TA in Transition: A Year in Retrospect

As we wrap up 2025, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the massive shifts in Talent Acquisition. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of Talent Acquisition with global talent expert Shelia Gray, the newly appointed Global Head of Talent Acquisition for Hyundai. As organizations worldwide face shifting expectations, emerging technologies, and increasing compliance demands, Shelia shares a year-in-review look at TA in Transition–what’s changed, what’s trending, and what talent leaders must prepare for next.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Shelia Gray and Her Background
• 2:58 Shelia's Role at Hyundai and Global Talent Acquisition
• 6:08 The Impact of AI on Talent Acquisition
• 9:02 AI in Recruitment: Opportunities & Challenges
• 12:01 Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition
• 14:41 Skill-Based Hiring and Job Matching Technologies
• 18:08 The Role of Assessments in Recruitment
• 20:59 Regulatory Changes Affecting Talent Acquisition
• 23:36 The Future of Work: Gig Economy and Contract Labor
• 26:51 Advice for Navigating the Evolving TA Landscape

Transcript

DirectEmployers Association (00:00):

Get ready. The DE Talk podcast starts now, insightful conversations and dialogue, helping you put the human factor back in HR.

(00:08):

As we wrap up 2025, we're taking a moment to reflect on the massive shifts talent acquisition teams have faced around the world. This year brought an explosion of AI enabled tools, reshaping how we attract, evaluate, and hire talent. And with that, innovation came new challenges. Candidates are becoming more sophisticated in their applications and the influx of AI generated submissions is creating real bottlenecks in the hiring process. At the same time constantly shifting regulatory requirements or adding pressure and complexity. In this environment, TA professionals must be adaptable problem solvers, ready to pivot and innovate at a moment's notice. Today we're exploring why that agility is essential and how relying on strong partners and trusted solutions can help you stay informed, compliant, and ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving talent landscape.

Shannon Offord (00:58):

Welcome to the DE Talk podcast. We are very fortunate to have Shelia Gray with us. I've known Shelia for years. She actually was a Board Member here at DirectEmployers many years ago and has also been on our NLx Steering Committee. She is a global talent expert and we are so excited to have her today. Shelia, welcome to the DE Talk podcast.

Shelia Gray (01:25):

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today.

Shannon Offord (01:28):

Before we get started, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. Before we do that, I guess I should say congratulations. I know you just got a new position, so super exciting. So can you tell us about that as well?

Shelia Gray (01:43):

Sure, so my background is in human resources and in talent acquisition. I've spent over 20 years in the TA space. I've worked for large companies, I've worked for small companies, I've worked for quite a few global or international headquartered companies. My area of specialty is being a recruitment architect, which means working with organizations to create, to reorganize or to transform the recruiting function. That's everything from systems, tools, service delivery models, all of that. I was on a call with someone earlier and I said I remember having the first ATS in the nineties, so I've seen technology actually evolve over time. I'm in a new role, so only about less than a month in, and I'm the global head of talent acquisition for Hyundai and very exciting new role. Very good company, good brand. It's funny now as I drive down the road, I notice how many cars are ours.

(02:38):

You don't notice cars like anything until you're in the environment. When I was working for an appliance company, I was an appliance snob. I got to see appliances manufactured. So now that I see that, I'm like, that car could be ours. That's our car. So I'm very excited. It's a good opportunity and I love working for global companies because they challenged me in other ways in terms of culturally growing my knowledge about talent outside of the us. So very, very excited and glad to be a part of this podcast. Look forward to this discussion today.

Shannon Offord (03:09):

Can you tell us just a little bit about some of your responsibilities at Hyundai real quick?

Shelia Gray (03:14):

So in my role, I'm heading up what's called the Global Talent Acquisition Office. So we have regions all over the world. So North America is a big region for us and we're headquartered out of California for that. But I have also have locations, regions like AMEA that's out of Germany. I have China, I have APAC that's out of Indonesia. I have the Middle East, China, have Latin America and I have India and I'm very excited that what I'm looking to do in our organization is we have a strong brand regionally. We are a known brand company. We've done very, very well. We have one of the fastest growing luxury brands in the world, Genesis, and I'm coming into the organization to build upon great things. So looking at the organization, what does our brand look like regionally we're strong, but we need to have that one brand consistency, that one company approach.

(04:09):

As we look at our talent around the organization, I'm very excited because our CEO, who's located in Korea is the first non-Korean to be head. He's actually from Spain, Jose Muni, our head of North America is an African-American male and the first African-American male of an automotive. So very, very excited about that. We have a lot of diversity in our organization and so I'm going to build upon that in terms of the organization. Then looking at all the infrastructure things that they have because we have so many new things in terms of governmental compliance around the world. You have GDPR in Europe, but artificial intelligence is coming on strong everywhere. We're starting to see laws in New York and California around artificial intelligence and in the TA space it's becoming a little controversial because making decisions, it's always been something that gets challenged and who makes those decisions and where they lie. So I'm very excited to take this organization on their transformation journey and look how we can build upon all the things that we're doing

Shannon Offord (05:10):

Well. I know you mentioned AI and that is a super hot topic in TA right now and not just in TA, just in the world in general. How are you seeing organizations practically apply AI in TA right now?

Shelia Gray (05:23):

So first of all, let me just start by saying I'm new to my organization. So everything I talk about today is my experience. I'm still learning my organization. So how am I seeing organizations using AI? I think we had to get a handle on what AI is. I was in conferences as of last year where we were asking people who has governance over AI, how has governance done? Many of us have started having those governance councils. As I walked into this organization, I spent a lot of time in online training about our AI platform, how we protect our data, all of that. I'm finding that many companies outside are starting to do that. Now, when it comes to the TA space, it's a little tricky there because many of us eased into AI with things like chatbots. That was probably our first kind of space in how do we use chatbots, people using chatbots on the front end of their apply process to help people understand how to navigate to answer basic questions.

(06:21):

And some of us have gotten sophisticated use things like paradox and other tools out there to actually schedule candidates and actually do some type of screening on the front end. So AI is coming in there. I found a lot of people, early adopters of ChatGPT used AI to create job descriptions to figure out how to do that. People were using AI recruiters to create interview profiles based on job descriptions. So I've seen that in our space. I've seen our candidates, so I hear this quite a bit as I'm out there with TA people, candidates are sophisticated. Whenever there's technology candidates will find out how to do it. So first candidates will use to redo their resume and why not? Because people who could afford were having resume writers do their resume. Now you can have AI actually create, do your resume, but the tricky part where some people are taking their are still doing this, are taking their resumes and they're taking the job description and having AI created to the job description, it's okay if it aligns.

(07:21):

It's not okay if it's going to say embellishing upon your actual proven demonstrated space. So you're seeing that. So you're seeing some organizations deciding to take resumes and credentials and putting it through filters to see how much is AI generated? I'm seeing AI being used when it comes to some assessments now. Then you also have candidates. So there've been debates out there about what is cheating in the recruiting process. And I say this, if we're using AI as chatbots and I'm talking about we in terms of companies, if we're using AI as chatbots, if we're using AI to come up with interview questions, if we're using AI in assessments and if candidates will be allowed to use AI internally when we get hired, then to me it's okay for candidates to use parts of AI. The issue is when candidates need to be in a discussion with us around their skills in a building answer questions, that's when we want to see their authentic self and that's when AI should not be used.

(08:23):

And what I always say in my peers when I say, well, we found people cheating, the first question I ask is, do you have ground rules and transparency about when you use AI and when it's okay for them to use AI? Because I typically made it a part of my interview process that when I send out, here's your list of here's your list of interviewers, here's the process. If we're going to be using Zoom or some type of technology to do the interview, then this is a point where we want to see you, you'll see us and we want to see you. So we can tell when you're moving over and looking at another monitor or answers are coming back, we can see that and so we're not feeling that's the authentic view and can disqualify you to the process. So that transparency I think is the piece that people forget as they put into the process.

(09:10):

But as I did unleash this year, as I typically do and I do a couple of the tech events, I'm finding that many more organizations are building in the TA space, building AI in. They're building it in for helping with efficiency and that's good. The question is we can't rely on AI to make decisions. So I know that there's a major lawsuit out there now around Workday. I've been a Workday client, many organizations and Workday uses some AI and Workday actually is partnered with an organization which is now partner HigherScore and HigherScore uses technology on the front. The question that was challenged by a African-American male who I think was a veteran and is disabled, right, was there's fact, but he's challenging it. He's challenging AI, he's challenging the hiring decisions. He saw a pattern of him not moving on into the process and is challenged that AI made those decisions.

(10:11):

And so we've just got to be careful that it doesn't make decisions. It can help us make things quicker, but when it takes the, because remember the part about people say AI won't replace us, that thing, now we're seeing companies saying AI will replace us, but we used to say AI won't replace us because we have human judgment and that is the difference between the two things. When we give up that human judgment, that's when people will challenge us. And so I'm seeing people now becoming more careful now that the Workday lawsuit is out there.

Shannon Offord (10:45):

I think a lot of people, at least with me, people are worried about this whole being replaced and I just look at AI as really more of an assistant, a personal assistant for me really it's really more of a time saver more than anything

Shelia Gray (11:00):

It is. It's more of a time saver, but it can be. So I think at your event that we did the DirectEmployers meeting, I said, if I look at jobs that could be replaced by AI in our space, I think things like a scheduling coordinator we're getting there where scheduling tools are becoming so automated and things like Calendly where you can schedule right on someone's calendar, may take some of those operational people's roles or reduce them. So scheduling is one of them. The other one that's been on the horizon is self booking travel candidate travel that has been technology has been there, and as long as once you can find a way to take that to using AI, then I think that will also be an area where you'll see some redundancies

Shannon Offord (11:46):

What do you think about sourcers?

Shelia Gray (11:46):

I believe that sourcing is something that can be replaced, parts of it. So for example, when we use research firms to generate names, and you can start to use AI now to say, I want to know everyone who has presented at a conference. I want to know everyone is presented at a technology conference on AI. I want the list of all those presenters. You could start to do some of that organic sourcing stuff now through AI. So I think that the roles of sourcers in terms of hunting maybe reduced over time and brought back in, and I will tell you why organizations will love that because it will give recruiters more capacity. But anytime I say you bring AI in, there's more training for the staff that's there now. They have to assume how to use the technology. That's the piece. People are missing that piece in the middle. I always say the conference this year, and there was a firm there, I think it was called Higher Brain, and they were saying how they sit on top of over your recruiting process so that managers don't have to understand how the technology works and just gets pushed out the tools, right? Here's the next thing you need to do. I think the more complex you get with technology, the more you have to understand that people have to be trained on.

Shannon Offord (13:13):

What do you think about some of the, well, obviously with this whole job matching thing that's out there, a lot of people, we've had job matching in the past, but now it's a lot of it's more skills based. Do you think, give me your thoughts around that and kind of how that may impact.

Shelia Gray (13:28):

Yeah, that's another big one. I've looked at technology that does that. I know that things like Eightfold and HireVue do that. Here's what I like about it. So years ago, if you went to Apple's career site and you went in there and you wanted to look for a job, it asks you to upload your resume or CV and it recommended jobs. I used to think that was the coolest thing. I don't have to search. I don't have to search by any of those things that it can help me do things. So what I'm finding is these tools that are coming up now called Find My Match, some of the tools that are out there that are seen are only on the entry level, which are people typically that are starting off their careers. They have called homogeneous skills. You are a fresh college grad in engineering something that's where it works, customer service roles, it works like that too. What I think it gets a little bit more complicated is when it becomes more mid-career senior roles doing those kinds of matching things because people may have taken several different paths in their career now where I think it'd be great and you guys had that through Recruit Rooster was being able to put that military analyze around there because people come out of the military with different grades not knowing what's a good job match for them.

(14:46):

That's when AI really looks because it matches you up. But I think when it comes to mid-career, people in my career, for example, I started off as an HR business partner. Then I went into diversity and affirmative action, then I made to recruiter and then I may have done several other things. How do you help me match my job? How do you do that? I think it becomes a little more complicated in the middle things, but I think it's good. But on that note, the other thing that someone turned me on to this past summer was these things called kind of the reverse recruiters. Have you heard of that concept?

Shannon Offord (15:17):

I have, yeah.

Shelia Gray (15:18):

Standing in the gap for you and actually being you applying for jobs, looking for jobs and all that. The interesting thing about that is I think that's what's driving traffic. If you talk to anybody now there is job shrinkage in terms of number of jobs open, but we're finding most people are finding thousands of candidates applying in the US, in the US market that was always chasing some other markets. But in the US market we're finding many more people applying to our jobs and I think it's because of the automation.

Shannon Offord (15:48):

And do you think that automation is helping? Well, so I've been reading a lot of articles and it talks about how AI is finding positions for people to apply to. AI is actually doing the whole weeding out of candidates as well. But because of those two things are happening and there's no real human interaction happening that people aren't getting hired. Do you see that as an issue or

Shelia Gray (16:13):

I don't think. Okay. I think that the influx of candidates makes a bottleneck because for those of us who are actually reviewing candidates and not using AI to narrow down the list, it makes it much harder. It makes it much harder for people that are using AI to help them skinny the list down. So it's going in saying these 500 people have applied, you have identified because you make the decision, here are our top characteristics for them, competencies they must have, years of experience, geographical location, maybe job titles, it will skinny the list down. Still doesn't even answer the question, who should I interview or not? But it's skinny. The list down for those people doing that, that list has increased because people using AI to help them with their resume job titles and everything else has allowed more people to opt in than before. And it was interesting, there was somebody out there at a company at the right thing. Terry Terhar put a post out there on LinkedIn and he said, no, I have some recruiter jobs in their virtual right remote. And then he came back and he said, this is the numbers, huge numbers of candidates that apply for that job. And he himself as a CEO went through every resume and got back to every candidate.

Shannon Offord (17:34):

Wow.

Shelia Gray (17:34):

He used technology, he has technology. He said, I'm kind of old school on this that I wanted to look at. I put it out here under my brand and I wanted to do that, but it took some time because he had huge numbers. Here's the thing, the differentiate in your resume may once you use AI is harder. It's harder for me to say Susie, Bob and Kip because their resumes now look all the same. So that means many more phone calls. What I will say is I think it has increased the time for us to get through the recruiting process.

Shannon Offord (18:11):

Do you think there are tools or do you think there are ways that recruiters and TA professionals can kind of speed that process up?

Shelia Gray (18:21):

Okay, okay. I'm old as dirt here. I'll tell you this. I start off when recruiting was resumes in a folder, job ads, job fairs, and we have a ton of resumes we collect and mail ins and people walk into the office. I had a ton of resumes that were in the folders. I'd have to sit there, figure it out and depend on the volume. I had to get them very quickly. I had to get on the phone. There was no email. I had to call them to schedule 'em to come into the office. We didn't really do a lot of virtual back in those days or do a preliminary phone screen that was time consuming. Technology is now making stuff time consuming once again. The whole purpose of an ATS was to make efficiencies. It did. Now our jobs can skip more eyeballs on them, more people can apply to them because most of us have mobile access to all of our jobs.

(19:17):

So you can do it right on your phone. So that means I can apply to 10 jobs where I used to have to do whatever. I don't have to update resumes anymore. There's parsing out there. Technology has made some things better, but it's made volumes and I think it's speeded. It slowed up things, it slow up things because like I said, in the old days, if you wanted a job, you had to take the time to apply to the ad, write a letter, mail it in, physically show up at a job fair. Now we have virtual jobs here, so you can just show up on camera on your lunch break somewhere. So now more people are opting in

Shannon Offord (19:54):

And you can send out hundreds of resumes that are tailored for that positions in a matter of seconds

Shelia Gray (19:59):

You got back. And now with generative AI, you can say AI, I'd like for you to today go out there and check Indeed, SimplyHired, all the job boards that I've listed. Please tell me which ones have job openings with this job title or this salary range. These are my desired markets, and please apply to them on their career website.

Shannon Offord (20:24):

Yeah, I have a friend that's actually in that process right now and he tells me that each day. He told me before when he was looking for a job, it used to be an actual job looking for work. And now he's like, I get up, the jobs are right there for me. I tell it to apply to these jobs on the career website and it takes literally minutes to do.

Shelia Gray (20:45):

Absolutely. But you remember one, the requirements, and I think it's still a requirement at the Department of Employment and Security in the US is that you must apply to X number of jobs to get unemployment. So that meant you had to be doing activity, right? You had to be looking for jobs, you had to be applying for jobs. And we've always had people that applied for anything just so they could get their seven jobs. Sometimes there's just not enough jobs out there for you, but today I can just do it every week on Monday, Hey AI, please apply to my seven jobs for me, documented in my folder cause I need to send it in for my unemployment. So are they really job looking? I don't know?

Shannon Offord (21:21):

No, no, not really. But I mean they're meeting the requirements

Shelia Gray (21:24):

And what you said, what I said about jobs going away because of AI, everybody kept saying jobs are not going to go away. But we've had some companies now, I believe it was Amazon, Microsoft who recently said that they were eliminating those jobs and it was because of AI that they were going to use more efficiencies of AI. So they're the first ones who've ever said it. We've all thought this out there as we see things because I, I've been watching the driverless car in California now. I go get back to California a lot. I'm like, and I've known people got in I I'm like, I'm still in the people car. I don't want to get in the driverless car.

Shannon Offord (22:02):

I rode in one in Vegas. It was weird,

Shelia Gray (22:05):

But you think about it, that's replacing cab drivers. Uber gave cab drivers or taxi cab drivers a run for their money. Driverless cars are giving that industry money. But when I went to your conference many years ago, and I think it was in Indianapolis, is when a presenter got up and said, what's coming is the technology for the driver's car wants to target truck drivers the one the hardest fields to fill because they have long hours, they have some very treacherous roots in the wintertime and downtime. They must get so much sleep time. That is the perfect market to have driverless things. If that were to ever occur, that would replace an industry of people.

Shannon Offord (22:51):

Well, they're actually testing that up in northern Indiana because it's obviously flatter up there. So as long as they're doing the same route daily, they've been running some tests there and I've also heard that they're running similar tests out in the southwest. Obviously the terrain allows for that as well. So I do think it's coming at some point. It may us not be as fast as some people thought,

Shelia Gray (23:13):

But that's a job that can be replaced. There was a DirectEmployers Member one time who did a presentation. They were talking about how hard it's to find truck drivers these days because people away from their long distance truck drivers away from their families and whatever, and they were recruiting retirees, they were recruiting couples to letting the spouse be with them on the things because those are treacherous jobs. Now in COVID, it made it even harder because you remember we shut down truck stops along the way so they can even stop for breakfasts and stuff. That became an essential worker during COVID was being a truck driver. And so we saw how important the job is and we now know that there's a shortage of people coming into that field. That's one of those jobs that today may replace over time.

Shannon Offord (23:55):

Well, when I was at Unleashed two years ago, I met a sourcer who was there. I was like, Hey, what company are you with? And he's like, well, I'm actually not. The company I was with actually has replaced their sourcers, the majority of their sourcers with AI tools, but they actually paid for me to come here to network to find another job.

Shelia Gray (24:19):

That was nice. That was very

Shannon Offord (24:20):

Nice. So I was like,

Shelia Gray (24:21):

But yeah, I can see that because I'm a big fan of AIHR, which is training, recruiter training and certification. And you think about it, the techniques and everything that they're training and AIHR's on Boolean searches, how to do social media search, all that stuff. That could be something that's trained very AI to do and very easily they could replace outsourcers.

Shannon Offord (24:45):

Alright, so let's switch gears a little bit. AI obviously huge hot topic, but what other emerging trends are you seeing out there in TA aside from AI?

Shelia Gray (24:56):

So there's a couple things. So one, we've been going back and forth on skill-based hiring, right? Do we do skill-based hiring? Do we not do skill-based hiring? What does skill-based hiring do? I think that's going back and forth. Companies are there. When I was at Unleashed this year, Berson was, I guess he was skill. He was on the skill-based hiring. He did a presentation on why he doesn't think it is effective anymore. I think that's a trend we've been going back and forth on that. That requires us to create job competencies, which is out of TA usually in the talent management and compensation space because linked to job stuff, I see that's a big trend that's going to still be around for a while. I think internal mobility.

Shannon Offord (25:40):

Do you think companies are actually digging into that or do you think that it's just one of those things where, hey, this is a fad or phase, it'll go away? I

Shelia Gray (25:52):

Digging into it, I think I'm digging into it. I was in a customer meeting for one of the platforms out there and they were saying because of all the jobs that they have done over time, they can actually do competency and skill validation for jobs. There's actually companies that are popping up now today, which I think was very interesting. I went to a TA technology session last year and what the firm does is for engineer, for software engineers, you may have the software engineers apply for the job, dah, dah, dah, but before you send them to the hiring manager, they will do virtual interviews with them and based on the level of the job, it is an actual software engineer at the different levels that will actually do a skill validation based on competencies of software people. So I do think that that is something that's there skills are critical today, I think so I think that's one.

(26:46):

I see another trend out there around assessments. I think assessments are coming back again for assessments. Were real big at one point, especially with assessments for jobs that were more manual, having assessments on being able to do that debt theory. I remember in the nineties I was hiring telephone operators, being able to spell to type. All those things were coming back. But I think assessments are coming back now on potential. I think assessments are coming back now on certain skill levels and I think executive assessments are coming back because executives, what I've found is that most times when executives do not work out well, it's not because of their skills, because cultural fit, cultural fit, it's hiring for aspirational capabilities. So you're an organization going through change and you want all of these transformational leaders who've been entrepreneurs who've done all this stuff, but guess what?

(27:47):

The leadership team is there. It's not. That's why you want these new people and there's no bridging of the gap. So they come there, they get frustrated. I was at a session a couple of years ago and a guy said that he did an exit interview of someone that took them two years to get, they hunted for her for two years. She was the foremost authority in there. They wind and dined her for two years to get her to come. She even relocated. They got her there and she lasted less than a year and her exit interview, she said, I've never been somewhere where someone wanted to dummy down my skills.

Shannon Offord (28:23):

Wow,

Shelia Gray (28:24):

You hired me for the ability to do this and I had a proven track record. You badged me for two years. I came into this organization fully prepared to be an asset to the organization and I was not allowed to thrive. So what I'm going to say assessments on the executive level, I see them continuing to increase. I mean, for years people have been doing things like Hogan, emotional intelligence, all of that. But you got to think about this, and I say this, I've seen this hiring level, hiring your leadership talent moves the stock price moves the stock price.

(29:00):

You have a bad leader and that bad leader makes a bad decision. Your stock price goes down. Or there used to be a trend sometimes like, okay, this person was so good in software, I'm going to bring them over to manufacturing, two different environments, two different sets of paces. While they could have been a perfect product marketing person over there that's different than a consumer based product over a year, but people were making that move because they wanted these people that were so great a cultural fit. And so I see that. So I see assessments at the executive level increasing because people want people to do well and they want the best talent. So I think that's increasing. I think ethics and integrity in the TA space is something that people have got to examine themselves around because I think the use we just talked about, the usage of technology is one thing.

(29:57):

Laws that have popped up around things like pay transparency is because some of our practices around paying people and not paying fairly, you're seeing state laws coming up because of gaps that they see in our hiring practices. So I think that that's on the horizon For us. Immigration for the US is an issue. I saw a couple of things this year that's troubling. One is that the strength of our US passport is not as strong as it used to be in regard to other countries. And the number of visitors to the US is going down

(30:36):

And because of the challenges by colleges and universities in the US, the number of foreign students has changed. Now people forget a lot of times that foreign students also usually are a hundred percent tuition payers and large endowers. Many of our schools and universities, which allow us to have scholarships, allow us to do research, allow us to do all of that. Those challenges on universities are challenging us in pipeline. So I think that issue is going to be the immigration issue until we settle on something that's going to hurt us tremendously. In terms of having the best and brightest talent in the United States.

Shannon Offord (31:19):

What's one thing that people aren't talking about that you see becoming a larger issue in TA in the coming years?

Shelia Gray (31:33):

Well, here's the issue that this is my pet peeve that I've wanted to do for a hundred years. There are many channels for talent, okay? We've tapped a couple of them. So we've tapped, we know how to do college recruiting in TA, we know how to get experience recruiting in TA. We have partners around executive recruiter, in TA. But the question is, does all work need to be full-time work? I've always said that the issue of gig work was hot for a moment, but people don't talk about it.

Shannon Offord (32:08):

It's kind of fallen off the radar.

Shelia Gray (32:09):

All the radar contractor work, people not talking about it. Contractors in many companies, if you go in and look and you peel behind this because contract labor is not always managed by on the TA side, we have applicant tracking systems. On the contractor side, they have what are call VMSs, vendor management systems and contract labor comes in many different ways. It comes in 1099ers. It comes in people that come in as consulting firms that do projects for you like a Boston Consulting Group or a Hewitt or whatever. That's contract work. It's contract work. It's not on a project basis, but contract work, there are many forms of how work can get accomplished. What I think doesn't happen enough is on the front end when someone says I have work, we don't determine what type of work. Is this work that is project related and it is short term, is it long-term? Is it something that could be done in a developmental capacity by a college student? We don't figure out what the work is to figure out what channel it should come in. I think if we figure out the channel, we'd use college students differently. We would not necessarily open all these jobs and then lay off

(33:26):

When cyclical work because we would say this is cyclical work. There's a pattern of this. Let's hire contractors on for short term. We would do work differently so our hiring patterns would do it differently. So I think on the front end we don't do enough to determine that, and that's my pet peeve, that my dream has always been on the front end to do stuff. So there is manager, he submits a ticket into a system and says, I have the following work. He answers a questionnaire. It is 40 hours, it is indefinite requires these skills and competencies does not require a college degree, but I prefer one does a bunch of stuff on the assessment side and submits it. TA comes back with a strategy. So you submitted a ticket, you want to get a job filled, here's what I'm going to recommend my consultancy, my judgment says that this is a short-term assignment and this could be done through gig work. You want to create and build websites for whatever you don't know how long it will last. Let's start off with gig work and then if it turns into full-time, we can open a requisition for you for a full-time person and I will help you on the gig channel.

Shannon Offord (34:42):

I know before COVID, while I would sit through these sessions at different conferences, and a lot of the topic was a lot of conversation was around employees will have three or four different organizations they may be doing projects for and that's kind of what the future's going to look like. But it really hasn't gone that way or gone that direction.

Shelia Gray (35:02):

Yeah, I think work starts off differently. Work doesn't start like now I have a job description, go find me someone. No, I think work is what is the work? What is the work? And then you start that conversation. That's what I've always dreamed of. Someone gave me my dream job. That's what I would be doing. I would transform the TA organization to be on the front end to be those consultants to say, you want to do this? Lemme give you some talent insights. You want to hire this software developer in California? Why? Because we are back in the office. Here's the labor supply. I have access to metrics from TalentNeuron of MC or one of these others about what the talent market is. Here's what is paying in that market based upon what I can see of your current workforce with similar jobs that's going to be over the ninetieth percentile. Do you have the budget for that? You walk them through the work first, then you decide the channel in which the work comes from. That's just something I've always wanted.

Shannon Offord (35:58):

No, I agree with you. I agree with you. I mean, like I said, I went through a lot of those sessions and I kind of bought into that. And even when I look at things that we need to do here, does it require a full-time person? Could somebody just come in and do it on a short-term basis?

Shelia Gray (36:13):

Yeah, the worst. My thing as a TA professional, the worst thing I can do, and I've done a lot in my career, is do a layoff and do a layoff because of cyclical things. We need to make the fourth quarter and so we need to get rid of people or with the stock price, we're concerned that we're not going to come in on the nines. We need to lay off whatever. And it impacts recruiting. They think recruiting comes to a stop. It doesn't because as soon as the market goes back, you're going to want people, you're going to want talent again, and there's no one there to help you with it. So the worst thing I can do is in the TA functions do a layoff and because of cyclical thing, it's a difference if the work changes or whatever, but because of cyclical issues that we cannot plan for. That's why I say it would pay to have the right model on the front end. And maybe the right model is I don't need a hundred, but I need recruiters in certain channels to manage the flow. I need recruiters to manage the geek cycle. I need recruiters to manage the college recruiting flow. I mean whatever. But yeah, that's been my,

Shannon Offord (37:13):

I just love talking to you because you've got a lot of experience, been at this for a long time and your insights are, like I said, I just enjoy it. So before we close, one thing, obviously that's huge for a lot of companies right now, they've been dealing with since the beginning of the year, and that's some of the regulatory changes. You can't be in TA without that affecting you. So how have some of the regulatory changes really affected the way employers recruit today?

Shelia Gray (37:42):

Okay, so here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say that the world was not perfect before January 6th. It wasn't perfect, but at least I had guardrails. I could go to the OFCP website, I could find out information, I could figure out some stuff, and it was a constant, I knew the requirements of how things got done and I could err on the safe side based on some guardrails. The regulatory stuff today, it's not fully flushed out. And I say it, if I were to do a comparison in the nineties, we went through quite a few new laws. We went through ADA, we went through I9, and I remember when they first came down, we were trying to figure out what it meant. I was taking the ADA regulations, translating the recruiting, saying, okay, all job descriptions are going to have to have essential skill requirements, weight pounded, you must carry all that.

(38:37):

We were figuring it out because always when regulations come down, how to enact those regulations to us takes much longer. We get the cookbook after we've told cook the chicken, cook the chicken today, but then we don't. If the barbecue chicken is it, whatever, we dunno, right? The regulatory come down much later. When we first came out with the applicant tracking systems, it was at least a year before a definition of an applicant came down the definition of an applicant. So we would know how to track against it the definition of an internet applicant because we all had a definition of an applicant, but the government had come up with a definition of internet applicant. I feel like that's the same pond we're swimming in now. But the regulations are changing and interpretation is hard because lemme tell you something, I don't know how it means lawyers must be doing very, very well today because there's so many challenges to regulations by states and by organizations that you don't know what to follow.

(39:37):

Now regulations are very hard and I do believe people want to be compliant. They want to be compliant, but it's very, very hard. Yesterday I was watching the news and I saw that in Australia they have made it illegal for children under 16 to be on social media. They have a social media account, they roll that out for a whole country. That's a big thing to say you 16, but they had all the guidelines with it, penalties for it, everything mapped out when they rolled it out. We're not like that. So the regulations this year have been tricky. They've been very tricky.

Shannon Offord (40:17):

Yeah, I think a lot of people looking for guidance, really

Shelia Gray (40:20):

Guidance. And I'm going to tell you, between the regulations and the immigrations, our lawyers usually in organizations, there are lawyers on staff, but we don't have huge employment lawyers in the house. We oftentimes use our supplemented with external employment lawyers for specialized things. I think many of us are utilizing that now because there's so much. There's always the regular state regulations that go into effect. And it's interesting enough, they don't ever go into effect like the same time instead of the whole state of New York, New York City will have something, we're trying to figure those regulations out and then Colorado will have something and then California will have something and they're to in enact at different times. Lawyers were tied up on that stuff. Now you got these government regulations that are not well, well, I'm not going to say not well thought out, but not well documented on what we do.

(41:14):

And so our lawyers are trying to give us best case guidance on the spirit of what we should do. So I think that's been very hard for us. Just the concept D&I, when the whole challenge of D&I, there were companies that were changing D&I and coming up with different terms for the words. There were companies that were dismembering programs because of D&I because they were afraid they're going to be fined. Many of us were getting challenges to our board of directors to get rid of D&I programs and it's all over the place. It's all over. But I'm sorry,

Shannon Offord (41:47):

What advice, I guess would you give someone that's NTA as far as trying to stay up, stay ahead of this stuff, where would you tell 'em to look or what would you tell them to do?

Shelia Gray (41:56):

I'm going to say for me personally, one I watch Squawk Box. Well first of all, I work for a global organization, so I got to stay abreast on many different continents. So a TA person, you got to first figure out where your regions are that you support, and then the second piece is where you're going to get your reliable information. So some of our reliable information I get from just me being in the social news, everything else, reading multiple publications, then it's organizations like DE. DirectEmployers is a resource for us. It's a membership organization that post a lot of things. You guys have podcasts and you have blogs and you have speakers. That's another way. There are organizations in the TA space that I'm a part of, like a CareerCrossroads, which is a membership organization which brings in speakers and whatever. There's that space. The other space I think people don't use or not is their vendors.

(42:52):

This concept has popped up in the last couple of years called The Art of the Possible. A lot of our vendors want to take us down a road of looking out how we can use them in different ways. I actually asked my partners, I could sit in the partners to help me stay abreast of things like my partners in the assessment space, what's happening in terms of lawsuits against Ai, how will you defend me? What are the new things that you're putting in place to defend my assessment decisions? I'm asking people in my compensation space, are there new pay transparency rules that are coming out? So I think we don't use our partners enough in that space to get things done. But I think that right now, I've always believed that of all the functions in TA, all the functions in HR TA is a community and we share more than any other space because you cannot replicate what we do in another company.

(43:46):

You can take the spirit of what we do and that's why we share stuff. We share best practices, but you can't take it, uplift it, do it over there and have the same results, different culture, different managers, different learning curve, different whatever. So we share stuff. So I think the TA community comes together. We came together a lot during COVID. So while hotels, hospitality, and restaurants were laying people off, pharmacies, hospitals, other industries were hiring, we were sharing candidates. We created a recruiting site called recruiters, recruiting for recruiters to help our industry. So if you, you're a new TA person coming in, leverage all of your resources, leverage our community in TA and join organizations that give you exposure to our communities globally. Make sure you are part of member organizations that can legally help you or help you in the areas that you most need.

(44:37):

But I'm going to say today, I've always said HR moves at the speed of the business. When the business wants to make a change, a moves at the speed of the external market. External market, anytime something happens in the external market, it has an impact. It has an impact. We hear about an ICE raid and we're thinking, well wait a minute. Do we make sure we have our documentation or employees and impact to do? Are our college students who are away for the holidays or can they come back? We are always impacted in the TA space because we're dealing with people. So in the TA space, we just have to be abreast of so much more than we had to do before. And I've always said, today's best TA people are problem solvers. They're problem solvers. They're not order takers. And the people who struggle in TA right now are black and white thinkers because the rules keep changing.

(45:34):

I'll wake up tomorrow and I will have started off playing checkers and now I'm playing chess. And so TA, people who are in this space have got to be prepared for that. Just like service delivery. When I came into this field years ago, we had the job description of a recruiter. And at that time we didn't think about how do recruiters deliver the service? Are they linked to customers? Are they linked to geographies? Are they linked to skillset? And we had to figure that out because we realized that managers want one point of contact and so they want consistency. So we had to figure out service delivery models. Then we had to discover, do we want to use RPO? And we had to figure that out when RPO came on to augment. So TA has always reinvented itself when I talked about going from file folder to software as a service and they're going to AI, I've seen the evolution and TA, people who are flexible, adaptable, and problem solvers are going to, I feel like going to manage the waves that we have coming ahead of us the best.

Shannon Offord (46:36):

I think that's a good place for us to wrap up. What we usually do at the end of our podcast, we do some rapid fire questions. So I'm going to have a few rapid fire questions, but one thing I do want to talk about briefly, how excited are you as a North Carolina fan to get out of football season and we get to basketball?

Shelia Gray (46:57):

Lemme just say that as a proud alumni, I'm going to be like Michael Jordan. I'm going to be politically correct. I'm going to give my football season given my investment more time, given the number of players that we recruited last year and based on Recruiting Day did last week, we did well again, basketball season. Let me just say I've always been a basketball fan because as an alumni of Carolina, I think I went to three games in my four years, but basketball lived it, breathed it, and I'm a ticket holder now Rams Club member and I'm at the games this year. And as I go into the excitement, I've seen our team progress greatly. And I'm telling you, I have very high hopes this year for our team and how well we'll do so. I'm glad to be in basketball season. You know what? People forget all the other things that we exceed in.

(47:50):

We've seen in soccer, our women's soccer has been national champ. Our women's field lacrosse has done extremely well over the time. Our men's tennis, we have so many athletic programs. We are really an athletic school, but people only think about us is football because football usually pays the bills and basketball because we are a blueblood. And on tonight, as a matter of fact, on ESPN, they're going to do Boo-Yah, which is on Stuart Scott, who was a Carolina alum. Yes, Stuart was a Carolina alum. Couple classes behind me and he revolutionized ESPN and loyal Tar Hill fans.

Shannon Offord (48:27):

Yeah, he definitely made ESPN what it is or helped make it for sure. No doubt. No doubt. So just a couple of rapid fire questions before we close up. Favorite country to visit?

Shelia Gray (48:38):

I've been to a lot. I'm going to say because of some country things and some countries that I love to go to, I cannot go back again. So my top probably favorite to visit right now is a tie between Thailand and Ireland. They're my favorite too.

Shannon Offord (48:57):

Yeah, I can see that.

Shelia Gray (48:59):

I love Ireland because Ireland speaks English, so it's not hard to do the language, the borders, the customs is in Ireland, so when you go out of Ireland, you can fly into any city because customs is on the side, so it's easy to come and go

Shannon Offord (49:14):

There. So I'm very familiar with Ireland

Shelia Gray (49:17):

And Thailand because Thailand has the most expats. So when I go to Thailand, I meet so many people from around the world in Thailand ethnically, and it's just a great place and a great infrastructure. But I'm going to say after working my current company, I'm going to say Korea in couple of months.

Shannon Offord (49:35):

Good answer. Good answer. Favorite state you've lived in, but you can't include North Carolina because I know that's where you're from.

Shelia Gray (49:43):

I'm going to say it's going to be a cross between Colorado and Arizona. They're very similar. They're very similar. Same stores, restaurants, whatever. Just two different weather patterns. But I enjoyed those states a lot and it's a diverse person. I really enjoyed them having lived on the East coast most of my life in cold weather, going to Arizona and having only 30 days of rain and a lot of sunshine and cheer, you don't shovel sunshine. So I really enjoyed that and being on flat land and so much to discover and whatever. And Colorado is just a warm, inviting location. So both of those are my favorite places to live.

Shannon Offord (50:21):

Alright, last question. If you weren't in TA, what would you be doing?

Shelia Gray (50:26):

That's easy. If I wasn't in TA, I would be working in sports and I would either be in sports marketing or I would be doing something with sports promotions or something because I thought about that. If I hadn't have gone the track, I would've. But I lived in Massachusetts, there was a great program at UMass Amherst that was in sports administration. So I see quite a few people coming out of there and females coming out of that that have been general managers of Boston Red Sox and stuff like that. I would've gone into sports management because that would've been my second passion. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed collective bargaining. I would've liked collective bargaining, but I would've been something I would've been, it was some sports team. With sports teams, it's not personal when they fire you. So that's the only industry where it's not personal. When they fire, you pick up as a coach, you pick up as a person, you go to another team. So I've been over there.

Shannon Offord (51:14):

It's wins and losses. That's what it's about.

Shelia Gray (51:16):

Yeah, it's because there's some good coaches. I'm like, why are you getting with that good coach for that loser coming in and then hey, but do it all the time and it's nothing personal, nothing personal,

Shannon Offord (51:27):

All Ws and Ls. That's what it's all about.

Shelia Gray (51:30):

Yeah, and that's one thing also, sports management doesn't do layoffs. They fire you. They don't do layoffs. Good point. They don't do layoffs. They fire you.

Shannon Offord (51:40):

Well Shelia, thanks so much for joining us today. It's always fun to talk to you. We need to do a round two of this. Be on the lookout. I'll reach out and see if we can do a round two.

Shelia Gray (51:51):

Absolutely. And I'm a walking acknowledgement of DE and how much DirectEmployees helped me in terms of my job and navigating a lot of stuff. I sat on the sessions earlier this year when we started talking about affirmative action. I went to your Member meeting this year because I wanted to spend time with other Members talking about things we were going through and strategizing. So I encourage people to watch the podcast and be an active Member in DirectEmployers.

Shannon Offord (52:17):

Well thank you and thanks again for joining us.

Shelia Gray (52:20):

You are welcome.

DirectEmployers Association (52:22):

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