This year FSG sent Angela Benz, Amanda Rogers, Cristin Charzewski, Kim Bowser, and Virginia Castillo to Indeed Interactive’s “Search for Greatness” event, where industry-leading talent professionals from a variety of backgrounds and specialties shared what greatness is and how to recruit for it and empower individuals to achieve their goals and make organizations prosper.
Over the course of the conference they had the opportunity to earn continuing educations credits while listen to presentations on topics related to innovation in AI technology in the world of talent recruiting, participating in discussions on creating change through collaboration, changes in the recruiting market, and creating or changing workplace cultures.
Kevin, who is the Senior Director of Marketing for Indeed, opened the conference by presenting on the changes in the landscape of recruiting and hiring. The decrease in the unemployment rate and what that means for hiring managers is in contrast to recent history- in which the power was in the hands of the employer. He pointed out that companies have to do more to attract quality candidates, who hold the upper hand, when it comes to negotiations and asking for what they want from a company. This relatively recent shift in power has resulted in the recruiters here at FSG to get creative when recruiting and negotiating so we can keep up with the changing marketplace. Attending Indeed Interactive has provided a great environment to get insights, gain new techniques and ask questions so we can evaluate our processes for recruiting and hiring the right candidates and retaining the employees we have currently.
Culture and Burnout
PwC’s Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Jill Kiemele mentioned during her presentation that she advocates for creating a culture that would allow employees to feel empowered to create exciting and positive energy in the office, by allowing employees to take time out for family, vacations, medical appointments, and mental wellbeing. PwC calls it “Be Well, Work Well”, more commonly referred to as Work/Life Balance- and it helps them retain happy, healthy, fulfilled employees by making sure they feel balanced, engaged and satisfied. Some examples they gave to reduce burnout is to breath deeply for a few minutes and stop what you are doing to relax or going for a short walk; these are ideas that can improve concentration allowing the employee to complete tasks and reduce stress. Amanda Rogers has a walking club at the Austin branch, where her and fellow employees walk outside for a few minutes every week to help reduce burnout and stress.
Simply, there are three factors that play a huge role in whether or not an employee is satisfied and ultimately what can drive an employee to leave an employer: a bad or non-existent relationship with their boss, being bored or unchallenged by their work, and having a poor relationship with coworkers. FSG has taken great steps to reduce burnout by creating a culture that listens to their employees and strives to improve its employee’s lives. By having compassionate and empowered managers, friendly coworkers, a team centered office environment, team building events and directors and owners that CARE about their employees, FSG has created an environment that infuses energy into daily tasks and appeals to employee and prospective candidates need for balance and stability.
“Having management in place that supports your ideas as an employee, pushes you to move forward and take more ownership and engage with others, is what makes FSG much different- and better- than any other company I have worked for.”- Cristin Charzewski, Business Operations for Division 26- Utility Services
Talent & Grit
Presenter Angela Duckworth, is an advocate and researcher of gritty-ness, how to foster it in existing employees and celebrate those special individuals who possess that something extra that pushes them forward to keep excelling. She spoke initially about how her father saw her as mediocre because she didn’t have TALENT in any subject matter. But she did have passion and interest. Angela continued pushing forward through difficulties, being tenacious, and focusing on long-term goals consistently to achieve greatness, GRIT. She went on to become a MacArthur Fellow (a real genius!), a founder and CEO of successful non-profit, a distinguished professor, and the author of NY Times best seller “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance”. Grittiness paired with passion, the ability to work through challenges, and opportunity to learn can lead to tremendous success. It is passion, work ethic, a mindset of growth and need to learn that will push achievers to excellence. For FSG spotting, these candidates and recognizing current FSG employees who harness their grit to continue to make FSG the industry leader it is will help strengthen our teams and make FSG even more successful year over year.
“Paul D’Arcy with Indeed quoted the movie Moneyball during his keynote presentation and it hit a chord with me on how we make decisions about people. The line from the movie was “People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws- age, appearance, personality.” He goes on to explain how looking at candidates from a different perspective allowed the baseball team to select overlooked baseball players. We need to be aware that we all take our experiences into every decision we make. We bring our experience and unintentional bias to our personal and professional life. Professionally we can miss out on a great candidate for a perceived difference of culture fit. I want to learn more about how we can overcome personal bias so can continue to build an amazing and innovative team.” – Kimberly Bowser, Marketing Communications for Division 20- Austin Electric
With the support of FSG’s owners and managers, who promote and celebrate continued education and collaboration between coworkers, those of us that work in HR and Talent acquisition will be empowered to hire and retain candidates that bring grit and greatness to FSG.