From Silos to Synergy: Unifying Recruiting Teams for Success

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

In this role, Adam is responsible for all recruiting strategy and learning programs like leadership development, tuition reimbursement, VNAs, learning management system, and executive coaching. prior to this role at VNA. Adam served in similar roles in the pharma sector, in medical devices, in managed care.

izational development coach. [: 00:01:00

Adam Shandler: Jim, always great to be with you. Thank you for the invite.

Dr. Jim: This conversation is going to be pretty in depth and especially since both of both of us have pretty strong roots in the talent acquisition space. I think we have to restrain ourselves from being, too deep on the topic since this is a short form show.

So before we dive into the core. Pieces of the conversation. I know I mentioned a lot about your background and history in your bio. Why don't you share with the audience a little bit about some of the things that I might've left out or anything that you feel is relevant, that's going to inform the listeners, about your background and experience.

That's going to be relevant to the conversation.

VNA, working at Dr. Reddy's [: 00:02:00

Might be a work in progress, but being able to facilitate and lead teams that are situated all over the world in different time zones to unify our mission and get something accomplished that we can all get behind. I think that is it is something I truly cherish from. A few of my past lives in, in HR.

Dr. Jim: Prior to joining VNA, you were at more global organizations. And you specifically mentioned, learning some of the key skills necessary when it comes to effective communication and all of those different things associated with lead leading global teams.

How did that prepare you for a role that is much more localized in your current position?

m Shandler: I never intended [: 00:03:00

And it just so happens that the VA VNA came calling. And what I really liked about that was, okay, I've done the global thing. So I know that at least indirectly I have worked with teams that have. supported health care indirectly, have made people's lives better indirectly. But those are people I'd never meet cause they were in different parts of the world.

ink, to answer your question [: 00:04:00

We're a very multicultural organization at the VNA, even though we're based in only three states, New Jersey, Ohio, and Florida. Those happen to be three of the most diverse states in the U. S. So I think having the perspective of knowing where people come from, and being able to apply that in very diverse American communities has been a huge help.

Dr. Jim: When you think about your current role, what's the accomplishment that you're most proud of to date?

new jersey ins. During: 2021

Dr. Jim: Your vaccination efforts during the peak of covert or through covert. That's pretty impressive. So I'll be really curious to get your answer to this question.

When you think about the moonshot that you have on your radar that you want to accomplish over the next year, maybe two years, what's that moonshot accomplishment that you, you want to knock out ?

Adam Shandler: I think if it's at the v and a, I want expand upon the home health residency program. And go beyond the anywhere between two and six people we hire every year and make that the future of the VNA. It has to be the future of the VNA. We have to bring in more junior, more digital, native type employees who can come in and grow with the agency.

career of a nursing student,[: 00:06:00

In nursing, and there's no rule that says they couldn't just jump right in that to home health nursing. And now that the residency program has been around for the better part of five years, I think we have enough advocates that can prove that point.

Dr. Jim: That's quite an elephant that you're planning on eating. You're talking about a transformational change starting at the educational level. To build out a, more junior team.

Adam Shandler: You said it was a moonshot, Jim. So I figured, it was either go big or go home.

Dr. Jim: all right I'll be, oh man, I really wish this was a longer form show because I'd totally be digging into that particular area. Like, where are you going to start with that? But I want to stay I'm going to be disciplined and stay focused on the on the conversation.

t of the clinical healthcare [: 00:07:00

Get your line of sight into some of the things that we're talking about. When you look through your career and you think about all the teams that you've built, I want you to share with us what that game changing realization was that really accelerated your ability to build high performance teams.

I'm going to take you back to: 2011

We were super divisionalized, very decentralized. And prior to 2011, we had a very divisionalized support model when it came to talent acquisition. So some of the smaller divisions may have had one or two recruiters, and they would be generalists. They would be recruiting on all disciplines. All the ones I mentioned before, [00:08:00] sales, marketing, regulatory, R& D, the list goes on.

In some of the larger divisions, you might have had somebody that was just based at that division. But perhaps their portfolio would be one discipline. Finance, marketing, R& D, manufacturing, the list goes on. Then we decided to flip the switch to a more regional model, where you would have a cluster of recruiters that would be supporting a variety of different business units in a certain region.

And we had three. We had the East, which was my region, the Central, and the West. Based in New Jersey. So East region is my region and now we had to get buy in from a whole bunch of managers and a whole bunch of different divisions that they were going to have somebody supporting them in their division, but they'd also be supporting managers and other divisions and in order to do this effectively, we had to make sure we had the right people.

as then called the Corporate [: 00:09:00

So that included sourcing, that included talent assessment, good interviewing as well. Relationship building with both the candidates as well as the internal stakeholders and also being a good business person, good business partner, where you understood what were the challenges of the market, you were able to gather data and interpret it and then be able to convey that to your internal stakeholders.

tch flip for me, and it gave [: 00:10:00

So it was very successful at Striker and I'd say because, our recruiting team was fairly small at Dr. Reddy's, but it allowed me the time to develop the recruiters that we did have at Dr. Reddy's to be good at all of these different things.

Dr. Jim: If I understand what you just described, you went from a recruiting organization.

a regional model where each [: 00:11:00

I think that's what I gathered out of that. So when you. Move through that pivot. What was it about that pivot that really changed the game for you in terms of how you built your future recruiting teams?

Adam Shandler: I think the big takeaway was the unification across all businesses, all regions in that one standard. Because prior to this new operational look this reorg, if you will, every recruiting team in every division just did things their own way. And I would say recruiter to recruiter, they probably did things their own way.

be good at across the board [: 00:12:00

Dr. Jim: If I'm taking that and synthesizing that into a cleaner point, it almost sounds very six sigma ish. The previous state was yet everybody doing their own thing. So you really couldn't identify where the gaps were in the process. So the game changer for you. When it came to building elite teams was actually standardizing process so that you can measure where the gaps are or monitor where the gaps are and then take corrective actions as needed.

That sounds what the true, realization was versus just shifting from a siloed recruiting process to a candidate lifecycle recruiting process. Is that in line with kind of what you're describing?

to be good at everything in [: 00:13:00

We're a big Gallup shop. So the whole Jim Collins and Marcus Buckingham lead with your strengths was very prevalent at Stryker. So we allowed our recruiters to maintain those areas of the recruiting sub disciplines that. They felt that they were good at, we just needed to put some refinement around it.

And once those recruiters understood, okay, this is my strength space. Now, where do I have to pick up the slack? We were able to make those shifts and provide training and continue to push on having our recruiters become more complete players.

ing on building standardized [: 00:14:00

So when you look at doing both of those things, If somebody is listening to this conversation and they recognize a lack of process, or they recognize people are too siloed in what they're doing and they want to change that. What are the mistakes that they need to be on the lookout for? When they're trying to make that change, what did you encounter that really slowed you down that you want to bubble up to those who are listening so that they don't make those same mistakes?

Adam Shandler: The first thing I'd say is regardless of what piece of HR you own, whether that's, employee relations, comp and benefits, HRIS, don't think that you have to reinvent the wheel and develop something organically, unless that's something you really want to do when you have the bandwidth for it.

formative era that was going [: 00:15:00

The other thing is have conversations with those people who are gonna be intimately involved in this change management process. And for us, that was the recruiters, right? They were gonna be the most affected. Arguably, and I guess some people could say was the clients that were gonna be affected, but I think their change management and their adoption was gonna be temporary.

We were going to go through with this anyway, so I think it's important to talk to the folks who are receiving this training, the folks who you're doing the standardization for and see what kind of buy in they have. Maybe they're in my case, maybe there were some recruiters and I could tell you this was the case that didn't want to be a full life cycle recruiter.

being the client management [: 00:16:00

And you're going to want them to take ownership of the work that they're doing.

Dr. Jim: So there are a couple of things that you mentioned there I think is worth calling out and adding a little bit more context to. One was your point about don't reinvent the wheel and look for radically different solutions if it doesn't. Need it, or if there isn't a need for it. But the other thing that you mentioned was you need to be disciplined about having conversations with the people that are handling change management.

looking at. Yeah. If you're [: 00:17:00

So those are important things to, to watch out for. So the question that I would have is. Let's break this down even further. You're a new leader in an organization and you've been brought in to do X job. Let's say it's, similar job to what you have right now. If somebody is looking to really understand what the priorities are, where the critical failures are within the organization.

What are the things they should be doing over that first 30, 60, 90 days to set themselves up for success, but more importantly, set their teams up for success.

a listening tour. Talk to as [: 00:18:00

So find out what the history is. Get a sense of customer satisfaction, see if there's any survey data. If not, maybe that's one of your first deliverables is doing some surveys or doing some focus groups. And then, I don't know, every time I've joined a new organization, I know they, your boss always gives you the advice, take your time.

You don't have to make any radical changes immediately, but I think that high power leaders always want to show impact. Fairly immediately, and I think that 90 day framework is a really good timeline to do something, a small win. So if it is bringing in some insight that your new organization had never experienced before, if it is, doing something small feedback from a listening tour.

That you can provide in an [: 00:19:00

Dr. Jim: Yeah I really like your emphasis on the point of looking for that small win or a series of small wins over the first 90 days. Because I don't know of any impact oriented leader that wouldn't be thinking that way. You take a role because of the opportunity to make an impact.

So why would you wait on making an impact? Adam. Great conversation as as usual. And I'm not surprised that that it's it's pretty packed with a lot of insights.

e of when they're looking at [: 00:20:00

Adam Shandler: yeah, first thing I would say is find your advocates, get that buy in from those internal stakeholders get those, what I call recruiting team friendly. People in the organization that will tell you about the successes. What's really good about TA, but we'll also tell you where you're clumsy because those are the folks that will probably help you in building a better structure.

They realize that talent acquisition does not live in a vacuum. And really most HR processes cannot survive without the support of executive stakeholders. So find those allies, find those advocates. Make them part of your new process and then make sure that you have the right team that can execute on this.

HR function, come up with a [: 00:21:00

And I'd say big picture, moral compass, Jim, make sure that whatever you're doing is aligning with your mission and your values. Don't do something that is going to be square peg round hole culturally because Everyone will see through it, and you'll get called out on it. So it has to align with the comfort of the culture of your organization.

Dr. Jim: Really solid stuff, Adam. And I think that last comment that you had is well taken and it should be informed by that listening tour that you mentioned earlier, that if if you take the time to do that, you'll really. Have to try to be misaligned with values when you're prioritizing what you want to work on.

f someone listening wants to [: 00:22:00

Adam Shandler: Yeah, happy to receive an email. My email is adam. shandler. It's like Adam Sandler, but with an H, at vnahg. org, as in visiting nurse association, healthgroup. org, so it's vnahg. org. I can also be found on LinkedIn. Very happy to connect with you. I think I'm the only Adam D. Chandler on LinkedIn. So send me a, an invitation request or a DM and happy to continue the conversation.

Dr. Jim: And if you're having trouble finding Adam, keep a lookout for the profile that has the bad to the dad podcast on it, because that's that's another way to find Adam. So Adam really appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing your insights.

zed. A structured repeatable [: 00:23:00

So whether you're talking about the TA process and HR process or any other process. You need to make sure that you're looking at standardization across that entire life cycle and that business process, and that's going to set the stage well for you to impact change. The second thing that stood out about this conversation that you shared is the importance of communicating and especially communicating with your stakeholders.

If you're looking to make an impact and prioritize the right. things. So if you're a new leader coming into an organization, you care about impact. One of the first things that you should be doing is talking with your stakeholders and talking with, the key people within your organization. So you have line of sight on into what's most important.

So Adam, awesome talking to you. For those of you who have been listening to the conversation if you liked the discussion. Leave us a review and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader joining us and sharing with us their game changing realizations that help them build a high performing team.