At Delaware North, recruiting 20,000 employees annually across 200+ unique locations requires more than operational scale—it demands strategic clarity, brand cohesion, and relentless focus on candidate experience.
In this episode of Talent All-Stars, Amy Duncan-Menendez, Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Global Innovation Center, and Laura Murray, Director of Employee Branding and Strategy, reveal how they are transforming one of hospitality’s most complex talent ecosystems. From lodges near national parks to concession stands at major league stadiums, their team is building a centralized talent model that honors local nuance while driving consistency and efficiency.
They pull back the curtain on:
Connect with Amy and Laura on LinkedIn:
Amy Duncan-Menendez - https://www.linkedin.com/in/admenendez
Laura Murray - https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-murray-pmp-48641943/
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[00:00:00] Amy Duncan-Menendez: You may not know who Delaware North is, but when we start name-dropping, as I like to call it, you talk about the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, you talk about TD Garden, you talk about the Bruins, like you see people's faces just light up.
[00:00:15] 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 guests are helping transform the talent function at one of the most unique companies in hospitality. Amy Duncan-Menendez is the Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Global Innovation Center at Delaware North, a company that delivers food, retail, and lodging services at national parks, baseball stadiums, luxury resorts, and more. Amy's joined by Laura Murray, Director of Employee Branding and Strategy, who's helped shaped how Delaware North shows up for job seekers. Together, they're centralizing the company's talent acquisition system, elevating its employer branding, and redesigning how seasonal hiring gets done at scale. So let's bring them in. Amy and Laura, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:13] Amy Duncan-Menendez: Thank you. Great to be here.
[00:01:15] Dave Travers: So excited to have you, so much to talk about, and Delaware North and all the things. But let's start with, for each of you, maybe Amy, we'll start with you. When did the world of talent and people, and connecting people to opportunity. When did you realize this might be something that's not just your current job or the job you're applying to, but might be career or calling?
[00:01:38] Amy Duncan-Menendez: Gosh, yeah. Going back to my days in college, I've always loved connecting people to opportunities. I was in a work study program in college, worked in the career services center, and that's really when I knew, so my career kind of started in helping college students find their opportunity after college. I then also started to recruit people to come to that college, and then decided I wanted to get into HR and started in the temp staffing world.
And then kind of like many people, right? It's success and luck equal parts sometimes, and stumbled into HR through temp staffing. And, uh, I've always loved talent acquisition. Most of my career was in recruitment process outsourcing. As I grew my career in the RPO space, I just realized that I was getting kind of too far away from what I really loved doing. And I think if you're a recruiter, you love talking to people, and I wanted to get back to doing that. So I ended up leaving the RPO space and moved to corporate TA at Delaware North.
[00:02:47] Dave Travers: Awesome. Laura?
[00:02:49] Laura Murray: Yeah. Mine's a little more of a, a longer way to get here to get to TA. I was more on the marketing side, worked in an agency and a company and content marketing, and found my way to TA through. I became a project manager on an employment branding team. It was my first experience with employment branding with recruitment. Didn't know what an ATS was, had really never worked with a recruiter other than to get that job, so it was learning quickly on the job.
But as soon as I started doing it, I realized how much I enjoyed it. Both the marketing side of helping people find jobs, but even on like the technology side, I loved getting behind the scenes and seeing how we could make the process better for candidates, for managers. So it was kind of a stumble of my way there.
And then, kinda like Amy said, it's just through kind of opportunities that have worked my way here. I came to Delaware North following a former coworker and friend of mine who introduced me to Amy. She's like, I've got a new boss. She's great. I think you'll love her. Had a call with her. So I joined just a couple of months after Amy did, and as soon as I spoke to Amy, I was like, oh yeah, I will follow her anywhere. My God. Well, let's do it. I'm up for this ride, and I've been here for almost six years. I love it.
[00:03:59] Dave Travers: Okay, so now you've come together several years ago and been working closely together, and you're at this company, Delaware North. That's a huge company, but not everybody knows it because you're powering these amazing venues and locations.
So people who may not have heard of Delaware North. Have certainly heard of Yosemite and TD Garden and all these amazing locations where you're helping power the people and the experiences that people have there. Talk a little bit about the company at Delaware North and what is it like recruiting 20,000 people a year across 200-plus locations.
[00:04:34] Amy Duncan-Menendez: I will say we're very lucky. That we get to do what we love, but also be able to talk about how you can create these amazing guest experiences. And so many times, you may not know who Delaware North is, but when we start name-dropping, as I like to call it, right? You talk about the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, you talk about TD Garden, you talk about the Bruins, right?
Like, you see people's faces just light up, right? Because their iconic locations and we deliver experiences and guest satisfaction is so, so important to us. So. I would say that's probably the best. You can have a lot of great talent acquisition opportunities, but very few of them do. You get to talk about how much fun your locations actually provide and make memories for families.
[00:05:26] Dave Travers: Amazing. So now think about just the business challenge of doing that, where you have these iconic brands and people showing up for an experience they've been thinking about maybe for their whole lives as they show up. How do you think about recruiting at that scale for somebody who's maybe managing, or individual contributor as a recruiter in a single location or a handful of locations at nowhere near that scale? What does it take versus recruiting at a single or a couple different locations to scale up to where you're recruiting tens of thousands of people across hundreds of locations?
[00:05:59] Amy Duncan-Menendez: Sure. And I think that also speaks to a bit of the challenge that I found coming here, is we were in this, what I would call, a decentralized model. So every one of those locations had their own way of doing things. And when you have all these just disparate processes, that creates inefficiency. We needed scalability, we needed consistent processes, and that's what I found when I arrived. We lacked not just consistent processes, but we lacked the documentation of that process, and those that know me know I love a good process map. I get really excited about a process map. And once you have that process map, how do you just keep making it better? We needed to get to a place where we had a framework and then know where we could deviate from that framework when it makes sense.
And so that's really what helped get this team pulled together in a centralized fashion and not centralized by geography, but centralized by specialty, by talent acquisition. And by doing that and getting that consistent process, we were then able to have scalability in the team. And so then, whether you are recruiting for TD Garden or you're recruiting for a Globe Life field, that process is the same.
What you're describing and what you're selling is a little bit different, but. That process is the same no matter where we're recruiting.
[00:07:28] Dave Travers: Okay. So, I love that idea, but I want to double click on it because it sounds like a contradiction you're both talking about we're gonna have a process map that has all this unification and scale built into it, and at the same time we're gonna decide where we have the flexibility to be a little bit different based on the location because a waterfall is different than a stadium or whatever the case may be. How do you decide where to be flexible and where to enforce the, this is the process?
[00:07:59] Amy Duncan-Menendez: I'll start, Laura, and then feel free to jump in. Well, first of all, it's knowing your customer. We needed to get to know our customers very well and our customer being that unit, but then also that end client.
So just an example of what we call like flexibility in the framework. The framework is post-offer being accepted, we move to background check, but guess what? Some of our clients have different background check requirements. Some of our jobs have different background check requirements, so then that's when there's a deviation or not really a deviation from the process.
That's when you have the standard, like the work instructions that say. If you're at this location or it's this job, you must have a pre-employment drug screen done. And so the team knows, and we have, our teams are dedicated to, they have like their primary location, but then they know they can deviate and swing wherever we may need them to assist us, and then that's when they learn.
Okay. I'm at a different location now. Let me go to my matrix that says, for this location and this job, these are the background check packages that we use. That's the best example that I think makes the most sense,
[00:09:09] Laura Murray: And I think some of the flexibility also comes in where. We have access to the data. We can see, so we can see how things are going, where there's a lack of applicant flow, or maybe where there's too much applicant flow and it's just sitting with someone to review, whether that's a recruiter or a manager to review them.
We can see all of that, and so we know, hey, maybe in this location, the managers don't have the bandwidth to do interviews, so instead, in that case, we're gonna have the recruiters do the screening and selection. It's just having it because it's now all consolidated in one place, where the recruiters can easily switch out. We can see that data and we can, we know when we do need to flex that model, and we can make those recommendations to the locations.
[00:09:50] Dave Travers: I think that is very powerful. Using data as a tool to say, Hey, something's clearly working here, or something's. Either not working or it's not visible, how it's working is a really powerful tool to think about that.
And then also, obviously, things like compliance to local regulations or whatever forces, things like being adaptable to different locations, I imagine it's quite complex. Another complexity that you have in managing a business like yours and the talent strategy is. Your brand versus the brand of these iconic locations in iconic places where guests are coming to live, sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime experience from a branding perspective, as you're attracting and retaining talent, but especially attracting talent.
How do you think about where and how to think about the Delaware North brand and where to think about the brand of the iconic location?
[00:10:46] Laura Murray: This has been a tricky one, but kind of since the beginning of working here, I've always been pushing the Delaware North brand primarily because ultimately what we're trying to do is make sure Delaware North as a whole.
It's staffed, whether they're working at TD Garden or they're working at a restaurant outside of TD Garden, which is a separate entity, it's a separate location. Ultimately, we need the whole company to be hired. So I am trying to build my team, one large talent pool that we can use and can use across the country, across the globe, because my team is global.
We do co-brand in some cases. Yes, there's, we work with some great brands. We do wanna get some recognition from theirs. If there's opportunities to partner with those locations with an MLB team or something. If we can, we absolutely will. But we always include the Delaware North logo in anything we do, because ultimately we're trying to hire for Delaware North, we want people to know that there's other opportunities here.
So you're not just coming to work at the Grand Canyon. You could go work at Shenandoah National Park the following year, which is, it's another, uh, something to appeal to people. Then also, we don't want them to; it seems like a bait and switch. Someone thinks that they're applying to this one MLB stadium, they get their paperwork, it says Delaware North, and they're like, who is this?
We wanna be consistent across the board. So while it could be appealing to just use those client logos or the National Park logos, ultimately I'm trying to play the long game and make sure we have Delaware North out there when it comes to recruitment.
[00:12:15] Dave Travers: Okay. I want to double-click on that because I think that is really important. So the idea of, you said, bait and switch, but the idea of having the candidate be informed early on in the process. What is the benefit? In the drawback of doing that. 'cause I think some people feel like there are drawbacks, and the best thing I can do is get the person in the door talking to me, and then I'll convince them how great we are and what the opportunities are, et cetera, et cetera.
How do you think about what you put forward early on about the pros and cons of a particular job, or the attributes or the requirements, versus what do you bring along during the process and show a candidate?
[00:12:54] Laura Murray: Yeah, I mean, we try to be as transparent as possible. Yes, our jobs are fun. They're in fun locations. There's also some jobs you're standing on your feet all day, eight hours a day, 10 hours a day. We try to be transparent with what the roles are on in our job descriptions, on our job ads, but you want to say that upfront and tell them upfront and be transparent. 'cause the worst thing you can have is make this investment in both the recruitment, advertising, the time of the recruiter, the time of the hiring manager, the time of the candidate to go through this whole process, and then get up on, show up on day one.
And they go, this is not what I signed up for. I thought I was just gonna be watching the baseball game. Like, no, you do have to work too. So we try to be transparent and try to be obvious of like, Hey, you are not working for the MLB team. You are working for Delaware North, who is providing the concessions that's doing the retail here.
Knowing that you still, you also have all these great other opportunities to work in our other stadiums and our parks, and our airports, all of that. So it's want to communicate upfront, early, and often, so there isn't any kind of confusion down the road. And you also don't want someone to get their offer letter and then like, what I didn't think this is who I was applying for. I didn't think this was what I was gonna do. I thought I was gonna be working for a baseball team.
[00:14:05] Dave Travers: I think playing the long game is exactly the right way to think about that, in that it's only gonna be to your benefit as the employer to get it all out there upfront and allow people to self-select and say, this still sounds like a good fit for me.
And obviously, also put everything out there that makes the job great. Like being able to switch locations and all the stories you have about people who've switched locations. I think that's a super exciting thing of being part of a big organization like Delaware North. Okay, so. Here's one of the things that I think people would naturally think about when you have 200 locations in hiring at your scale.
I imagine that some people, some locations, are doing better at certain aspects of the recruiting and talent process and struggling with different things, and that their best practices or new ideas or innovations happening at the ground level at some of these locations that make sense to percolate up and then out to all the different locations.
Is that a theory on a whiteboard, or is there really a way to make that actually happen?
[00:15:05] Amy Duncan-Menendez: Yeah, so, so you're right. All organizations you can't have 200 running perfectly at all times. I wish there's always those challenges, right? And the challenge may be volume. The challenge may be that market, and it's not a one-size-fits-all all, right?
We see that in some markets, culinary is easier to recruit for than in other markets. And kind of coming back to what Laura said earlier. It's about having that data and getting that data as quickly as possible to see where we're performing. Well, and maybe it is a lot of applications, but the problem is somewhere else in the process, like how long it's taking our hiring managers to review those candidates.
So it may not be a top-of-funnel issue; it could be a problem somewhere else in the workflow. So we have so much data to look at now in order to pinpoint where we're having some roadblocks. And I have to say, like when I first started here and we were implementing our new operating model, our new technology, rolling out our employer brand, you thought I had six heads when I was trying to say, Hey, we're not taking paper applications anymore.
And getting back to what Laura said, playing the long game, having to explain like, paper applications. Well, I understand people walk in, you wanna just give them an application. But the long game is where I'm able to actually track all these things that come along with where are they getting to see our application and where are they coming from, how long is their application taking them to complete?
‘Cause we are very, very protective of our application process and want to keep it as simple as possible so that we can capture them and then continue to market to them ongoing. So yes, to get back to your question, there are all these nuances, and I think part of its equal parts, having access to that data, but then someone to act upon that data and someone that's always looking at it.
That's where I think our operating model really makes a lot of sense. And we have TA managers that are aligned to each one of our business lines that are working day in and day out with the operators, watching that data, consulting with the business, making recommendations, and saying, Hey, this worked over here. Let's try that here. Or maybe it's a cross sub, right? So they partner with their colleague to say, Hey, we're having this challenge in Patina group. How have you solved this in sports service? So we connect really well as a team to share those best practices.
[00:17:48] Dave Travers: So one thing you said there that I really wanna follow up on is the idea of protecting the application and the speed with which a job seeker can get through the application.
That's something that I think people often underappreciate how powerful that is as a tool to improve your recruiting process. Talk about that a little bit. Like, I think a lot of people have the experience of a hiring manager or a head of division or somebody from legal saying, Hey, guess what? We have to add this 15-page addendum to every single thing, every single application. How does that manifest itself, where you protect the application process and keep it as efficient as possible?
[00:18:26] Amy Duncan-Menendez: Well, I just say no all the time. No, actually it's done. It's magic. Well, when we were implementing our applicant tracking system, and I think the benefit of Laura's background and my background is we were able to kind of blend together my experience with many name brands in RPO and their approach along with Laura's expertise in marketing. And we really took the approach of, again, it's not cookie-cutter, it's not one size fits all, so let's think from an empathy point of view of our applicant, what are they able to consume before they're just like, this is too difficult.
I'm exiting and I'm going down the street where I can scan a QR code or I can text to apply, or whatever it might be. There's just so much faster. That's our consumer now, right? So we think about at the beginning, upfront, and the type of job it is and the persona of that applicant. And we have multiple application workflows that our team can pick from, right?
And even our longest workflow still takes less than three minutes to complete. And that's super important to us. And when those requests come off, we need to add this addendum or whatever it might be. We really think creatively of how can we solve that outside of the application. Is there some other way we can solve this through some kind of automation in the workflow after we've captured their information?
And if not, let's think through what's the least impacting to the applicant and not just think about it benefiting compliance HR or the hiring manager, but actually the individual that's doing the application.
[00:20:08] Dave Travers: Okay. So Laura, in thinking about where the brand of Delaware North as it continues to grow and thrive in current scope of business and as all that the future holds, how do you think about where a brand like Delaware North is today and where you want it to be a couple years from now? How do you map out what success looks like?
[00:20:27] Laura Murray: I mean, for me, I'm trying to get the brand more out there. We're always gonna be a little bit of the name behind the name because that's just the nature of our business. With a lot of contract work, we're always gonna kind of be there. But my team specifically working to get more content out there, get more things with Delaware North on, there are different properties on there really investing in like making videos of our different locations and highlighting. The stories of people who have moved through either multiple roles in a location or have worked in multiple locations. They've really worked across Delaware North, working on a lot of stuff too, still to come, but a lot more content to share.
We launched our new career site late last year in the US and then globally here in March, so working on adding more career path stories and things there. We have some partnerships with like in her site where we do editorial content as well to get partnering with our corporate communications team and our marketing teams to help them also with their content calendar of sharing the employee stories that we have.
Really just trying to find every opportunity to talk about Delaware North as a whole, as a place to work, and why you probably haven't considered it before, unless you're from Buffalo, you've worked in one of our competitors. You probably haven't heard of us, but as soon as you have heard the name and you hear these, these great locations and the great stories, then we'll hook you in with the content that we've got.
[00:21:47] Dave Travers: Fantastic. Okay. We always end these episodes with a rapid-fire round, so I want you both to imagine and Amy, we will start with you. I want you to imagine that you're at headquarters in Buffalo. The CEO happens to walk up as you're making yourself a cup of coffee and says, Hey, Amy, I was thinking about the talent team and our whole talent strategy that we have happening over the next couple years, and with so much going on in the world, how should we measure the success of the talent acquisition organization over the next year or two?
[00:22:22] Amy Duncan-Menendez: So I would say there's so much right now in the industry. No matter what article you open, it's around AI, automation, and I think there's pros and cons to it depending on the organization that you're in, and I think the level that you take that varies depending on the industry that you serve. So I would say something tied to automation and AI and the impact that's had, whether it be on productivity, standardization, or in our case, experience, because sometimes the automation and the AI, yes, it can improve productivity. Yes, it can standardize things and make things way faster, but at the sacrifice of experience, and we talk about experience a lot in our organization, as you can imagine, being in hospitality. So we're very thoughtful about kind of when it comes to those things, are we sacrificing one or the other, and we're very deliberate about those things.
So that would be my recommendation is how we would tie and some kind of success measurement to bringing those things into the function.
[00:23:36] Dave Travers: There's no CEO in the world who doesn't love a good success measurement, so I think that's a winning answer. Laura, I wanna go to you on our last rapid fire question here, which is. Same scenario. I'm the CEO. I'm walking up, making a cup of coffee, run into you at headquarters, and say, Laura, I spend a lot of my time interviewing people both internally and externally for all sorts of roles, executives, board members, et cetera here. I would love to become a better interviewer. What's your one best tip to become a better interviewer?
[00:24:06] Laura Murray: I mean, I would say probably it's the soft skills. It's the having the empathy to understand where a person is coming from. So, taking the time to review someone's background, but seeing. Hey, are they coming from a time where maybe they've been unemployed for a period of time, they had a layoff, and kind of making sure to phrase questions in a way that is sympathetic to understanding.
Maybe they had that gap in their employment, or maybe they've taken the time off from work, they've traveled to another state to have an interview. Being empathetic to that and like welcoming them to the location, making sure they get a tour of the property. Really getting a sense of. Because, as Amy said, we are a hospitality company, and I think that's kind of the key for interviewing here, is to make sure we're setting that hospitality standard in the interview process.
So one, we can judge to see, hey, is the person also do they also have these skills? But also to set it up of like, Hey, if you're going to work here, you need to have these skills. You need to have the understanding, the expectation that we should treat everyone, whether it's your coworker or your boss, your employee.
All, everybody should be treated as a guest and as the way you would want to be treated as a guest.
[00:25:19] Amy Duncan-Menendez: It's actually pretty well timed this question 'cause it's something we're working on, rolling out some additional training to our operators on interviewing. And something that I am, I'm on a soapbox a lot about is if you don't know what you're looking for, you're never gonna find it.
And really consulting with the hiring manager on like, okay, I know we wanna go fast, but there's so much power in the pause to just sit down for a little bit and really think about what you're looking for, and then we can craft the right questions to really hone in on what you're looking for. Then, after we've come up with those questions, let's actually think about what a good answer is.
And it's not just to check the box of asking the question, but what does a really good answer sound like? And that I think is really important because our culture is very like lean in, roll up your sleeves, go right? We're a very fast-paced culture, but sometimes it's okay to pause and really think about what we're looking for.
[00:26:24] Dave Travers: Amy Duncan-Menendez, Laura Murray, is so clear why you're Talent All Stars. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
[00:26:30] Amy Duncan-Menendez: It is our pleasure. Thanks for having us.
[00:26:36] Dave Travers: That's Amy Duncan-Menendez and Laura Murray from Delaware North. We'll drop both of their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes. And just a reminder, we post the video versions of these conversations on YouTube, also on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you've got feedback or ideas for future guests, send us a note at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars, and we'll see you right back here next week.