An Interview with Katie Conti, VP of Talent Acquisition & DEI at HealthEdge
I had the chance to talk to Katie Conti, VP of Talent Acquisition & DEI at HealthEdge. It was fun to learn more about Katie and get her pulse on the current talent landscape.
It was really interesting learning how she landed in talent. Katie explained, “My career path was not a direct one! Many of the steps I took in my career led to my current role overseeing Talent Acquisition but maybe not in a traditional sense. Leaving college with a degree in English and Sociology, I knew I did not want to teach, but did not know much else.”
She continued, “I started in a benefits administration role in an interesting organization that focused on retirement benefits for truck drivers. I learned a lot in that role, managed my first team, and knew that was not where I wanted to stay long term. I spent five years learning about finding and using my voice more strongly, experienced a front row seat to the challenges many women face in the workplace, both overtly and in the form of microaggression and have so many stories for that time in my career! After that, I landed at Oracle working in Resource Management where I would spend the next 10+ years of my career. This was a role where I took customer demand for consulting projects and had to put together project teams to meet the demand. Often that would be by placing our employees that had availability and skill set matches on the team, and when we had gaps going out to hire either through partner agencies or direct hiring. What I found in those scenarios over and over again is that when I went to our partners, and when I worked with the in-house recruiting team, that what we were getting for profiles did not match the need and I would take over the recruiting myself more times than I care to admit. So while many people in my role worked at agency or as a corporate recruiter, I grew up on the business side as a stake holder to Talent Acquisition.”
Katie elaborated on what led her to her current organization. “In 2018, when I was connected with the head of HR at HealthEdge, it was meant to be a conversation around hiring for Professional Services teams. It turned into a job opportunity that I am in now, which is at a 2000-person software company. I found all of those experiences as a customer to TA really helped me build a lens for what the business needs and how to partner closely. It’s been an amazing ride, but I think I have found my passion! Matching people to the right opportunity, and helping build strong functioning teams, is fun, dynamic and ever changing.”
So I then asked her to talk to me about what her current role looks like. She shared, “My role today is the VP, Talent Acquisition & DEI at HealthEdge Software. I am responsible for overseeing Global Talent Acquisition. I directly manage the US team, and indirectly oversee the India TA team; collectively we are a group of 25 today. In addition, I am setting and executing the DEI strategy for the organization in partnership with our larger People team.”
Then we really dug in and talked about today’s market. She said, “We are definitely seeing the market pick back up, which is exciting! We have been fortunate to continue to hire during the last downward trend, but it had slowed down. We’re also seeing trends around candidate and employee experience expectations evolving. In a post-Covid world, flexibility is key. Whether it’s in working hours, PTO/time off, or even in Job Expectations candidates are still driving the conversation in a lot of ways and forcing organizations to be in a constant review of their practices. In an Employee Engagement survey last year, we heard our team was feeling that even with remote work, balancing work life and home life was an ongoing challenge. We took action by adding in 4 additional summer holidays around Memorial Day, Juneteenth, 4th of July and Labor Day to give our employees built in 4 day weekends. The need to adapt and evolve is constant!”
It is so refreshing to hear how progressive Katie and her organization are so then I got right to it; the question we were all wanting to ask her. What is AI? I was grateful she understood why we were curious about this popular topic! Katie shared, “You can’t go very far today on CNN, New York Times, LinkedIn, social media, etc. and not run into AI discussions happening. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay and it’s been fascinating to see how quickly things like ChatGPT went from something I didn’t know to a recurring theme in strategy meetings, and at the forefront of thought leadership.”
So then I asked, How is AI changing the recruiting process? She explained, “I think AI will have a huge impact on recruiting, although it is admittedly new to me and I am just in early learning stages myself. From job description creation to resume creation, to interview questions and beyond. I think in some ways, embracing the technology to work smarter and not harder is very appealing. The fear of losing humanity in the process of hiring I think is one that a lot of HR professionals are feeling but I don’t feel is warranted necessarily. I am trying to learn more and think of use cases where the time spent writing a JD gets to go back to the team… and they use that time instead to dig deep with candidates and focus on ways to expedite finding those employee/manager matches. Leveraging that gained time for strategic and creative parts of our function is a huge opportunity.”
When asked if she thought recruiting professionals will see a decrease in the value of resumes, Katie said, “I am of the opinion that cover letters in particular are a thing of the past. I think that resumes will continue to evolve but I think carry less significance. I’ve always relied more on the screen and the conversation than the resume. I’ve been hiring in software for almost 20 years; a resume rarely truly reflects someone’s capabilities and the ability write a “good” resume is subjective and short sighted often to hold against candidates. I look forward to them carrying less weight honestly.”
So, I asked, “Will there be less humanity in human resources?” Katie said, “I think the people side of our roles will always be. AI can’t take into account non-verbal communication, body language, nuance etc. And if you think of our field, that’s so much of the core of what we do. Honed critical thinking, the ability to read people and read between the lines, is very fundamental to successful Talent Acquisition and People teams. I see AI helping us find the time to spend in those conversations being able to actively listen and react and strategize vs having task level to-do lists that are taking up brain space and time.”
Then we broached the subject of ChatGPT, an AI text tool. I asked her if she believed that AI and ChatGPT have the potential to reinvigorate the entire HR recruitment and retention experience for candidates and employees. Katie shared, “I think they are tools that help elevate some of the administrative tasks our teams are faced with. I think working in a tech company, there comes an expectation that our teams are looking forward as well – not just our software engineers but our organization as a whole is staying current and ChatGPT and AI are definitely where that drive is today. Using these tools in our recruitment process feels inevitable and I hope to continue to learn and embrace it.”
We wrapped up with talking about great advice. Katie shared, “I don’t know that I have received a lot of great advice to be honest, but I’d throw it back to Ted Lasso…with “Be curious, not judgmental” (also Walt Whitman but it stuck with me for Ted). Don’t assume anything and ask all the questions, the details you learn about people along the way are really at the core of building relationships in work and life. I try very hard to maintain those details about the people I meet-birthdays, career goals, family dynamics, favorite authors or bands etc. Those details add up to who someone is and helps determine how you interact with them, learn from them, help them…it’s all part of the same story.”
I asked Katie to leave us with some of her best advice. She said, “I think the best thing a TA partner or leader can do is to really understand the business you’re in. Spend time listening and asking questions and saying “I don’t understand, tell me more” and having that be part of the team functions is important to me. Coming from the other side of the desk before officially coming into TA, that was the missing link for me. If I understand what your team, what the organization as a whole, is working towards, I can help bring the people in that fill those gaps and help your team grow in the ways that enables the business to succeed.”
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