All right, well, we will go ahead and get started today. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Carrie Phillips, and I am the Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, as well as serving here on the Cabinet for Case District 4. And I want to be the first to officially welcome all of you to our very first Case Currents Deep Dive. This is a new series that we are starting, and what it's really focused on is those deeper conversations on some of those most intriguing topics that you read in your Case Currents magazine when that comes to you every few months. And so we have a real treat today. Dr. Yvette Marsh is representing the LSU Foundation. She's going to be talking about strategic talent management. You may have read an article that she had in Case Currents this fall, and so we are so excited to have her join us to talk a little bit more about some of the strategies and some of the things that she covered in that article. And before we get started, I do want to go over a few housekeeping notes. First, ask all your questions. You can drop those in the comments, and we'll make sure that we get those to Dr. Marsh so that we can make sure that she's answering those. Pay attention to that comment section because we'll be sharing some other links and opportunities for you to stay engaged. And then if you have any technical difficulties throughout the conversation today, please just feel free to reach out directly to me via the chat, and I will be thrilled to get you connected and get you over to some help that can get that taken care of for you. And so with that, I am thrilled to introduce our presenter to you today, Dr. Yvette Marsh, and in her role as Assistant Vice President of Talent Management, she is responsible for the oversight of all talent management and human resource functions of the LSU Foundation. After serving in similar roles at multiple organizations, she has gone home, and the three-time LSU alum has the privilege of leading efforts to make the Foundation an employer of choice through culture-impacting initiatives. She's actively involved in CASE, and she'll be at the CASE 4 conference this April talking even more about talent management. And so with that, I'm going to stop talking and turn it over to Dr. Marsh, and I'll let her set the stage before we begin with questions. Dr. Marsh, it's all you. Thanks so much, Keri. I am going to, as instructed, share my screen just to set the stage. I hope everyone is in a warmer place than I am right now, as well as Keri. I'm in the south, but still we're having some temperatures in the very low double digits, so hopefully y'all are in a warmer place. So I do, again, want to thank, and let me check, is the screen being shared? Everyone okay? Perfect. So it's great that y'all are joining today to chat about a topic that really, I think, has caught fire in the recruitment and selection arena, both inside and outside of higher ed, and that topic is transferable skills. I can tell you just in this past year, I presented on this topic at two conferences, the article that Keri mentioned, and now this webinar. And when you add that to all of the articles and blogs and posts about this topic, and actually I stumbled upon one yesterday that, if anyone's interested, I'm happy to share that particular article. But all of that communicates to me that there are many individuals, besides myself, that have simply become frustrated with traditional recruiting efforts and needing an approach that worked. And I think that this does, at least for us here at LSU. So before we sort of get down to the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts, the meat of our topic, I want to make sure that we're on the same page regarding what exactly transferable skills are before we move forward. So an online definition that I found states that transferable skills, sometimes called soft skills, portable skills, are versatile abilities that can be applied across all industries. So the word transferable and portable highlight the fact that these abilities, these competencies, these aptitudes are acquired and developed in one particular work environment, but can be effectively applied in another, possibly completely different. And those include a few of those that you see there, communication, leadership, adaptability, others are critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, tenacity, my favorite, emotional intelligence, and there's a host of others. The list goes long. So I mentioned that at LSU, we jumped on the bandwagon, the transferable skills bandwagon, simply out of frustration. And I mean, it's true. And I think if you're in the business of recruiting, it doesn't matter what your industry is. Everyone is experiencing that same frustration because you're charged with looking for a particular candidate profile, right? And for us, our stakeholders, namely our beloved deans, I did say beloved, yes, we do love them. They wanted candidates who look really good on paper, that checks all the boxes of the usual criteria, right? And of course they do, because who wouldn't? But we all can recite that familiar criteria, right? If you're talking about a fundraiser, and for us, that is our most challenging position to recruit for. So that means we are charged with finding someone who has several years of fundraising experience at a university, right? Must be at a university or a foundation, preferably a university within your conference. I'm getting a little narrower here, right? Who's raised a significant amount of money consistently, and for good measure, why don't you make them an alumni vet? Great. All right. And if they don't live here, convince them to move here, along with their three school-aged children and their spouse who is also working where they live. Fine, no problem. No small feat, right? So on top of it being no small feat, what happens as a result is you're competing with other universities and foundations, right? You start playing this musical chair coaching scenario where we're just trading fundraisers, you know, back and forth across the country, and that's just, you know, madness. I ran into a colleague the other day, and she mentioned that at their university, they're not even allowed to put their fundraisers on their website because, you know, the poachers are going to find them and steal them away. So it's all making us bonkers because we're looking for those very narrow, narrowly defined profiles. And then on top of that, you end up paying a premium as it relates to salary, right? Far probably beyond your salary budget because those pool, the pool of those candidates is so small and shallow. So what are we doing, right? So it took some time to convince our stakeholders, and that's not only our deans, but our hiring managers, leadership, and the like, to convince them of the value of transferable skills. Because as I mentioned, it's understandable. That profile, though, for me, is problematic because that profile speaks to what I call a fundraising technician. I don't know if that's used anywhere. Maybe I need to trademark it, but it's a fundraising technician. That means that's a person who understands all the science-y part of fundraising. They can probably quote those principles and, you know, what a particular approach is called, but they miss that gorgeous art of fundraising. And that's who we're looking for here at LSU because out of the core of that art is born those transferable skills that I'm talking about. But convincing those stakeholders really became a necessity because of this very real issue of talent scarcity. And just for good measure, the landscape, I think, of philanthropic fundraising is changing as well. It looks very different today than it looked, you know, 10 years ago, and I'm sure it'll look different a decade into the future. All right. So we convinced those stakeholders. The deans are somewhat on board. So now what? We had to change where we were looking. We began recruiting outside the proverbial box. To set the stage for that, we first changed our job postings. One of my colleagues is on the call. She was in the throes of that with me during her time here, Brandy Shillings. And the way we changed our job postings is we removed a lot of the limiting language, such as requiring a background, quite frankly, in higher ed philanthropy or fundraising at all. We also removed the requirement to have a minimum number of years of experience. And I see a lot of postings out there that still ask for that particular requirement, and it has to be limiting the results of their recruiting efforts. I know that there are probably different schools of thought out there about whether you include or exclude that requirement. Those that are in favor of it, I get it because it does allow you to some degree qualify individuals for, for example, a junior or senior position, right? Number of years equates to the level at which someone can be slotted into a position. Those on the other side, some of them shy away from including years of experience because it may be viewed in some instances as indirect age discrimination, right? So it depends on where you land. My reasoning for removing them specifically from our job posting is let's say I asked for those minimum of five years. Who's to say how that person has spent those five years, they could have spent the five years just picking their nose or reading war and peace, right? It doesn't necessarily equate to a high performer, but it also may cause me to miss out on someone who spent two and a half amazing years at a shop that lines up with the same values that we do here. They spent two and a half years really digging into honing their craft, spent some time taking on other professional development opportunities. So we removed it. And when we did, it really opened us up to this, this gift of transferable skillsets that I'm talking about, because we got a lot more interest from obviously, people outside of our typical arena. Now you are going to get a lot of Walmart greeters. I can tell you right off the bat, when you take the requirements off, it opens up all of the gates, no shade to Walmart greeters. I love them. Well, I love some of them, but we did start getting a lot of interest from other nonprofit organizations. So these are some of the positions that we started hearing from these different industries that we heard sparingly from in the past, from teachers, in both public and private settings, from sales professionals, all of the ones that you see here. So if we changed what we were, where we were looking, that is, it stood to reason that we had to change how we interacted with these applicants. And that started with the interview process. And during that process, we focused on two objectives. And those objectives are those that you see here. One, whether or not the candidate had the capacity and the desire to do the job, and whether or not they had the willingness and openness to building their skill set. So the pursuit of those two objectives was again, primarily through the interview process. Now, I'm not sharing any secret, you know, formulas here. This is not rocket science. We all conduct interviews, but we started looking at them differently. We had long transitioned away, happily, from, you know, interviewing with this rote set of closed-ended questions that basically ask questions that were on the resume already, quite frankly, we had shifted to asking different types of questions. We were using structured panel interviews. And of course, that brought this beautiful diversity of thought. But when we started asking ourselves, what exactly are we trying to achieve here? We're not just checking the, I conducted an interview box, right? We are really doing some important work of assessing and vetting people who are going to, who we're asking to join our organization and make contributions toward us becoming unapologetically excellent. We have been using that phrase for the last year or so. And it is the truth. We are becoming, we want to be excellent. So if we're talking to people, interviewing individuals to make sure that they align with that, we had to take it seriously. So we had to really focus on the job at hand. So if we're trying to achieve that first item, the capacity, the, the, can you do the job as well as the, do you want to do the job, which is the desire piece specifically, do you desire to do it to the standard that we require, which is high culture, high performance. And then finally, do you want to have a better skillset than you had before you walked in the door, right? Then our interview process, again, had to be different. Not only the logistics of it, we had to go about it with a different mindset. So how was it different? I'm going to start with the interview questions, which is the obvious, right? We had to start asking questions that cleared the fog on quite frankly, whether or not they possess these transferable skills that I'm talking about. Now, I'm not going to go through the laundry list. We have a robust bank of interview questions and they are categorized by the skill that we're trying to identify depending on the position, depending on the candidate, but here's a few. So if you want to suss out effective communication, right? Then you ask, candidate, how do you tailor your communication style when you're interacting with different audiences, be they colleagues, clients, or stakeholders? If you want to identify adaptability, then ask, can you share an experience where you faced setbacks or failures? And more importantly, how did you bounce back from those setbacks or failures? So similar questions are posed coupled with role play scenarios, behavioral assessments, and all of these sought to determine that first piece, the capacity, can they do the job? Other open-ended questions were asked to determine whether they had the desire, again, to join high culture, high performance-based organization. So here's one of those questions. What steps did you take to ensure the quality of your work and what were the results or the feedback that you received? So what I'm looking for is a response that speaks to collaboration, to teamwork, to sharing, owning up to your mistakes, learning from them, being open to feedback. I mean, being a lump of clay, like I'm just open to being better, right? And that particular question and others lines up with one of our team values, which is excellence. There's that word again, right? And we have other team values like professional development, respect, fun, and we have questions tied to each one of those values, again, to suss out, do you have the desire to join us? Is this going to be a good fit? And then that final one, the willingness and openness to building their skill set. That has really become an interesting one to me because one might think that it's a given that they have that willingness to build their skill set. I'm not sure if this is anyone else's experience, but I am coming across candidates who feel like they are as informed as they need to be. I am a seasoned professional, and I have all of the certifications and I have letters behind my name, and I've been at this a long time, and they really, and some of them, balk at instruction, education, all of that. And that still just will never cease to amaze me. I'm looking for candidates who ask me about professional development. I don't have to ask them a question that seeks to get at that. They are asking, I want to hear the question from them. What do your professional development policies and practices look like? And I don't want them to flinch when I answer because it's pretty intensive. I don't want them to flinch about how we onboard really intensively. Then we have regular feedback sessions led by our senior vice president on a regular basis, training sessions. We recently launched a pretty significant training program with advancement resources. I want that to be a push, not a pull. So I'm happy to share more about all of those things. I will take a beat and a breath and give you a chance to ask away. Thank you so much for giving us a little insight into how you and the LSU Foundation are approaching this concept of transferable skills. As someone who's in the process of hiring for a position right now, some of those interview questions I found, I was furiously taking notes. But one of the questions that I have, and I'm very curious, is what are some of the main challenges that you and the team have faced in implementing this? Was it in the buy-in? Was it in changing those internal processes? Something else? What was kind of the hardest spot to think through? It was absolutely the buy-in. For sure, it was winning over those stakeholders that I mentioned. Those that are making the final hiring decision. All of our executive team. I mentioned our deans, department chairs who have gotten very involved in the process. Especially those that are really firmly holding on to these very traditional ways to hire and to select. I have found the best way forward with those individuals is through education. Not formal education, of course, but just talking about informally all the success stories, right? For example, if a dean were to just in conversation say, Jane is doing a great job just going gangbusters, you better believe that I'm going to say, that is so good to hear. Well, you know she came to us with a pharmaceutical sales background, right? I'm going to drop those little nuggets as often as I can so that slowly that becomes normalized versus again, hanging on to those old outdated ways that just don't work anymore. One of the things that I heard you mention was this idea of talking to people and bringing people together in this. I'm curious in terms of onboarding, what did some of those processes look like? Because I'm betting you had that same method of collaboration. What has worked and maybe what are some things that you've sunsetted that are maybe a little outdated that haven't stood the test of time? From an onboarding perspective? So that's also interesting. I, we started our talent management shop exactly 11 years ago. And there was really no planning. We, I just sort of jumped in, hit the ground running, which is why I really don't like that phrase. I really should have taken time to plan. Like, what does an excellent talent management shop look like? And given that I did not ask myself that question at the time, I also jumped into what best practice onboarding must look like. And at the time, I thought it was, because I, again, did not have a penchant for jumping in and hitting the ground running, I begged, like literally begged managers to let me have new employees for three days. And after much gnashing of teeth and scars and tears, they granted the three days. But that was really not a good move. So what that three-day onboarding looked like was just a bombardment of information. And in asking employees, which asking employees is very important to me, from day one to the end of their time here, what's working, what's not working, they're like, with all due respect, this is not working. It's too much information, right? So we were trying to sort of inculcate our culture, a lot of training, learn about your benefits on the front end, especially those that with non-traditional backgrounds, as I wanted to get them sort of transition seamlessly into everything. And it was too much. So that was something that we changed. We threw that away. And now it's delivered in more bite-sized pieces, right? Some information is even provided before they join us, that the training program that I mentioned through Advancement Resources, in some cases, they start that training before day one. And I'm curious for all of those who are on the call today or who may tune in later, as they're thinking about me and this is something that I need to do for my organization and for my institution, what are the things that they need to be aware of in terms of having those conversations with leaders on their campus about this kind of approach? How can they best advocate for this and help minimize concerns that those leaders may have? I would say to have some hard evidence that if you have the ability to do even a little bit of it, right before you adopt it as your particular approach, I would say to start monitoring and tracking that. And you can do that through a very analytical, data-driven approach. For example, if you have an HRIS system, run a report on a regular basis, whether it's quarterly or annually, and look at data points like tenure, promotion decisions, for example, how often the employees get promoted and compare the employees with traditional backgrounds to those who don't and see if there is a difference. And if there is, that could go a long way with convincing, again, leadership that this is something that could work for your organization. We also look at performance of those types of skills, not just performance in general, but how are individuals performing in these soft skills, if you will. Every single employee here gets evaluated on, of course, the technical part of their job, right? What I always refer to as the widget building part of their job. But we also evaluate on the soft transferable skill sets. Of course, managers are going to evaluate how much and if the fundraiser raised each year or whether an employee met their target or their goal, but we are also evaluating all of those things that I mentioned earlier, critical thinking, tenacity, professionalism, communication skills, all of that. And what is important about that, because again, that's not rocket science, that's not anything new and sexy, but here those things carry equal weight, which means that the degree to which you hit your goals every year carries an equal weight to the degree that you're tenacious, to the degree that you know how to critically think. So that means you could raise a lot of money, but if you don't play well with others, you're typically not going to last long here. So that sends a huge message to our staff and to leadership, of course, to buy into this approach. And all of that information can go a long way with communicating and convincing any detractors that there is definitely merit to this type of recruiting. And I'm curious, we've got some questions coming in from the folks on the call. So I want to get to those first. How has advertising changed to really encourage applicants that are coming in from outside of this development and advancement world? Quite a bit, Keri. So we used to spend a lot of money advertising in all of the usual places, the Chronicle, all of the higher ed philanthropy leaning publications and websites and job boards. Today, I spend a fraction, I mean, like literally pennies on advertising for two reasons. One, we're no longer looking heavily into the, we still look, obviously, we're never going to not look in those areas, but they're not weighted as heavily as they were. And secondly, we do more hand-to-hand combat, if you will, like beating the bushes, in the trenches, going to conferences, yes, to learn and hone our skillsets, but we're also recruiting. We recruit everywhere. I ran into, I went to Wingstop the other day and the young woman who was at the counter was lovely. I mean, she was effusive. She was, I just loved everything about her. I'm like, where can this Wingstop employee fit in our organization, right? I'm always having my recruiting hat on, but those two shifts have caused us to not expend a whole lot of money. We heavily use LinkedIn. We, again, attend conferences, again, not just for our own benefit in education, but conferences that have attendees of the people that we're looking for. We started an internship program. So we spent a lot of time across the street on our campus talking to students about careers in philanthropy. And many of them did not even know there was such a thing, right? We visit a lot of nonprofits here. We visit a lot of associations. So we're just telling our story and at the same time, keeping an eye out for talent rather than relying on spending a great deal of money because it's very expensive, right, to post in some of these places. We've just changed everything about how we go about finding great talent. Well, and you bring up a good point that you always have your recruiting hat on. And so there is, you know, whether it's the lovely young lady at Wingstop or someone else, how heavy of a lift is it to get those staff up to speed when they're coming from those nontraditional higher ed backgrounds? And how does that kind of process work on the campus? So you think it would be a heavy lift, but I would not use either of those words, heavy or lift. I am, as I said, an advocate against hitting the ground running. And well, let me say that again. I think our managers think it's a heavy lift and that bringing those employees on board, getting them up to speed, so to speak, they assume that it is a heavy lift, which is why it was so difficult to get them on board. It's why they were detractors, right? It's like, you better have time to do that. I have things to do, but individuals who have a strong suite of those types of skills, quite frankly, it's easier to bring them on board, right? They don't have to unlearn anything. They are bringing, for example, if I can identify someone who is adaptable, I mean, think about it, that's going to make for an easier transition, right? There's not a lot of coaching and instruction on the front end about those types of things, right? I don't have to unlearn or deprogram individuals to help them do away with bad habits that don't fit in our shop or anything like that. So I think it's easier. It's not such a heavy lift if they have a non-traditional background because they bring such a, again, suite of strong transferable skills that equate to less time onboarding because they can quickly adapt. They know how to collaborate. They know the value of all of those things. And we have a little bit of a logistics question here, and that does, how does the talent management shop work with this institution centralized HR unit? Are they working together? And are there, how does that kind of process look? Can you tell us more about that? So we have it a bit easy here because I'm at a foundation, right? So we, at our university at LSU, there is centralized HR, but development, all the development resides, that is, at the foundation. So we do all of the hiring, everything, and there's really very little involvement with centralized HR on campus, which I hear just, I don't know, in the wind that that may be a blessing because it can be a little bit problematic, right? So I can't really speak to that because we have the gift that everything under development is here at the foundation. Thank you for clarifying that. I think that is really important. And another kind of logistic kind of question, as you are coaching your managers, coaching those leaders who are making a lot of these hiring decisions, can you give us a little insight about how you help them to identify transferable skills that a candidate might possess during that recruitment process? Not to beat a dead horse, but it really, well, let me, I guess, shed a little bit more light on what I kind of briefly mentioned, but didn't really speak to in detail, and that is our role playing. We have employees to serve in the role of like a prospective donor. And we actually have someone on our team that has a theater background. So we love to tap her to do that. But we map out very realistic scenarios and ask the candidate to sit. We video it. We ask them to engage as they would if they were actually meeting with a donor. Those videos are sent to the managers and go a long way with helping to identify those skills. I mentioned briefly behavioral assessments. We use them a bit sparingly, but there's one in particular that we use that has been very helpful in, to your question, sussing out during the recruiting process whether or not these transferable skills exist. And that particular assessment is a Hogan assessment. It's not unique to any particular industry, which is actually a good thing. And some people are a little bit leery of using that because I'm sure as many of you know on the call, if you're using such a tool during the hiring to make a hiring decision, it can be a little problematic because it absolutely has to have a high degree of validity but the Hogan assessment does. So all of these things, the interview bank of questions, the really detailed role plays, we ask them to complete contact reports, which you can kind of suss out a little bit, the Hogan assessment results. Those are some really specific ways that we're able to do that. Thank you so much. And as we kind of start to wrap today's conversation, I wanna look a little bit first to the future. This is something that the talent management shop you shared has been in existence for 11 years. If we were to fast forward five years, how do you see the role of transferable skills starting to evolve in higher education recruitment strategies? Well, because we're higher ed, some things aren't gonna ever go away, I guess, although that sounds a little bit heels dug in, but I don't think that formal education will ever not be an expectation in the recruiting process, if only to cement that you can start something and finish it. But I think that efforts to determine if these abilities that we're talking about can be applied in a real world scenario, I think that's gonna go to the next level. I really think that this is not a fleeting strategy. I think it's here to stay, but again, it's gonna be elevated. I think there'll be greater expectations on asking about projects that you've worked on to see the manner or the quality at which those projects have been completed. I think there'll be looking at portfolios in a different way. I think there'll be more practical demonstrations beyond a role play to determine that. I think all of that's gonna find its way into the selection process, which will provide a bigger spotlight on those who are really open to and wanna showcase these transferable skillsets. I think advanced analytics is gonna play a role. IA is gonna find its way in there in different ways. I think that then we've seen some organizations, of course, already use this concept, right? I mean, if your ATS uses an algorithm to filter down prospects, that's kind of AI-ish, right? But I think it's gonna look very different along with other types of predictive analytics, if you will, just to elevate this to the next degree. And I'm curious, what's a piece of advice that we need to be thinking about as we're trying to think more about this and how to integrate this? What's that key takeaway that you would share with everyone? I would suggest, if you're successful with integrating this within your organizations, it doesn't end there. Those individuals, because they may be coming into your organization thinking that they're a bit of a unicorn, like, you know, my colleague here has so many years of fundraising experience or philanthropic experience. This person has been in donor relations for 10 years. I don't have that. I think making sure that they are embraced and welcomed into your organization is going to be just as much as a value add than convincing folks on the front end to allow them in the door. And so there's many ways to do that, right? I will always be an advocate for intentional employee engagement. I'm pleased to see that that is also becoming as prevalent as transferable skillsets, right? I saw a director of employee engagement or see those positions cropping up more and more, you know, across the board. Creating an environment where they feel, as I say, welcomed, one that's not defined by just punching a time clock and keeping your head and, you know, spend your eight hours and go home, but instead it is environment that is welcomed in ways that you provide outlets to them to share about themselves and others. So there's these collegial interactions, making it fun at work, making sure you're offering opportunities that may lessen the focus on the fact that they haven't, they don't have a philanthropic background, but heightens the skills that they do have. And there's lots of ways to do that that are engagement focused, I think will create a more successful foundation for those employees to thrive. We have time for one final question, and this came in the comments, but can you talk a little bit about how salaries are determined? If you're thinking about this in terms of transferable skills where someone may have less direct experience and how you maintain equity, but make sure that you're still offering a competitive wage and how you're thinking about that. So I would love to hear if anyone is doing this differently, but it has not impact our identified salaries for positions, the fact that they, you know, do not have that traditional background. Our salaries are not published, that might, you know, put a different angle on it, where there might be an expectation of those that do have traditional backgrounds that they should be paid more. But again, we equally value both sides. And so it has not impacted or changed the salaries that we assign to various positions. I'd love to hear if there's another school of thought out there on that, but we have not. Because again, I don't want to, we don't want to send that message that one is valued more than the other. We are trying to normalize it all. And I think doing that would be just counterproductive. Thank you for clarifying that. Well, that does kind of take us to the end of our time today. And Dr. March, thank you so much for your time today. I have thoroughly enjoyed so much, and I look forward to getting to continue the conversation at the 2024 Case Conference in San Antonio. And that goes for all of you on the call as well. You can register for the district conference right now. We'll have a link here in the chat. So just make sure that you are plugging that in and you get ahead of that early bird rate that ends on March 3rd. We also have district scholarships available. So be sure to visit that link to make sure that your colleagues are applying for those. And that deadline is February 16th. And then finally, we will be right back here on Thursday at two. Claudia Taylor, who is on this call, is going to be leading our next Together. We will be talking with folks from the University of Texas at Austin, who are going to be talking about strategies for engaging with international alumni, how to do that effectively and efficiently. And then we've also got that link of upcoming Together. So make sure you're tuning in. These are a great, no-cost professional development opportunity, and those are available for anyone with that case login. And then finally, we want to celebrate all of you. Case has just opened their 2024 Circle of Excellence Awards. Those are available. The link has the website timelines and criteria, but the most important thing you need to know is the Super Saver rate is only $55. That is only valid through the end of the month. So get on those. And otherwise, we thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you all right back here on Thursday at two to talk about that next topic. So otherwise, have a great rest of your day, everyone.

transferable skills

recruitment

LSU Foundation

job postings

interview questions

behavioral assessments

fundraising landscape

onboarding