When you're hiring cleaners, commercial real estate brokers, and everyone in between—in dozens of countries—your recruiting strategy has to be both scalable and local.
Danielle Kensinger, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Cushman & Wakefield, shares how her team customizes talent acquisition strategies by region, role, and urgency—without losing speed or consistency.
She also shares:
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[00:00:00] Danielle Kensinger: You're noticing lower applicant flows and the applicant flows that are coming through, right? Many of them, frankly, are looking for the next opportunity and development and might not be the developed candidate to bring into the role. And so it's more passive candidate outreach. It's headhunting and it's proactive, targeting it at all levels.
[00:00:21] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter and on Talent All-Stars. We shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses. If you've ever stepped inside of any type of commercial building, an office, a shopping mall, a government building, anywhere in the world, there's a good chance Cushman & Wakefield had a hand in operating it.
It's one of the largest commercial real estate services firms in the world. Employing brokers, cleaners, maintenance tech. Architects, the list goes on. And our guest today, Danielle Kensinger, is responsible for sourcing that talent around the world. She's Cushman & Wakefield's Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition, and we're excited to have her on the show. Danielle Kensinger, welcome to Talent All Stars.
[00:01:13] Danielle Kensinger: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:01:14] Dave Travers: So excited to have you, so much to talk about. You have had such a cool career. So now obviously at Cushman & Wakefield, where you've been for a while, and you've rose through the ranks. Talk about the early days before you became a leader of leaders and before you were running many teams, et cetera.
Talk about earlier in your journey when you started to feel like maybe being in TA wasn't just a job, but it was a calling or a career. When was that moment for you?
[00:01:45] Danielle Kensinger: The first time that really sticks out in my mind. I was an intern in undergrad, actually. I was a junior, and it was a bank in downtown Cleveland.
And I was just learning about human resources and figuring out even what major I wanted to have. And they had me plan and lead a career fair, like a hiring event for bank tellers and positions. And I had the time of my life, like we had great turnout, huge volume of people, and just connecting with people, the excitement, new opportunities, and new jobs. And to this day, I love event-based hiring. It's my favorite thing to do. So that's what hooked me for sure.
[00:02:24] Dave Travers: And so then, as you made your way up through the ranks and you had that feeling of being hooked and connecting people, when you started to become a leader, what changed? What was different about being a leader versus being in that individual contributor role, and what was the hardest part?
[00:02:37] Danielle Kensinger: I think that the satisfaction triggers change, right? Because when you move into the leadership roles, you don't get as much engagement and interaction with the individual. You're not talking to the person who is super excited about this career change or new path that they can take. You're dealing more with infrastructure and processes to set the recruiters up to do that, and so you kind of shift from getting your energy from the candidate to getting your energy from your recruiters and your hiring managers, and it's fun.
It's just different. You're not ticking a list that's about the candidate. You're ticking a list more. That's about the hiring manager and the broader experience.
[00:03:17] Dave Travers: I think that's so true of so many people, where you get your energy in your job, what motivates you to get going is such a critical part of that.
And exactly to your point, when you become a manager, often you get selected to be a manager because you're really good as an individual contributor. But exactly to your point, your mindset really has to shift to taking pleasure from the individual sort of execution and getting that energy, as you put it, from the success of your team members.
Okay? So many TA leaders we've talked to on this show have had experience at multiple different roles in multiple different companies, but haven't always had at every single role the sort of exact fit of the type of company that is a good fit for them culturally for the type of team they wanna lead. What about Cushman was a good fit for you?
[00:04:08] Danielle Kensinger: I think the thing that made me get most excited about working here, and it keeps me here. I wake up every day, honestly, excited to come into work. It's the ability to create. It's a company that really focuses on our motto: is better, never settles, and it's everywhere.
Every day you come in, and if you have a new idea and if you have a better way that you think you can do something, there is an infrastructure across every department to express those ideas, collaborate with others. We have a very entrepreneurial spirit to our culture, and it's a big part of our drive behaviors that we integrate into everything that we do within the company and externally with our clients as well.
One of the interesting things about Cushman & Wakefield is you guys are all over the place, so you aren't just in at headquarters in Chicago or where you're at in Salt Lake City, but you're nationally and beyond. So, how do you, as you think about different regions and different parts of the organization?
How do you stay in touch with or adapt to the different nuances of different areas that you are responsible for recruiting for
[00:05:11] Danielle Kensinger: The leaders on our people team will often use the term glocal. So we work to be global, but with a local flavor to it. You have a consistent underpinning of values. Business goals, the strategy, what you're trying to achieve as a firm, and we bend it for different locations without breaking it.
So, in TA, what that means for us specifically often is creating process flows that follow what you want for your hiring manager experience, what you want for your candidate management experience, and then that. Process float. The systems that you'll use might differ slightly, and you just tailor it to the different geographies that you work in.
All recruiters, right? Should be sourcing from external job boards in addition to looking on our applicants. Which job boards those are, right? In India, it’s Naukri. It's Job Street in Southeast Asia. It differs depending on what location you're in, but that kind of consistent process flow remains.
[00:06:11] Dave Travers: And one of the things you mentioned there was job flows and candidate flow. So if that's something that a listener hasn't heard of before, talk a little bit about that as a framework for thinking about how to design a process or continue to assess and improve a process.
[00:06:25] Danielle Kensinger: It's funny that you're asking to explain that because again, Cushman is so entrepreneurial. A lot of it comes in and kind of figure it out from the seat of your pants.
And so when we do bring some of our hiring managers into the more consistent process flow, we explain it to them as a roadmap, right? Here's what you can expect when you're dealing with our clients: you lay out for them what the expectations are and what they can anticipate from us and our process flows in the TA and the people space.
It's the same thing. It's what is our commitment to you. What are we contracting that we're gonna deliver to you from a service perspective? What we need from you in return to fulfill that contract? And typically, then the SLA is the timeframe that you can expect to see it. And it's important that we have that because when you're working in TA, you have so many different parts of the relationship.
You have the hiring manager. You have your recruiter and you have the candidate, and if everybody doesn't know where they're moving or where they're in that process, that's where you create the discomfort. That's where you lose candidates, where you have frustrated hiring managers and it just doesn't lead to that, that perfect hiring experience that you're looking for.
[00:07:34] Dave Travers: I love that. And one of the things I wanna double click on there, you talked about both timeframes and SLAs, and what service level people should expect. Talk a little bit for somebody who hasn't thought about how to get faster, what the appropriate level of speed is. How do you think about what is an appropriate timeframe?
How do you even begin to assess? Are you moving fast enough? Is your timeframe nimble enough for today's talent environment?
[00:07:57] Danielle Kensinger: When I actually first started here, we kind of had a consistent process flow and SLA that we were using for all of our hires, and I can take no credit for this. My leader that I report into, Heather Rickard, I'll give her a shout-out for it being her idea.
When I joined, she was talking a lot about this concept of talent segmentation, and we hire a wide range of talent segments. Cleaners. Cleaners are integral to our business and a lot of the services that we provide to clients. Then brokers, right? Again, integral to a lot of the work that we do, the way you will recruit those two talent segments and then everything in between.
Early in career, your skilled tradespeople, it's different. And so for our cleaners, that cycle contends to be quite fast. A need will arise. A new client will come on board, and it'll be event-based hiring. We'll host an event, you'll have 60 people show up, boom, boom, boom. You're hiring on the spot there in many cases.
Brokers or other strategic hires, account directors, positions like that, it can be more of a courting relationship, right? Your market mapping, you're looking at who's out there, calibrating with your hiring manager. What's the talent that we want to go out there and get the candidate profile, and you might need to talk to somebody for two years.
Just send them notes and really cool things that we're doing here, and this is why Cushman would be the place for you. And so we kind of have it broken out by that. But recognizing the different needs of those candidate pool, I think, is definitely the key to success with that.
[00:09:30] Dave Travers: Absolutely. So, how do you even decide when it comes to thinking about different candidate pools? How do you decide whether you have fundamentally 10 or two? What is it that makes you think, you know what, we should treat this as an entirely different candidate pool, where we think about what's the SLA? What's the timeframe? What's the flow for that pool?
[00:09:47] Danielle Kensinger: I think it's listening to the recruiters, and we've evolved this as we've gone along in terms of which processes we break out and create, and you'll hear it. I really like to connect with the recruiters on our team and stay close to the folks who are at the front line there. And they'll, they'll tell you, this isn't working for me, and my candidates aren't applying for our jobs.
There are language challenges, there are technology capabilities. And then that's when you start to think, oh, well, if we did this instead, that would make it easier for you, wouldn't it? And before you know it again, part of why I like my job here. You've created something that works better for candidate business and gets the individual in the door and generating revenue, which is the goal at the end of the day.
[00:10:30] Dave Travers: So you talked about getting the feedback from recruiters in using that as the signal that something needs to change or we need to double down on something. As you think about what recruiters needed to be two years ago versus what they need to be two years from now, what changes are we in the middle of, and how does that affect what recruiters need to be able to do and what sort of skills they have?
[00:10:52] Danielle Kensinger: I think that you can feel the skills shortage happening. You can literally feel it. And it's interesting because there are a lot of articles about how like AI is coming in and replacing jobs. We're definitely on board with using technology here at Cushman. We have a fantastic technology department, and so we are integrating AI into a lot of work, but a lot of our work is relationships.
It's people, it's seeing the human, the person. Um, and so the way that we have to go about and attract candidates is very different. You're noticing lower applicant flows and the applicant flows that are coming through, right? Your active candidate searches, many of them frankly, are looking for the next opportunity and development.
Might not be the developed candidate to bring into the role. And so it's more passive candidate outreach. It's headhunting and it's proactive targeting it at all levels. And because those active search candidates might not be the profile of what you're looking for, you have to bring your job to the candidates and where they are. Cause they're not looking for you, you're the one looking for them. I think those are the main. Shifts, I think I've felt in the past couple years.
[00:12:07] Dave Travers: I think so many people in TA and beyond are being asked by their boss and their boss's boss these days, what are we doing to leverage the evolving power of AI?
And so how do you think about that? You mentioned the importance of relationship building and things that are hard to replace with technology for recruiters. How do you think about? Where do we integrate new technology? Get more efficiency and speed and things like that, and where do we continue to rely on the human part of the process?
[00:12:40] Danielle Kensinger: Our guiding principle from a TA perspective is everything that we can do to maximize human interaction and take backend or administrative services off of the recruiters. TA coordinators the sourcers. That's our strategy right now. So there are, of course, functionalities where an AI bot can interview somebody for you or try to actually communicate with a candidate.
We're not really going there. We want our recruiters to be able to spend as much time with candidates. And AI matching of the applicants to see who even fits basic criteria. Love it. Let's do it. Interview scheduling. Love it. Let's do it. But more of that face-to-face interaction. I'll, I'll give you an example.
I was at lunch with one of our recruiters. She was talking to me about her day yesterday, and about this candidate she talked to, and he told her he was gonna interview with another company, and she was like, we can't compete with what they'd be offering him in that role. And she was, but I asked him, can we like have another call and meet next week?
I was like, oh, that's great. We're gonna kind of keep talking to him even though you don't think she'd take the role. She's like, yeah, I really wanna hear what they asked him about the interview and just keep a relationship going with him. That long-term game, right, that they'll have time to do if AI can take some of those other tasks off of them. So that's what we're really shooting for.
[00:13:59] Dave Travers: I think that is thinking about the back office, and what's the toil? What's the sort of administrative duties, as you were describing them that can be reduced so you can focus more of your team's time on the high-value tasks? That is pure gold. If you can use technology to make that happen and take away the bad half of people's jobs and get them able to do more of the good half the or the higher value half.
That's super powerful. So, as you zoom out now, thinking about the TA and where it's heading as a TA leader now over the coming few years, where do you think TA leaders need to be looking beyond what recs are we filling today? What's the current pipeline? If I'm thinking about where do I as a leader, not just as the individual recruiter, need to be a couple years from now, what are the skills that leaders need to have to be able to adapt for this changing future?
[00:14:51] Danielle Kensinger: The biggest thing that comes to mind for me is cross-functional partnership and collaboration, as you said. In the past or in some organizations, maybe where the competition isn't as high or the pace isn't as fast, you're just kind of waiting for your wreck and running 'em through your pipeline as it gets tougher to find the skill sets that we need, and labor shortages likely come to fruition.
Partnering with procurement to figure out what are the right contracts to have with the agency partners? How do we maximize and make the most cost-efficient agency relationships that we can possibly have for your technology departments? What technology should be using? Should we be using? What's the strategy there?
What's your business development departments? Where are we gonna grow? Where should I start looking and pipelining for candidates today that maybe we won't need for the next year? And I could go on, you know, finance, if all of this comes through and I have this small pool of candidates, which requisitions should I prioritize that will bring the most revenue in for the business? And which can we maybe pump the brakes on? So that's gonna be a key thing, I think, is we all try to figure out how to do more and continue growing with potentially less people.
[00:16:05] Dave Travers: One of the interesting things that you mentioned a couple times, a bit about the culture of Cushman & Wakefield, and so being entrepreneurial better never settles, like they're clear on sort of.
Cultural 10 poles that come up and talk to you, and at the same time, there's a bunch of wisdom out there around all the smartest companies do it this way. These are the best practices in TA, et cetera, et cetera. Is there an example, or is there a framework you think about using for when is it that like. For me at Cushman, for Danielle Cushman, like there's an accepted best practice everyone else has figured out how to do this. We're just gonna do it. And when do you think, you know, just doing it the way everyone else doesn't make sense for us because we have our own particular culture, and sometimes we do it our own way.
How do you think about the trade-off between those two things, and is there an example of where that's been a difficult trade-off?
[00:16:55] Danielle Kensinger: I think that's very much Cushman. I think that resonates on us a lot. I'll be talking to, you know, a friend that works at another company, and they'll be doing something that's best practice, and I'm like, we don't need that, or that would never work for us.
I think that we're so focused on clients and what our clients need. That is what drives the vision of everything else that we do, and everyone else doesn't have the same clients that we have. So the solutions that we create and the solutions that we present are tailored to them.
[00:17:37] Dave Travers: I think one of the interesting things I hear, and certainly for me, thinking about where we make changes and where we adapt to industry best practice and where we forge out on our own 'cause we do things differently. I think one thing that is an interesting litmus test is I hear you talking about is I envision myself sometimes thinking about at the meeting where we're announcing this new product or new practice, and I try to envision the five people I care about most in the room who know the company, are they gonna be saying, oh, thank goodness we're finally doing this. Or are they gonna be rolling their eyes, saying, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. And thinking about who's the audience and the core stakeholders, often when deciding whether to adopt industry best practice, or whether to forge out your own way and do something that fits within the Cushman & Wakefield method, is often a really valuable way of thinking about that.
Okay. We always end these episodes with a lightning round, so I want you to envision that you're visiting headquarters and you're grabbing a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and the CEO walks up to you and says, Hey, Danielle. I was just thinking, as we think about the talent we need over the next couple years and all the things that are evolving in our business, what is the smartest way for me to evaluate the performance of the TA team over the next year or two?
[00:18:51] Danielle Kensinger: I think the first one would be your either vacancy or your staffing rate, and I think a lot of companies focus on things like time to fill. How many you've actually hired per recruiter? They're valuable. But if you're the business leader, I wanna know, are you actually filling up my cup? You could be filling 10,000 roles, but if I'm only 50% staffed, we have a problem there.
So I think staffing and vacancy rate is one. And then another, I would say would be source of hire. You wanna know where your candidates are coming from. Is it a lot of boomerang hires, right? Is there something that's attracting people to come back? Are they active candidates, passive candidates? And I think that's really important to figure out the health of your recruiting and your overall staffing strategy.
[00:19:39] Dave Travers: Yeah. So double click on that boomerang idea because nothing gets a CEO. More excited than hearing that somebody's gone out, seen the real world, and come running straight back. Like, how do you think about that as a measure of success for your team?
[00:19:52] Danielle Kensinger: I think we love boomerang hires. We do it a lot, and a lot of the companies I've worked at have done the same thing, my two previous employers as well. People are people, and they need different things at different times. And if somebody needs to step away and get a new experience or have a different set of parameters around a job that fits their life better, those things change, and they'd like to come back, and they bring back that new knowledge and what they learned when they left.
It's a great strategy. It's a great approach. It's a great way to tap into talent that already knows your culture and your organization. So slower onboarding time as well.
[00:20:30] Dave Travers: Okay, one last lightning round question. Same scenario. CEO walks up to you. You've got 60 seconds or so, and CEO says, Hey Danielle. One of the most important things I do in my job is interviewing and figuring out who should get the next big promotion, who should be the next new executive that we add to the team, or new candidate we bring in from the outside. You're the expert. Like, give me your best tip. Help me become a better interviewer. What would you say?
[00:20:56] Danielle Kensinger: Interviewing for skills instead of experiences? I think one of the biggest struggles that we're gonna face, again, as the labor shortage comes through, you're looking for the person who's worked in this specific job and had this specific career path.
And you're missing out on a whole group of people who likely have the skills that you're looking for their experiences. Maybe we're just a little bit different, and we're working to try to make that shift here. Skills-based interviewing, hiring, rather than focusing so much on the experiences.
[00:21:28] Dave Travers: Danielle Kensinger, the VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Cushman & Wakefield. It is clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today.
[00:21:37] Danielle Kensinger: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:21:42] Dave Travers: That's Danielle Kensinger, Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at Cushman & Wakefield. We'll drop her LinkedIn profile in the episode notes below. And just a reminder, Talent All-Stars is also available on YouTube. Head over to the ZipRecruiter channel and look for the Talent All-Stars playlist to catch full video episodes. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. We'll see you back here next week.