Crafting an Authentic EVP That Attracts and Retains, Cara Brennan Allamano, Co-founder @ PeopleTech Partners

A strong EVP is the cornerstone of hiring success and retention.

In this episode, Cara Brennan Allamano, Co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, shares how to craft an EVP that not only attracts the right talent but also aligns your team around a shared vision. She shares a data-driven approach—asking employees why they joined, why they stay, and what keeps them motivated—to build an EVP that reflects your true strengths. You’ll also learn why stakeholder alignment is critical and how to make sure you maintain it beyond initial creation.

Listen to learn how to turn your EVP into a practical tool that helps hiring managers, recruiters, and leaders build authentic, consistent connections with candidates.

Key Takeaways: 

1. Build with intention: Start by asking employees why they joined, why they stay, and what keeps them motivated. This three-question approach creates a foundation for an EVP that reflects your company’s strengths and values.
2. Keep it practical: Your EVP should guide decision-making, help hiring teams communicate consistently, and ensure alignment across the organization.
3. Evolve as you grow: Check in with your EVP at regular intervals or during key milestones. This ensures it continues to reflect your company’s priorities and resonates with employees and candidates alike.
4. Align early and often: Stakeholder alignment isn’t a one-time exercise. Your EVP should be deeply connected to your business strategy, with buy-in from leadership, recruiters, and hiring managers. A misaligned EVP leads to misaligned hires—and, ultimately, higher attrition.
5. Evolve with data: Your EVP isn’t static. Revisit it at least twice a year and at key company milestones. Use data-driven discovery—listen to candidates, survey top performers, and track what actually keeps people engaged—to keep your EVP relevant and effective.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction

(01:16) Defining an EVP and its role in hiring success

(03:39) Who owns the EVP and its connection to business strategy

(05:35) Steps to build an authentic EVP internally

(07:56) Key questions for EVP discovery: Why employees join and stay

(13:21) Structuring an EVP for internal and external use

(19:47) Stakeholder alignment and testing your EVP

(24:52) Improving time to hire and offer acceptance rates

(31:11) Hot take: Trusting recruiters to drive decision-making

Transcript

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:00:00]:

It's truly unfair to expect an employee to be able to be successful if you haven't been clear to them with a realistic job preview and a true understanding of what this company values and how they plan to execute their business. So when you have alignment around those things, you can be excellent in hiring.

Shannon Ogborn [00:00:39]:

Welcome to Offer Accepted, the podcast that elevates your recruiting game. I'm your host Shannon Ogborn. Join us for conversations with talent leaders, executives, and more to uncover the secrets to building and leading successful talent acquisition teams. Gain valuable insights and actionable advice from analyzing cutting-edge metrics to confidently claiming your seat at the table. Let's get started.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:05]:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Offer Accepted. I'm Sharon Ogborn, your host and this episode is brought to you by Ashby, the all-in-one recruiting platform. Empowering ambitious teams from seat to IPO and beyond. I am super excited to be here today with Cara Brennan Allamano. Cara has had an incredible career as a people leader spanning the most incredible companies from Adobe and Pinterest to Udemy and Lattice. She is a three-time startup to IPO builder, two-time startup to acquisition builder, Co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, and so much more. Cara, thank you so much for joining us today.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:01:37]:

So happy to be here. Shannon. I love talking about this stuff.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:41]:

Well, I'm excited to hear more about the results having an employer value proposition can bring to an organization, but first, if we could take a step back and if you could tell me a little bit more about what an EVP actually is and why it's so important, I think that would be great context.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:01:55]:

It's really easy to very quickly get misaligned on the why? Why are people choosing you? Why are you hiring the specific personas that you're hiring for the roles that you have? I've heard some people say, you know, just hire the best. Well, the best can mean very different things across the spectrum of individuals hiring managers, roles, departments, divisions, et cetera. And what I learned and what I've seen in companies that have been able to scale up successfully and maintain a really high-performance culture and have a their business evolve effectively with the right hires is that none of this was done unintentionally. You have to be extremely thoughtful about who you're hiring and how they fit with your talent strategy. And the really fun part about building an effective talent strategy is that every company is going to be very different. It should look very different. You should be able to reinforce all your key differentiators by hiring certain people and not hiring other people. And across the companies that you mentioned that I've been a part of, Pinterest was a very different company than Udemy, which is very different than Lattice or Planet.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:03:10]:

And the role that an EVP plays in that is, it is your template, it is your roadmap for who are the types of people that are gonna make our company successful. And we want an EVP that deflects people that aren't gonna be a match, that aren't gonna be the folks that are here to drive our and really push the envelope. And similarly, in all the businesses I've been a part of, we've looked at our EVP as something that really serves as a reference point both internally because you build it into your, all of your recruiting processes so that you're continuously communicating the why behind why someone should wanna be here. And then you're pulling the thread through all of your HR processes, right? The things that make you great, the things that bring in really diverse mindsets. And the reason somebody can be successful at your company should be reflect in that EVP as well.

Shannon Ogborn [00:04:03]:

Absolutely. And you said something that jogged a thought in me. When you're creating an EVP, it's not taking something that you took from another org and applying it. It's applying the process of how do you fundamentally create an EVP that works for your company? And on that note, before we dive deeper, I would love if you could help us understand who should be building and owning the EVP at a company.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:04:29]:

I've taken this on as an accountability for me at the CPO level. And the reason I say that is the employer value proposition is something that should ultimately be owned by the CEO because it is a direct outcome of your business strategy. It determines how you're going to execute your business strategy because it's two steps down from that. It's your business strategy and then the talent strategy that's tied to that, that says here's the type of organization we're going to build. Here's, here's the organizational design that we're going to have, and these are the types of people that we're going to hire into different roles from a persona perspective that are going to help us execute that business strategy. And then very close, nestled Right up. Next up to that talent strategy is your EVP, which are the marching orders for your recruiters to know the storytelling that they're going to be doing when they're talking to candidates. And it works across the org because it informs your marketing strategy as it relates to your employer brand and it informs your hiring manager in terms of what they're going to highlight when they're looking to attract candidates. And your hiring managers are in every corner of your org.

Shannon Ogborn [00:05:40]:

Absolutely. And I know we've talked previously about how involved talent should be in this process. And just to kind of get into some more of the tactical nature of this. If you were at a company today that didn't have an EVP, how would you get started on putting one together?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:06:00]:

There's a number of different ways you can do this. I've seen folks bring in external individuals. I like to do this work internally because I think you learn a lot through that process. And what I'll say is, you know, depending on the scale, it depends on how much effort you're going to put into your EVP in terms of how much time, how many resources you have. Ultimately, I've come up with a bit of a quick and dirty process that having ab tested this across a couple different orgs, some where we brought in big fancy consultants and others where we've really diyed the whole process. I lean on this version of the EVP because I think it brings really authentic outcomes. And as with anything, it's something you're going to iterate on. So what I've done is when I've been in a head of people role, I've had both recruiting and HR functions reporting to me, which I personally think is really important because there is such a strong connection between those two areas.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:06:58]:

You can start either side. I like to have these folks work together through this discovery process. And what I've done is I've said go to our leaders. Or if you have already have a calibration process and you know who your very top performers are across your org, go to those 5% of top performers. If you're a very small org, if you're 20, 30, 40 people, it's probably your top 10% of employees and you want to make sure that you have a diverse group across different functions representing different dimensions of diversity so that you're getting a holistic view of why someone would see value in becoming an employee at your company. And then I asked three questions and have open ended answers that we now collect. You can record a zoom, you can Get a transcript. Before we do the old-fashioned note taking and putting a spreadsheet.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:07:47]:

But whatever version of AI makes this a lot easier is what I would recommend. The first question is, why did you join us? And get that full answer, go deeper, get down to the brass tacks of why someone accepted this job. And I always preview this of like, look, we're looking for brass tacks as much as aspirational here at Planet, which was a really interesting company that I was ahead of people at, we were a space tech company. So for many, many people, the reason they joined the company is because they were obsessed with space. So we started with that conversation that we went into. And I wanted to be in a high-growth company and I wanted to be in the Bay Area and I wanted to be adjacent to both hardware and software engineers. Those were pieces that were important to a number of folks that we hired there. So go in, get that answer.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:08:43]:

The next question is, why do you stay at this company? One is, put yourself in the position of accepting this offer. What got you excited? Why did you choose us over others? The next is, what keeps you coming into work every day? And that's a different answer than the former. And I think a lot of times with an employer value proposition, people don't necessarily dig into why people stay. They will start with what attracts you here and that doesn't help you execute against the bigger talent strategy of retention and engagement and making sure that people stay happy here. And so much of this, in my view is setting expectations on the front end and again getting the people that are going to be the right fit and deflecting the people that aren't right. Why do you stay here? Answer is, often I have great leaders or my immediate manager. My team is amazing. A lot of times it's really down to the nuts and bolts of the work that people are doing day to day, which I always think is really important.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:09:43]:

And sometimes we don't lead with enough in talent acquisition, which is literally like, Shannon, your day is going to look like this and you're going to be like, this is cool. I'm doing more of the things I like to do and fewer the things I don't like to do, right? And then the last is a very tactical question but really important. What component of your total rewards package is most important to you? This is a really important answer because for some you're going to hear it's cash. For some you're going to hear it's equity. For some it's going to be a fertility benefit. For some, it's going to be mental health and wellness.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:10:19]:

For some, it's going to be our generous vacation package. For some, it's going to be our sabbatical that we provide every three or four years. That is good information because a couple things, especially in the current environment where we're in, you might not be able to be 150% on all fronts, right? Your talent strategy will tell you whether you're going to be paying significantly above market in cash in some areas and maybe not in others. It'll tell you whether you're going to be giving above-average equity grants or not. And you should know what those trade offs are and you should hire people. If you are not a cash king company and you're a company that's really focused on the long term and are lower on cash and higher on equity, you need to make sure you're not hiring people into that company whose cash is their number one because those folks will not be happy over time, so this is really where you get into the brass tax.

Shannon Ogborn [00:11:16]:

It's nearly impossible with total rewards for every single one of them to be in the 90th plus percentile. So like you said, there are trade-offs and you have to make the right choice and align it with your EVP, but yeah, all of those questions make total sense. When you're asking people these questions. How can you encourage people to be honest in this process and build that trust?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:11:40]:

I love that question. And Shannon, this is why I think it's really important to be thoughtful about your information-collecting process. And this is where I said across the team. Look across your team. And if it's the HRBP that has an existing relationship with this top performer, have them be the person that's in sitting down with them and going over these questions. If these are newer employees or if they just have had a great relationship with their recruiter. I find recruiters sometimes are the absolute closest to employees because they've been through these really big life decision journeys, right?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:12:13]:

And my recruiters loved, love to do this kind of work too. So I've kind of gotten everybody in a room and said, okay, here's our short list of folks that we want to be interviewing for EVP. Who do we feel like has the most trusted relationship and is willing to go go in and have the conversations. And then I think a couple things that are important in this process is communicating that you are collating this information, meaning you're not looking to attach it to a specific individual. This is really a broad set of Data that you're collecting and you're going to be putting it all together to one broad EVP. And there's not going to be a, like Shannon said, this is what she cares about. It's going to be, we're trying to survey across the org and come up with some real value propositions for our future employees. You know, this could be a fun conversation.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:13:02]:

I think it's really important to time box because these conversations can go really long. I've told my team 15 minutes go in three questions, five minutes each. And then it sort of forces that individual to get to the most important pieces. And then the really fun part is once you have that information, you do collate it, you put it all together. And I have to tell you again, with GPT, the world has gotten so much easier. We literally just whatever your transcribed notes, whatever your stuff you put a prompt in, hey, I'm a future employee of X company. I want to know the reasons that people want to join, answer these questions and collate this data and answer these questions for me. And man, it comes out beautifully and easily and wonderfully, very, very quickly.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:13:53]:

And then boom, you have your EVP and your EVP should cover those question areas that we talked about. Why people join our company, why people stay, and our total rewards highlights.

Shannon Ogborn [00:14:05]:

I love that the prompt though is from the candidate perspective, not I am a chief people officer and I am trying to create this EVP for my company. Here's the information we got. It's. I think that's so smart. And then kind of breaking down into the structure. Can you tell me a little bit about how you structure the EVP once you have that information?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:14:28]:

You know, I've seen different companies structure differently and I have structured it differently at different companies. And part of that is sort of what are your results in your document? And I would say an EVP should be no more than than one page. I live in a bullet point. A bullet point land. I love that. So I would say up to five bullet points covering these different areas. Other folks have transformed it really into a narrative based on the points of information that they have. And that has worked really well for them.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:14:57]:

I think this is where you have an ability to partner with your marketing team to see how your company communicates both externally and internally and really craft it in a way that makes sense for your current employees and your future employees. And the magic of an EVP is this is it is a tool for your recruiters to help drive a decision-making process both with a candidate and with A hiring manager to take a step back. My talent acquisition leaders. What I look for is a keen capability to drive a decision-making process. That's all recruiting is, right? I do not see it as a sales process. I actually see it as a process where you're trying to help a group of humans make some really tough life decisions and do it really effectively based on on authentic, honest, effective information. It's data-based decision-making. And recruiters are the best, in my mind, one of the best employees within any business to help drive data-based decision-making.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:15:59]:

Here's the flip side of this. If your employees don't have an EVP to work with, they're filling in the gaps with the data. And then you wonder why you might not have consistent, effective, high-performance hiring across your org. You might not have the talent density that you want. It's because you are building the most critical process that you can as a high-growth company without any core data and without consistent alignment across the org. So the short story is you have your EVP. Every hiring manager should have an EVP. Every recruiter should have an EVP.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:16:33]:

Your total rewards team should have the EVP and build total rewards around that. When your marketing and branding team are talking about your company from an employer branding perspective, it's hitting the highlights of your EVP and again opening up the conversation and making sure that Everybody understands an EVP's intention is to attract the people that will help you be successful and deflect the folks that won't. You want this to look different than your neighbors or your competitors or the hot new founder who made a big raise. You want it to look different than those folks. Evp. This is what makes you special as a company.

Shannon Ogborn [00:17:11]:

Absolutely. And to your point about filling in the gaps I've noticed at companies I've worked for that didn't have a strong EVP to go off of. You kind of have to start filling in the gaps from your own personal experience, but the issue with that is that there's no way that's representative of the total company and why many people join the company. You're only speaking from your personal experience, which can be powerful, but that's not always aligned with the EVP. And so when people don't have the resources, they're going to start to fill it in. And it's not always going to be with what you want. And I know one of the key ingredients you've talked about before is authenticity.

Shannon Ogborn [00:17:52]:

What breaks if an EVP is not authentic?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:17:56]:

This is where down the line you're going to be dealing with misaligned expectations for roles and ultimately it's going to affect your attrition numbers. This is where I say you create or you solve so many of your people problems in the acquisition process. And when I have seen spikes in attrition, I like to break it down by cohort. And really you want to understand why is this group opting out? What are some challenges you're when you're taking a look. And a lot of times what I've seen in high growth periods of time, you have dysfunctionally oversold an organization. And I understand why, because I've recruited before, right? I've sat in that seat. I've been a hiring manager before, I've been an HR BP before. And you're like, oh my gosh, I'm supposed to hire 10 people this month.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:18:49]:

I'm just gonna sell the heck out of this company. I'm gonna nod when this person says, do you do this? Do you do this? This is the filling in of the gaps, right, Shannon? So this isn't a blame scenario, but you definitely see that if you are nodding and saying the reason people stay here is the cash compensation, you know, we are the best, we pay more than anybody around. And if that's not true, and the reason people stay here is because they have an incredible insurance benefits, that's really what the happiest folks lean on and that builds a level of trust and care and those pieces. And then as soon as you get to a merit cycle and somebody's, wait a second, you know, I'm not paid significantly above market, then you lose those people because that expectation has been broken. It is a trust component, right? And it is about being authentic in that moment. Obviously, things change within an organization. It evolves. You can go as a leader, as a CEO who owns the employee employer value proposition, you can say, I know this has been our number one on our total rewards and let me tell you why we're shifting this piece and then you can adjust it and know going forward.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:20:03]:

So what you do is you manage through the change of your current employee base and then you make sure immediately you have cascaded that change down to every new employee who's being hired into that org. So that trust is still there, the expectation is aligned and you can make sure that you're moving forward without this being something that becomes a driver for attrition in the long term.

Shannon Ogborn [00:20:26]:

100%. On the note of stakeholders, talk to me a little bit about stakeholder alignment and kind of what are the Important inputs for that.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:20:37]:

The last step before going to publish an EVP internally. When I say publish, that's just sort of sharing, hey, here's our play value proposition. Before you do that, I like to workshop it, right? Like you're going around and you're saying, hey, here's our draft. Depending on the size of your company, you can have some roundtables. You can definitely share it with your executive team, share it with Frontline employees, share it with hiring managers. I love sitting down and talking through it with my recruiters and saying, hey, is this is a value prop? Do we feel like we have enough to close our top candidates here? Those are the questions you should ask yourself. So test it out. See how this works.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:21:18]:

And that's how you get stakeholder holder buy in. There is risk in this scenario of people saying, no, no, no, we need to tell people that equity is our number one value proposition. Well, if it's not, and if it's not the reason people are staying, then you don't need to do that. So there is ownership and accountability for the group or the leaders that are ultimately leading this process. And people need to be able to push back. I have found that it has led to some really interesting conversations. And the other thing I like to do is make sure that you're including in your employee surveys, if you have pulse surveys, et cetera, questions around these different areas so that you're testing your assumptions with your EVP and you are making sure that you're staying close to evolving reasons. And I have seen this shift.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:22:07]:

Here's what I've seen, which is, which is a very positive version of this, which is people join the company because they love a benefit that they have. Everything's paid. In early companies, you'll often have really rich benefit packages, which I think is great because you aren't covering as many employees. So you're small and you can do this, and it's super. Maybe your cash compensation is still a little bit below market and people are dreaming of having equity that's a higher value. And then you grow and you see success, and then you see, wow, oh, this equity value is kicking in. I thought it was paid fairly from a cash perspective, but man, this whole equity thing, it's really happening. And then what becomes your number one employer value proposition? The equity.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:22:57]:

And that shift can happen pretty quickly. It can happen with the fundraiser, it can happen with a new product being released or a new feature being released that people are really excited about. So then you're going back to Your value prop. And you're saying, all right, everybody, the game has shifted. And then what you're also doing in that scenario is flowing it through to your cash compensation strategy and your total reward strategy at that point. And then it might be more of a conversation of we don't need to supercharge our benefits plan if we know that equity is what people really care about here. And so it makes you a lot more efficient and effective in your selection processes because it allows you to be more agile.

Shannon Ogborn [00:23:37]:

I love that. If you could briefly talk about at what cadence should people reevaluate their EVPs? Is it milestone-based? Is it, you know, maybe once every two years we should check in on this. What are your thoughts having been through this?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:23:52]:

Yeah, yeah, I think both. I like to have internal discipline around this. And so I think it needs to be at least twice a year. Depends on how quickly you're growing. I think definitely milestone any large milestones. This is where I do rely a lot on my talent acquisition leader. That's where I'll say, okay, ultimately among my team, you are the owner of this employer value proposition. And what's interesting to me is they will often see external signals before we even see internal signals.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:24:24]:

You're going to be hearing candidates saying, hey, I saw you all do this. This was really cool. And often it may not seem like a key milestone yet because the company hasn't necessarily seen, garnered the revenue from that, that shift, et cetera, but if those are the types of conversations you're starting to have with your candidates and you're seeing it enough, that's when I think it's fair to revisit and say, hey, we might need to fold this in. And that's where I would go to some of those newer hires that we're excited about that we're already seeing early stages of high performance from ask the three questions and then bounce that against some of your other high performers that you revisit the three questions with and that allows you to refresh at any point in time.

Shannon Ogborn [00:25:08]:

Yeah, that makes total sense in terms of results. Would love to hear your personal experience if there's anything tangible you can share as well. On results of implementing an EVP. Are there any metrics you've seen improve talent density, time to hire, you know, things like that that might really stand out to a talent leader encouraging them to create an EVP for their organization?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:25:32]:

I'm convinced because of the data that I've seen that there is a long tail impact that's harder to prove because they're correlations, not causations, right? Because you don't have a control group in that scenario. Everybody's along the ride with you. So what I can say is I can speak to the data in the very near term within the recruiting team. I have seen when I have implemented EVP processes, time to hire be reduced and that's where I often see most of the impact. I'll see time to hire reduce and then I sometimes see fewer offer exceptions. Time to hire as a measure is really about the efficiency of your process.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:26:21]:

And there are two things you can do to drive efficiency in your process, in my opinion. One is tooling. There you go. Ashby, right? You can have a tool that takes away a lot of the manual work and lets the machine do the work. And the talent acquisition leaders drive the decision-making, which just can make you infinitely more effective. The other is alignment and agreement.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:26:47]:

Because all talent selection is, is a decision-making process. And if people are aligned around what we need, when we see it, we know it's a match to what we need because we're already fully aligned on what we need that can speed up a process. I've seen things like a 20% improvement. And what I'll say is I recognize when you're scaling a company, when you're trying to build quickly, there's a million different priorities. And an EVP sounds like something that is often for a later stage fancy company that is competing with marketing consultants and employer branding folks, etc. I have seen that if you can bring an EVP process in early, it gets everybody aligned very quickly. You're deflecting more candidates early in the process. You are accelerating candidates that you're able to in the screening, be able to get folks really motivated around the right levers for your business.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:27:49]:

And then your hiring managers are very easily able to understand and articulate the reasons that someone should join the company outside of like, I want you on my team, right? So everybody's speaking the same language. And, and Shannon, you probably know this even more than I do because you really live in the land of candidates that is reflected to a candidate in a really positive way when everybody's saying the same things, when they're also authentically telling you what this is not. Hey, if you don't have a great benefit package and you tell people that up front and someone can make a decision about that. Super. Because that's a great experience for somebody too. And then they can say, but I still really want to work here. So here's how I'm going to make that work and I can move to an offer quickly and then that's the final piece. Offer acceptance rates tend to go up when you have full alignment around the value proposition because you're not at the end of the day, you haven't made promises that you're not able to deliver at the offer stage.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:28:50]:

Which drives me batty. The worst case scenario I have, and this is when I know I've got an EVP problem, is when I have a lot of exceptions around compensation bans or somebody's trying to make a lot of special deals. We're trying to put a lot of sign on bonuses in place. It's that we have not communicated the correct information and we are not fully aligned with this process to start with.

Shannon Ogborn [00:29:14]:

Yeah, certainly by the time you get to the end of a process with a candidate, there's certain things that are just helpful if you've already been aligned from the start. When they feel like they have all the answers and they've talked to people not to say that everyone has to say the same thing or it has to be manufactured, but if I'm interviewing at a company, I'm a candidate and I say, hey, like what do you love about working here? And they say, you know what? The people that I work with are just the smartest people I've ever worked with, the kindest, the most empathetic, the easiest to work with. And it's really collaborative. And if everyone says some version of that, you feel confident, right, that you're making the right choice and then you get to the end of the process and you say, I think I know what this company is and what they stand for. And so that authenticity piece is important, but the consistency of decision like helps candidates make what they feel is more informed decisions. And I think that's really important, so yes, I love all those.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:30:13]:

Shannon. I've seen it the other way too in the sense that I've been part of organizations that are very competitive. Everyone indexes on winning and that's the differentiator in culture. And so what I've also seen in that is everybody is aligned around that. And you have words that you've used in your employer value proposition that says come here if you want to win. And candidates early in the process who said collaboration is my number one, not competition, are able to opt out a lot sooner, but I love exactly what you're talking about there, right? It's really just being open and clear very early so that you can get the right folks in the seat and that they can feel good about their decision at the end of the day.

Shannon Ogborn [00:30:58]:

Absolutely. Well, taking a thousand steps back at Ashby, we talk a lot about hiring excellence and from your experience and the companies you've worked for, all amazing at hiring. Would love to hear. When you hear hiring excellence, what does that mean to you?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:31:15]:

I think about alignment just full stop. And I think that's sort of the theme you probably heard from me all day today. It's truly unfair to expect a talent acquisition leader to be successful if you have a million different voices saying different things inside an organization because that is so much friction in the system. It's truly unfair to expect an employee to be able to be successful if you haven't been clear to them with a realistic job preview and a true understanding of what this company values and how they plan to execute their business. So when you have alignment around those things, you can be excellent in hiring. So to me it's alignment. And you see those ultimately in the long tail people numbers with people who are engaged and retained.

Shannon Ogborn [00:32:03]:

Could not agree more. There's no bigger bummer in talent acquisition than being grossly misaligned with your hiring managers, executives and all of that. So alignment. Let alignment be our word for 20, 25 talents.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:32:19]:

Let's do that.

Shannon Ogborn [00:32:20]:

Well, all your experience in this space, I'm sure that you have some hot takes. So I would love to hear what is your recruiting. Hot take has to like flip hair for this because it's. Here it comes.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:32:34]:

My hot take is I. Well, I don't even know if it's a hot take for me. We don't trust our recruiters enough. We just don't. And again, this is the absolute most important decision that your company is making. And these are folks that all day long sit in a seat and drive decision-making processes. If you're not trusting somebody, like figure out the reason behind that. If they are in seat, they need to be some of the most trusted folks in your org.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:33:05]:

And when I hear about processes, you know, I've had the founders that they have the final interview with everybody. I've had the executive leaders that say, you know, I want this question asked of every single person. If we're not trusting our talent acquisition leaders to be able to drive those processes, we are crippling the most important decision-making process in your org. And I see it all day long. And that's when I asked my question. I was like, why are your recruiters not driving this part of the process? And you know what, in any organization, do you have a process where you say okay, we're going to have somebody do their whole job and then right before they're delivering we're going to allow three people veto power over their their decision-making. We don't do that anywhere else, right?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:33:57]:

And I understand this is a collaborative decision-making process, but quite literally, many times we set our talent acquisition leaders up for failure by how we construct the organizations that we exist in and I'd like to see that changed.

Shannon Ogborn [00:34:13]:

Agreed. Put some respect on Talent's name because they are out here doing the impossible in my opinion. Well, I love this conversation so much. I think we are coming up on our time though. Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:34:28]:

I would take a look at my LinkedIn. I do actually respond to people's messages on there. Love to meet people. Please take a look at Lattice. I am a huge fan, was CPO there and now continued as advisors and talk about capability building for your org. That's Lattice. And take a look at PeopleTech Partners. It's a network of leaders that I'm really proud of and we do a lot of thought leadership in this space.

Shannon Ogborn [00:34:53]:

I love it. Well Cara, I am really excited for people to jump into their own EVPs and hopefully they can follow up with you on how it's going for them, but thank you so much for joining us. On offer. Accepted. I really appreciate you spending some time with us today.

Cara Brennan Allamano [00:35:06]:

It was great. It was great. Thanks, Shannon.

Shannon Ogborn [00:35:10]:

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