At Concentrix, a global leader in customer experience solutions, talent acquisition is closely integrated with business operations rather than functioning as a standalone department.
In this episode, Jillene Jensen, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, shares how her operations background led to a new kind of talent acquisition strategy: prioritizing alignment, performance, and long-term impact.
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[00:00:00] Jillene Jensen: If you will take the time to read your reports and understand what they're telling you, that's gonna give you a leg up on how you recruit.
[00:00:11] 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 Jilline Jensen, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Concentrix, a global firm that helps major brands deliver better customer experiences. Jolene didn't come up through the traditional HR track. Her background is in customer service. And business operations, leading teams navigating change and driving results.
So let's see how she's applying those skills to leading a high-performance TA team today. Jillene Jensen of Concentrics. Welcome to Talent All Stars.
[00:00:56] Jillene Jensen: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:57] Dave Travers: So excited to have you, so much to talk about. You have such a cool path that wasn't just through recruiting to becoming a TA leader. You've done lots of stuff. So how did you end up in talent acquisition, given your interesting past?
[00:01:11] Jillene Jensen: Yeah, I have had just an amazing journey, and it started out years and years and years ago. I'm not gonna give away my age, but as an inbound customer service rep for a startup telecom company, which were very popular back in the day.
And then, I spent the next few years really in expansion roles, learning the nuances of the business, and really found my footing in customer service management. Ultimately settling into a senior leadership role, managing customer service and network operation centers. And after about 15 years and a number of mergers and acquisitions, I found myself between jobs and decided it was a great opportunity to try something different.
Quite frankly, the industry I was raised in was changing, and I knew I had to change as well, so I took a leap of faith. Accepted a position with an international BPO as an operations manager, which led to a site director role in operations. And then ultimately, where I'm at today, leading talent acquisition for North America.
What I had planned as a six-month trial or a stepping stone, if you will, has turned into an incredible 17-year career journey with concentrics. Honestly, recruiting was never on my career roadmap, but my years in customer service and operations truly did prepare me for one of the most rewarding steps on my career ladder to date.
[00:02:34] Dave Travers: I wanna dive in right there, which is customer service. And operations. How does that impact how you viewed talent acquisition as you entered it for the first time, and doing more recruiting as a full-time job? And how does it impact how you view it now, now that you've been in TA for a while?
[00:02:53] Jillene Jensen: I was a bit uncertain about the move to talent acquisition. I wasn't certain that I had the skills necessary to make a successful transition when the truth is that we all recruit daily by promoting our brand and encouraging referrals, employee referrals, for instance, and talking with the public. Uh, for instance, think about a time when you've experienced great service somewhere, and then you think about whether that person may be a good fit for your company, right?
And I just started to connect those dots, and creating life-changing opportunities for people was really appealing to me. The TA community can impact critical change in lives, and bringing people back into the workforce or introducing people to the workforce for the first time is just a very rewarding experience.
[00:03:41] Dave Travers: Yeah. So, and talk about the service orientation. So obviously that's central to Concentrix, you know, whole business model, and what you guys do, but it's also central to what you've done in your past. Is there a service and a customer orientation lens that you bring to talent acquisition, or is it missing in talent acquisition sometimes?
[00:04:03] Jillene Jensen: No. No. As a matter of fact, I believe now that layering operations experience over talent acquisition is a natural fit from my operations experience. I knew what good and great looked like, and. Immediately wanted to be a part of replicating that success. So when you understand the puts and takes of operations, I believe that brings yet that other layer of value and insights into what it takes to transform good to great.
Now, the importance of value, I believe, expands beyond KPIs as we know them in operations, right? It encompasses the top of the funnel. Through the entire lifecycle of an employee. So from an application to onboarding through training into nesting and onto a productive career in operations or customer service.
And then from there, it can really evolve from a frontline advisor to a trainer or a supervisor. You can move into a manager and then onto an operations leader. So the opportunities are really endless when you think about the CX experience. And then, you know, heck, you can move out of operations entirely into technology or innovation workforce management, people solutions. I mean, the list is endless. So I believe that those two tie in together beautifully. I do.
[00:05:22] Dave Travers: Yeah. And so when you were the customer of talent acquisition as a, as a leader, as a site leader, et cetera, how did you view the partnership with talent acquisition and how do you view it, that partnership now?
[00:05:34] Jillene Jensen: So we're hiring at high volumes for call centers and when you are supporting multiple clients in a kind, in a call center, they have unique needs. Some clients are very prescriptive, others are not. So, as a customer of talent acquisition, it was always a challenge to make sure that we were 100% aligned on that profile, that we were getting the quality on the backend.
And that means all the way through training and in into production. So, having to calibrate on a regular basis. I shouldn't say having to calibrate, affording calibrations throughout that process to ensure that you're meeting that profile, you're aligned, and you're delivering that quality candidate.
Two, your operations partner is key. And at any level in operations, you kind of hang off that, right? So we are giving them the training and skills they need to come into production ready to go. But as an ops leader, it's incumbent on you to make sure that you're providing the coaching and ongoing training to ensure their success.
So, as an ops leader, if I didn't have that quality candidate that didn't have the skills to learn and grow, we try to manage attrition very, very tightly. That's one of those KPIs I, you know, I, I refer to, and quality drives that quality drives retention. Quality drives a happy employee, a happy experience, and they stay.
[00:07:06] Dave Travers: And you talked in there about KPIs. What are the performance indicators now that you bring this operational background and philosophy, and KPI-driven sort of orientation to talent acquisition? What are the KPI or a couple KPIs that you look at most as you're thinking about how do I measure the performance of talent acquisition?
[00:07:28] Jillene Jensen: Well, I would say there are two key indicators. One is quality of hire, and two is retention. And again, for the reasons I just shared, right? A happy employee, one that embraces your culture, is the one that is engaged, is gonna stay with you and gonna grow with your organization.
[00:07:46] Dave Travers: And so a retention is one I love because I think business leaders love having a talent acquisition team that is focused on retention because as an operational leader, it's critical.
But as a talent acquisition leader, sometimes it feels unfair, frankly, to be measured on retention. I go out and get the people as a talent acquisition leader, and somebody else has to retain 'em. It's not always a hundred percent in my control. How do you think about ownership of that metric and where the handoff occurs and where the shared ownership, you know, sort of exists about how retention is truly, you know, something that talent acquisition is responsible for?
[00:08:23] Jillene Jensen: When I talk about calibrating, a part of our calibration process here is through like a playbook process, right? And that's, that is just end-to-end communication. And it doesn't stop. You have to learn from your mistakes, right? So if, for instance, we have. On the rare occasion delivered a challenging class.
We're gonna go back and learn from our mistakes, right? Did we miss the profile? Were we not calibrated on that? If you're not communicating and you're not willing to learn through that process. Then you're not gonna evolve, and you're not gonna drive that quality into your business. And I think that I will say another part of this, too, that I have learned from is I was fortunate enough to make that transition from operations into talent acquisition.
As I look for new recruiters to join our team, I will tap into operations as often as I can because I believe. That you bring that knowledge with you, and you know what good is, you know what great is, and you know where the opportunities are, and you're going to use that knowledge in your recruiting process.
[00:09:27] Dave Travers: I love that learning orientation you talk about because a mentor mind says, you're either getting better or you're getting worse. You're never staying the same. And so if you're gonna be committed to the getting better part of that, like you referenced, everybody's had a tough class or a tough hire or something. And if you're not committed to taking the learnings from that. The getting better gets very hard.
[00:09:49] Jillene Jensen: You know, I think it's important that everybody in that life cycle is accountable to retention. That way, you've all got skin in the game and you're all working together to ensure that you're doing everything necessary to get that quality in the end.
[00:10:01] Dave Travers: Absolutely. There's no way to say quality is high, but there's no retention. And there's no way to drive retention without real partnership between talent acquisition and operations because there's no way you can solve only one half of the problem and not the other half. I love that. Okay, so one of the things that you, as an operational leader and a talent acquisition leader, have to think about all the time is you're learning, refining, and growing is like if we're gonna change, if we've learned something and we're gonna change something, there's new technology available.
We tried something new and we learned something new. You have to decide all the time. Are we gonna change this process? Are we going to change our strategy for how we do something? And there's a combination of technology and people involved in that. How do you think about, for somebody who hasn't done this nearly as much as you, how do you think about the building blocks, the fundamentals emerging as a leader.
And for the first few times, I'm saying, we're either gonna try this new technology, we're either gonna change this process, or we're not. How do you decide? Does the technology work? Will this work with the people? Is this something I should back? How do you make that decision?
[00:11:09] Jillene Jensen: Well, I think it needs to be a collective decision and based on what you're trying to solve. So I'm gonna just go ahead and touch on, you know, some of the things that are really front and center right now, and that is in talent acquisition. So, you know, we're all learning AI, right?
I mean, it's just, it's the direction we're going right now, and we have to stay, we have to stay in front of that. And in talent acquisition, we believe that AI should support and not replace a recruiter's role. So when we're looking for new technologies, we have to consider that it's great for efficiency.
Things like resume screening, scheduling, or sourcing. But that human connection is still crucial when you're selling a candidate on your culture or assessing their soft skills, et cetera. And just like in the customer service or customer experience space, we see the same need in recruiting and getting the right mix of that AI and human interaction, and we're all, as we are navigating this new world of technology, you know, we're all trying to balance that mix of AI and human interaction and delivering that great experience for the candidate and for the employee on the backend with whatever they happen to be doing.
[00:12:23] Dave Travers: So how do you cajole, convince, sell someone who's afraid about the next change you may need to make? Whether it's AI-based or some other change in the process or technology, when you have somebody who's like, Ooh, change is hard. I kind of like how it works now. We sort of know what we know. How do you drag someone over the line to be a supporter?
[00:12:42] Jillene Jensen: Well, I believe we all need to be open to and willing to embrace the change in our world today.
We need to understand the value in self-educating and being curious. Our intent is to introduce new tools and resources to enhance the experience and not jeopardize the well-being of our employees. I wanna be really clear on that, and I think that that's important because there's a lot of uncertainty out there right now about jobs.
You know, what does this mean to me? We're mindful here of providing an immersive training experience along with that continued education. When we introduce new tools, we also identify individuals who can provide insights. And support when preparing for new systems or integrations, and meaning. We pull colleagues into special task force teams who can assist with the due diligence, the development, and the deployment of our new support platforms.
And there's added bonus in there is that now we have a built-in specialist or primary point of contact within our own organization that can help with that continued education and provide that support. And I'll say this about that as well. This also affords our team members to expand their skills. And their knowledge for future opportunities.
[00:13:53] Dave Travers: Yes, that is so change presents opportunity. And even if your job is gonna change a little bit, you think about the leaders above you in any organization, they're looking for people who are gonna embrace change and figure out the new thing, 'cause the new things aren't gonna stop coming. They need people who are game for that.
So I think that's exactly right. Okay. So now think about as you're recruiting and you talked about people embracing change and learning new things, whether it's the people you already have or the new people you're recruiting, what do they need for the next three to five years on your team? And what do talent acquisition leaders need in general more than they've needed in the past?
[00:14:33] Dave Travers: What is it that is gonna be crucial for them?
[00:14:36] Jillene Jensen: I'm gonna have to reemphasize the importance of that self-education, staying current and relevant. We need to keep them focused on upskilling in areas like data analytics, as an example. So with today's new tools, they offer tremendous insights through data.
Knowing how to read and interpret your data can be quite valuable. There are typically multiple ways to leverage a tool or customize features to best suit your individual work styles. And you know, we encourage learning those features and learning that data so that you can self-serve your individual needs.
I just think that staying abreast on what's going on in your talent acquisition space is important, but you also have to understand what's going on beyond that. I'm really understanding the business that you support, right? So recruiting is recruiting, but it's not the same for individual clients, for instance, right?
So you have to be willing to learn and understand why they may be prescribing a certain profile or a certain assessment for their candidates. Embrace that and learn how to develop on that so that you can, again, drive that quality into your hire.
[00:15:52] Dave Travers: I think that talent acquisition professionals often underestimate that that can be a two-way conversation with the business leader, not just, uh, hearing from them what they need because you have a bunch of data and experience that they don't have.
[00:16:05] Jillene Jensen: Bingo, and I think you're doing them a disservice if you don't share that. Right? Because you're the professional on the recruiting side. And I think that you really need to share those insights, and most often they're willing to hear those and quite thankful.
[00:16:19] Dave Travers: Yes, that's right. Like, you know, thinking about, Hey, you know, you as a business leader, you always tell me all this stuff.
You never talk about cultural fit, for example, as being part of that. But when we look at our retention data, the people that stick around are the ones who resonated with the culture, not on day one, but on day negative three when they were thinking about taking the job. That sort of insight really helps a business leader.
[00:16:39] Dave Travers: So one thing is you talk about data being so important. I think there's potentially a contradiction that I wonder if you can explain if it is a contradiction or if it's actually only appears to be one, which is a lot of people get into the people team and into the recruiting field 'cause they really like people.
And over and over again, as we embrace change in new technology, data is critical. All of a sudden, I thought I was getting into a people field, and now my boss is telling me, and everyone's telling me, you gotta get closer to the data. Well, wait a second. I wanted to be here because of people. How do you think about both the people skills and the data skills that are required to be successful today, and even more so in the future? And are those two different things that contradict, or do they live in harmony somehow?
[00:17:23] Jillene Jensen: Well, I think they can live in harmony if you're willing to expand. Expand into that, into the data, and learn it and put it to good use for yourself, right? So the data that we have available for us today and it's getting smarter all the time, right?
With some of these AI tools, right? They learn, they grow, they get smarter. And if you will take the time to read your reports and understand what they're telling you, that's gonna give you a leg up on how you recruit. You can learn by your successes, and you can learn by your opportunities. Right? And as I mentioned earlier, now, every now and again, you're gonna get that clunker.
And when you do go back and research your data and understand what that data was telling you, because the answer is in there if you dig deep.
[00:18:12] Dave Travers: Yeah, it absolutely is. The other thing I would say. Is that nothing brings data alive? As for people, people especially, nothing brings data alive more than a story.
So if you can bring data to a conversation that supports it and say, think about that great hire we just made on your team three months ago that you tell me you love so much. She fit this profile that we're talking about, and this is what the data's telling us. That brings it alive for people and connects the people with the data.
[00:18:38] Jillene Jensen: It truly does, and I just think that, I mean, it's a nice reflection to go back and really understand what you did or what you were thinking at the time. If you go back and review, not only did, well, it's included in the data, but for instance, an assessment of some sort. What did you miss? The score will tell you one thing, but go in and look. Uh, what drove that score? Yeah. The answer may be in there for you. Yeah.
[00:19:03] Dave Travers: One layer deeper. Usually, there's some more wisdom to be gleaned when you're in the data world, okay? We always end these conversations with a rapid-fire round, so I want you to envision that you're at headquarters and you're fixing yourself a cup of coffee, or you're getting in the elevator, and all of a sudden the CEO of Concentrix walks in and says, Hey, Jillene, you're the interview expert, the talent expert I spend a bunch of my time interviewing. Make me better. Like what's your one best tip for being a better interviewer?
[00:19:37] Jillene Jensen: Again, knowing in granular detail, the clients that you're hiring for, what's important to them, understanding the puts and takes on the operations side that makes them successful.
That will help you understand if you've got the right candidate. It's not just about your view as a recruiter; you have to understand the business that you're delivering these quality candidates too.
[00:20:03] Dave Travers: I love that because it's, it's so easy as an interviewer to get into, like, I like this person. But if you do the prep work in advance and really think about what's the business need that we're looking for here, it brings a different orientation to the conversation.
Jillene Jensen, it is very clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thank you so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:20:23] Jillene Jensen: Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful.
[00:20:29] Dave Travers: That's Jillene Jensen, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Concentrix. We'll include our LinkedIn profile in the episode description, and just a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube. Also, you can find them on the official ZipRecruiter channel. If you've got feedback or ideas for future guests, we'd love to hear from you. Just email us at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. We'll see you right back here next time.