Today’s Talent All-Star was recently on the other side of the talent acquisition table, and he came away from that experience with some shocking insights.
Jay Olson, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Medtronic, had spent years perfecting the art of hiring. But recently, his time as a candidate gave him an entirely new perspective. Which led him to rethink his entire strategy as he settles into his new role.
Jay also shares:
Connect with Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayolson
Connect with us:
💻 All Episodes: TalentAllStars.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ziprecruiter/
💼 Dave’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davetravers/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ziprecruiter
🎵TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ziprecruiter
Enjoyed this episode? We’d be grateful for a rating or review on your favorite podcast app.
[00:00:00] Jay Olson: It's no longer about ensuring that your candidates are taken care of, you're shepherded through a process really looked at from a bespoke manner, but now it's all about. We just got to get people through the process and everybody thinks technology and AI and automation is the key to all of this, when in reality, that's part of the problem.
[00:00:21] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter. And on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Today's Talent All-Star is Jay Olson, the Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Medtronic, a medical device company with about 100, 000 team members worldwide. Jay has two decades of leadership experience in talent acquisition, but he was also recently on the candidate side of the equation, and he came away from that experience with some really interesting insights.
So Jay Olson, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:01] Jay Olson: Thank you, Dave. I've seen some of the other podcasts that you've done and I'm, I'm honored to be a part of this.
[00:01:09] Dave Travers: Oh, we're, we're excited to have you. One of the interesting things for you is that we talk to people all the time. I've been at an amazing company for a long time.
What's interesting for you is you've joined an amazing company recently. And so you've recently been on the other side of the table and the job market's a little bit different than it has been over the past couple of years, especially for higher-skilled folks, I think both when you look at the data and when you talk to people out there, so I'd love your, what was that experience like and how does that make you change how you approach your, your day job now that you're backed on the, on the TA side?
[00:01:44] Jay Olson: The experience was, it was brutal. I mean, it is, it is a very, very difficult job market right now. And. I hadn't been, I guess, voluntold, uh, to be looking for a new job and call it. It was about 17 years And, uh, what I learned was the rules are completely different. And so what I saw right away, there's a lot of organizations that love to talk about candidate experience and how important it is for them.
Yet it seems like, especially in this job market, candidate experience has, it's literally been pushed to the side. It's no longer about ensuring that your candidates are taken care of, you're shepherded through a process really looked at from a bespoke manner. But now it's all about, we just got to get people through the process.
And everybody thinks technology and AI and automation is the key to all of this. When in reality, that's part of the problem. So I think we've, we've swung a little too far on the automation side. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions about like how AI works within TA, the technology that we use self selecting, you know, people out without any human interaction, like none of that is true, but from a candidate's perspective, I can absolutely see why people would believe that.
Because of the way we've set our systems up, because of the way processes are now, it doesn't have that same human touch element to it. And it's not the fault necessarily of the talent acquisition functions. It's that they have so much going on. It's doing more with less, as is true in most organizations now.
So they want to do more, but they just simply don't have the time in the day to do more. And that eventually flows down to candidate experience. And that's where. You start having the raw.
[00:03:35] Dave Travers: And so how does that change now? As you start with a clean sheet of paper and the list, huge leadership role at a big company like Medtronic, how does that change how you approach the job?
[00:03:46] Jay Olson: You know, I think it's really in conversations with hiring leaders or key stakeholders. When we're talking about hiring into the organization, you know, we need to make sure that what we're working on is truly the value add for the organization. So when we think about candidate experience, we think about hiring as, you know, we're going forward as an organization, the perspective I can bring having now been a candidate is we need to make sure what we're putting out there is real.
You know, that the jobs are ones that we are urgently looking to fill, not something that we have hiring leaders saying, you know, it'd be nice to have this person, but we're going to post a rec and we'll see what happens about six months down the road. That's not only bad from a candidate experience standpoint, you're also now taking the time away from the internal team.
So for me, the big lesson coming out of this is it's prioritization. In the right ways for the business to be successful because everybody has, has a want the question though, is what is the need? And we need to be focused on the needs first and then build up to the wants.
[00:04:53] Dave Travers: I think that's so interesting and so timely.
So when you're talking to one of your business leads or a hiring manager about that sort of a thing, how do you, I think so many of us, you know, can see in the data about. How lots of job postings don't lead to hires these days, and they can hear the experiences people have had of applying to jobs where it doesn't seem like the urgency to actually hire is that high.
So now, like as a, as a talent acquisition leader, who's seeing that inside the company, how do you discern, are we really urgently in a focused way going to hire for this, or are we just putting that out there to see what's possible?
[00:05:31] Jay Olson: I think what winds up happening so often is when organizations are doing well.
You know, the hiring controls really aren't in place in the same way. It's just, it's not scrutinized in the way that it is when, when they want to tighten the belts a little bit, you know, and what I think needs to continue to happen into the future is probably just, we need to. Up our level of scrutiny, and I'm saying this across the board.
This is not just Medtronic. This is industry in general. Up the scrutiny for the jobs that we're opening because you're right. You know, we hear the word hope used a lot, especially when people are in the job market. They're hoping for an interview. They're hoping to see that job pop up. That's going to fit for them.
They're hoping they get that, that offer. So when we put something out there and you put your organization's name, logo, brand on it. If you're not planning to hire for it, it's absolutely contrary to what we're trying to do as a talent acquisition function. And to, you know, to hear stories like that, it's disappointing because then all of a sudden we start getting painted with a broad brush of this is how all of talent acquisition is.
That's not at all how it is, but we have to get our leaders to understand that just because we might've done something a certain way in the past, doesn't mean that we need to continue to do it that way into the future. And so. Thinking of it from a continuous improvement mindset, certainly growth mindset is a very prevalent thing here on the Medtronic TA team.
It's about how do we better the experience across the board, but that includes hiring managers. So what that means is getting them to understand the work we're doing to benefit them and their teams and how we can be true business partners to them. So we're not saying no, or we shouldn't do this because we just don't feel like doing the work.
It's because there should be. Market data, there should be data insights that are brought to these conversations. We need to come to our hiring leaders and explain why we are saying the things that we are. So for me, that's been the kind of the thread that I continue to bring to my team is it's always about the, why, why are we making these decisions?
Why are we doing things the way that we're doing? And it doesn't mean that everybody's going to agree with it, but at least 11 understanding as to why you're making the decisions you are and not feeling like you're just pulling random answers out of the air and saying, this is what we're going to do.
So I think showing up educated and advising and what we're trying to do with hiring leaders, it builds that credibility. But it also then builds the credibility of the organization because we're focused in areas where there is a true sense of urgency. And we know in this market with candidates, they will move quickly.
So my message to the business is we will act with the same sense of urgency that you do. I like an urge position for you. It's an urgent position for us. But if you're just going to kind of go kick the tires and poke around. I'm probably going to have my team working on some other things right now, because we will have other jobs that have a sense of urgency behind.
[00:08:22] Dave Travers: I love that. And it's not just the candidates will move quickly. It's that the very best candidates will move the fastest. It's not the average candidate that moves the fastest. It's the best one. So. Uh, you're really new to your role. You're just a few months into your role at Medtronic. And a lot of people who listen and watch this podcast are earlier on in their career than you and aspire to leadership, but haven't yet gotten to leadership and leadership at the size of a role you have.
Talk about what's it like walking in day one, when you're at a new place, how do you establish yourself with your team, with your peers throughout the organization? Give somebody who hasn't had to do that before a primer on how to approach that.
[00:09:00] Jay Olson: I hate business cliches. I really do. Like I, they actually make me laugh because I think, you know, just say what you're saying, you know, you don't need to candy coat it and all this stuff, but you know, there's this thinking of, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
And so when, when I'm walking into a new organization, especially one like Medtronic that is highly complex, very matrixed, it's huge, you know, a hundred thousand people globally within this organization. So it's a lot to learn from a very, even call it scientific perspective, because we're talking med device.
So for me, it was all about coming in and listening as much as possible, which. It's hard for me to do sometimes because, you know, you think about past experiences that you've had and you know, that's why when organizations hire leaders externally to come in, really, the thinking is the past experience that you've had is going to lend value to this organization today because of just a different view.
It's a different mindset. It is what it basically is boiling itself down to is this is where cognitive diversity becomes so important. So, When I go in, or what I would tell anybody going into a new organization is you're there for a reason. So they hired you for a reason, and they see something in you that is valuable, that is bound to bring good to that organization.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be walking in the door. They're not going to give you a badge if that's not the case. So be confident in that when you walk in, but understand that that confidence needs to be tempered with an understanding that you are new here. And understanding the industry is one thing, understanding the organization and the internal politics is another.
And that's where I think the greatest learning curve actually is for most people is it's not understanding the job itself. It's understanding how the job fits into the organization and then how you fit into that organization from a value standpoint.
[00:11:01] Dave Travers: I think for somebody new at it, and especially at a big company with a bunch of smart people running around.
Learning early on from the people who work for you now, your new team, they're going to want to talk to you learning from them. No problem. How do you just [ tactically, how do you go out and learn elsewhere in the organization? Like, how do you get a VP who's not in HR? You know, how do you learn from them?
How do you set yourself up to do that for somebody who's never done it before?
[00:11:25] Jay Olson: I think this is where you really have to understand that the only person that is going to drive your career is yourself. So There can be trainings that you'll be set up for, there can be mentorship programs, there can be recommendations for you should meet this person, all of that's going to happen.
It, it happens everywhere. But when you think about, you know, where you want to go, what you want to do, so how do you get that knowledge outside of your specific area? Oftentimes, it's you taking the reins of that thought and then proactively going out there and seeking it. The coolest part about having that mentality, though, is that Within most organizations, and I would argue most people would be this way.
If you reach out saying, I would love to learn from you, or I would love to hear your story, 99 percent of the time, the person's going to say, yes, usually it's because people love to talk about themselves. Right. But at the same time, I also, I believe that human beings are innately wired to want to help one another.
And it's a flattering thing when people reach out saying, I would love to learn from you, or I would love to learn, how did you get to where you're at? So if you're new in your organization, you want to get to know senior leaders. Flattery does go a long way. It does work, but I mean, I say that a bit tongue in cheek because it is beneficial for you in such a way that you are going to get.
Not only more knowledge, but you're building the right relationships. So you have to have certain types of relationships in an organization. You know, you have your leadership, but then you need people that are like your mentors, you know, to really help you and guide you through maybe difficult decisions or challenging situations, but then you also need champions.
You need people that aren't there to necessarily guide you in your work, but rather to speak of you to others because they know you. They know the type of person you are. They know your work ethic. They know the quality of the work that you bring out. So you get those three aspects, leadership, mentorship, and champions, and you've got then a really good base of a network within your organization.
My one call out on that though, and I learned this one the hard way, and that is when you're new to an organization, you will put probably 100 percent of your time into networking within that organization, and it makes sense. It absolutely makes sense. You're new here, you want to get to know everybody, you want to get to know the business.
But then what winds up happening is that becomes your habit, and then that habitually becomes your days. And then all of a sudden, your network is purely internal. And that's what I found when I lost my job at Anderson, was I had spent almost two years building that network internally at Anderson, because that's where the gain, I thought, was.
When in reality, I had let my external network die a little bit. And that was a valuable lesson to learn, is that just because you go into a new organization, you have this new opportunity, and you're excited about it, you want to learn everything you can from the people that are there. But never neglect.
Your external network, because, well, I'm literally, I'm one day away, December 14th will be one year since I was, since I was laid off. Yeah. So to think about the difference that's been made in a year, but it was a valuable lesson learned of. External networks are so important, and I will never ever take that same approach again of focusing all of my time just within my employer.
The market outside of your employer is arguably as important for you to stay connected to if you want to grow your career in a way that could have you moving to other organizations, taking on lateral projects, all of that. But I heard that the term mess talked about this cliche thing. When you, when you're looking for work, people will tell you, it's all about who, you know, it's who, you know, that's how you're going to find your job.
That's actually, that's not true at all. I have a huge network because I've been in talent acquisition for 20 plus years, but it didn't matter because I hadn't stayed in contact with a number of those people. So it doesn't matter who you know. What matters is who knows you. Who knows you're looking, who knows that you're open to new opportunities, who knows what you're actually interested in pursuing.
That's what's most important. Doesn't matter how many connections you have, it's who are you talking to. So, lesson learned coming out of being in the candidate marketplace for eight months. It sucks to be there, but there are ways you can accelerate yourself out of it if you look at it from a more Broad perspective versus focusing just in one area.
And believe me, I know that is way easier said than done.
[00:15:56] Dave Travers: I'm going to yes. And that, because everything you said about the importance of keeping not just your internal network, but your external network alive, vibrant, fresh for your own career is absolutely right. You will do better at your job, et cetera, but it's also a benefit to your current company.
It's not just for sure. You, you will now have this. Group that you can go to, to bounce ideas off of as you're facing a tough problem. How has someone else solved this or struggled with this before? And you will just by osmosis, not even thinking about issues. You'll be like, Whoa, I've talked to five companies and we're the only ones in the world who appear to do it this way.
And it doesn't seem to be working that well. Should we reconsider? Because they're taking for whatever, you know, candidate experience really seriously everywhere else. Why don't we ever talk about this or whatever the case might be.
[00:16:44] Jay Olson: I have a slightly different mentality. I think that a number of TA leaders, and that is, um, I'm not a big believer in competition.
And what I mean by that is Medtronic as an organization, we have competitors in the marketplace within certain segments. That's how, that's how business works. We get that. But when I'm thinking about talent, though, and I mean about talent for these different organizations, I don't believe that competition is the way that we should be looking at it.
So this whole war for talent thing, I really don't believe in it in the way that it's been defined. The reason I say that is because in the point you're just making, if you have four other organizations doing something really well, and your organization is not, the realistic, logical way to be thinking about this is candidates are not going to be as drawn to your organization then as they are to others.
Is that their fault? No, that's yours. That's your problem to solve. So my mentality has been, let's make our organization the best it can possibly be. And then the right people will find us because not everybody should work at Medtronic, just like not everybody should work at X, Y, and Z company. People aren't universal in the sense that they belong everywhere, and I think we've gotten to the place where so much advertisement is like, you know, we can employ anybody.
It's simply not true. That's not how this works. There are skills required. There are knowledge backgrounds that are required for some of the work that we do here. So we have to understand it's not a competition. It's about making ourselves an employer of choice. And we focus in that area. The candidates will come and find us.
And then if they choose to go someplace else, we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, what did we not do to then retain this person.
So I'm a talent acquisition person that talks more about retention than I do about attraction, because retention to me is arguably the most important and powerful tool that we have within talent acquisitions. People want to know why is the average tenure of a employee in Medtronic 10 years? That's the story I want to be telling in the marketplace about Medtronic for the right people.
We have amazing organizations out there, especially in the med-tech space. That have created life-changing, life-saving technologies. So far be it for me or anybody else to start throwing rocks in a glass house saying, Oh, you don't want to go work there. The missions are the missions and they're positive ones.
But I want Medtronic to be the best company it can be for the people that work here? Because I believe that engagement is what's going to continue to lead to our, our future success. And that's us bettering ourselves internally and then broadcasting that externally. So people will want to come and be a part of it.
[00:19:27] Dave Travers: I love that. So as you think about recruitment marketing, and so you have a, such a clear value proposition with an incredible retention stat when you have. A strength like that that you've identified within your company. That's so clear. How do you make the most out of that? Cause I think, you know, it may not be retention for other folks.
It may be, um, that we compensate really well or whatever your clear value proposition is that we're based in an amazing city and we have a great relocation program or whatever it is. When you have such a clear strength like Medtronic does in retention, how do you make maximum advantage out of that as you're out there recruiting the best people?
[00:20:06] Jay Olson: I think the way we take advantage of that is truly through TA brand marketing. And oftentimes organizations, they will have corporate communications. They'll have, they'll have LinkedIn content. They'll have these things, but it is more corporate or broadly focused. What I want to do and what I believe Medtronic TA wants to do is be able to tell stories.
So when we do the work that we do, storytelling is arguably one of the greatest strengths or skills. You can have, and I think when we talk about candidate communication, hiring manager, communication, even external market communication, you're always telling a story of some kind. So to share the stories of the employees, you know, how did they get there?
How did they get to the role that they're in? You know, in my first week at Medtronic, I was fortunate enough to sit next to a couple of different folks that had been there, you know, 10 years and 15 years respectively. One of them started as an intern, so 12, 12 years in, you know, through that internship and then the actual time as an FTE, her story was incredible about just all the different opportunities she has had.
And I told her, these are the stories I want us to be able to put into the marketplace because they're real, they're genuine, they're authentic. And it's a possibility for others as well. So I want us to be able to show what it's like to work within Medtronic, to really broadcast that from a TA branding perspective.
It's not about the corporation necessarily. It's about the individuals that make up the corporation.
[00:21:40] Dave Travers: I love that. So I think that's true outside of talent, like in any being able to tell the story of what you're doing, why it matters is important in talent acquisition. If you're the person inside the company, if you're looking to differentiate yourself and take your career to the next level, set everything else aside.
If you're the person who can best describe what it's like to really work at this company and be successful, you are an incredibly important person to the company, uh, so in sort of. Thinking about it in those terms, like to make yourself invaluable to the CHRO and the CEO, they want that person in the building, the person who can really viscerally make somebody the new and super talented.
Okay. We always end at the end of these shows with a lightning round where we go really quickly through a couple of questions. So I want you to imagine we have, we have 60 seconds. We're a Medtronic HQ. We're going up the elevator. The CEO steps in. And says, Hey, Jay, you've been here a few months now.
What's the number one, most important thing is we think about 2025? What's the most important thing for the talent team to accomplish?
[00:22:45] Jay Olson: I think it's, uh, the most important thing for us to accomplish is to continue to build our process in a way that is very candidate-friendly. I've made the comment, I want it to be difficult to get a job at Medtronic.
But I don't want it to be difficult from a process standpoint or from an expectation standpoint in terms of necessarily education or background. I want it to be difficult because we have so many people that want to work there. So, to me, if we can get our processes and our technology really aligned in a way that allows that to be just running in the background seamlessly, that gives us an opportunity to really put the bespoke nature of talent acquisition into what we do, because we'll have more time to be spending with the candidates and the hiring leaders.
[00:23:30] Dave Travers: Love it. Okay. Next question. 60 seconds again, we get in the elevator. It's the CEO who says, one of the most important things I do in my job, Jay, is actually interviewing people. And I don't know if I'm that good at it. What's the one thing I should do to get better at interview?
[00:23:45] Jay Olson: Interview is a fun topic for me because there's always a debate between behavioral based interviews, the star method.
Personally, I, I, I'm really not a fan of either. Uh, so the way that I tell people or that I would recommend to people to get better at interviewing is ask situational questions. So instead of somebody regurgitating an answer for tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult customer, you just, you know, you could make something out, I would have no idea.
I'd have no idea if what you're saying is true or not. But if I tell you we're currently dealing with a difficult customer, a different, a difficult vendor, this is the situation. How would you go about handling this? To me, that allows somebody to pull all the different experiences they've had from the past and put it into an answer.
And it shows you not only the type of answer that they would give you, but what's their thought process? How do they think through a problem? So if you don't feel like you're good at interviewing. Ask somebody the question of a problem that you're having and see how they respond to it. That's one of the fastest ways to see how somebody thinks and whether or not their background is real and that it would fit with the type of mentality that you're looking for.
[00:24:53] Dave Travers: What a great way to wrap it up. Jay Olson, clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
[00:24:59] Jay Olson: I appreciate it. Dave. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:25:07] Dave Travers: That's Jay Olson. He's the Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Medtronic. You can find him on LinkedIn. We'll drop a link to his profile in the show description. And if you have feedback for us or know a talent leader who'd make a great guest, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter. com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars and we'll see you next week.