Serena Ziskroit

▶0:00HostWelcome 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. I'm excited to welcome Serena to the Built by People Podcast. Serena, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if we could hear a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:48GuestYeah, no, great question. And thanks for having me on the podcast. My career journey is kind of a career jungle gym, and I love that term because it's definitely not a ladder for me. Graduated from college, went and did public service work in California, thought I wanted to go to law school to help immigrants get legal status and resources, and quickly realized what I loved about helping people with resources is the human resources side of it. So after law school, I actually went, joined big law, those big law firms of 2,000, 4,000 people. Worked directly for the chief professional development officer, realized— disenchanted with big law and how they rewarded all their lawyers. They pay them by billable hours, not by outcome. They're back and call the partner and went back to Penn and got my degree in applied positive psychology and entered into the world of tech and HR. And I've been there since 2014.

▶1:47HostThanks for that great introduction, Serena. Could you share a specific example of when you successfully helped an organization restructure its HR team using AI? What were the challenges and how did you overcome them?

▶2:01GuestYeah, I think we're all trying to do that a number of different ways. Currently with my clients, I think it's a goal to not even just restructure the HR team, it's to restructure how we all as individuals contribute to the company. I can give an example. Yesterday I was on site at a client and we just finished implementing our performance reviews. The first time they've run an annual feedback cycle, we were using software. I'll say it's Lattice. It has great AI tools. And to kick off the career development portion, we're redoing all the job descriptions. And rather than having people write them, we're going to use our internal chat. That's the AI chat. And basically from the feedback cycle all the way to creating job descriptions, to thinking about next steps on hiring, AI will be incorporated all throughout that employee lifecycle. And I could talk forever. We've got 15 minutes today, but I feel like it's my responsibility as a dynamic people leader to apply the most innovative technology that helps both humans and the technology come together and succeed as a business and help the humans thrive in their roles and in society.

▶3:21HostTrina, when was the time you saw a transformative impact on company operations after implementing a new HR tech stack? What were the key takeaways from that experience?

▶3:33GuestGood question. I think probably ironically enough, it's been feedback tools because historically we in the Industrial Revolution were, were widgets, right? That's how we started. And as time has gone on, we've been able to use our inductive reasoning, all these things to accomplish projects and all these things. And now we've evolved to the computer being more of the widget and us being this creative problem solver. And if the team member is not getting feedback from, it doesn't have to be their quote unquote manager, but from the company as a whole, they don't know if that resource they're providing is being recognized. And sometimes that's the thing that a team member, an employee wants most is that recognition. We all know money, written recognition, all hands, right? Those all matter, but it's that feedback cycle that sometimes has the most impact.

▶4:40HostHow did you approach advising a public company or a private equity firm on structuring their HR teams and tech stacks? And can you provide a case study or example that illustrates the process and outcomes?

▶4:53GuestYeah, an example is a stealth startup at a public company. They had been in the Workday suite, but the stealth startup was only 250 people, and so it didn't have clear ownership of the suite, right? We all know that Workday relies on specific developers and specialists to roll out specific parts of the employee lifecycle. And so those leaders weren't really set up to thrive and really bridge that human side and technology together to help the company succeed. Their head of HR had left, their senior HR business partner had left, and I was told to come in, analyze what was going on, and rethink the technology and the people leadership at the company. And long story short, we got rid of Workday, implemented HR tech stack and HRIS much more relevant for their company size, and then restructured the people team to have a very successful senior HR business partner who could grow into this head of people. And I worked on hiring and onboarding that person. So it was a combination of assessing both the technology, the people org structure. There were even additional sourcers and folks that just in this day and age, we all know with AI, like, sourcers are not needed as much. There are particular recruiting tools that you can purchase that a recruiter can leverage instead of necessarily a person to do that work.

▶6:31HostSerena, can you tell us about the most innovative AI tool or solution you've come across in the HR space recently? How is— and how is that changing the way organizations manage their HR functions?

▶6:43GuestOh, there's so many. I'll tell you one. I'm all about trying out new products, and I think it's really important as a leader to pilot those. One of the associations I'm part of is People Tech Partners, where they get a chance to try out 4 products each quarter. And through that association, I was offered the opportunity to try out SeekOut Spot, which is where they use a combination of AI and their recruitment services to provide you a slate of individuals that meet your JD's rec. So the only time that we spent looking for a slate of candidates was when myself and the hiring manager met with SeekOut's representative, told them about the rec, what our requirements were, and within, I think it was 1 to 2 weeks, we got a slate of 2 to 4 candidates. And after that we purchased using the product again. Basically what it got rid of was, let's say that company had been using 20% contingent recruiting fee to hire, say, a mid-level marketing manager. Now what they could do is spend a fraction of that to get a slate of qualified candidates. And I think we just had to do 1 or 2 rounds of interviewing., and that person actually was offered, I think is being offered the job today. So yeah, that's one example. There's so many.

▶8:13HostSerena, what parting advice would you like to share with our

▶8:17Guestcommunity? I think that it's really important for all of our people leaders to have this growth mindset that we're not necessarily in this bucket of quote unquote HR, which traditionally has had compliance and really have that growth mindset that we can help with technology, we can help with the business side, and still stay connected to our other stakeholders in addition to the company, our team members, and candidates. I feel like it's almost a duty for every single strategy that I implement in a company to consider whether there is a relevant AI tool or task that we should be replacing with a current task. And that's how I approach my job every day.

▶9:10HostSerena, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶9:15GuestThanks so much, David.