Christine Aldrich

▶0:00IntroWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:37HostI'm excited to welcome Christine to the Built by People podcast. Christine, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:47GuestThanks, Dave. My journey in HR started off a little bit differently than the traditional because I've always known that HR is what I wanted to do. It is When I graduated high school, it's what I went to college for, and it is the only thing that I have done throughout my entire career. HR back then, about 25 years ago, looks way different than it does today, but it was about the service of people. Both of my parents actually were entrepreneurs, and how I saw them have relationships with others and how that drove business is how I interpreted into the HR world. I do believe that is the foundation that is still true today. I started off, I lived in Michigan at the time. My joke is that they don't let you leave the state of Michigan if you don't work for one of the big three. So I worked at Ford Motor Company, survived the automotive downturn, and realized that large business like that did not connect with me personally. Fast forward throughout my career, I was with Dunkin' Brands and QSR. I was with Dunkin' Brands when they went IPO. After that, I started my startup journey. I got a call one day that said, "Hey, let me tell you about this once-in-a-career opportunity," and I bought that line. Here I am, 4 startups later. It is absolutely what I love to do. I love to help organizations, and more importantly, people grow and thrive at the place where they work.

▶2:11HostChristine, can you share a real-world example of how you've implemented your leadership philosophy of execution excellence led by empathy? In an organization and what impact it had on the team or company?

▶2:24GuestAbsolutely. I think when you first start off as a people leader, you have this idea about what you need to be like and how you need to show up. And just like every other leader, did I make so many mistakes in my first people leadership role. And in particular, as human resource professionals and executives, we are the ones that need to help other people leaders become strong in their roles. And I think that what I learned along the way is that when I get to show up as my true self, and I let others on my team and others that I'm working with show up as their true selves, I think that we have so much more understanding and appreciation for what anybody else in our universe could be potentially going through. You cannot go wrong when you lead with kindness. And so when I was evolving as a leader, in particular at my current organization, Pin Drop, we run very lean. I think that coming out of post-pandemic, kind of a small headcount is the new CEO flex, and that organizations, in particular startups, are no longer Hiring just for the sake of hiring. So we ask a lot of our people. We ask for them to do multiple roles, show up, work hard. And when my team does that, I want them to understand that I am appreciative, that I acknowledge what they're doing, that they are taking time away from their families and sometimes young children in order to contribute to this organization. And so that's where I talk about execution excellence with empathy. I think that if we are able to help support our people and they understand that they have somebody on their side, they are so much more apt to show up stronger, better, and deliver higher results. And that's my real-world example between where I used to be as a leader, and I thought I had to have all the answers. I had to be driving hard. I had to be the strong one and never show signs of vulnerability or weakness. When I get to show up as my real self to my team, they understand it's okay and safe for them to show up as their real selves. And then together we work in order to deliver a high level of results.

▶4:49HostCan you tell me about your challenging situation where you faced, you were faced with a deepfake candidate, how your company's technology helped address that issue and what lessons HR leaders can learn from your experience in dealing with such advanced fraudulent activities?

▶5:06GuestAbsolutely. When I tell you that this is a whole new horizon here in the HR world, I truly mean it. This is something that we have never seen before, and it is something that I am passionate about trying to educate and spread the word on. So, Pindrop is a fraud prevention organization. Our foundation is in call centers and voice authentication technology. When you call up your bank or a cell phone provider and they say, we have authenticated you utilizing your voice, that is PinDrop in the background. We have since advanced into video and face authentication. In fact, we have our technology that is bolted onto a Zoom meeting or video meeting, if you will. That can detect liveness in the person that you are actually meeting with. So knowing that we are a deepfake organization in fraud prevention, that the fact that we've had candidates show up to apply for jobs that are fully remote engineering roles, that they themselves are deepfake candidates, absolutely astonishes me. Our technology was able to identify that my recruiter that is conducting the interview is completely a true live person, and that the individual on the other end is utilizing AI face swap and voice change technology in order to become a totally different person. And when you realize that is happening in real time, in the real world, Even for an organization that catches deepfake technology, I think that's something that we all need to be aware of. What I find so fascinating about this, Dave, is that in particular, HR professionals and recruiters, we're trained to have a non-biased opinion. We are trained to say, maybe that's a bad internet connection. Maybe that is English as a second language. And then therefore excuse a lot of the things that could potentially detect the other individual being a deepfake candidate. Now, I am not saying that we should lead with skepticism, but I think that we should trust but verify. So for HR professionals and recruiting professionals in the talent acquisition space, we really need to be diligent about what we're seeing on the other end. If you're seeing that there's glitches, that the voice does not match up with the lips, those are red flags. The challenge is that really the human eye has a very difficult time in actually confirming what a deepfake is without technology. And that is why the advancement of good AI to combat bad AI is so important. And that's one thing that we're very proud of at Pin Drop that we are currently developing. In addition to that, which candidate shows up in your first stage of the interview, we need to verify shows up at additional stages of the interview. Never in the history have we really had to think about who shows up for the recruiter screen is actually the one that's still showing up for the manager interview. And that's another way that they're utilizing AI in order to have one person show up for one stage and another person show up for another stage. If there is some sort of assessment, right? So engineering assessments or utilizing ChatGPT in the background in order to answer questions holistically, we need to make sure that we're flagging that as well. It is a whole new world out there. And while I am a huge component of AI and how that is really creating efficiencies in our workspace, I really believe that if we don't holistically adopt AI, then those organizations will not be advanced as the ones that do, we need to be cognizant of how it's showing up in negative ways.

▶9:13HostChristine, in your experience, how has the role of HR evolved from being a foundational function to becoming more of a strategic business partner? Provide a case study or example where this shift made a significant difference in a company's success.

▶9:28GuestYeah. So I can say that in all of the startups that I have worked through, when I have come in, the leadership team has generally thought of HR as we process payroll, we get individuals onboarded and filling roles, and that's pretty much where that function has stopped. It's no surprise, right? Because as you're growing and scaling an organization, those are the fundamentals of HR that have to happen. You've gotta have people that can help to build your product, sell your product, market your product, and you have to find out a way to pay 'em, right? But as organizations grow and scale, getting into more of a people operations function is so important. What do I mean by that? The foundation of HR will never go away. Do all of those absolute essential functions. Will always be there, but it's the strategic side that makes it a people operations function that really is a game changer. One example would be at Pin Drop. When I joined that organization 5 years ago, my CEO, Vijay, was like, okay, you're an HR leader. And I was like, we don't call my department HR, we call it people operations. And I explained to him the difference between just being functional and a strategic business partner. I said, give me 1 year. I said, and at the end of the year, I'm like, if you don't agree with me, we'll totally switch it back to HR. This is my 4th go-around, so I know, I knew what we were going to be doing. So we really took a long time to talk about how it is understanding, do we have the right people in seat? Is it succession planning? How do we assess talent? How do we understand the skillset that we're going to need 18 months from now and hire for that? How do we create systems and processes that improve people and our employees' lives versus just creating a system or a process for the sake of that. How do we really do a game changer and prepare ourselves for the next chapter? I think it's really important that when we think about your people being the biggest line on your P&L, it's through those people that we will create a strategic path forward and drive the business. And where the game changer is. I'm really happy to say that not only did my CEO after 1 year go ahead and say, "Absolutely, now I understand." It is about the fact that we've hit over $100 million in ARR. And it wasn't just what about being at the table. It's not just about HR or people operations having a seat at the table. It's what people operations brings to the table that is such a game changer.

▶12:09HostChristine, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶12:13GuestI think it goes back to where I talked about leading with execution excellence and empathy, and that is being strong enough to lead, but vulnerable enough to know that you don't have all the answers and that you have to learn how to ask better questions. I think that when people operations leaders deeply know the business, that is where they have the biggest impact. Because they're not just coming with insights about how to drive that business forward holistically. So I think that it's strong to, to lead, but know that you don't have to have all the answers and ask really good questions.

▶12:53HostChristine, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast.

▶12:56GuestDave, thank you so much for the time.