Customer Advocacy with Chris Havrilla of Oracle

Announcer 1 (00:01):

You’re listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. We are recording from HR Tech in Vegas. Thanks to our friends and partners at Jovio. We are talking to some of the best minds in HR and business and digging into the most pressing issues in the workplace, so you don’t have to. Here’s your host, William TinCup.

William Tincup (00:20):

Ladies and gentlemen, this is William TinCup and we are podcasting live from Jovio’s booth at HR Tech. I have one of my dear friends and person that I absolutely respect, Christine Havrilla. And Chris, would you do us a favor?

Chris Havrilla (00:33):

Yes.

William Tincup (00:34):

Before we get into the bit, is introduce yourself.

Chris Havrilla (00:36):

Absolutely. My name is Chris Havrilla.

William Tincup (00:40):

Drops mic, walks off stage.

Chris Havrilla (00:41):

Boom.

William Tincup (00:42):

My name is Madonna.

Chris Havrilla (00:43):

My name is Havrilla. It is just one name’s hard now. My name is Chris. Talk about respect and being able to do this with you is such a thrill because he’s my good friend. And I love the conversations we’ve had over multiple years that we won’t admit to how long that is.

William Tincup (01:06):

No, the statute of limitations hadn’t run out on some of these things.

Chris Havrilla (01:08):

Absolutely, absolutely. Working for Oracle. Relatively new to the product team there and running strategy, which is for HCM, for talent. And it’s a really cool job. I love it because it’s like 50%, what should we invest in? What? Why? How do we message that internally, externally, kind of playing connective tissue with all the internal players and partners. And then the other half of it is customer advocacy and advisory. Which is, I think we all know, if you’re going to use tech, actually apply it right.

William Tincup (01:49):

Turns out.

Chris Havrilla (01:49):

Right. It turns out, a hammer doesn’t build a house by itself. So, there’s that side of it. So it’s a kind of dream role for me in a lot of respects to really start to model all the things I’ve studied and the things I’ve done and the ways I’ve done it, which may not necessarily been the only way to do things. And really kind of apply it and try to build some showcases of doing things right. Because we’ve been doing a lot of talking about stuff in this industry around work, workforce, workplace for a long time. And maybe we haven’t knacked it all yet perfectly, but that’s just small rose-colored glasses goals, right?

William Tincup (02:33):

Oh yeah.

Chris Havrilla (02:33):

Fix the world of work. Make work better for people, people better at work.

William Tincup (02:36):

One of the things I love about your career is you’re a disruptor and an innovator together. So, you actually come in, look at what’s there, challenge the status quo, et cetera. When you were with a large payroll provider, unnamed-

Chris Havrilla (02:53):

Unnamed.

William Tincup (02:54):

Unnamed, there’s a perception of that firm and you went in there and literally innovated. And I thought that was just genius that they allowed you the space and the freedom to do that. In Oracle, in similar ways, people have a perception, preconceived idea of what Oracle is, it does, et cetera. And I think the brains actually of hiring you and letting you in and going, “Okay, hey, go do this. Take us to the next place.”

Chris Havrilla (03:25):

And actively blogged about it. They know I am a professional question asker.

William Tincup (03:30):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (03:30):

I question things for a living.

William Tincup (03:30):

Why are we doing that? Why are we doing that?

Chris Havrilla (03:34):

“Why, why, why, what? Wait. Oh, but how come?” Just everything. And I love that they blogged about it, owned it. Because I don’t think it’s a big secret that that’s what I do. But I use my powers for good, not evil. And I love that they not only did it but then said, “We want that. We want that.”

William Tincup (04:00):

They actively sought you out.

Chris Havrilla (04:02):

Exactly.

William Tincup (04:02):

Which again-

Chris Havrilla (04:02):

Which is very cool.

William Tincup (04:02):

… you give them all the kudos, that’s just genius.

Chris Havrilla (04:02):

Exactly.

William Tincup (04:06):

Okay. So I am going to give you a magic wand.

Chris Havrilla (04:09):

I’ve always wanted one of these.

William Tincup (04:11):

I know, right?

Chris Havrilla (04:11):

I love it.

William Tincup (04:14):

So, if you could fix anything in talent sourcing, sourcing of talent, what would you fix?

Chris Havrilla (04:22):

I would fix… This probably isn’t the answer. I don’t know how sexy this is. And I don’t know how innovative this is because it seems kind of like a no brainer to me. But I would squash this notion that it has to be external all the time. And I think we’ve talked about external candidates, we’ve talked about passive candidates, we’ve talked about should you do this, should you do that? And I don’t think most organizations totally get that they’re competing for their own talent all the time. And that they have skills and capabilities that they don’t know, that sometimes the people don’t know.

William Tincup (05:00):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (05:00):

And so, how do we leverage data and tech to start giving us insights even about our own people? And why does talent acquisition and talent sourcing always need to be externally focused? And there are some big systemic issues. There’s some insight issues. There’s a few issues of why, and beyond mobility, right?

William Tincup (05:24):

Right, right, right, right.

Chris Havrilla (05:25):

Look, we have real problems. There’s people shortages, skill shortages, talent shortages, every kind of shortage ever. And we don’t seem to focus on the fact or care sometimes. We talk mobility, we talk developing, reskilling, upskilling. We talk a lot of stuff about it, but we still have silos even within talent. And so, I would transform by going, “Unleash these people on anybody.” And why do we have to protect and make it hard for literally everybody to keep our people?

William Tincup (06:09):

I did a briefing for a talent marketplace type of vendor, and there’s about 80 people on the call. We had about two hour schedule. And they started off, they said, “William, you’re a thought leader.” I died a little bit.

Chris Havrilla (06:22):

Right. Die a small death.

William Tincup (06:24):

Thanks, I’m vomiting in my mouth. Thanks. They do this bit and then they said, “Okay, take us, take us. What is going on?” And I said, “Here’s the deal. If you don’t offer up opportunities to your own people, someone else will.”

Chris Havrilla (06:40):

Right.

William Tincup (06:41):

It’s that simple.

Chris Havrilla (06:42):

It is that simple.

William Tincup (06:43):

So get good at it quickly.

Chris Havrilla (06:45):

It is easier. I literally studied this so deeply when I was at Deloitte, right? And it was ridiculous how many systemic issues that there were. Silly things like policies of you could only get a 4% increase for a lateral move and maybe only eight to 10%. And that’s like aggressive.

William Tincup (07:07):

Oh yeah.

Chris Havrilla (07:08):

For a quote, “promotion.”

William Tincup (07:10):

That’s how you lose people.

Chris Havrilla (07:10):

And that’s exactly how you lose people. Where’s the pay to stay data, right?

William Tincup (07:15):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (07:15):

I can’t afford to give that person a $25,000 raise.

William Tincup (07:18):

Can you afford to lose them?

Chris Havrilla (07:19):

Can you afford to lose them and still give whoever comes back in a $25,000 raise on top of that?

William Tincup (07:25):

Add in all the recruiting costs, the training costs and all that other…

Chris Havrilla (07:28):

Exactly. The time to productivity. Everything.

William Tincup (07:30):

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Havrilla (07:30):

Right. I don’t understand that.

William Tincup (07:32):

I do because…

Chris Havrilla (07:35):

I want to. Explain it to me. Please.

William Tincup (07:36):

Okay. I think it’s the difference is sales and marketing. We play doubles in tennis, right? So in sales and marketing, you blame each other. So if the leads are bad, sales blames marketing. The leads are bad, you sent over the wrong leads, these aren’t the right leads. If marketing then has that, you’re not selling aggressively enough, you’re not doing demos, you’re not following up with it. Okay. In recruiting and HR, much the same thing, where recruiting has historically dropped at onboarding.

Chris Havrilla (08:10):

Right.

William Tincup (08:12):

Done. We leave at the… Offer letter signed. Great. Done. That’s your problem, YP, MP, your problem, my problem. And this is, I mean, 200 years of just… That’s when you say entrenched historical systemic. Yeah.

Chris Havrilla (08:32):

That.

William Tincup (08:33):

It’s that because they’re still blaming each other. So how do you pull the recruiters through? Pull their data, the systems, the process, how you pull that through and then say, “It’s okay. These people, fair game. And oh, by the way, yeah, it’s better that we source them here and give them another opportunity because there’s people outside of our organization that are going to source them”?

Chris Havrilla (08:56):

It’s easier for them to get more money, more challenge, a better manager outside. And that’s just wrong. But then why are we still trying to solve every business problem with recruiting?

William Tincup (09:09):

Yeah.

Chris Havrilla (09:10):

Right? External recruiting anyway, right? All the woes of the world. Why is it talent acquisition’s responsibility to fix the broken attrition issues and what’s causing those and the systemic issues. If you’re going to put it all on talent acquisition and talent sourcing to keep fixing the problems of a business, then unleash them and let them do it. Let them source internally, let them source externally. Give them data and insights. And by the way, that data can even help those workers help themselves.

William Tincup (09:41):

A hundred percent.

Chris Havrilla (09:41):

And when you do have a brilliant manager, they can, but managers are busy holding onto their talent.

William Tincup (09:47):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (09:47):

By giving them no options.

William Tincup (09:49):

In fact, that’s a tell of a bad manager.

Chris Havrilla (09:50):

It is.

William Tincup (09:50):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (09:51):

It absolutely is. But they are so worried that nobody can backfill that.

William Tincup (09:56):

That’s right.

Chris Havrilla (09:57):

And it snowballs. So, that’s what I would transform.

William Tincup (10:03):

Drops mic, walks off stage. Thank you so much for this.

Chris Havrilla (10:04):

Boom.

Speaker 4 (10:09):

You’ve been listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. Live at HR Tech, graciously sponsored by Jovio. For all other HR, recruiting and sourcing news, check out recruitingdaily.com.