Catherine Petersen started waiting tables at a Shoney's in Birmingham, Alabama, when she was 14, and spent the next 15 years working her way up through restaurant management. The part of the job she loved most was helping people grow, but restaurants back then had almost no room for HR. So in her late 20s she walked away, enrolled in night classes, and started over at a staffing agency hiring tempsCatherine is now the Vice President of Talent at Groundworks, North America's leading foundation repair and water management company, where she leads talent acquisition and talent development for more than 7,500 employees. In this episode, she explains why she checks the company's sales numbers before she looks at yesterday's offers, how a COO who started as an installer changed the way her team approaches every interview, and why she expects AI to put her recruiters on the phone more often.
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Connect with Catherine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-petersen-550a789b/
Learn more about Groundworks: https://www.groundworks.com
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[00:00:00] Catherine Petersen: I can take AI and help my team with the backend of the function, and they can spend more time really meeting the blue collar workers where they are and making that human to human connection.
[00:00:13] 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 Catherine Petersen, Vice President of Talent at Groundworks, North America's leading foundation and water management company.
She started her career at 14 when she fell in love with the restaurant business. Through this experience, she found her passion for people and made a decision to pivot, attending college at night and finding her path into human resources. Catherine Petersen, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:00:55] Catherine Petersen: Thank you, Dave.
[00:00:56] Dave Travers: So good to have you. Okay, you have an incredible background. I want to dive back in time and say I would love to hear the story or the moment or the light bulb that went off when you realized that talent acquisition and helping people find their next great thing, helping companies grow through talent. When did that, like, did you realize, "Wait, this might not just be what I'm doing right now, this might be my thing"? How did, how did that happen?
[00:01:26] Catherine Petersen: Great question, Dave, and as a matter of fact, talent acquisition was not my true love in HR. I'll, so I'll go all the way back to when my HR career began. I started off my career, um, at 14 years old working in restaurants, actually at Shoney's in Birmingham, Alabama, and waiting tables, and fell in love with the restaurant business.
You could make a lot of money in tips. And then worked my way up into restaurant management. Didn't go the traditional route of college right out of high school. Continued to work my way up through restaurant management. Well, there's not a lot of human resources in restaurant management, specifically back when I first started my career, and I am someone who is super passionate about people and driving their careers and their experiences.
And so in my late 20s, early 30s, I pivoted my entire career and decided to stop working in restaurants and go to college at night for human resources. I saw a deficit in my own passion and what I wanted to do, so I completely took a pivot in my career. Got my first role in human resources at a staffing agency.
That's where you cut your teeth in talent acquisition all day long when you're hiring temps, and then went to work for, um, Lowe's, where I spent 11 years, including a role in enterprise-wide talent acquisition. And so did many, many, many jobs, but in every job I've had in HR, it has always been something where I could help people accomplish their goals and their careers, whether it's hiring them, teaching, coaching, and training them, or just simply advising them on their career trajectory.
So that's a long story short of how I got my passion and what led me to where I am today.
[00:03:12] Dave Travers: Okay, first of all, before we even get into talent acquisition, I think so many people early in their career, late 20s, early 30s, whatever, are, like, doing something but not necessarily loving it, and making a switch at 29 starts to feel a little different than deciding at 23 to make a switch.
What's your advice to someone in that situation? You've been through it. You remember how difficult, stressful, how much guts that took, whatever. Like, how do you think about that?
[00:03:40] Catherine Petersen: I think about it in this way: find something you fall in love with and go for it. I have a job, and regardless of the job title, everything I've done in HR has been something that I'm madly in love with because it allows me to navigate the human experience and help fight for people in different ways.
Fight for them in a job, fight for them in an employee relations issue, fight for them in promotions, fight for them in something. It is always find something that you're super passionate about. Two of my favorite movies, Dave, are Rocky and The Color Purple.
[00:04:19] Dave Travers: Yes.
[00:04:20] Catherine Petersen: And then I would also be remiss if I didn't say my third favorite movie is Fight Club. So those three movies describe my personality.
[00:04:29] Dave Travers: That is an eclectic but fantastic list. I love that. I love that.
[00:04:32] Catherine Petersen: Right.
[00:04:33] Dave Travers: Okay.
[00:04:33] Catherine Petersen: That just is how I see human resources and talent in general.
[00:04:37] Dave Travers: Okay, amazing. And then obviously at Lowe's you had an incredible run there, and talent acquisition was part of that.
You say you love people, but there are so many different parts of HR that involve people. What was it about TA that really drew you in?
[00:04:50] Catherine Petersen: What really drew me in is the ability to take someone who doesn't necessarily know where they want their career to go, kind of like I just described how my career was.
They don't understand exactly where they want their career to go, and guide them in those directions, see things in people that they don't see in themselves. I remember I have a very good friend who worked for me, she was a recruiting coordinator. She knows who she is. Um, she didn't know that she was in love with systems or that she was really good with systems, and eventually worked her way from recruiting coordinator to director of talent acquisition systems, and fell in love with systems.
And so I say that TA is the fun side of HR because you get to watch people learn and grow and really develop throughout their career.
[00:05:38] Dave Travers: And then at some point, obviously you weren't just working in talent acquisition, you were leading too. That's something that happens along the journey to becoming a leader of teams like you are now.
And how did that change things? Like what, was that immediately always what you wanted to do, felt like a fish in water, or was that like a, a, you know, a really hard struggle?
[00:05:59] Catherine Petersen: It wasn't a hard struggle. Honestly, I'm, I feel like I'm a natural leader. I've always been a natural leader. I also have, and maybe this goes back to my restaurant days where I was a, a, a restaurant manager, but I feel like I have an operational engineering brain.
So really building a recruiting talent acquisition engine, seeing problems and how they can be solved, seeing the larger picture, the picture on the box. I'm a Stephen Covey fan, so seeing the picture on the box and translating that to the team is what makes me super pumped and excited. I'm not the world's greatest recruiter.
That's not why I lead talent acquisition spaces, but I know how to hire the world's best recruiters and teach, coach, and guide them in order to get to the next step. Also I feel like something I'm super strong at is understanding what drives people and what motivates people, um, to accomplish their goals.
And seeing that, seeing what drives people, I think that made it easy for me to transition from individual contributor to leader, really.
[00:07:03] Dave Travers: I think that is such a powerful skill that people don't talk about enough is, like, figuring out what makes people tick, what drives them, what motivates them, such that when you see them do something that other people might be a little surprised by, you're like, "Ah, that makes sense."
You know, like, I know what makes them tick. For somebody who does not think of themselves or has not figured out how to figure out what motivates other people, how do you get started at getting good at that? Like, what's the, what... You know, that's such a key leadership skill. How do you do that?
[00:07:30] Catherine Petersen: It's having, literally just having conversations with people.
I talk to my team. I have 27 people that work within the talent space. I don't just lead talent acquisition; I also lead talent development, which is leadership development with Groundworks, and I talk to most people on my team at least once a week. And I get the stiff arm sometimes from my managers saying, "Back off," you know, "Let me lead my team."
But I don't call them and talk to them about their actual job. I simply call them and say, "How are you today? How's it going?" And people naturally want to talk to you about their job. I didn't call to ask you about your job. I called to ask you about how's it going with your aging father? How's it going with your child who was sick from her first week in daycare?
How's it going that you just bought your first home with you and your husband? Understanding what's important to human beings makes them feel part of something larger and makes them want to work harder. I don't want to put pressure on people to make them work harder. TA is hard enough. The pressure's already there. It's how you build a culture with the team of just simply having conversations and human-to-human contact, which we don't have enough of these days.
It's not a Teams message, it's not a text message, it's not an email. It's a phone call of, "Hey, Dave. How's it going? How was your kid's soccer game this weekend? Did they win? Did they lose? I know they were struggling with this or that or the other, and let's just talk about it." The work comes naturally after that. That's how you do it.
[00:08:53] Dave Travers: So smart. I think that is exactly right, and I think what you said there is also exactly right, which is, like, you can push people to work harder for you by grinding them and giving them higher and higher goals. But you can also make people want to work harder because they're like, "This person knows me, cares, you know, about what's going on.
When I say I have a community service thing that's super important to me, you know, it's important to them, too," or the aging father or whatever the case may be. I think that is really, really smart. Okay. Leading a team is obviously only part of the process. You've got this engineering side of you that you talked about.
Talk about, you know, thinking about recruiting not as connecting one person to one job, but as a system. For somebody who's a recruiter or just starting their career, what does that even mean? How do you begin to view talent acquisition not as connecting one to one, but as a system?
[00:09:46] Catherine Petersen: Recruiting is no different than how you would treat your customer journey.
So how you think your customers would enter into your pipeline is exactly how my candidates enter into the pipeline. How I would treat my customers is exactly how I treat my candidates, and how we move them through the process, whether your customer make purchase or the ma- whether my candidates get an offer.
It's the exact same process. It's part of something larger. I think additionally, where we've been really successful in guiding the team is helping them connect how recruiting is not this separate engine that sits apart from the business. Recruiting literally fuels the gas in the engine of the business because everything begins and ends with people. So teaching the recruiters, we call them talent acquisition specialists at Groundworks.
Teaching the talent acquisition specialists that they're literally part of driving the future growth of Groundworks is mission critical. So that's how I teach them that they're part of something larger than just the recruiting function.
[00:10:50] Dave Travers: Aligning somebody who's an individual contributor could be just focused on my little set of metrics and my little thing 'cause that's what my boss told me to do, and getting them to think about I'm critical to the whole organization.
The system understanding will fall out of that. If you understand how my role impacts what the boss and boss's boss and the board and everything cares about because we power the business forward, you will have to understand the system to do that. So rather than saying, you know, sitting somebody down and saying, "Let me, let me draw on the whiteboard for forty-five minutes and show you the system," it's like, "Let's talk about why you matter," and then the system becomes a side benefit of that. I love that. I love that.
[00:11:29] Catherine Petersen: One more point, if I may. Our chief operating officer, Jeffrey Martin, started off his career at Groundworks as an installer Worked his way from an installer, which is our frontline, our very first frontline worker, worked his way from an installer to the chief operating officer of the company.
So there are two points here. Number one, I talk to my team about no matter who you're interviewing, potentially you're interviewing the next Jeffrey Martin, regardless of the role that you bring the person into. Number two, we look at our sales report daily before I look at how many offers are made the day before.
I don't look at offers, I look at sales, because sales drives everything else, and they both impact one another. So if my team is focused on sales and revenue, then they are automatically focused on how many people we need to hire in order to continue to accomplish that. And we also talk about the fact that it's not just us, to your point, it's impacting seventy-five hundred Tribemates that work at Groundworks.
Everything we do impacts those seventy-five hundred Tribemates.
[00:12:34] Dave Travers: I think it's such a great trick or rubric you just showed there, which is if you wanna make something impactful to someone, I love how you said that, because you talked both about the scale and the numbers and how big this is, but you also brought it back to Jeffrey in the single story that everyone, like, "Oh, wow, the big boss, you know, started exactly like this." And the combination of those two things is what makes people really remember something. I love that.
[00:12:59] Catherine Petersen: Yes. Yes.
[00:13:00] Dave Travers: Okay. Obviously, we're in this time when we're designing systems, everyone's thinking about technology and thinking about AI. This is the hot topic everywhere. Everywhere, you know, everyone is asking each other about it, "Am I behind?
What do you know that I don't know? Am I ahead?" How do you think about this human-driven human connection function that you lead, but you're, you're building a system and there are all these new tools that are constantly getting better that can help you build that system? How do you think about where's the next thing where I'm going to, you know, plug in AI or the next tool or the next technology? How do you approach that?
[00:13:41] Catherine Petersen: My team is, you know, like everybody else, is nervous about AI and all the functionality that's coming. We use Workday, and we have an AI functionality that we're going to implement in late October that's part of Workday, and this is the Paradox system, so it will take work off of my talent acquisition specialist's plate.
I view AI as something that will help us have more human-to-human contact, not eliminate the human to human contact. AI is going to take the administrative tasks off the plate of my talent acquisition specialist, so then they can literally spend time with human beings. So they're not filling out paperwork over here and which takes away from time where I could actually be talking to you.
Additionally, the type of employees that we're focused on aren't focused on AI. We're focused on blue-collar frontline workers who aren't even on smartphones a lot of the times. So if I can take AI and help my team with the back end of the function, then they can spend more time really meeting the blue-collar workers where they are and making that human-to-human connection.
A lot of the time, the people that we're focused on aren't even interested in emails. They're only texts or phone calls, and that's how we reach them. So a global, broad-scale AI functionality that reaches out to them- they're not gonna respond to that. And I think there's a lot of employers that are gonna be in that space because of the lack of blue-collar workers that we have in the country right now.
So I'm not scared of it all. I'm actually excited so I can talk to more people.
[00:15:14] Dave Travers: I think you're right to think about the shape of the workforce, and how we need more, and I totally think you're right about AI. But I do think you touched on people are nervous about it. So when someone says... Often they're not gonna come into your office and say, "Hey, I heard about this new project.
I'm nervous about it." You have to suss it out in other ways. How do you address that? How do you put people at ease? 'Cause every day they're reading the headlines saying job apocalypse or whatever. You know, how do you address that and get past that?
[00:15:41] Catherine Petersen: Yeah, Dave, I hit it head-on. I'm a very direct individual.
My team knows that I'm very direct, so I simply talk to them about it. I talk to them about any functionality that we are going to implement. We've been looking at the implementation of Paradox for about, mm, six or seven months now, and so I started talking to them immediately about what does this mean for them, and then having them repeat back to me, "There's no subtext behind what I'm describing to you, so let's talk about what it exactly means for you."
And really walking them through their current process and then walking them through the s- future process so they truly understand that it's not taking away anything from them. It's actually gonna add additional time to their plates and prevent some burnout. We hire a lot of people, and this is how I can help you do a better job without making you work harder and longer.
'Cause TA burnout is a very big concern in TA So that's how I approach it. I hit it head-on. I don't hide behind it. I like to talk to them exactly where they are and then address any concerns when they come up.
[00:16:46] Dave Travers: I think you're exactly right. The way AI works and what it's good at, it's not good at calling someone and said, saying, "We wanna give you an offer.
Like, you're fantastic. You've talked to, you've done the whole process." That's not what AI does. But that's generally not the least favorite part of the job for most people. You know, like the, the grinding through the administrivia, as you put the little details, that is what it's really good at. And I think you're right.
When people see it in action, the, a lot of the anxiety will come down, but we gotta get 'em there first. Okay. Obviously, in a company like Groundworks, there's corporate staff like you and your team, and then there's the heart and soul of the company, which is the front line, um, that's actually doing the work and delivering for the customer, et cetera.
So many companies are like that and deal with that. You know, those are, in one sense, two different parts of the workforce. How do you build a culture that builds a company where those two live in cohesion and, and are rowing in the same direction rather than creating a dual class structure?
[00:17:45] Catherine Petersen: There's a couple of things that we do internally.
Internally, we call ourselves the tribe. We're not employees. We're not teammates. We're the tribe. We're all part of one thing. One of our core values says we all put our boots on the same way, and that applies to everyone, every single person from the CEO all the way down to the frontline installer, to ensure that everyone is aligned to the same mission, value, and goals.
Even our corporate office is not called the corporate office. It's called the field support center, and we call it that for a reason. So everybody who works there understands that we are supporting the men and women who are crawling under basements in 115 degrees in Miami or minus 15 degrees in Fargo, North Dakota.
What we do every day impacts them and their work. And you're right, they are literally the heart and soul and the foundation, no pun intended, of Groundworks in every single thing that we do.
[00:18:40] Dave Travers: What I love is the very intentional choice of words about putting your boots on the same way. You're not saying everybody puts their shoes on the same way.
The boots is a real nod to the core of how this business works and what we do every day. I love that. Okay. We always end these episodes with a lightning round. So I want you to think about, you know, you bump into the CEO at headquarters. You're all of a sudden in the elevator together. You've got 30 or 60 seconds, and, uh, not a ton of time, and the CEO's like, "Hey, Catherine, you know, I've been thinking recently, how should we measure your team?
Like, how should I... You know, I don't have a chance to think about it every day, but talent's the lifeblood of the business. What's the right way to measure the talent team?"
[00:19:19] Catherine Petersen: Yeah. Great question, and we do measure the talent team. So we measure them based on how many offers that they make per week. Um, and it's literally one KPI.
It's how many offers do you make versus how many headcounts available in each of our locations, and how, h-how did you meet your goal compared to that? I don't care about screens. I don't care about interviews. I don't care about any of those things. I care about results. 'Cause if you're recruiting, you know there's 50 ways to get those results.
I don't need to focus on all those. I wanna focus on one simple thing, and it's offers. Um, so that's how we look at it.
[00:19:52] Dave Travers: Next question, same scenario. Catherine, you, you've built this incredible team. We're b- we're, we're, you know, having all these offers. I saw the metrics. They look great, but I feel like the world's changing in talent, just like it's changing in so many different ways.
As you think about building your team, Catherine, what's the number one skill your next layer of management, your direct reports, need over the next few years? What do we need more of?
[00:20:17] Catherine Petersen: What we need more of is understanding how to manage a workforce that has six different generations operating all at the same time right now, and how you have to be so flexible, agile, how you have to navigate from one conversation to the next and literally talk to someone who is of, you know, Gen Z to Gen Alpha to the silent generation, to all those different generations, and accomplish the same results while navigating all of those different personalities.
That is a number one skill you have to have in the workforce right now, no matter how many people you're leading.
[00:20:54] Dave Travers: Oh, I love that. How do you do that? Like, what's the key to spanning the generations?
[00:20:58] Catherine Petersen: Yeah, it goes back to what I said originally. You, you just simply have to know your team and what motivates them.
You have to understand each individual person. When I first started my career, we could cookie-cutter approach it. You had one approach. You had all the things. This is how you lead a team. Today, and as we get a more diverse workforce, m- more generations, the changing expectations of the generations, you have to continue to know your people and what they need on a daily basis, and sometimes that changes.
It changes with the way the world changes. We're an economy of instant gratification, an economy of instant gratification, meaning you're not gonna buy a hairbrush on Amazon unless it has 5,000 five-star reviews and gets to you by 5:00 this afternoon and is $5 cheaper than the next. But yet we've got certain parts of the workforce that were raised on different values and don't understand the instant gratification economy that we're in right now. And so you have to have a brain where you're continuously learning about the workforce and what their needs and desires are in order to continue to motivate them. I have so much to say about this subject, but I'm so passionate about this.
[00:22:10] Dave Travers: There's a whole other episode just on this topic. I love this.
[00:22:12] Catherine Petersen: I think there is.
[00:22:14] Dave Travers: Catherine Petersen, it is very clear why you are a talent all-star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:22:21] Catherine Petersen: Thank you, Dave. I really appreciate it.
[00:22:26] Dave Travers: That's Catherine Petersen. She's the Vice President of Talent at Groundworks. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And just a reminder, we'll put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube as well, on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. See you right back here next time.