Talent All-Stars

Why Anaplan's Chief People Officer Banned the Word "Backfill"

Episode Notes

Most companies hire reactively. Someone leaves, a role opens, and the team scrambles to find a replacement. Carey Pellock, Chief People Officer at Anaplan, thinks that approach is already outdated.

Carey has spent years pushing her organization to think differently about workforce planning. Instead of asking "who can fill this seat," she's asking "what skills do we need two years from now, and how do we start hiring for them today?"

In this episode of Talent All Stars, Carey walks through how she approaches workforce planning in a fast-changing field, what she's learned about leading HR through AI adoption, and how she thinks about the THREE types of employees she sees reacting to new technology.

You'll also hear:

Connect with Carey: http://linkedin.com/in/carey-pellock-1808aa8

Learn more about Anaplan: www.anaplan.com

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Episode Transcription

[00:00:00] Carey Pellock: Stop thinking about a backfill. Often when we think about workforce planning, somebody resigns and it's like, I immediately need to backfill this role or this person. We want you to take a beat and think about what's the future fill. 

[00:00:16] 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. 

Welcome back to Talent-All Stars. I'm Dave Travers. When I look back on these conversations, I can think of so many talent leaders who highlight the importance of workforce planning.

Leaders from companies like Intel and Lockheed Martin need solid data to forecast talent needs well before it's time to hire, months, and sometimes even years in advance. One of the leading companies doing this type of work is Anaplan, and their Chief People Officer, Carey Pellock, who joins us today. In this episode, Carey shares what it's like to lead HR in a fast-changing field.

The three types of reactions she's seeing to AI, why backfilling is an outdated concept, and much more. So let's bring her in. Carey Pellock, welcome to Talent All-Stars. 

[00:01:14] Carey Pellock: Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. 

[00:01:17] Dave Travers: Fired up to have you here. Um, okay. Where to begin? Let's go back, not all the way back to the beginning, but let's go back and think about you developing as a people leader.

Not necessarily, you know, when you're rising to the ranks, all the way to chief people officer, but when was that moment for you when you realized that being a people leader in the people function was like something you could see yourself doing for a long time and calling it a career. 

[00:01:45] Carey Pellock: It's really interesting that you asked me that question. I know you said let's not go all the way back, but just, um, a little bit about my background. I didn't have a very traditional path into HR. I'm not sure. A lot of folks actually have a traditional path in the hr. I originally wanted to be a Broadway singer, um, and one of my first real jobs was working at a record label, 'cause I thought that's how I would be able to achieve that goal. 

Clearly that didn't happen. Um, yeah, well that's true, right? Never say never. And, uh, I got my next job after that was with at Sallie Mae. And. I was an executive assistant to our head of investor relations. I loved my boss, I loved the company, but I was bored outta my mind with the work.

And he said to me, and it resonates years and years later, he just said, Hey, why don't we go talk to HR? Because maybe there's an opportunity somewhere in the company, and I think you're such a great talent. I would hate to lose you. That just meant like so much to me that somebody would seek to retain talent versus, you know, even if it wasn't in their own shop, versus having them leave the organization.

And when we went to go talk to HR together, there happened to be an opening in the learning and development area in hr. So I had an opportunity over my tenure at Sallie Mae to really. You know, learn many facets of hr, gain many experiences. But it was that his connection of fit for purpose talent connected to the business so that we had this truly winning environment made me realize that this wasn't just gonna be a career, it was gonna be a calling.

I've spent my entire calling, my entire career working to create environments like that, that connect employees' work to the business outcomes. 

[00:04:01] Dave Travers: Wow. What a fantastic story. That's incredible. And everybody, I think, resonates with like having a boss who goes beyond their own short-term interest to think of, you know, your best interest and what could end up being a calling for you.

So, as you think about going from Sallie Mae, then Neustart, now to Anaplan. As you're rising through the ranks, you're not just founding a calling, but you're finding yourself in a position where you keep getting thrown more and more responsibility. What does that feel like? How do you build that muscle where you get increasingly comfortable taking on functions and responsibilities where you don't bring expertise to the table on day one?

[00:04:40] Carey Pellock: First, I consider myself a lifelong learner, and so if it's something that. I'm unfamiliar with, I'll just try to be a sponge and do my own research and try to get educated as best as I can and never lose the importance of having a village, right? And that comes in many shapes and forms and sizes and everything.

Go seek out, you know, the power of networking allows you to be able to call upon those. Subject matter experts with whatever it might be. Mentoring is another excellent tool and vehicle to always have. Um, so you can rely on your mentors to give you guidance with different things. And then sometimes, you know, that village is just for me, a lot of the times it's my husband to just be like, I don't.

[00:05:32] Dave Travers: That was a tough one.

[00:05:33] Carey Pellock: Yeah. I don't know what this is. Um, yeah. You know, what do you think I should do here? And just being able to kind of have that. Trusted advisor, if you will, who can help you figure out is it right or left? That should be your next step to go learn all these things. The other thing that I would say is that I wasn't afraid to raise my hand for anything.

So any project that it was that did get me out of my comfort zone, I said, yeah, let me give it a try, and it allowed me to. You know, grow in these kinds of safer spaces because I had had so much tenure at the prior two companies that I probably wouldn't have had that experience had I ho around honestly.

So I think those are some of the things that helped me continue to grow. 

[00:06:25] Dave Travers: Oh, I think there's great stuff there. So, so one is, it's clear that when you're struggling with something. You are not in the suffer alone. And just think about it amongst yourself camp you're, you know, developed people and you talked about networking.

And I think early in your career, when you don't. Have a network already. And when you haven't done that a bunch, networking feels like showing up to a conference of a thousand people. You don't know any of them, and say, okay, I'm gonna go find a mentor today. That feels really daunting and impossible. So how do you start, like, how do you get the ball rolling from like, okay.

I would love to not suffer alone. I would love to have somebody to call on. How do I start that process and start catalyzing those relationships? 

[00:07:08] Carey Pellock: It's just breaking it down into bite-sized chunks that you are able to swallow, right? So just start with one person. Instead of looking in the sea of a thousand people, just start with one person and striking up that conversation.

The other thing that I highly encourage folks to do is to get involved with like local SHRM chapters, for example, right? Or there are many, many of those types of HR organizations that'll hold local networking and oftentimes, literally just a happy hour. It truly is just a networking event versus, you know, an education moment followed by networking.

And then there has to be somebody in your life. Who you really admire and look up to. And so strike up the conversation of, Hey, would you like to be my mentor? 99% of the time, they're gonna say yes, you know, unless they're like wicked busy and they just don't have the time. But it is important for you to educate yourself on what mentoring really is.

It's not them helping you do your job. It truly is about career guidance, or you know, maybe working through a particular challenge at work or whatnot, but it's just starting small with some of those little things that will help you build a grander networking base over time. 

[00:08:43] Dave Travers: Yeah, the breaking it down into its component parts and realizing, for example, that just because it's the first relationship you're networking with doesn't mean that person has to grow into a mentor.

Like you can't predict in advance who's gonna become the relationship that pays off over years and decades. You just have to build several of them, and you'll be amazed by what. Unexpected twists and turns happen along the way. Um, but that's, so, but you just, it's like building a muscle or how do, how do you get fit by, you know, working out on the first day, um, and then taking it from there.

That's exactly right. So wise. Okay. And then you also talked about on your path and journey there, having somebody you admire and asking them to be a mentor, that asking to be a mentor can feel like. I'm really setting myself up for rejection, and this person that I admire. So I care. I already know. I care what they think, but I don't know that they care what I think or about my feelings.

How do you approach that? Like, you know, role play that for me. If I'm gonna ask you to be a mentor, how do I do that? Well, 

[00:09:48] Carey Pellock: I think it's important to understand why you want the mentoring relationship, right? So take a moment and prepare yourself of what are the outcomes that you're looking for. And I'm not asking because I want to get promoted, or you know, the head of HR at Sally Mae asked me when I had been in HR for about a year.

That question we always ask, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Right? And I said, I wanna be you. So it took me 20 years, but I finally got there. I had had enough kind of internal reflection to realize where did I wanna go? So I think prepare yourself, have those realistic conversations of what are you trying to achieve, what do you want out of that mentoring relationship?

And to your point about, you know, it's daunting and the fear of rejection. Sure, but if you don't ask and you don't give yourself that opportunity to at least try, more often than not, they're gonna say yes. And so think about the positive component of the experience that you're gonna gain by having this mentoring relationship. Like I said, you won't know if you don't ask. 

[00:11:03] Dave Travers: Absolutely. And if you commit to asking 10 times, you're gonna get a lot of yeses, even if the first one happens to be a no. 

[00:11:09] Carey Pellock: That's right. And then learn from what could you have done differently when the person said no, to ask it in a different way for the next person to get them to say yes.

[00:11:18] Dave Travers: Okay. So in addition to mentorship, one of the things you brought up was. Saying Yes when somebody asks you to do something, and I think this is really counterintuitive for some folks who want to be seen, heard, understood, recognized that there are certain parts of my job I'm excited about, certain things I wanna do, certain things that are drudgery and I don't wanna do as a young person. 

And so I'm always thinking about that, you know, as a young developing person. And when my boss asked me to do something, I'm hoping, or somebody else in the company that senior asked me to do something, I'm hoping they asked me to do. One of the things that I really like doing as opposed to one of the things I don't, but your advice was say yes and just be the person.

So this walks me through that. Like, what's the mindset? Not everything you said yes to was probably your dream assignment. Walk through why that was your attitude. 

[00:12:11] Carey Pellock: That's a true statement, but as I said earlier, I've consider myself a lifelong learner. There is something that you're gonna learn out of anything that you say yes to.

Even if it is, I know I don't wanna do that. Right. I know I'd learned that. I don't want to do that work. And often, you know, as I'm coaching, like. My leaders and frontline managers, 'cause there's always this struggle of, I don't wanna give this assignment to one of my direct reports because it's an administrative task.

They won't like it. You know, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, I'm always countering them on that because it might not feel that way to them. So give them that opportunity to learn from it. And who knows, maybe they're gonna go tackle this assignment that you're giving them in a completely different way than you would be doing it.

And so you also are learning by giving them this assignment. So there's something to be learned, I think, in everything. You just gotta figure out what that is and hold that true as you, as you keep going. 

[00:13:31] Dave Travers: Couldn't agree more. I think that is so wise, and I think if you think about how you want to advance in your career, how you want your boss and your boss's boss to view you.

Do you want them to view you as, oh, you know Dave, that's the guy who really likes to do this, but doesn't like to do that or that, or do you want to be thought of as. Dave's the guy that whenever I have a problem, like I can ask him for help and he's going to enthusiastically say yes. And as a boss or a boss's boss, you think about those two types of people very differently, naturally. 

[00:14:02] Carey Pellock: Totally, totally. I always wanna be thought of the person as somebody that they can rely on, um, somebody who's gonna go put very thoughtful purpose around whatever it is, because I've had all of these different areas of experience to go put out, you know, a more polished product or whatever it might be.

[00:14:25] Dave Travers: Absolutely. Okay. So that, that's part of your journey and your secrets to getting here. Now let's talk about where we are, and where we're headed. So we're in this world where everyone's using this word AI 147 times a day. And even though it's over-hyped, it's also under hyped. And so now you know this world that's changing and you're at a company that's at the center of that, you're pulling, you know, you help your customers pull data from every different possible place in the company and then make great decisions and think about different scenarios that might [00:15:00] happen, um, and make good plans.

So. As a leader at a company that does that, that utilizes AI, and you know, field of HR and people that is util starting to utilize AI more and more. How do you think about it? How do you decide? There's a million different directions you could go. There's a cacophony of noises and sounds and pitches being made to you every day about things you could do with AI.

What do you decide to do next? How do you figure out what's the next thing we should do to take advantage of technology in the realm of people? 

[00:15:31] Carey Pellock: So, probably a little bit of how I said of starting like mentoring, you just take it one step at a time, right? And so we have started a lot of initiatives, not only with our tech and our platform, and everything as it relates to AI there, but how we're also using it internally and also for hr.

You said it, it's probably more than 147 times a day, um, that people are, are using those two letters. But I also think that when it became much more prevalent, my team and I, we kind of talk about this in categories of three folks. You got folks who are like, I cannot get enough of this tech. Let me go in there.

Let's play around. We have an extremely talented team of engineers. Most of them are in that camp, right? They're like, let me, this is a new tool. Let me go and play with it and break it and do all the things. Then you've got folks who are pure detractors who are just like, I'm scared to death of this.

We're gonna lose jobs. All the HR jobs are gonna go away. We're not gonna have any more recruiters because it's all gonna be replaced with AI, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then you've got folks who are somewhere in the middle who are like. I don't know enough about it, um, to know, you know, which camp I wanna get into, and those are probably the folks you wanna concentrate on first to have them see.

Lots of different possibilities with it, and then you can start focusing on some of the detractors. I think with the detractors, most of that is just baked in fear and fear of losing the jobs. And there was a conference that I just went to a handful of weeks ago where one of the speakers said the speed of hype is faster than the speed of the actual innovation.

And I was like, oh, that's so profound to think about. You know, we got maybe more ahead of our skis. I think a lot of AI really just results from having a proper change management philosophy. It is something that I personally take very seriously. At Anaplan, we also take very seriously with change management because.

If you get all of that right, you're gonna just be much more successful with whatever it is that you're implementing to just make sure you're navigating the change. But the other thing I learned at this conference that was really interesting is that lots of studies are saying positions are gonna be eliminated because of AI, and that really isn't the case.

It's taking the tasks that folks do. To see what can be automated with those. But you can't, your competitive advantage is your employees. You can't take the human out of whatever it is that you're trying to build, if that makes sense. Right. So I am very focused on that. The human element, the leading with empathy, I've said to my own team.

How many of you enjoy writing job descriptions? I've got one myself that I've got to write today, and I'm like, I'm gonna let AI do this for me. So there are those things that will help you, whether it's be productive or quite frankly, just. You know, it's a mental slog to deal with writing a job description, and that's gonna help with my overall well-being to let it do that for me. I'm gonna do that. 

[00:19:20] Dave Travers: First of all, I love you're creating three different sort of internal customer personas. You have the early adopters, so to speak, and they're just gonna run off with it, and you almost have to just make sure they're good enough guardrails. You have the laggards who you could spend a lot of time trying to convince a laggard who hates it to change, and that could may not get you anywhere. 

And then there's that biggest group in the middle who are like open to it. But like I'm more of a late adopter, you know, kind of maybe very late adopter. And there you can make a lot of headway, and it's probably the biggest group of people as well. So that makes sense to, I think that is very smart to focus.

Group and what you said was so smart is that the AI is coming for the tasks, not for the job. And so if you're worried about it, you should think, do I do anything besides rote tasks? And if I don't feel like I do enough other things, what could I do? What is the best person? In this department, who does my job do?

When people talk about them going the extra mile, the extra mile tends not to be the things that AI does. The extra mile tends to be that like I checked in with my customer or my internal customer to see how the hire went two weeks after every time no other recruiter, you know, does that they move on to the next rack or whatever that is.

That's not an AI thing. That's a, like I called the person and I said, how's the new person working out? Or whatever that is. Imagine yourself in a world where you're freed up to only go the extra mile because everything else is done for you. Like that's a much better job. That's a much more fulfilling way to live, and that's the opportunity we all have to create that job for ourselves by embracing AI.

[00:20:55] Carey Pellock: Totally. And like, you know, I've had the conversations with my recruiters, would you wanna work at a company where all you're interviewed by is an AI? No, I wouldn't. I would want that human touch. Right. So it's exactly what we're saying here, that there are certain tasks that let's have AI help us, 'cause it's a hotbed for talent, right? And we're, you know, where we're competing with. All of us are, we're competing with what's the right company to work for. And so being able to cast your net in bigger ponds and letting AI help you do that, yes, let's do that. But you're not gonna come here and work for an AI thing, right?

You're gonna come here and work for a person? Um, yes. So you're gonna wanna understand the things that I certainly talk about in my interviews, which is, let me tell you about our culture. Let me tell you why. It's not just our tech that is extraordinary, but like why our culture is extraordinary. You're not, you're gonna get more of that in this type of a conversation than watching an AI version of that.

[00:22:07] Dave Travers: Yep, absolutely. Okay. So one of the things you do and you use your AI for, and your customers use your AI for is workforce planning. So, given what we just talked about. What's the talent we have in the building today, the metaphorical building perhaps, and what do we need in more of in the future, whether we develop that from people already here or we hire that, how do you even think about attacking that problem?

[00:22:34] Carey Pellock: It's an interesting problem to think about, right? Because in some of the skills that we're looking at right now, we've been having conversations with our business leaders of, and, and it's a complete mind shift. Stops thinking about a backfill. Often when we think about workforce planning, somebody resigns, and it's like, I immediately need to backfill this role or this person.

We want you to take a beat and think about what's the future fill, not a backfill. What's the future fill? And so what are the skills and capabilities, AI or otherwise? Maybe it's AI-influenced that will require you to have different skills two years from now or a year from now, and let's go look for that talent when we think about workforce planning of the skills that you might need.

Because if we can have that talent here now, it's gonna help you go achieve those goals you're looking for in two years from now, even faster. And our ability to innovate and move quicker is what we're all trying to do. So it's a difficult conversation because we've been programmed for so many years to just backfill.

[00:24:00] Dave Travers: Well, that backfill is such a known quantity. Like, you know, I don't have to think about it. I know Jerry was doing a great job. Jerry's gone, now I need another Jerry. The very little cognitive load required there. And so thinking like, oh, now I gotta pull out my crystal ball, predict the future, learn some new stuff. Like that's a whole lot of hard work, and it's scary. 

[00:24:20] Carey Pellock: But what's cool is, and this is something that we're also building internally, is. Let's have an AI prompt ask you the questions so it can, so back to my point about a job description, right? Nobody wants to write those. What are those things that you're thinking?

And let's see. You know, and it gets you 80% of the way there. That's a different way to utilize the brain. 

[00:24:46] Dave Travers: Totally. Okay, Carrie, we always end these episodes with a rapid fire round, so I, I want you to imagine the scenario that you're stepping into the elevator or making a cup of coffee at corporate headquarters and the CEO walks up [00:25:00] next to you and you only gonna have 30 or 60 seconds to answer, and it's sort of a fly by.

But, you know, the CEO says, Hey, Kerry, you know, I was thinking the other day. There's so much going on with how we need to transform our workforce and all the things you and I were just talking about. There's so many things going on. How should we measure the effectiveness of the people team over the next year or two?

Like how should I even think about that? What do you say? 

[00:25:23] Carey Pellock: So he's asked me this. 

[00:25:26] Dave Travers: You're prepared? 

[00:25:27] Carey Pellock: Yes. For many years. So the first thing is recruiting and retention. It's the two sides of the coin. Often, we think about just recruitment metrics. If you're not hanging on to your top performers, it doesn't matter.

And so those have to be the very, very first, you know, top measurements because it's the only way we're gonna go achieve all of our goals is if we have the talent, AI or not, right? The second thing is often I think in hr, as HR professionals, we measure. The favorability of programs. We do engagement surveys.

We do surveys after like a management development program, and we say, you know, folks thought it was favorable. The next level up that I'm certainly being asked in terms of measurement is what's the effectiveness of the program, right? So said differently. We rolled out a management development program about two years or so ago.

How many of those folks have increased their engagement survey scores have retained their people have hired the people that they said that they were gonna hire according to their plan, because they learned how to be a more effective manager from our program. Right. So it's another twist of thinking about, 'cause a lot of times in HR will roll out a lot of programs because it's all with the third.

Like of the stool, which is the engagement, so recruiting, retention, and engagement. But are those the volume of those programs? Are they actually effective? Are they having some meaning for your folks here?

[00:27:17] Dave Travers: Awesome. Okay, one more. Same scenario. CEO walks up to you. You're making your cup of coffee, says, Hey, Carrie.

I spend a ton of my time interviewing people. Sometimes it's for the board, sometimes it's an executive. Sometimes it's an internal candidate to move to a different job, but you're the expert at the, you're the like, you know the people person. Give me your one best tip. How do I become a better interviewer?

[00:27:38] Carey Pellock: He would never ask me that because he is a master at it. 

[00:27:43] Dave Travers: Well, what's his best step then? Yeah. Yeah. Give us that.

[00:27:45] Carey Pellock: But for the others who would ask me. Yeah. Um, I think really, truly, the star method is probably the most tried and true, mostly because of the results, and it's about the outcome. We spend a lot of time focusing on what is the outcome that you're trying to achieve here?

'cause I do a lot of interviewing, obviously, myself. I push candidates to articulate those measurable outcomes on things that they've driven because it doesn't tell you just what they did, but what the impact they actually had on the business. And I think it's one of the best ways to predict future performance, you know, with us again. Trying to go achieve those big goals that we have. 

[00:28:34] Dave Travers: How can you tell when somebody's in an interview talking about their results and the outcome that the results are real? You know, they said revenue grew by 13% or whatever, and how can you tell what their role in driving those results would be like? You know, some people are good at interviewing. How do you cut through that? 

[00:28:52] Carey Pellock: I think you, you know, it's how you cut through anything, right? Not just in an interview. It's their body language. Do you feel that? Their poison, their posture are actually matching what they're saying. But here's the thing that I also just wanna mention for some people, like interviews are ruthless and not because of the interviewer, but it's like dating. Do you like me? You know what I mean? 

[00:29:24] Dave Travers: Yeah. Am I worthy? 

[00:29:24] Carey Pellock: Yeah. Yeah. And so you have to cut everybody with a little bit of slack, you know, as you're having interviews. And that's why you also shouldn't just do one. We take it very seriously of making sure that you have a diverse panel of interviewers.

And by that I don't mean just based off ethnicity. I mean, people across the company who come from all different aspects are part of your interview panel, because we believe that to be much more innovative, you need to have diversity of thought and ideas. So recognize that people come from all walks of life all shapes and sizes, and so maybe interviewing is just very, very, very difficult.

So give them, you know, another opportunity to be able to kind of prove their, what they're saying on a piece of paper is, is actually true. It goes back to what I said, um, earlier too, about AI in recruiting. It's all about this human element. Right. And so you can't lose sight of that, especially in an interview.

[00:30:32] Dave Travers: So wise, Carey Pellock, very clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for joining us today. 

[00:30:38] Carey Pellock: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it

[00:30:45] Dave Travers: That's Carey Pellock. She's the Chief People Officer at Anaplan. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the episode description, and as a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube, also on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email to talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.

I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars, and we'll see you right back here next time.