Standing Up Talent Acquisition: Storytelling, Vulnerability, and AI with Jim D'Amico

Jim D'Amico: 0:03

This is the Rebel HR podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people's space. I'm Kyle Rode. Let's start the show. Welcome back Rebel HR community, super excited for the guest today. This is one of those situations where I wish I would have hit record like five minutes ago, but we're going to do our best to reenact that. With us we have Jim D'Amico. He is the director of talent acquisition at Holland America Group. We're going to be talking about talent acquisition, innovation and a little bit of stand-up comedy. Welcome to the show, jim.

Kyle Roed: 0:39

Thanks for having me. Kyle Happy to be here.

Jim D'Amico: 0:44

Well, we're chuckling because we're just having a great conversation here. I would like to give you an opportunity to maybe give yourself a little bit of an introduction to our audience about your background and, ultimately, how you ended up as the director of talent acquisition for Holland America.

Kyle Roed: 1:01

Sure, absolutely. The quick snapshot is my background is built on just numerous failures and learning and building on those. Essentially, I've been in a talent acquisition space for almost 30 years now. I love it to death. I wound up at Holland America in a very non-direct route. I actually had a friend that was working there that asked me to do a consult for them. I was working for another company at the time, which I loved the team, loved the people I met the folks at Holland America. It's a fantastic team. It's a really great organization. It just felt like such a good fit. By the way, unlimited free cruises it was a good decision.

Jim D'Amico: 1:54

That's a good perk. I can't offer that to my employees.

Kyle Roed: 1:59

We don't have that Exactly.

Jim D'Amico: 2:02

It's the best perk I've ever had. There you go. There's a subset of a business opportunity there for all those cruise lines out there. Hey, let's make this an employee benefit.

Kyle Roed: 2:14

Exactly.

Jim D'Amico: 2:16

Awesome. I'm really excited for the conversation today because you have spent a large part of your career really digging into talent acquisition and really focusing on innovation in the space. I'm curious what sparked that interest in innovation and doing things differently or finding new ways to do things.

Kyle Roed: 2:42

I think it's a combination of two things. I've always been very intellectually curious, which please don't confuse that with intelligence. It just means I ask a lot of questions. Secondly, I'm inherently lazy. Basically I figured there were better ways to do things. I just had to figure them out. When I started in TA Kyle, I started in third party recruiting right the old boiler room recruiting. You realize real quick there has to be a better way to do it. You're just really talking to people, learning what they're doing and then building on that knowledge to do things different and better. My focus has always been on how do we manage effort through efficiency? I think that's the key question I always have to ask.

Jim D'Amico: 3:40

So I actually I love that answer and so my background. I grew up in retail and manufacturing. We're always talking about lean, right, and we're talking about continuous improvement, and I've always thought about this like, yeah, this is great for lazy people, right? Like you know, it's all about working less hard and you know the flip side of that is we say we're working more productively, but the reality is we're all just trying to work less hard or IE lazy. So I love that. It's like the yeah, innovation is the lazy man's dream, right? Yes, absolutely. We're also getting a little bit of a background. For those that aren't aware of, jim cut his teeth and stand up comedy, so you know there's an inherent jokester across from the microphone as well. So thanks for bringing that out, jim.

Kyle Roed: 4:30

No worries, that's failure number six, by the way.

Jim D'Amico: 4:33

Failure number six.

Kyle Roed: 4:35

That was failure number six, my career and stand up.

Jim D'Amico: 4:40

You know what? Is it a failure, though? I mean I guarantee you that you have some really awesome stories that most of us do not have.

Kyle Roed: 4:52

So you know, look, it is a failure. I'm not on SNL, I'm not hosting a late night talk show, I'm not in the movies. But I mean from that standpoint, yes, but what I learned and again, that's a key with any failure, it's what you learn and how you apply it. That really means things, and the great comedians make it look so easy, but you get a real respect when you learn what goes into it, what's behind it and how hard it really truly is. So I would not trade any of my experiences that I've had, no matter how much of a crash and burn they were.

Jim D'Amico: 5:30

Well, I appreciate that and I think what's fascinating about this discussion and your approach is you know, the reality is we've all had failures, right.

Jim D'Amico: 5:41

You're just able to admit it, but I also think that's inherent in all great innovators as well. Right Is the fact that you know it took X number of tries before you actually got something correct, and the difference between giving up on that one that you got correct versus the 99 you got incorrect, you know, made all the difference right, and so I think it's a testament to all the great innovators out there. So, as you look at the challenges facing us in talent acquisition, first of all, I would agree, ripe for innovation that is one of those areas that you know, I still think has a significantly long way to go. So, as you look at your space and you know there's also a side note you know you've been named the last three years a talent innovator for 2020, 2021, 2022. Obviously, you're doing something innovative in the space. Where are you seeing the biggest opportunity to make the biggest ripple and how are you kind of focusing your energy on that right now?

Kyle Roed: 6:56

So great question. So I think it comes to that we've had to transition how talent acquisition operates, and what I mean by that is, you know, 10 years ago and we changed slowly. So 10 years ago was like six months in TA time, but 10 years ago you could focus on attraction, talent attraction right which means flashy ads, flashy postings, you know whatever and get people motivated. Well, you know we have 1.6 million more jobs than we have people now, so attraction isn't where we're at. So I tell people all the time we're in a post attraction world, we are now focused on talent seduction right, which is a longer process, more involved. But when I look at when that realization came to me that difference between attraction and seduction what really realized me was so how do, how does seduction work? And, like all things that humans do and this goes back to comedy, this goes to everything it all comes down to storytelling. So that was when I won that award.

Kyle Roed: 8:08

The first big push we made in innovation was around how we approach storytelling. So I'm a recruiter by trade right, and so my team. We were talking about that and said we need to do a better job selling, telling stories and focus on stories that are constructed properly, that are legit stories right, you don't want to tell fibs and that in some way we can serialize, because we have to build these relationships with candidates, and we discussed before the call. So I trained for five years at Second City but again, I'm a failed comedian so I didn't think I was the best person to build that. But I'm a recruiter.

Kyle Roed: 8:45

So I sourced a screenwriter that had worked on a couple of shows that my recruiters really liked, which were Walking Dead and House of Cards, and I cold called her and said hey, would you be interested in helping me build a storytelling class and course for my team? That was foundational. So my team was really one of the first ones to really focus on structured storytelling as part of the talent acquisition process first person stories, all very honest, coupled with a diagnostic interviewing process where we were not telling stories at first. We're asking people where it hurts and then using stories to show the cure, and that really changed the game for us. So that was a big impetus for innovation for us and I'm sorry that was probably 10 minutes too long.

Jim D'Amico: 9:38

No, you're good, you're good, okay. So I just want to back up for a minute. So you just. So Jim wants to build a course. What does Jim do? He cold calls somebody that's a screenwriter for, like, house of Cards, walking Dead, and just says, hey, can we build a course on telling stories? So, okay, I'm cool, I'm hooked. So, as you're building out, like building out this protocol, thinking about this, you know the power of the story and I love the comment changing it from attraction to seduction, which I guarantee there's a lot of jokes in there. But I am not a second city comedian so I'm not even gonna try. I'm sure you can probably think of some. But as you're building out this course and as you're thinking about telling this story in the context of recruiting, what did the professional screenwriters focus on? Like, how did they approach this problem and help kind of ready your team for telling these stories?

Kyle Roed: 10:44

Sure. So first there's a technical portion, right, like so, stories have a structure and it's basically the three act structure, right, you have an act one that is an introduction, sets a stage. Act two is a challenge. Act three is the resolution. And then you have seven story archetypes that you can build around, and those are things like Hero's Quest, voyager, return, rise from the Ashes. So you have these different archetypes.

Kyle Roed: 11:12

So, understanding that structure, understanding that for stories to be powerful they have to be first person, right. When you're telling a story like this happened to a friend of a friend, people lose interest, but when you tell it from the first person, it's realistic. And then also, we really wanted stories that were what we called snackable, right. So we're talking these are 90 second stories, so you have 30 seconds per act, essentially plus or minus a couple, and then so then the other thing we had to work on was so that's the structure, build the stories.

Kyle Roed: 11:51

Then we had to constantly work on how we rehearse those stories. You don't want them to sound scripted, you don't want them to meander, you don't want to have a ton of ums, you want them to sound very good. So we built our stories and most people built them out like around bullet points and then we practiced them with each other over and over and over again, which is what you'd see comedians do. So if you're ever at a comedy club, look through the window. After a close, there's a bunch of comedians sitting around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, telling each other jokes, just really trying to practice, making them sound natural and great delivery. So we did the same thing.

Jim D'Amico: 12:29

Did anybody do like the Seinfeld voice? Because I feel like that would really say that's it. No but that would have been beautiful.

Kyle Roed: 12:41

That would have been so beautiful.

Jim D'Amico: 12:43

That'd be good. Yeah, I'm totally going to use it. So I think it's. You know what's fascinating about this conversation? I've never thought about this before, okay, so, first of all, so, congratulations.

Jim D'Amico: 12:54

This is like the 200th episode. We've talked about the power of stories, we've talked about the power of humor, but we haven't really talked about, like how, how everything fits together, especially from the context of how do you apply this to the talent acquisition process, right? But I think you know what, what you're getting at here, what's what's really powerful from my standpoint is, I hear, this is like we're tapping into people's humanity, right, we're tapping into the things that entertain them and get them excited and get them motivated, and, like and like, tap into something that's at the core of human beings, which is like we want to hear these stories Like. This is like this is how we have shared communication for, for you know, thousands and thousands of years. So why wouldn't we use this thing that we're like biologically, naturally inclined, want to take towards, and put it in the context of getting people to want to work for you?

Kyle Roed: 13:51

Absolutely 100%, 100%.

Jim D'Amico: 13:56

It makes perfect sense. Okay, so, okay, so I'm sold on that, so I'm going to go. I got to go figure out which show I want. You know, you know, I don't know I've been watching, I've been watching too much Key and Peele. That's probably not HR appropriate, but I think they're probably way too busy.

Kyle Roed: 14:13

But great storytellers, right, they tell a story very in an episode. They'll tell several different stories and they're great, I love. I love Key and Peele too.

Jim D'Amico: 14:23

Me too. So here's, here's what's funny. Okay, this is, this is maybe tangential, but like the re-a-stow, I was watching Key and Peele like old school, like episode one, like season one, whatever, and I'm watching it and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like this is the same voice that all of Jordan Peele's movies are in now. Yes, Some of those sketches, and it's like for me it was like a powerful like oh, I can see, like the paintbrushes from this, from the artist, yes, Right, and so so I actually I actually do have a question here. So I, that was kind of an interesting, like like aha moment here. It was actually this weekend. I'm curious how you take these stories. How do you put that kind of that artist's brush on them so that they tie that person back to either the recruiter or the hiring manager or the organization? How do you, how do you make this so that this is, this is personable and that it that it is almost that artistic expression for the folks that are telling me stories.

Kyle Roed: 15:23

So two, two things there. So, first off, everybody has their own voice. So never try to apply your voice to someone else, right, let them find their own voice. That's really important because if not, they're going to stumble, it's going to sound artificial. But also it's knowing what story to tell at the right point. So I alluded earlier to something called diagnostic interviewing, right?

Kyle Roed: 15:44

So when we're talking to somebody, somebody's not talking to us because they want a job. They're talking to us because they think we can solve a problem they have right. Maybe they don't like their manager, they don't have a chance for advancement, they, you know, they want to be in a different location. There's a million different things that could be that pain point. So we have to take the time to do that diagnosis and say what is that pain point? And then make sure that the story that we tell them applies to how we would see that being a cure, giving them an example of how we've cured that before or how it was cured for us. But it's lining up the right story. So we hear all the time selling and telling are not the same things. So when we're telling a story, we're really selling a story that makes sense.

Jim D'Amico: 16:34

Yeah, yeah, I love that, so it's. So. We have had this dialogue with um, on the other side of the spectrum, where we talk about, like, okay, when you are creating a job description, what is the problem that you're trying to solve for the organization, right, but that's, it's very, it's all honestly, it's kind of selfish, right. It's like, well, what do we, what do we want, right? Yes, I think it's a lot more rare where you'll find an organization that actually does what you just described, which is, go try to figure out what, what their problem is, what is the candidates problem that they're trying to solve? And then, my gosh, what if you get those two things aligned right? Like, hey, you know, my job is done here, I can go home now.

Kyle Roed: 17:20

Exactly, and that's why, like when it comes to jobs and when it comes to candidates, like what is the wrong question in my mind, I think we have to start with why? So, when we talk about a job, why does a job exist Now? Why is it open? Right, it's probably open because somebody left or we're expanding, but why does the job exist? Is it there to make money? Is it there to save money? Is it there to improve a process? Because, as a candidate, that's what I really want to know is is why? Why do you need me? And for candidates, it's the same thing. It's not so much about what they can do. We have to start with. Why are you looking? What is that pain point that you want help solving? It's a much more human way to look at things.

Jim D'Amico: 18:07

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it, you know, goes back to the intellectual curiosity that you mentioned earlier, right, and the fact that you're not just assuming that well, so-and-so, quit, okay, where's the job description? Well, when did we update it? Oh, four and a half years ago. Good enough, it's still got our logo on it. They'll go ahead. You know, it's like. I mean, and I guarantee you so, our listeners right now, I guarantee you, they're like oh yeah, oh that yeah, oh, they're chuckling because they know, yeah, we all do this, we all do this, all like, like. If anybody says I've never done that, you're full of shit, come on. Oh yeah, because it's easy. It's easier to just say, okay, here's the job description, post it, hit, send and just wait for the applications to flow in, right, but my, my guess is, your opinion is that that might not be the best way to do it.

Kyle Roed: 19:04

It's not right. So, look, we all want to take that path of least resistance right Again. Let's get back to you know we inherently, as humans, love stories. We inherently are lazy, so you know. But when we have to do things that go past that lazy, I think we're we're. Ta fails and this is often true in the larger HR context of how we communicate with our constituents is we never really tell them what's in it for them. You know no hiring managers looking forward to doing an intake because they think it's just going to be sitting on the phone with a recruiter giving them keywords, telling them where to look. You know, going over the experience. But when we say, look, if we take the time and we really dig into the why and we get some of this other information, you know what's in it for you is going to be quicker access to better candidates that are more engaged. So you know, qualified interest and available becomes much quicker for you and the people that you talk to are going to come somewhat pre connected to you, absolutely.

Jim D'Amico: 20:07

Yeah. So earlier in my career I didn't get it. I was in the same kill. I was just like why do I have to? Why do we have to do all this Like this? Like you know, we've already looked at this job description so many times. What more can we do to it?

Jim D'Amico: 20:23

And in the reality is, you know, the more work you do up front, the more clear you are, the more, not just on what the job needs to be, but but being really honest about what are the actual skills that we need. Yes, what do we need? Somebody from the industry or not, you know? And then having the opportunity to have a candidate come in that is warm and like already warmed up, like we'll go back to the like, you know, it's like the stand up comedian that has the warm up act. Right, Like, yes, nobody wants to see the magician, but the magician makes the comedian look that much better, right, absolutely. I hope you know what, jim. I'm really sorry if magician was one of the one of the like six failures before comedy oh, got nearly talented.

Kyle Roed: 21:07

I have a good friend that's a magician that got nearly talented in us.

Jim D'Amico: 21:11

I love if there's any magicians listening to this. I love you all. This is where equal opportunity magicians included. That's a protected class under the EEOC.

Jim D'Amico: 21:21

That's right See now see, now you got me going and now you, everybody's realizing Kyle is so bad at comedy. Leave the jokes to Jim. That's what's happening. You're doing great guy. Thanks, man, I appreciate it. You know what? Just keep feeding my ego. It's going to be better for for for me. So you know, I think I think one of the things that that's been interesting about this conversation and and I'm curious to get your perspective on it is, you know, the. The other thing that I have found, and and you are no exception is that when you talk to people who are good storytellers and to take the time to actually kind of build this, this, you know, level of connection, you start to actually build a relationship and you start to kind of understand okay, who am I talking to? On a level that's deeper than a transaction, right, and? And so it is part of your goal as a talent acquisition leader to get your team to build these levels of connection more rapidly. Is that part of the benefit of the storytelling approach as well?

Kyle Roed: 22:34

Absolutely right. So it's a competitive marketplace, so the relationships matter and people will make decisions based on where they feel strong relationship versus where it's been very transactional. And storytelling is a great way to make those connections because the stories and the archetypes are universal. We all have a relationship to those and when you layer in, like if you, if you, if you're doing you know anything, where it's comedy or it's humor, people don't realize. All comedy comes from only two places and that's truth and pain. And to open yourself up to share your pain or share your truth, you are making connections with people. People respond to that because it's honest and we like that. We want to have those honest relationships.

Jim D'Amico: 23:30

Yeah, it's a vulnerability thing is really interesting. If I look around the world and I look at all the professions where people really suck at being vulnerable, hr is one of the top in my mind, where we're supposed to be these stoic but empathetic, but not too empathetic because then you're being too friendly with… it's like this weird dichotomy of what you're supposed to be as an HR profession. I think we're having a little bit of a crisis moment and you look at burnout levels and people like… they don't feel like they can be themselves at work. What advice would you give to us who are maybe struggling with this honesty, the truth and pain and vulnerability? That actually helps facilitate some of these connections, but those professionals that are really struggling with that because maybe they've gotten mixed messages or just aren't comfortable with it yet.

Kyle Roed: 24:38

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from not being comfortable with it. It's something you can't just jump all in on right away. I think you start with sort of think of yourself as a book, start with a profess and chapter one, open yourself up slowly and be vulnerable. But I think it's important that you don't be afraid to show that vulnerability. Great leaders admit mistakes. That's a key act of vulnerability.

Kyle Roed: 25:12

I always tell people I was helping a young fellow once to get in the comedy not too long ago and I'm like here's the deal the butt of your joke is always you, it's not anyone else. You have to be the butt of your own jokes. Being comfortable in doing that, because it doesn't… I don't know. We get this feeling that it takes away from who you are, but it really doesn't. Look, I've been at some masculine fields. I was in the army for many years and you could still joke. It doesn't make you less of a soldier or a warrior or whatever you want to call yourself, because you have a sense of humor, being open to it, knowing that, again, nothing's perfect. You may get some bad reactions or your boss may say why are you being that way? Look, humans need to be human. I think that's the bottom line.

Jim D'Amico: 26:11

I couldn't agree more. I think it's one of the more important things is that we recognize when we're being inauthentic and that we're honest with ourselves when we're doing that. I've had this conversation with a number of professionals, some poignant conversations with professionals who feel like I'm not allowed to be myself. I literally walk into work and I have to put on this mask or this completely different facade, and then I'm reprimanded. When I am myself, at a certain point, it's like, okay, well, that sucks, maybe you shouldn't go there anymore. I do think that something that's just like we can choose not to be in those situations. I'm curious, maybe shifting gears a little bit, because I want to ask this question. Maybe you're sick of these types of questions.

Jim D'Amico: 27:11

I feel like we can't talk about talent acquisition without talking about AI. It's the hottest topic. I think there's 7,500 new podcasts with AI in the title. I started three of them just to see, and they've already eclipsed the downloads. But the reality is, I do think that AI will be a little bit disruptive, but what we're talking about is humanity and connection and stories. I'm curious how you see AI and all of these AI screening tools and chat, gpt and all these kind of what you could call story writing or storytelling tool? How do you see this playing in to this challenge of telling stories, being a seductive employer and building that human connection, that relationship, without having a human?

Kyle Roed: 28:12

So I think you know AI is going to continue to change our lives. It's going to be an evolution, but I think where AI really impacts right now is actually freeing recruiters and sources and people in TA from the transactional pieces that can be managed by that computer or by that machine learning and what then gives us more time to focus on relationships. So I think that's the biggest strength Now, products like chat GTP. I love chat GTP because when you're writing stories this is my experience is people tend to be too wordy, right, we put too many words. In chat GTP is a great editor, like. It really helps me distill a story down in a way that used to take me hours and hours and iterations to do so. I'm a big fan, yeah.

Jim D'Amico: 29:08

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like a like you can't just take it and copy paste, right, but it's a good like it helps fill in the blank space. That, yeah, would be very frustrating and annoying. Yes, I haven't given it one of my transcripts. I don't want to know how many ands and ums it cuts out.

Jim D'Amico: 29:28

But, I'm not so through that. But, yeah, absolutely, I couldn't agree more, and I think you set it perfectly. It's like like you still have to do the relationship piece, you still have to make the human connections and you still have to be the representative of the organization and you still have to give realistic job views and honest perceptions of what it's like to work there and tell your personal story, um, but that doesn't mean that you have to do all of the all of the transactional administration behind the scenes anymore, right? So absolutely, couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more, all right. Well, I got my obligatory AI question in for the day, so thank you, excellent. All right, we are going to shift gears. We're going to go into the rebel HR flash round. Are you ready?

Kyle Roed: 30:17

I am ready.

Jim D'Amico: 30:18

All right, here we go. Where does HR need to rebel?

Kyle Roed: 30:23

So let's go back to what we're talking about. Hr needs to rebel and be more human. Do not let the business tell you that you are an automaton, that you are a machine that fills a function. You be the humans that help the other humans.

Jim D'Amico: 30:40

Be the humans. It's actually in the job title, Unless you're one of those new school like people leaders or something like that, people operations or whatever. The newest title is yeah, All right. Question number two who should we be listening to All?

Kyle Roed: 30:57

right, I'll give you. I'll give you several folks. So, with the topic of humanity, my good friend Craig Fisher, who runs the town that live conference, just wrote a book called hiring human, which is a fantastic piece of. You know what we're talking about right now. You know from a TA perspective. I also loved him Sackett's voice. He's been around the block a lot. And then, from a storytelling standpoint, one of my really a person I enjoy a lot learning about how we tell stories in a way to engage candidates is Jody Ordoni at Brandemix. Just, I think those three are all incredible.

Jim D'Amico: 31:47

Awesome, awesome. I don't know two of them, but we actually literally just had Tim on the podcast, tim Sackett, so we talked all. We talked a lot about tech on that one.

Kyle Roed: 31:58

So if you, if you, if you're, ai fixed. We just did the Michigan recruiters conference. He and I started that years ago and I was just up there last week.

Jim D'Amico: 32:07

Nice Doing that.

Kyle Roed: 32:08

Yeah.

Jim D'Amico: 32:09

Yeah, Great boy. So appreciate you sharing that Last question. How can our listeners reach out and connect with you?

Kyle Roed: 32:15

Well, because I'm in TA. Linkedin, of course, is we're all living on LinkedIn, um, but you know, if people are on LinkedIn, you can always email me at jdemeco, at HollandAmericaGroupcom. I'm happy to to connect and speak with people anytime.

Jim D'Amico: 32:35

There you go, and if you're looking for a career change and want to go into the industry, they have great perks. That's right. I'll give you a little, a little plug. We usually don't sell things on the podcast, but I'll give you a plug for for the, you know, the most unique benefit you can have. Jim, it's been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for for spending the last few minutes with us and sharing some, some really powerful information. We'll have all your information in the show notes. Check it out, and I appreciate you being a voice out there for for adding some humanity back into the town.

Kyle Roed: 33:08

Thank you, kyle, my pleasure.

Jim D'Amico: 33:11

All right, that does it for the Rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, twitter at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resourcescom. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.

Kyle Roed: 33:41

Maybe,