Episode 72 : Meet the Speakers - Gil Cohen

Dear Corner Office

Hi thank you so much for joining us today I have with me, Gil Cohen. And he is one of the speakers at my Summit, which is actually next week. So, Gil, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing today?
I'm doing great. How are you doing?
I can use the map. But that's a whole other story is like the rant the weeks going into the last few days going into the summit are always like extra exciting, tiring. But I'm energized and sleepy at the same time. Is that a thing? It
is, it is a thing I'd say Be wary of the post lunch curb dip. If you're expecting a nap, I expect you'll you'll be sleeping sometime when to this afternoon.
I agree with you on that. So I want to I want to get some clarity like are you like an American in Canada, Canadian that comes to America like where are you exactly?
I am give just north of Toronto. The city I live in Vaughn has a really catchy tagline the city above Toronto, it's really, we're really so proud of ourselves that we tie ourselves to, to Toronto. But no, I was born in the US. I lived in the US in a variety of places, mostly in the northeast, until I was eight years old, then move to Canada and haven't looked back since then, as my family likes to say, well, most of us are American by birth and Canadian by choice.
I love it. I love it. So I always think Canadians like cold weather more than American. Or you really hold on and enjoy the summers better than we did it. Maybe it's about
a little bit of both. Look, I enjoy having four seasons, I enjoy that. I don't mind the cold. I mean, once we get into extremely cold temperatures, I don't love going outside. But in the same vein, I don't love going outside in extremely hot temperatures either. So we're good with it. And the funny thing is, is that the way it works is we're actually south of a lot of parts of the US. We're south of Minnesota, we're around the same areas, I think around Milwaukee or so. So there's a lot of American places that are further north of us and get more extreme weather. We're actually the southern part of Canada, we're the spoiled part of Canada.
I love I love the way you say that. I remember many years ago, I lived in Massachusetts for a few months. And one of my co workers went well, you should have known it's gonna be cold here with Canada south of us said, Oh my god, I'm a math person. Not a geography person. But good point. So after that, I always had to like where's Canada in relation to this location? Did I did I knew what the how to how to dress for the winter?
Absolutely. I was actually born in Massachusetts in the middle of an ice storm. So I can definitely attest to the fact that it it gets cold there.
Yes,
definitely. So you're you're an HR professional, you run your own company, what was the name of your organization? And what do you do there?
It's employee experience design, I have to actually say, I'm not an HR professional. I never actually technically been in HR for the first 16 years of my career. So I was a consultant, working for HR professionals working for leadership teams, but it was mostly around talent management, focus on behaviors, that kind of thing. But I was never actually in HR. Then for two years, I worked within an organization. As manager, director of employee experience, HR was one of the items that I covered. But I also worked on strategy I helped with technology facilities, different elements like that. So I now I've been working for the last two, two and a half years. Wow, I can't believe it says time has flown on employee experience, which is which works a lot of the times with HR groups, especially the way companies are structured by but I always am careful to say I don't want to present myself as something I'm not and I'm not. I'm not an HR person, certainly not at heart. I also don't love the phrase HR, the term EHR. i For me, the semantics of it matter. I don't love referring people as resources, but that's the history of where it comes from.
Let's talk about that. Add ooh, I take issue with that too. Um, human capital is my, my biggest issue with like, Do you realize in the US, you're saying human capital? They're like, Yeah, I don't understand the problem. Well, let's talk about chattel slavery, human capital. And they're like, but that's not. Or when we say marketplace, and when we're talking about a job board. And here, we're going to build a marketplace for women to find jobs. Yeah, you might not want. And it's, it's such a disconnect, and how you are utilizing certain words when you're talking about people. And so it just makes me wonder, it doesn't make me wonder, it just really shows the disconnect, and why some people don't like certain HR departments in organizations, but there's a huge disconnect and in the terminology itself, but Okay, so now you can see why deal and I get along.
I'm grateful you went out, you went to the human capital piece before I did, because that was my next one. Because as much as I dislike human resources, human capital is just that much worse. So thank you for touching on that. I appreciate that.
So I really liked how you said like, I'm not an HR, but this is how I support employees, by engaging with HR and these areas. And I think it's really important for people to know you can still support HR, in your own areas of expertise. So thank you so much for clarifying and sharing that, because I said it for a reason. So other people, oh, he's an HR. Now let's talk about what Phil really does. So employee experience is really important. Your session with us, is really interesting, because I had to do or ask you to do this particular topic.
We talked about a few. What is it about your Why should people and I'm about to share what the cover is, again? But why should people really join your, your session on Thursday next week, people should join my session, I think, well, first of all, because it's between some other amazing sessions. And if you have nothing else to do, then make sure to join maybe. But for the session itself, recruiting and recruiting processes. I think a lot of them miss the mark in a lot of leaders become frustrated as you build a recruitment process, and you have to build it from scratch. You take a lot from other people. And what ends up happening is you don't do what's right by your organization. One of the things for me that throughout my career that has been fundamental in employee experience captures that is that every organization is unique. Every group of people is unique. So it's not about taking what was the best practices or this is what Google does, or whatever it is, and trying to apply that for your organization. It's about understanding how to capture those ideas, how to capture the uniqueness, and translate that into processes and practices, where you'll be able to thrive in building that recruiting process, as opposed to facing frustration facing pushback, or facing irritation from people down the road, who don't either don't understand or won't be able to support the process.
I think you're on mute.
Of course, I'm on mute, they could sort of can't hear my brilliance that was saying. And I love how you talked about the frustrations. We often think once we get it done, it's done. But it's not quite done yet. We still have to work the process and it makes some changes and it takes time and effort. And so I really appreciate you doing that. Doing this topic, because starting from scratch can see very stressful, right? Overwhelming and having somebody who has done it before really join in and say hey, this, these are some things to do. These are things to look out for and sharing their lessons learned. And you understand that deals real. His expertise is also an employee experience. And so how do you marry that right in in that recruitment process? And I think other people often think internally, right, how do we make this process easy for us? People are looking for a job. It doesn't matter if it's clunky if they really want it, they'll do it. It's like you You're going to miss out on candidates that are like, You know what, this is 18 extra steps and those other places three, not nobody's posting their their pay. So so you're both at ground level, your branding is about the same. I don't know, either one of you you're not, you know, Nike. It really does. It really does make, make it more important in that aspect. So I really, I really liked the bringing that time at all together.
Yeah, I Sorry to interrupt there. But I really want to highlight exactly what you said that they make the process based on what's easy for them, what works for them without a consideration of when it comes to recruiting process, the experience is all about the candidate experience. And the candidate experience and I've seen it with myself in the past, I've seen it with my wife as well, I've seen it with colleagues, the candidate experience can quickly turn you off of even applying. I mean, how many times have we seen you know, if you follow LinkedIn or whatever, people talking about how you have to put in your resume, and then you have to fill it all out again. And I'd be willing to bet most companies that have to do that have lost many, many people just at that step alone. So you're losing out on good candidates, because they don't want to jump through hoops to work for your company. I mean, the paradigm has changed, the perspectives have changed where yeah, maybe 50 years ago, companies could get away with saying, Yeah, you're lucky to work for us, you will do whatever we say now, especially in a global market with I love millennials and Gen Zed bringing a different attitude to it. Companies are no longer in the position to just say we'll put whatever out there and they'll come to us.
I absolutely agree. And I love that. So if you're trying to figure out what we're talking about what is really going on, I'm gonna pop this up real quick. Gil is speaking at my virtual Summit, talking about using data to retain underrepresented talent. And he's going to be discussed specifically building a recruitment process from scratch. And he breaks in employee experience aspect of desks, his area of expertise. So you definitely definitely want to join him. Now, before we leave, go, I gotta I gotta know, I gotta know. There's some things on your wall, like what was really going on like?
That is mostly mostly my son's artwork, there are a few pieces by my wife, especially up top, but I tried to showcase my boys are at work. But it started accidentally, just at the beginning of COVID, when we all had to figure out, you know, a place in our homes to do these calls. I mean, prior to COVID, I was always working in person on client sites. And so now all of my calls were here, my boys were home. Because they couldn't be in school, my wife was also a teacher, so she was home with them. She kept them occupied with a lot of artwork. And I'll plug art hub for kids on YouTube, which is great for little kids. Learning how to draw, it makes it really easy for them step by step. There was actually a brief time, my boys were taking requests. And so a few of these on the wall behind our requests that my boys did, but then they got sick of it. And what's just fascinating for me to think is that when they first did this work, they were 10 and six, and now they're 13 and eight. So it's it's an interesting reminder of how quickly time flies.
Yes, that is yeah, we've been at this for a while now. And we're not done yet. So yeah, and I, I'm one of the people like I refuse to let this be my normal. This is like a, we're passing through this point in time. And we're building up different strengths. We are developing different tactics and tools as well as skills by by living through this time. So hopefully, empathy is one of those empathy for mankind. So we'll see. Get out any final words for for those watching us?
I know final words rather than just come join us. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. I'm really looking forward to all of the the other talks I mean, it's such a valuable topic to really understand what it means to maintain a diverse employee population and what it means to really treat them right treat them well. And so I look forward to all of the topics and I really appreciate it having the opportunity to participate.
Glad you could join us so everybody, be sure you go to diversity data dot positive hire.co Big O reg. Sure, come join us live. We're starting at 11am. Eastern time. So if you're on the Pacific coast, we got us at and we didn't we didn't make y'all try to get up at six. We understand so and we're in the at 2pm. So for those on the East Coast, like, look, I have to work all day like I got you. So we're gonna end at 2pm that way you still have you can you have a whole three, four hours in the morning? A whole other three hours in the evening plus, we added a second day. I told somebody I took Christina yesterday, we added a second day. But the first year I did it, it was five days. I don't know if I'm I don't know. We added a second day compared to last year. Last year. We did one day. This year. We're doing two and 2020. We did a whole week. Don't ask me why I did that. At the very beginning of the pandemic, but I have learned a lesson. Don't do it again. So we're gonna say one or two days, everybody, be sure to join us. It is complimentary to join. And well, you'll have a week to watch the replay. So everybody have a good week. And Gil, I look forward to having you join me next week. Yes, yeah, me too. All right. Bye, everybody.