How to hire with purpose with Karen Seketa

Tiffany Sauder: Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know I'm feeling this pull away from social media and towards real connection, and that's exactly why I started my newsletter. It's a place for us to connect authentically without having to jump through algorithms. I usually share a little bit about what's going on in my life, my family, practical tips for two career homes, and just generally things that are inspiring me.

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17 years ago I founded a marketing consultancy, and ever since my husband, JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep. That means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life. We love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these and in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too.

I'm Tiffany Souder and this is Scared Confident.

Today we're gonna talk to Karen Scheta. She's my head of talent at Element three. My intention for this podcast is that some of it is certainly looking in the rear view mirror and talking about days of. , but it also is a process of exporting. What are we solving today? And so one of the big things that we've solved recently inside the walls of Element three is Karen has totally revamped our hiring process.

And um, we've have our first, I would say like batch of people hired through that process. And it has created a significantly superior outcome. And so I thought, Hey, we've really learned some stuff. I want Karen to come on and talk about that. And I think the other thing that is really interesting and. Is that Karen's been at Element three for over 10 years, and so the process that she had to break and redo was the process she built.

And I think that's a really unique time in a business and even in a career to realize like, Hey, the thing I've built is no longer working inside of the environment today. How do I look at that with fresh eyes? That can be really difficult. So I wanted to share what we're. Just be generous with what it is that we're learning here at Element three, and also have Karen kind of explore some of those areas with us.

So that's what we're gonna do.

Karen, thanks for coming on.

Karen Seketa: My pleasure.

Tiffany Sauder: So we'll give maybe a little bit of background on where your experience is as an HR pro, because marketing, that word has a lot of different pieces of the pie in it. Just so listeners have context for like, this is kind of where you grew up, what you do, and then how you spend your time.

Karen Seketa: Sure thing. So to really date myself, I guess you could say I've been hiring people since 1989, which is a very crazy number to say out loud. So you would think that I would know it all, like I would know all the tricks and tips. But what the truth is, is that I actually know all the things not to do. So with maturity comes the realization that you're never as smart as you think you are, and you have to be open to.

Being wrong and sometimes going scorched earth with things and starting over. So I have a lot of experience with hiring literally every level of person from a hourly worker in a temporary staffing company to, you know, all different positions at Lilly, which are many. Um, and then also all of my years of hiring within smaller organizations.

And then the last 10 years here at Element.

Tiffany Sauder: So you started your HR career in recruiting? Yeah. I think that's also particular that like it's really where you started, it's where you've spent, if we're gonna take a summary of where you've said the most of your career, it's really been in recruiting. We've built this process that was working pretty well for us.

And then in the last, I don't know, what would you say, when did you think we kind of saw it starting to break?

Karen Seketa: I would say probably 18 to 24 months ago, we did some hiring. Used the same process we've always used and within 90 days, We knew that we had made not just one error in judgment, but a number of them.

And I knew at that point that since nothing else had changed, it was the system and the process we were using that was broken.

Tiffany Sauder: So we had a couple of, yeah, people who joined the organization where we realized this isn't working, and they realized this isn't working. It's a different thing. Even though the outcome is still that you have to let those people go, or you kind of come to terms together on that, it's a different thing when you know the responsibility is really on.

As an employer?

Karen Seketa: Oh, it was, it was a hundred percent on me. And I felt it like all the way to my gut because I mean, I'm pretty good at what I do most of the time, and you'd think for doing it for 30 some years, that you would have the system figured out. And so I had to be extremely introspective thinking about what happened and instead of blaming it on us, just hiring the wrong person.

Mm-hmm. , I had to take full responsibility to the. It was my process. It was just not working.

Tiffany Sauder: So is it worth talking through quickly what our process was? Kind of how it started, here's what we did, here are the steps.

Karen Seketa: Um, without getting too tactical, our process before was a lot of instinct. It was, it was hiring on how you felt about a person in the process, which I know every book you read says not to do that.

But I will say for us, it has always worked. And so while we had a. Rigid processing steps within it to move from one step to the next. You just had to like the person and have a good interaction to keep things moving. We did not interrogate the types of things that we are now, and I think that's why it stopped working.

Tiffany Sauder: So what changed environmentally? Was it just us as a company? Was it the work? Was it the hiring environment?

Karen Seketa: I think we changed, I've seen a pretty significant evolution of talent within our walls. and the people that we did hire and did get right over time, they have just gotten better and better. And then the people who couldn't keep up with that level of evolution left.

And so it was almost like we felt like it was a false indication that our hiring process was working because we did not evolve that while we were evolving everything else that we did within these walls.

Tiffany Sauder: And one of. I feel like unspoken realities of a service business, maybe others too. It's just this is the one we know.

Is it the teeter-totter between if on my right hand is the complexity of the client work and my left hand is the complexity of work we know how to do. Keeping those in balance is hard. And we have literally years where we're like, we wanna go try to find problems that make us sweat again, that we're solving at a level that's pushing us.

And then we start to feel this tension of like, we. A handful of people that know how to do that kind of work, but now it's starting to become a bigger percentage of our work portfolio. We have to go find people who know how to do that from their career or what, or they're trained to do that. And this teeter-totter of keeping those things in balance is, uh, it's a big deal in this kind of a business.

Karen Seketa: Yeah. Interestingly enough, the thing that I have found is that if you really break it down, when you go to hire someone, There are a couple things you're looking at. So you've got your set of non-negotiable skills. There are things they have to be able to do when they walk in the door, and those are things that are usually trained over time.

You sort of accumulate that knowledge and that ability. There's another set of things that are, are called talents that are not things that you can teach somebody, and those are things that were missing we found like we weren't even looking for. Mm-hmm. In some of the people. And those are things like grit, critical thinking skills.

Um, those two alone, if you don't have those, you will not survive in our environment and we weren't even measuring for them. And then you have the whole other set of things that are all teachable. And I think the mistake that a lot of companies make is that they, they wanna require all of the things to get you through the door.

And what I've distilled it down to is make sure they have the basic skills that you absolutely require for them to have when they sit in their seat on the first day and. The grit and the critical thinking and other talents that we require for that particular role, and then just teach them the rest of it.

Mm-hmm. , like we're, we're good at that. Um, and so that's probably one of the pivotal parts that's changed for us. And that is also a place that I see other companies fail when they're in the hiring process.

Tiffany Sauder: So what does it look like today? What's our, what Well, what are you, you were getting your master's at the same time.

Mm-hmm. , which was serendipitous, I think, for us, where you were in this place. Gift getting. Just some really different inputs into the way you were thinking about hiring. So maybe talk about what you were learning and how that started to inform the choices that you made about how it looks now.

Karen Seketa: Yeah. I don't traditionally think academically.

I think more based on theory and experience my own feelings about things and that that generally works well for me. Going back and getting my master's in HR at Kraner has, what it has opened up in my brain is looking at things from an academic standpoint, which has a tremendous amount of value. What it requires that you do is to really distill things down and look at them based on facts, on metrics, on data, on specific processes.

And so what I did was I took what I was learning and applied it to making the changes that I did and, and some of the more specific ones are. Creating this as a multiple hurdle process, which basically means now there's a stopping point at every single step in our process where there's a scoring mechanism and then there's a minimum score that a person has to get to move on to the next step.

And so we're eliminating people as we go, not based on gut feeling, but based on very specific things that we're doing in that particular step. We added in, um, a more rigorous sort of assessment process. and I will say, I know there's a lot of controversy around using assessments when you're hiring, so I wanna be clear about how we use those.

We started using the predictive index and we used both the behavioral and the cognitive. The cognitive is important because it helps you understand how quickly a person can learn. That doesn't mean they can't work here if they get a certain score, it just means we have to put them in the right job.

Just like the behavioral one talks about where they would thrive. The reason that those assessments are important is because we do not use them as a knockout factor. That is not a hurdle, that they get a score and then they pass. That is merely a mechanism to ask the right questions the next time you meet with them.

And so we also move to behavioral based interview questions, and I'm very specific about how I train on that for the people that help with hiring internally. . And so the assessment informs the way that we set up these behavioral based questions.

Tiffany Sauder: So can you, for people who aren't in hr, like what's an example of a behavioral based question and what would a question be if it wasn't behavioral based?

You know?

Karen Seketa: Yeah. Um, it's closed-ended, open-ended, a little bit of what the criteria are, but. There are right and wrong ways to do behavioral based questions too. The way that I teach it here is that you'll ask a question that a person can't answer unless they have an experience to share. So you're going to ask someone a question that starts with something like, tell me about a time when you faced a very difficult problem that you had to solve, and then you just stop the way that people sort of mess up the behavioral based questions, and I'll have people that don't agree with this, but they will then continue to say, and tell me how that turned out, or talk to me about the results, and you're sort of leading the person to the answer when you're adding that.

I have to get people here very comfortable with like putting the question on the table and then just shutting up. Mm-hmm. , and there's a lot of power in that, but it's very hard to do and so you're allowing the person to either be able to answer the question or sometimes they can't, but it's not your job to get them there.

The philosophy behind it is that if they indeed do have that type. Experience or example to share with you. It will be top of mind. You shouldn't have to get them to dig for it if they have to dig for it. It's not something they've either done recently or they've done very often.

Tiffany Sauder: I can see our like cultural aspect of wanting people to feel welcome.

Totally. And being a, like a culture where we really work on having high emotional intelligence. Were like making people. Purposefully or unintentionally feel uncomfortable, the interview process would be a real stretch for us.

Karen Seketa: It's a very big change and I have to be very explicit and specific when I am training someone on how to do it because it doesn't come naturally.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. So that's a piece of behavioral interview. I also know we're doing like, I'll call 'em like practicums, like, so talk about that and because we didn't do that before either.

Karen Seketa: One thing I'll say here. I know talking about these different steps makes it feel like our process is very long and complicated.

One thing I will say about that is that over the last couple of years, I feel like companies have been, um, under unusual pressure to hire fast. And what they're doing is they're shortening their processes and they think that they're not gonna get the hot candidates because they're moving so fast. , I would argue that the process itself, if it's intentional and it's moving quickly and you're constantly communicating with a person and you make the point of entry simple, that that argument doesn't work for me.

Mm-hmm. , it's like people appreciate the ease of, of entry and then constantly being informed of where they're going. And I will lay out this entire process is one of the first emails that somebody gets from me once they apply it and I wanna move them so they, they opt. Instead of me just sort of dragging it out.

Tiffany Sauder: So if I'm a candidate, I, I applied a job. The first email I get from you says, you've entered our process and here's what's gonna take place. Exactly.

Karen Seketa: Um, and I also give them the compensation band so they know what they're getting into from the very beginning. Cuz we like vary the lead. When we hire people, we make them sort of wait for the big reveal of what the compensation is for a job.

You should never do that. It can be a complete waste of somebody's time and very frustrating. Don't force them to come along on the journey just because they're waiting for the information they need that you can give them upfront. So to answer your other question, we did add in a kind of a live exercise, per se, and it's different for every job.

Obviously. It's something that it only should take the applicant about an hour to prep for, but then they come back into our office and they present. Their findings or their ideas or whatever the exercise is, is directly related to the basics of what's required to be able to do this job. So if it's for a, a digital marketing position, then they may put together a couple slides about a solution around.

A digital marketing strategy for a company. Not terribly in depth, but enough to like show that they know what to look for and what words to use. And also to get an idea of their presentation skills because every person in this company is going to be talking to a client at some point. And so that is a requirement to be able to be able to do that.

Tiffany Sauder: So who designs the exercise?

Karen Seketa: The hiring manager.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. The hiring manager. And then is that exercise explained to the candidate?

Karen Seketa: Um, it is introduced. One of the steps in our interview process, so the hiring manager will do an initial phone screen just to sort of make sure that the candidate has what they need to make a decision to keep moving, and that we can do a quick review of their background, that they're qualified.

The next step is they actually come into our office for a more in-depth interview with the hiring manager, and that's at the point where they both talk more about like, what's the predictive index assessment for? And then what does the exercise look like in this process?

Tiffany Sauder: So then they go home and complete the exercise.

Is that, or do they stay here?

Karen Seketa: They go home and then there's some steps in between that. I will talk to them. Sometimes we'll give them a chance to engage. Some other people in our organization, whatever we do, it's to actually be helpful in the process to make sure that this candidate has all the information that they.

Before they ever receive the exercise. Oh, they know it's coming. And once they get it, then they have direct connection to the hiring manager to ask all the questions they need to ask and make sure they have all the information that they need. So they're give a couple days, but they don't do it in our office.

Tiffany Sauder: It's not like they're giving it to 'em. We sit 'em in an conference room and then we come in a couple hours later. That's not,

Karen Seketa: no, they complet it on their own. Okay. A lot of people would say, oh gosh, they could, you know, use chat G B T or they could ask their friend to do it, which is fine. Let them, let, let the person do that because they do then have to actually physically come in and deliver the information, and I will tell you that.

We have three people in the office, the hiring manager, and two other folks that are in that department that will ask them very specific questions about the exercise and so much like behavioral based interviewing. It's really almost impossible to not have actually done the work yourself.

Tiffany Sauder: And then that meeting is an hour, hour and a half, something like that?

Karen Seketa: Yeah, it's usually about an hour.

Tiffany Sauder: And then after that, what happens? They come in and they do the. . That's the final step. That's the final step.

Karen Seketa: And then I will let them know, um, that once I sort of get that group back together and talk to them, if the next step is to give this individual an offer, then I actually set the offer up in a couple of different parts.

So I always give what's called a pre-close. I will send the candidate every bit of information they possibly need to feel comfortable that when they get this final offer in their hands, they know it's. So they'll know compensation, time off, like everything, and I'll send 'em our handbook. They'll look that over and if they have questions, which usually there are questions or two, then we go back and forth and sort of sort all the details out.

So by the time that they get the actual, um, official offer that they would sign, there are no surprises. They know exactly what they're getting. And then the reference checks happen between the pre-offer and the final offer. I don't check references until I absolutely know that the person is comfortable with the offer they're gonna get.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. On average, from like I submitted my application to, I have, let's say the pre-offer in hand. How long has it taken us to get people through that process?

Karen Seketa: Um, so the first time that I ran this process, this new process, I had a candidate who is now working here.

Tiffany Sauder: Share what you did. I think this is really interesting.

Karen Seketa: Um, yeah, I, so I came across this individual, I do a lot of my recruiting directly through LinkedIn. So I had reached out to this person and she was interested in talking to us, and interestingly enough, she wasn't in a huge hurry to make a change. So I had, you know, some leeway in there. And so I, I basically asked her to understand that I was testing this new process and that it may take longer and we may screw some things up.

She had no problem doing that and was so gracious through the entire process and it ended up taking with her probably, I would say four months. Um, part of it was because she had some delays and part of it was because we did, but we were able to work out all of our kinks, like test things out. I was so grateful f to her and it also kind of made it a no-brainer from the perspective of her being a really solid core values fit for our company.

So super happy she did it and she was the first hire under. New process and she's doing great.

Tiffany Sauder: I think that's really interesting that you brought the candidate into the truth, which is a very E three thing to do. Yeah. Um, of like, Hey, this is not a process we've perfected and I need you to be my partner in this.

Karen Seketa: Well, and it was good too to get her feedback, um, and see it from her perspective because she gave me some really good insights that I never would've gotten just sitting on this side of the table. You know, you get very myopic in your systems and your processes because you think. You know, it's like customers, um, that we work with who think they know what their own customers want from them.

You don't, you have to actually ask them.

Tiffany Sauder: So what, in a normal state, that one took four months in a normal state, what do you think It takes us?

Karen Seketa: Um, again, it depends. I've had some that have gone fairly quickly, um, like they have some urgency behind it, and I can always move it as fast as they want to.

Tiffany Sauder: What does that mean, like three weeks?

What's, what's, what's that mean? I don't have any idea.

Karen Seketa: Yeah. I would say a minimum, probably two or three weeks.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, I think that you're an SC on the DISC profile for those people who know that, and Karen plays a really important role on our team. Cuz when the marketplace was like an auction, like talent would become available.

It's like highest bidder, fastest HR team kind of wins the prize. You're like, we're not gonna play that game like we are in this for the long term as a business and we're in it for the long term with these people's career. . And so we need to be attractive enough as a business that people will be willing to wait.

Mm-hmm. , um, for us to go through the process. We need to, and if they can't, that's fine. Totally.

Karen Seketa: Yeah. If they can certainly opt out. And on the other side of it, it has held us very accountable here internally because one of the things that would happen every once in a while is I would have a senior leader in the organization fall in love with somebody and want to circumvent the process and like have their own conversations with them and move them.

And we can attach those times that they happened. Every single person that that happened with no longer works here. It never worked out well for us. So nobody gets to circumvent this process. Mm-hmm. , we all use the same process and we won't play that game anymore. It doesn't work.

Tiffany Sauder: We were just at our company kickoff and you showed a stat of like longevity and it's like over 60% of the company has been here five years or more.

Yes. Yeah. It's crazy. And so when we're looking at the, and not that everybody

has to stay here that long. We want a fit that allows that. Right. And I think that requires, if that's an outcome we want, that requires a process where we get to know each other. And you've always really been an advocate for that too, of, we don't just wear our prettiest, shiniest cultural outfit to all these interviews.

Karen Seketa: Like we need to make sure people understand what it's really like to work here. What's your talk track sound like right now? My mantra in this organization, you know, It's always been, and in my own life is no surprises. And, um, sometimes that can come across as brutal honesty. Um, but most of the time it comes across as transparency and authenticity.

And it's important to me. One of the questions that I ask new hires on their 30 day check-in with me is, are there any surprises? Was there anything I missed? Mm-hmm. . Um, and more and more I'm getting like, no, there were no surprises. You, you guys told me everything to. and we do that with our performance assessment process.

Everything it's is no surprises. I get, if you wanna make me mad, surprise somebody. Yeah, it'll piss me off.

Tiffany Sauder: But I think the things that are true to our culture we're so proud of are things like, this is not a place you can hide. It's not a place you can hide. It's a place of high accountability, which, if you're an achiever, that's music to your ears.

If that's not an environment, Excited about like every week you're gonna know if you crushed it or not. Yeah. Then this is a, this place could feel like a fishbowl. Um, cuz there's like nowhere to hide.

Karen Seketa: No. Which is why we wanna set people up for success. Mm-hmm. , because the people that didn't work out, that's on us.

Yes. A hundred percent. That is not any one of those individuals problems. They did not lie to us. They didn't sneak through the door. Mm-hmm. . We opened the door wide, let them in, and then we failed. . Um, and that's embarrassing. Mm-hmm. . And it's not good for our, our brand. And I hate that, um, when that happens.

So I think it's important that you're being so clear that a person is not blindsided when they walk in here. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. .

Tiffany Sauder: I think the other thing that can be surprising to people is there's a, like a persistence of pace in an agency that it kind of has to be a drug to you. That doesn't mean you don't get to sleep and go home and see your family, but it does mean like,

Most days are big days.

Karen Seketa: Yeah. And I think it's not just tedious tactical work. I will tell you, even, you know, sitting in the seat that I sit in having done this type of work for over 30 years, I am always thinking mm-hmm. . And so there's a mental aspect of it that you have to thrive on them. Yeah. You have to make friends with it.

Yeah. That can't make you tired. And so, For people who really want that. Mm-hmm. , it's perfect for people that it makes them tired because they wanna just learn the thing and then it's done. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. That doesn't work. Mm-hmm. .

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. I think that those are just like cultural misalignments for us, for sure.

What advice do you give a new hiring manager? Well, a lot of my advice is wrapped up in the training that I do for them.

Karen Seketa: Um, I will tell you this is a little bit funny, but, um, when someone starts working with me that hasn't before internally to hire a person, the first thing I tell them, You may experience bitch Karen, like I'm just telling you right now, like, I don't, I don't screw around.

Um, and it is so important to me that I keep this process moving and communicate clearly with the candidate that if you don't have time when the candidate hits your inbox, you look at it. Mm-hmm. , you tell me what to do next when we move through the process. I want your feedback. If you can't do that, I'm, I am not going to go into this with you right now.

Mm-hmm. , so let me know. I'm gonna bother you on Sunday nights. I'm gonna bother you all day long. I don't care how busy you are. But if we're gonna hire someone, then they come first. And so I think people get to see a different side of me. Yeah, it's all true. Uhhuh because typically people here don't work with me on projects.

Um, and when you're doing something like hiring somebody like that, you gotta be all in.

Tiffany Sauder: So I actually, that prompts this thing I wanted to talk about, which. Just because the process was done and you had proven it to be successful, you were very intentional about taking it through the organization. We'll talk about how you did that.

You let the organization know, we've updated our hiring process, um, through quarterly kickoff. And then how and when do you train the hiring managers that are, and the people who are gonna be participating in it? Because I think that's a step, that's a step that's missed. And we did it too.

Karen Seketa: I would just throw someone into an interview that had never done it before without proper coaching.

And you know what they do? They do what they naturally would, and they just talk the whole time. They don't take time to pause and listen. They don't know what kinds of questions to ask. We're all asking the same questions, and it's, it's not a good experience for the candidate. So now I have very specific training that we do.

I have training modules I've created for all aspects of it. Um, through Lessonly. I sit down with the hiring manager and it's not just new hiring managers, it's every single time I hire. If you've done it before, I don't care. We're gonna go through it. , I have really clear documentation that I create specifically for each hire, to walk them through the steps and to record, you know, where we are and how we go.

And you know, we use the applicant tracking system through Bamboo hr, which works great for us. Mm-hmm. , it allows us to communicate back and forth and capture everything there.

Tiffany Sauder: So are you having. People proactively create these exercises in the anticipation of needing to hire into different departments.

Are you, as we go through this, are you having them create them in real time?

Karen Seketa: So I thought about, cuz you know me, I like to do everything ahead of time. Yes, we do that. Um, but sometimes that's not a good idea. Uhhuh and I'm learning. I'm learning. So because the pace of change is so fast in what we do.

Mm-hmm. , um, I am waiting. And it's not until we know at that point in time that we're actually hiring cuz we don't hire a. So it may be a year or more between, um, hiring a particular position. And so I'll create it in real time to make sure that it's actually makes sense and it's accurate to what we're looking for now.

Tiffany Sauder: So not hiring a lot. Let's quantify that for listeners. We're hiring, would you say six to 10 people a year? Last year we hired eight, I wanna say. Yeah, I would say that's, that's accurate. Yeah. Six to 10. So that kind of gives you like a sense of scale for us and for every hire. How many. It depends on the role.

See how many applicants.

Karen Seketa: That is interesting because, um, that's a hard metric for me to pull because I don't passively hire very often. Like I don't post a job and hope somebody signs up while we do post it on our website. Sometimes I have aggregate sites like Glassdoor that pick it up, but a lot of those board postings like Monster and otherwise they don't work well.

So what I do is before I ever even post a job, I proactively recruit. So I have a system that's part of the training where I sit down with the hiring manager and I go through LinkedIn and I just reach out to people. And that works surprisingly well. The other thing is we have a database of future talent that we keep and, and I promise those people that I will come back to them when we have a position open.

Um, and I do. So we go back and look through those individuals first. So a lot of times my job will never actually hit a job board anywhere. Mm-hmm. , we'll just. .

Tiffany Sauder: Um, let's maybe touch on two quick things and then we'll wrap up. I would say big progress we made in 2022 was really solidifying the growth academy.

Yeah. We talk a little bit about what that is and how you've seen that, you know, impact our hiring process. And then I would say in 2022, we also began like over-indexing on building our employment brand and like really telling the stories of our people and what's happening in their careers. and I feel like this is a little bit of like a marketing advertisement by a marketing company for marketing marketers.

Marketing. Marketing. That's right. . So I'm aware of that, but just kinda share what we've done there and, and how that's impacted it.

Karen Seketa: The best way to articulate that is when do I get the aha moments from the candidate? When, when do their eyes really light up in the things that I talk to them. One of them is when they visit our website.

And you know, if you're a candidate looking for a job, you don't come for an interview without having looked at the website. The number of comments I get from people about how much they loved our website and how they, they would dig deep and they would watch our videos that our own employees made about their own experiences, and that means a lot to them.

And so they get a feel of the culture. They can sort of see the space. So that's one place that I think. I always see people just light up. The second one is when I talk about our Growth Academy and what our Growth Academy is, is basically pulling together all of the things we were already doing and focusing our sort of our external brand of Element three and turning the whole thing internally.

So we would take things. Our purpose. Well, those are the same externally and, and internally they're meant to be that way. But like our target audience is different that we go after our three uniques. The things that make us unique, they're different for people inside than they are outside. And so taking that whole e o s vision traction organizer process for anyone that uses that and applying it to our people is what became the Growth Academy.

So the Growth Academy itself is taking what our three uniques are. Which is story, strategy, scorecard, and they're taking the story part and applying it to themselves. So how do I tell my own story? How do I build my own brand and all of the resources below that that help them and support them In doing that strategy, how do I determine what my career path is?

How do I get personal development? Um, although the things that are associated with that, and then scorecard is how do I know how I'm doing, um, and all of the things that are associated. So that becomes what we call our growth. . The nice thing about that is it was, as I was creating it, I remember it was your idea when you first said it, and it, it felt very big to me.

I cuz you're very, uh, visual and I have to really see what you're talking about, but the first time you said it was, why don't we take all these things we're already doing and, and call it something and package it in a way that people can see it all in one place. And when I started doing that, I thought, wow, we we're actually creating something that is not aspirational.

This totally exists. We do all of these things and we do 'em, I think pretty well. So yeah, very well. Very well.

Tiffany Sauder: Uh, okay. We'll end on this. What was our last E N P S score? Karen

Karen Seketa: 94.

Tiffany Sauder: That's an HR mic drop. Boom, we're done. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear you will not decide what happens in my life.

I will. If you wanna get the inside scoop, sign up for my newsletter. We decided to make content for you instead of social media algorithms. The link is waiting for you in show notes, or you can head over to tiffany souder.com. Thanks for listening.

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