What’s Vanguard’s secret talent acquisition superpower? Turning their mission into an irresistible recruiting pitch.
Tiffany Haley, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Vanguard, shares why the best recruiters are those who genuinely believe in what they're selling.
In this episode, Tiffany explains how she coaches her team to leverage empathy, passion, and storytelling—transforming them into true brand ambassadors who attract top talent that drives company results.
Tiffany also covers:
Connect with Tiffany on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-haley/
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] Tiffany Haley: I think leaders need to be thinking about technology and it's moving fast. And where is it going and how are they going to use the technology to unlock more and to be able to take better advantage of the unique things that the humans on their team can do and make sure they're prepared to nurture that.
[00:00:20] 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 the head of global talent acquisition at Vanguard. One of the biggest names in investing, best known for its low-cost index funds and putting everyday investors first. Tiffany Haley has spent nearly her entire career at Vanguard taking on leadership development, HR strategy, and client services.
Before stepping into her current role, leading global talent acquisition, Tiffany, welcome to talent all-stars.
[00:01:03] Tiffany Haley: Thank you for having me, Dave.
[00:01:04] Dave Travers: So excited to have you. Okay. So you've been in Vanguard for a while, which I think most people know, but maybe if you don't, manages literally trillions of dollars. On behalf of, uh, other investors and mutual funds and ETFs and the like huge major player in financial markets, an amazing company with amazing history and culture and founder and things like that.
But one of the reasons I'm excited to talk to you today is because you came up, not just through recruiting, even though you're the global head of talent acquisition today, but in other parts of the people department, give us a little sense of that journey.
[00:01:38] Tiffany Haley: So my venture into HR kind of has some interesting beginnings.
So when I got out of school, I actually was working for a mortgage company in Detroit. And I was working in the contact center, which was not the job. I actually thought I'd be doing after college, but you know, they were hiring and I needed a job. So there I was and what I discovered about that work. So I was talking to the public about their finances, right?
As people who were for the first time trying to buy a home. Or trying to refinance a home. What I learned quickly was that I thought my clients were going to be people who were well-informed and who had been told very honestly about what that process would be like. How much money you would have to have, et cetera.
Those were not actually my clients. And so I found myself being the person calling saying, hey, I know the commercial said you can get that house in 30 days and you don't really need any money to do it. But the reality is I need you to send me proof of these 17 different facts about yourself. And some of those get kind of personal.
So I was taking a lot of incoming from the public who were very frustrated with me. And then I was like 23 years old, getting yelled at all the time by these folks, freaking out like, what have I done wrong here? But then I think what clicked for me one day was that my clients, they weren't the client I thought they were going to have, but they were my clients.
And so I realized like empathy was important and a little bit of technique. So I started challenging myself every day to say, the phone's going to ring and the person's probably going to be at a 10, maybe a nine. And my job was to deploy like empathy and technique to get them from ten to seven to five, maybe to two and ultimately get them to do the thing that I needed them to do, which was ultimately in their best interest because it was going to get them into their home.
So I actually came to really enjoy that and then I was tapped to help other people do it. Which was my first step into kind of the HR space and like the learning and development side of the house. So I joined the HR team there for the latter part of my, uh, kind of entry-level work experience. And I did that for years before I went off to grad school and got, came out of grad school not thinking I'd go back to HR.
But meeting Vanguard and hearing the empathy for clients and the focus on their well-being, it just clicked so well with like the way I had felt about my pre-business school work. And so it felt like a, let's do it. It's come out to the East Coast and work with Vanguard and the rest has been history. So a little less traditional path to HR, but um, it's the one that, you know, I think back up fondly.
[00:04:09] Dave Travers: Awesome. So you come out of business school, you enter Vanguard, and then as you start out there doing more learning and development, how do you end up in talent?
[00:04:19] Tiffany Haley: So it's interesting, you know, we, we talk a lot about what it means to develop folks here and to give people a shot at to nurture them. So when I came to Vanguard, I was tasked with doing something similar to what I had done in my background.
I was built an entry-level training program that was about empathy and technique and connection. with clients and a manager who saw something in me decided to give me a shot and invite me to talk about that work in front of our CEO at the time. And it was like, it's a big deal. I've been with the company 18 months.
I'm getting a big swing at it. And I had a lot of support and preparation and it went really well. And it started the conversation about what else I could do and who else I could inspire and what other kind of work I could do. So then I went from being in sort of a junior leadership role in learning to a more senior one to, hey, let's give you a shot at running our performance management function.
Oh, wow. Like you brought about some great change there. Let's see what you can do with our global leadership development function. And so I found that the more I was given the shot and the support, and then, you know, of course, you got to nail it when you get the shot. And then, you know, that kept opening up new opportunities.
That's one of the things that I value about my experience here is that if you kind of, you give, you put yourself out there, that you get the investment back in return. And that has helped my career. I've moved all around in talent management at Vanguard to land here in talent acquisition, but started at that beginning.
[00:05:38] Dave Travers: So take us back to that moment where you are 18 months in and you're in front of the CEO. For the first time, I think a lot of people remember that moment in their careers, or they dream of that moment. And so tell us what it was like. And so it sounds like it went really well. Did it go really well in the way you planned and hope for going in?
Or was it different? Well, how was that?
[00:05:58] Tiffany Haley: You know, it's funny. I've never thought of it exactly that way, but I'll credit my days back on in that contact center is I never really expect anything to go any particular way. So I've always tried to. Pride myself on being good on my feet and getting ever better at being good on my feet.
And so you do that. It's again, about being empathetic to whoever's listening to you and they might want to go left and you got to figure out, are you going all the way left with them? Are you going to go a tad bit left, but bring it back to center because that's what you need to do. But it's very dynamic.
So I think I learned that from kind of getting really key raked across the goals, uh, as a 22-year-old phone center representative. I never know what's going to happen in a conversation, but I'm kind of perpetually ready.
[00:06:40] Dave Travers: That's awesome. Okay. So you were ready for this. And then what happened in the meeting and how did that change the direction of your career?
[00:06:47] Tiffany Haley: You know, what's interesting about that is I was scanning the room and there were leaders around that table who were legitimately there to support me and make sure that was a positive developmental experience. So I feel like that made a big difference to say. I'm sitting there, people want me to do well in this moment, sure it's a moment to prove what I got, but they're rooting for me.
And I feel like that's something I try to bring to my leadership now, too, is that yes, there's moments of show and prove, but you also want to feel like you're creating the environment where people are likely to succeed, um, and feel like that's the point.
[00:07:28] Dave Travers: Yeah. I mean, that is such a powerful memory because I think coming up, all of us can remember moments.
Early in our career where a person did or didn't, you know, feel like they really had our back. And as you become more senior, like you have now, and you're a leader, like thinking every day about what the opportunities are to play that sort of a role that you may not remember even tomorrow, but is going to be hugely impactful for the rest of somebody's career.
How do you think about that now? How do you lead today with that memory of what it was like for you to be supported in that way?
[00:08:03] Tiffany Haley: It's such a good point because I'm a like pretty low ego person and so I think sometimes when I was earlier in my leadership journey, I underestimated that things I said and did could make that big of a difference for someone because I always had kind of see myself as.
Right in there with the folks and I, you know, the more senior I got, I never felt distanced from folks, but people do start to look up to you and the things you say about their work and the interest you show in their work, it matters in ways that if you don't stop and think about it, you could miss. So I think as I've just kind of gotten more senior.
Making sure to stop, and if I think something was great, making sure I mentioned that it was great, because that is going to be a difference maker for someone. Similarly, I try to make sure I point out the watch out for people that I care about too, because I know they'll take that seriously if I bother to pull them aside and say, hey, there's an adjustment that should be made here.
So the weight of your words is something I had to come to appreciate, because I'm just like, hey, I'm just one of the team. Um, then I realized it gets a little less true in some ways as your words develop that way. So I've tried to be more conscious of that.
[00:09:08] Dave Travers: So now here you are, this global leader of talent acquisition at Vanguard, and it is such a unique story and a unique culture within the financial services industry.
How do you use that? Where is that a challenge and where is that an opportunity and how do you utilize that you are recruiting amazing people to come join Vanguard?
[00:09:29] Tiffany Haley: So we're lucky, I think of the recruitment function as a sales function in a lot of ways, right? We're selling a value, absolutely proposition to prospective employees, and we're lucky to have a wonderful thing to offer, which is the mission of the organization.
So Vanguard's mission is to take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly and to give them the very best chance for investment success. And I guess post-pandemic even more so than before, is people care what they're doing with their time. They care if they're not, you know, having fun, if they're not with their families, they're at work, they care what they're doing with that time and they want that to be something that they are proud of and it feels worthwhile.
So while there's a million things a person could do to earn a living. We're very proud to offer the chance to actually help someone else live a better life because as we're trying, we're always looking for how do we extract more value for clients, what have we left on the table, what has the industry left on the table, and pass it along to someone who's honestly going to feel more secure and going to live better because we've done that with and for them, right?
So we can sell that to prospective candidates, right, and people are hungry to feel that way about work. And then on the other side of the house, then to keep that talent, then we have to make sure that that mission is palpable when you come to the organization. And it very much is because leaders like me, we have to bring it forward in the way that we work.
When you get to decision points, we, we always ask what's best for the client. We don't have daylight there. And that kind of affirms it and that keeps people saying like, you know, every day at work is not an awesome day. Some days at work are tough, but at the end of the day, people stay proud about what they're doing and they stay committed to what they're doing.
So it works on both sides of it. It helps us find the folks that are aligned with us and it helps us keep them here and feeling great through all the ups and downs of work life.
[00:11:16] Dave Travers: You're at a company where the impact on the end client is clear. And, uh, you utilize that in how you message to potential candidates and message to existing employees to make them feel a certain way about how they relate to their employer and to their work. If I'm an up-and-coming leader in talent acquisition that has a different culture, but a different strong customer value proposition, but I don't feel like we're utilizing that enough in our talent acquisition. How do I start? How do I go down that path of connecting talent acquisition to the end customer value proposition to make people feel that way that you'd do at Vanguard about how joining this organization could impact people in a big way?
[00:12:04] Tiffany Haley: Well, we worked a lot on our recruiters themselves, right? So they're going to be the first point of contact with a lot of, you know, candidates or people who are interested in the company. So the first question was to what extent. Do they feel it as the salespersons, right, for this experience? And sometimes when you're doing work that is not the client-facing work, you know, like a shared service function, like HR, et cetera, it takes a little bit more deliberate leadership effort to make sure people can stay.
You know, seeing how what they do directly does bring that mission to life for clients. So like in HR, here we talk about things like, this company is a collection of motivated, committed individuals, right? And keeping the right people flowing into this organization and then enjoying fruitful careers of this organization is exactly how we will continue to be successful and deliver the value.
To the end investors, which is why people came here to be a part of that. So that storytelling, you know, it's very important that our recruiters feel it. And that every leader that's going to participate in the interview and the kind of courtship process for candidates, that we ask them how they plan on positioning the value proposition of Vanguard to the candidates, because they need to reflect on wherever corner of the company they work in, they need to reflect on how, uh, they would tell that story, how they would say they live in the mission if asked, or even if they, if not asked, we think that should organically make its way into the pitch because we think it's such an important part of what we're positioning to candidates.
So. I would say everyone that's going to touch your candidates, like they have to believe it and they have to be prepared to kind of dig deep into their story and figure out what they're going to bring forward to as proof points for it when they're talking to candidates.
[00:13:48] Dave Travers: So you referenced earlier that a lot about recruiting is sales and what you touched on there is that an incredibly powerful sales and therefore recruiting tactic is to feel it yourself before you explain it and sell someone else on it. And so as you think about building and developing your team of recruiters, is that something you recruit for that they bring to the table as a critical element, or is that something you can coach and teach somebody who has the raw skills about feeling it so they can then sell it?
[00:14:19] Tiffany Haley: I think the raw skill is the ability to empathize and connect across the screen or across the table. With someone who's trying to make an important career decision. I think that's kind of the raw skill that you're passionate about making, helping someone make that decision to choose Vanguard. And you're passionate about helping hiring managers design a process that's going to lure that person and assess them and get them here to start this Vanguard career.
Those are the raw skills. I think if you would take a person who's passionate about doing that work that happens to be also very motivated by this particular mission. I think you're going to have magic. So I think it's our job to when we're recruiters to make sure we're doing all that same selling to them.
But then when they get here to do what I was saying before that as their leader, you know, making sure I'm modeling and I'm living it. I'm pumping it into the environment. So they stay believers. You know, when companies are making decisions, sometimes if you don't stop and some distill some of that decision making process to your teams, they may think, Hmm, does this exactly align with, you know, with what I came here to do?
And if you don't help people sew those things together, then you run the risk of having some fraying. So as a leader of the function, it's always my job to make sure I'm pumping that into the organization so they still feel proud and connected as recruiters to what we're doing, but they do have to bring those raw skills of like really being able to connect with talent and we can supplement through modeling and coaching and discussions.
You know, how you pitch that mission and that value proposition to candidates.
[00:15:50] Dave Travers: So now flip from thinking about it as a coaching, uh, of an up-and-coming talent leader to somebody who's a recruiter and they're sounding like. Gosh, if I were at a place where I could feel the mission, where I believed it viscerally myself and could have a physical sensation about what it feels like as I describe it to someone else, I'm going to be so much more effective in my career and in my job.
How do you coach a recruiter, um, who's thinking about that, that says, that sounds amazing. How do I find that? How do I find that place for me? How would I go about looking for the right place for me or the right fit for me where I'm going to be a recruiter, where I'm believing so much in the mission?
[00:16:30] Tiffany Haley: It's such a good point. I think you have to ask yourself, you know, and I talk about what you want to do with your time. I do think it's important for anybody that's considering any job to really be in touch with that. And, you know, you might want to spend your career. Rapidly advancing. So you hit your financial targets and retire as quickly as possible.
And I don't begrudge anybody that, or you might think, you know, I don't know how much time I have on earth and I want to do something that I feel like really matters, or maybe I want to do something where I could, you know, when I go to Thanksgiving dinner, I can tell my family what I do and I want them to all smile and go right on, like, good for you, like you, whatever your motivations are to pick kind of where you want to be and where you want to spend your time.
Like, I think you just got to really think about that. Cause there's a thousand things you could do. But then I think if you're talking to a company. You want to ask the questions that can help you understand how real the commitment is. And so you might ask questions about like examples of how that manager does believe their team has affected the end investor, you know, and be able to explain that type of thing.
So I tell my team all the time, imagine Vanguard without the right people in the right seats. The right people in the right seats here at the company make the right decisions happen. They keep the best products being designed. They keep the best services operating. They keep efficiencies flowing so that more value gets created for somebody out there whose dream is to like maybe retire two years earlier.
Uh, then they could have because they got this grandkid now. So I think it's like, it does take, I can see how that like might feel kind of hokey to somebody, but I really do think it takes that deliberate slowing down and thinking about it if you want it to matter to people. And so when you're selecting an employer, I think you want to be getting a sense for how real is it for the people you're going to be working with Slash 4 and have those conversations up front. I remember, you know, I didn't know a lot about Vanguard when I met them at a career fair in 2009, but every single person I talked to, they were like effusive about that.
And I believed it and I just kind of like packed up my stuff and moved out here and was delighted to find, you know, things to be as true as I was told they would be. So I just think those conversations are important when you're considering where you're going to land with your career as a recruiter or any other role.
[00:18:40] Dave Travers: That is amazing when you are talking to a company and you have multiple points of contact in the process and when everybody says the same thing. And you can tell they're not reading it off a cue card, but they're explaining it in their own authentic way. That consistency is a very powerful signal. On the flip side, when you hear a very different story from every person you talk to, that sends a different signal.
Okay. So one of the things that obviously was a turning point or one of the many turning points in your career was executive communication. We talked about earlier, the, the CEO moment for you and the first interaction you had with the Vanguard CEO. So model for us some of that great CEO communication skill you have and talk to us about, as you talk to other executives at Vanguard, what are the things that your team needs to do in this environment over the next year or two to be successful so that other people can hear how do you get out of speaking TA and how do you level up and speak to business leaders throughout the organization?
What's important for your team over the next year or two?
[00:19:42] Tiffany Haley: What's important is that they understand intimately what the business is trying to do. We're kind of an exciting time around here and heading into the, you know, 2025 and six and beyond are going to be awesome years to be a Vanguard, but you really need to know what the business is trying to do and you need to be watching their success.
And that needs to be as much or maybe even more so a measure of your teams. Like if they are succeeding, that means their talent is performing. And we should see ourselves as integral to that. So I would say, you know, you want to be able to converse with your business leaders in a way that says, okay, I know you're looking to increase this by this much this year.
I think it's going to take the deployment of these skills. Some we don't have, some that we don't have yet. Some that we do, but we need to accelerate. You need to have that kind of conversation for once. That's one. I have to be versed in that business so we can inform what you're doing in the talent space from an actual TA perspective, though, I'd want leaders to understand, like, what we're after is having no critical work be delayed because the talent wasn't here on time or because the wrong person was there.
And so we have that as a North star in TA, and we're talking to the business to say, not like how many. What skills do we have? What work has begun? What strategic projects are right on schedule or what's waiting? You know, there's something big out there is supposed to happen as soon as this person's in place.
So my team's accountable to making sure that's not a day late and it's the right person, right? So I think when we're talking to the business, we want them to understand we see it not in our, our dashboard, but we see it on their work getting going with the right person in the seat and that person being successful.
And then we think, too, once we have helped them match their roles with these persons, we're hoping six months, 12 months later, neither that candidate or that hiring manager have any buyer's remorse, because that's a credit to our assessment process and the way we successfully pitched the reality of working at Vanguard, the reality of the opportunity we have to offer you, and the reality of what our culture is like, and, you know, kind of the fabric of this place.
That's to make sure the candidate is satisfied, but then on making sure we screen for the skills. That we don't want these interviews to just be chit chat like we want to relate to folks, but we know we have a job to find out if the skills are there. And so if we've done our job, there's no buyer remorse on either side.
So I want leaders to know that. Then when you look back over a year, people that joined the company, how are both parties feeling about that? And then also I hope that the business can understand that we're getting more and more efficient. at how we do that, because again, delay is bad for everybody and quality is very important.
So we want to be able, if asked, to describe how we've become a more efficient shop to serve them. And I think if you can have that dialogue with leaders, you don't have to get too far in the weeds of how we do it and all, but I think at high levels are some of the things that we'd be proud to talk about.
[00:22:22] Dave Travers: It's such a powerful unlock from what you just said for talent leaders is talking, not in terms of headcount budget and fills, as you put it, but talking in terms of initiatives and how the business is doing.
So if a sales leader asks you as the head of TA, how are we doing on recruiting? Not that we're three heads ahead of where we hope to be, but that our sales goals are tracking ahead this month and saying, you know, we have the people to deliver against our goals. That is powerful.
[00:22:55] Tiffany Haley: Yeah. Your territories are covered and yes.
And they're producing. That's what we want to talk about.
[00:22:59] Dave Travers: I love that. Okay. We're going to move on to the rapid-fire section here that we always do. And so I want you back, uh, talking to the, the CEO of Vanguard. I know you have a new CEO now since your first CEO moment. And so if you're riding up the elevator and, uh, the CEO is there and, and says, hey, how should I be thinking about what are the skills we need?
Over the next five years that we might not have today. How should I think about that? What's your answer to that?
[00:23:29] Tiffany Haley: If I only had a second, I'd probably focus on leaders and I'd probably focus on senior leaders. Cause that's probably where, you know, our, our CEO would be thinking that the folks that he interacts with and whose judgment, you know, he wants to be able to rely on, I think leaders need to be thinking about technology and it's moving fast and where is it going and how are they going to, as they think about selecting talent and being prepared to develop talent, how they're going to use the technology to unlock more and to be able to take better advantage of the, the unique things. That the humans on their team can do and make sure they're prepared to nurture that because we don't want to be at war with the technology.
We really do want it to be, uh, as I said, an unlock for this talent. So if you're not thinking about whatever kind of part of the company, whatever function you work in, what's going to be the impact of that rapidly changing technology? If you're not paying attention there to thinking, okay, how do I get my team to maximize what they do alongside those advancements? I think you're going to miss something important over the next few years. So that would be my advice.
[00:24:36] Dave Travers: Technology and technological change is going to be a constant. So we need people to manage that. I love that. Okay. Next one is as the CEO. of Vanguard, I spend a fair amount of time interviewing people, but you're the expert on interviewing.
Like, give me one tip that will make me a better interviewer.
[00:24:52] Tiffany Haley: I think that everyone who is interviewing a candidate, they should be bringing some lens, some opinion that is uniquely valuable to that hiring leader or if you may be the hiring leader, but what is your thing that you are the best to assess and know that?
Because sometimes I think we, we think every interviewer can screen for everything. But, you know, we take assessment seriously. So if you're a person who's, um, has great executive communication skills, I'm tapping you to look for exactly that in my candidate and I want you to have thought about how you are going to do that.
So when I'm looking for your feedback, I implicitly trust what you're getting ready to tell me about executive communication. So I would say if you're asked to interview or you're preparing to interview, know exactly what your value proposition is as the assessor. And, have a strategy for identifying the skill or skills that someone needed you specifically to investigate with that talent, um, because, you know, I've been in like calibrations or debriefs from interviews and people just throwing out a bunch of commentary and it's just, I'm looking around the room like, whose opinion do I really value on that thing?
And sometimes wishing we had been more deliberate about that to start. So you don't have a lot of time with that candidate, know exactly why you're there. And as you converse with them and obviously relate to them, know exactly what you're there for. So you can go back and make a valuable contribution.
[00:26:19] Dave Travers: Tiffany Haley, it is so clear why you are a talent all-star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us.
[00:26:24] Tiffany Haley: Thank you for having me.
[00:26:29] Dave Travers: That's Tiffany Haley. She's the head of Global Talent Acquisition at Vanguard. We'll put our LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And just a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube too, on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you have any feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Traverse. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on Talent All-Stars next week.