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Green Room: Nicole Stephens

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In this episode of The Chad and Cheese podcast, recorded live from The Shaker Green Room at Recfest USA, Chad and Joel sit down with Nicole Stephens, Recruitment Marketing Manager at Floor & Decor. Nicole who shares her approach to employer branding and recruitment marketing, focusing on making work environments better and more enjoyable. She emphasizes the importance of doing more with less, offering actionable insights on maximizing impact with zero-dollar budgets.


Nicole also highlights how companies can enhance their candidate experience without spending a fortune, using examples from brands like Microsoft and Duolingo. She digs deep into the challenges talent acquisition professionals face, stressing the need to understand the business and make meaningful changes, rather than focusing solely on metrics like social media likes.


The discussion touches on important topics like employee advocacy, retaining talent, and the critical role of data in recruitment. Nicole shares practical advice on collaborating with other departments, automating processes without losing the human touch, and the importance of taking action, no matter how small. Finally, Nicole’s call to "work like a European" and embrace more holidays underscores her belief that breaks lead to better productivity and creativity.


ENJOY!


PODCAST TRANSCRIPT


Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.


Joel: Alright, let's do this. We are live from Recfest USA in Nashville, Tennessee at the Green Room.


Chad: Green Room.


Joel: Sponsored by our friends at Shaker Recruitment Marketing.


Chad: My favorite color, by the way.


Joel: As we welcome Nicole Stephens. She is recruitment marketing manager at Floor & Decor. Nicole welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.


Nicole Stephens: Thanks for having me, let's go.


Chad: There we go.


Joel: Glad to have you here. So it's a little warm, but I want you to like power through this. Give us a Twitter bio about who you are and what you do.


Nicole Stephens: Yep, so I'm 90 days into my new company. I do employer brand and recruitment marketing. And my goal is to make work suck less because we spend so many hours there. Let's make it better.


Chad: Yeah, so we're not dying at our desks. Yes.


Nicole Stephens: That's the goal.


Chad: That's yeah, let's not do that. Let's not do that.


Joel: You wasted no time.


Chad: Interesting. Well, she led right into it. It just makes sense.


Joel: I know. I know.


Chad: So it's interesting that the Japanese actually created a word for people who overworked themselves to death. Can't remember what the word is, but they actually created it. Almost feels like our culture is getting there. What do you think about that?


Nicole Stephens: Yeah, I feel like we do work really hard and I would love to take a page from a couple of the Europeans here today and get some more holidays going.


Chad: Amen, sister.


Nicole Stephens: I'm all for working hard, right? I love what I do. And I think most of us here do. But someone asked in a session earlier, if you won a 100 million dollars, would you still do this work? No, we'd all be on a beach together, right?


Chad: Yeah. Yeah.


Nicole Stephens: Maybe we'd nerd out and talk about it. But ultimately, we're all here for the money. So we love what we do. We're lucky to do that. But yeah, I think introducing more breaks makes us better, gives us time for inspiration, and just gives us a break. Come back stronger.


Chad: Do you hear that Cheeseman? Work like a European.


Joel: There's no fear of us overworking. Ever. Ever. So Nicole, you've relatively come off stage from your presentation. What'd you talk about? What's some of the takeaways from your presentation?


Nicole Stephens: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll tell you the part that I didn't black out for and what I can remember. So we talked about zero dollar budgets, right? 'Cause that's what we all have these days. Do more with less. Budgets are tight. Sales and marketing. Here's all the money. Employer brand, talent acquisition, zero dollars. So it talks about tactics that we can use across the candidate and employee lifecycle that costs nothing. How can you improve your candidate experience, your career site, your job ads, XYZ, all these different tactics that we can do a better job with to make people happier, give a clearer representation of what they're getting when they come to work for us. So using examples of big companies like Microsoft and Duolingo. Well, Duolingo is not that huge, but, and then also smaller examples like Buffer, Salary Transparency, Plane, CareerSite. So drawing inspiration from different companies, different regions, industry, sizes, take time to look around. What are other people doing? How can we actually make things better?


Chad: So it's interesting because you're right. The whole zero budget thing, because we're seen as a cost center and we're not because sales and marketing wouldn't exist without us. So what do we have to do to be able to demonstrate that without the actual people doing the work, generating the products and the sales and the client retention and so on and so forth, without us, the entire organization falls apart. So we need more budget to be able to get people, talented people in the seat faster. What do we have to do to be able to actually demonstrate that to the C-suite so we get more budget?


Nicole Stephens: I think there are two things and that's a great question. So the first is understand the business, right? And I'm so guilty of this. I've worked at companies that we've talked about and I've joked with coworkers, like I don't really understand how we make money. That's on me. We have to understand as TA professionals, how the business functions. Have a coffee chat with your finance person, have a coffee chat with your ops person, supply chain, understand how the bottom line gets drawn and be part of those conversations. Because we're always bitching that we don't have a seat at the table, right? We wanna see, we're gonna make our own seat, earn that seat, show that you can have that seat and have those conversations about the bottom line. If we don't have a supply chain team, what's the impact to the business? We've got to start with those numbers. And I'm not a numbers person, but we have to do it. 'Cause if we're just sitting here, like we got 38 likes on our posts, who gives a shit? Who cares? Also, that's a terrible number.


Chad: CEO doesn't care. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]


Nicole Stephens: But who cares? And your CEO might not be on LinkedIn, you know, he's like, whatever. So I think the first is business acumen and companies who can buy into that and even provide it for their own employees. Like my current company is working on that, which I think is amazing are going to see improvements. And the second thing, and I alluded to this in my talk, but we're all here, right. There're hundreds of TA leaders from literally across the world, mostly US, but we've all these ideas floating around, right? What are we gonna do? When we get home, right. We're all bitching about how tired we are and we're going home and we're so excited to meet everyone.


Chad: So hung over.


Nicole Stephens: But so excited for our own bed, right? Probably hung over. And then when we get home and Monday comes, we have to make up all these emails. We have all these meetings that we've missed. We have so much stuff to do. How are we making time to actually implement some of these really tactical or really thoughtful strategies that we've learned about? I think that can be a downfall from conferences. And I'm hoping this is a different one. You have all these leaders, you have all these great ideas, make time to actually implement some of these.


Chad: Yeah. Yeah.


Joel: I'm sure you're connecting with a lot of your EB friends here at the conference. You guys get together, talk shop. What would be sort of the number one advice for the employment brand professionals out there listening for the year to come? What's your number one tip for being successful?


Nicole Stephens: That's a great question. I mean, I think, again, I would almost lean on take action. So much hasn't changed. The employee engagement staff from Gallup, 33% of employees report being engaged. That's terrible. That is literally terrible. And that hasn't changed for a really long time. So we're out here. We have smart people, right? You have great, intelligent, thoughtful, strategic people here. Why are we not able to change that? So I think first and foremost, it's like, take action. I don't care how small it is. Once you can start showing more applications, reduce time to hire, you know, more time on page that leads to more applications and bring in that business acumen. That's the first thing. And I think the second piece of advice, and I've been working really hard on this the last couple years, so I feel like I can now tell people do this, is talk to more people. I know we're all tired. We have so much shit to do, right? We have so many meetings and life and everything, but having coffee chats, going to conferences, listening to podcasts, and just exploring what companies aren't on your radar. Like, who's small? Like, when I said Buffer today, a lot of people were like, yeah, Buffer's salary transparency is gold standard. And a lot of people haven't heard of that, but maybe it can inspire you to implement 10% of what they do.


Nicole Stephens: So I think it's getting out of our bubble. Both, "Yeah. I'm so busy at work, I don't have time." You do have time. We all have time. Jamie Diamond reads five newspapers a day. If he has time, right, we have time. And I think the other thing is talk to people outside of your industry and your region and your size. Like what's a company in India doing? What are they doing in the UK and things like that.


Chad: So don't you think with all of these problems that when you come to a place like this, we're at Recfest, and you see all of these professionals all over from all these countries, or all these companies, and countries, the answers to all the problems are really here already. I mean, people have already...


Nicole Stephens: Mic drop.


Chad: They've already in many different cases, like the salary transparency, right? That's one piece of an issue that some companies have. That's already been figured out. That's the gold standard. Okay. Check. Right. Then you go to the next one and then the next one and the next one. So I think you're 100% correct. If you're talking to people, especially professionals who are trying to tackle these things that the answers are already there. What the hell is our problem?


Nicole Stephens: Okay. Mic drop. Like we can go home now. Yes. I just sat in on a great session by Preston Sharpson and he laid out 20 tactics in 30 minutes that you can do. And I'm sitting there, that one wouldn't work. We already do that. That's a great idea. You're 100% right. It's looking at your candidate experience, it's looking at your employee experience. Where are we doing great? Where do we need to improve? So many companies are already doing a great job. So we don't always need to reinvent the wheel. If you have new ideas, a 1000% go do them, but take the time to look at other companies and see how can you tweak that for you? You're right. The people who can make these changes are in this room, this tent, whatever this venue. We're all here. So it's making time to like keep looking for inspiration in new places and actually taking that action.


Chad: I don't think you're gonna ask a question after that.


Nicole Stephens: Yeah. We're all going home.


Joel: I'm hearing a Jamie Diamond fan, which is what I enjoy.


Chad: Yeah, not so much. Yeah.


Joel: No, not a Jamie Diamond fan, but his reading prowess is impressive. You work for Floor & Decor. I'm gonna say not the sexiest brand on the planet.


Nicole Stephens: Fair enough.


Joel: Let's dig deep into this coffee chat question because I think although it's not sexy, everyone that applies is a potential consumer of the product. Talk about the discussions you have with marketing. How do you guys work together, coordinate, messaging? How does that work and what tips would you give for companies that are trying to make that connection?


Nicole Stephens: Yeah. So not the sexiest brand. Fair enough. And I think coffee chats have... I gave a talk a couple of months ago at Disrupt HR, completely on coffee chats because they can literally change your career. My talk today came from a coffee chat with James Ellis and I was bitching about employee advocacy and said, "I don't wanna do employee advocacy anymore. I'm so tired of this, copy and paste program." And he said, "Well, redefine advocacy." Mind blown. So I did. Advocacy is no longer to me, a program that people are in. It's every touch point. And that's what I rambled on for, you know, 30 minutes about. So having someone who's smarter than you, a lot of people in this room, right, are more intelligent than I am and more experienced, have those coffee chats with those people and have those conversations. What are your challenges? Advocacy. I'm so tired of it. Redefine it. I was like, I felt like I almost just had permission to do something. And then I was able to redefine it and say, "Hey, at our company, we're not defining advocacy as a program where you copy and paste content. We're defining building advocates as doing things the right way that you mentioned and building touch points and that create real advocates."


Chad: It's giving yourself permission at that point, right? So to be able to try to like piece this puzzle together that we're talking about, I think that the coffee chats are amazing. But it's also expanding your network to have chats and be more uncomfortable with some of the chats that you're having. 'Cause James Ellis and I have some pretty uncomfortable chats for God sakes, and they're not all about employment brand. But at the end of the day, it almost feels like we stay in a bubble and then we give ourselves this excuse that we're just way too busy. Well, if we're way too busy, we're going to be in the exact same state that we are right now in six months, in six years. So the big question is, what can you do? Because you are busy, right? You're a busy person. What can you specifically do? And for the audience out there, what can they do to give themselves permission? How do you execute something like that?


Nicole Stephens: Like execute permission?


Chad: Yeah, not just the permission, but giving yourself time and then being able to... So how do you currently do it? And what would you like to do more of?


Nicole Stephens: Yeah, so I'm a little old school. I'm a thousand years old. I literally calendar block and I will say like, "Look for stuff." I recently set up a meeting. So we're starting it this upcoming week and I called it a what if meeting. So it's a meeting with someone in learning and development and someone who's like an HR, BP/culture new role that we're still defining. And I literally said in the agenda, bring specific examples. Don't come. We're not just gonna like chat. We can do that at lunch, right? But bring examples that you would like to see us influence. And the only caveat is you have to have some control over it. So this can't be our social media sucks 'cause we don't own that, right, marketing does. But bring ideas that learning and development owns. Maybe it's a talent management program pilot. Bring an idea that culture can own, you know, and the concept of that call or that meeting, it's 30 minutes. It's like bring tangible examples and the goal is the last five minutes are action items.


Nicole Stephens: It's, "Hey, what are you gonna own? Hey, is this realistic? Great. We're gonna take this, go talk to this person and regroup." So I think it's like, it's taking away those excuses for ourselves. 'Cause you're right. If we don't start making these changes, we're gonna be back here next year. How can we make changes?


Chad: Same shit. Different day.


Nicole Stephens: Exactly. Different outfit, maybe I'll wear a kill. Who knows? Like we're gonna be having these same conversations.


Joel: Talk about data and how data impacts your decisions strategically, tactically. What milestones do you look at to measure success?


Nicole Stephens: I'm obsessed with this question and I wish we had seven hours, but I've worked at a lot of companies that have not been data driven. We say we are, right. We're data driven 'cause we think people like that and wanna work there, but we're not. I managed a million dollar social media budget for employer brand alone, the only data people cared about was did the budget spend out? Yeah, it spent. They didn't really care. I would try to explain the click through rate. It's above industry average. They didn't care. And so first of all, I will get to your question, but I think the first thing is when you look at brands that you think have their shit together, right? This is a huge brand. They're not always together. They're not always operating in this really advanced maturity level that we might think. I think the first thing is kind of let go of those preconceived notions that because someone's a big brand name, they know what they're doing 'cause that's not always the case.


Nicole Stephens: So in terms of data, it's digging into, for me, it's figuring out every single avenue. Is it review sites? Is it, you know, we use phenom. So what are the different pieces of data we have? And then it's figuring out based on where's our problem right now. Well, it's, you know, between clicks and applies. So people see the JD or the job ad, which I'm working on, and they're not applying. Okay, great. That's my area of focus. These are the data points for this next month or quarter. And then you move on and you pick a new one. But that goes back to the business acumen too. Hey, we're struggling in whatever the sales department, the marketing department. So our work here affects our sales hires and it's just bringing it back. But I think you have... I'm not a numbers person. Like numbers over 14, I'm like whipping out a calculator, you know, like seven plus whatever. But you have to get comfortable and start learning those because the people that you're reporting up to, I'm gonna go back to social right, 'cause it's where I came from. They don't care about the click through rate.


Nicole Stephens: They don't. You can report on that all day, but they don't care. They don't care if it's above industry average. They care, are you filling roles and are you filling them quickly? So it's looking at all the systems you have. It's LinkedIn, it's Facebook, it's phenom, it's, you know, whatever. It's Indeed. And picking out which of these bajillion data metrics that we have matter and putting those into a couple slides max that people can understand at the top 'cause they have a million other things going on.


Chad: Yeah. So if you could choose any technology that was out there today and you had the budget to be able to pull it in because it would fix a problem for you, what would it be?


Nicole Stephens: Oooh, that's such a good question. I don't know. Actually, I'm trying to think of our pain points right now, which is high volume hiring and like huge growth, and brand awareness.


Chad: What do you use for like the candidate engagement process? What tech?


Nicole Stephens: That could use some help.


Chad: Okay.


Nicole Stephens: I think honestly, a pain point that I would like to solve for is employee engagement metrics. So finding a company that supports with, you know what I mean? Like stuff like that. We're potentially doing an EVP next year. It's our 25th anniversary as a company. So we started in 2020, 2025.


Chad: So employee engagement for the purposes of better attrition, productivity. I mean, what part?


Nicole Stephens: Both. I think retention, not that our retention is bad, but you all know if we're spending less time filling, once we get people in, we've done so much work to get them in. We spend so much money, so much time figuring out are we gonna use Indeed? Are we gonna use, you know, EasyHire? Are we gonna use whatever? We spend a lot of time on that. Understandably, we're TA. I have a huge interest in once we get candidates, ensuring that they're happy and ensuring that we're supporting them because I've worked places that are not great. And that has just created in me this goal of like, I wanna make sure we're not selling you garbage. So I think having more like tools and a clear strategy on measuring that, whatever that looks like would be great.


Joel: You touched on Glassdoor for a second, and there was a time where it was really easy to look at reviews and there was one site and that has expanded into TikTok and social media. And I know I'm shocked on a regular basis at how anonymity doesn't matter anymore. If I'm getting likes and re-share, like that's what's important. How do you as an employment brand person think about social media and employees spouting off about you and what you're doing? Do you empower those employees to talk? Do you stifle it? How important is the three paragraph review of old versus what we're seeing now? How do you manage that?


Nicole Stephens: That's a great question. I'm obsessed with feedback. So I don't care if it's negative. I've worked at companies where I've been told, "Hey, this is a bad review, take it down." Excuse me? And I had that pushback. And I said, "Absolutely not." That's not the answer. You need to dig into why. And if it's one review, fine. If it's a theme, great. So we go through every quarter, pull the themes from Glassdoor and Indeed, 'cause those are our main two and try to figure out, what is the answer. In terms of if people are leaving negative feedback, okay, why? I'm not gonna discount them just because it's a former employee and we lean on that excuse of saying, "Oh, they're a former employee. They're disgruntled." Who made them disgruntled? We did. And why? That's not to say you don't take things with a grain of salt, right? Not everyone's gonna give a fair assessment on their way out. But I think it just goes back to the excuses. We are comfortable making excuses. Goes for me too, right? I don't wanna go to the gym today. We've got to be more comfortable taking ownership and accountability. So if people are leaving negative reviews, look at why.


Nicole Stephens: One thing I talked to someone about recently was, at what level do we want to drill down? So if someone, you know, if one particular store is not doing well in reviews, do we wanna give feedback to that store? Are people gonna get called out? Are they gonna try and figure out who said what? 'Cause that's not what we want. Do we need to do it by the district level or the region level? At what level can we still be impactful but not have people trying to suss out, this person said that, and like retaliate. So it's providing that data at a level that still has impact without the potential negatives. And I think two, I'm a huge fan of not employee advocates, but almost like brand ambassadors where you empower them. Go tell me about a day in your life. If you tell me you have 19 meetings that day, I think my record is like 11. Then I wanna know that because then I know I can expect to have double digit meetings and have that culture. So I think, you know, every company sucks in some way. They can be amazing 90%, but like, if you're not talking about the good and the bad, then like, no one's going to trust you.


Chad: So let's talk about that engagement, the employee engagement piece, 'cause I think it does pull the employee closer to the brand when they can tell their story. But a few years ago, and this has happened more than once, we had a kid who was working at Sherwin-Williams. He was mixing paint and he had over a million TikTok followers and they loved, it was cathartic just sitting there watching the paint get mixed, right? Well, he got fired.


Joel: With Blueberries.


Chad: Blueberry, yeah.


Joel: And fruits.


Chad: But he got fired from Sherwin-Williams. That was a loss for Sherwin-Williams because people came to see that, not just that, but the brand. So have we evolved? And I mean, as an industry, because I know some companies are more evolved than others. As an industry, do we think that we have evolved enough to start to allow our employees enough rope to actually do those type? Maybe not mixed paint, but talk about their job on a daily basis. Good, bad, or indifferent. I mean, that's... I mean, we've got to be authentic. We always say we're gonna be authentic and our employees are our most essential asset, right? So if they are, are we going to finally allow them to be authentic? And we in turn being transparent about our organization.


Nicole Stephens: First of all, that was a huge L for Sherwin-Williams, right? I mean, that made absolutely no sense and I hope so. I think that goes back to us as kind of the creators and owners of advocacy programs. I would love to create almost an influencer program and give people support and encourage them. Hey, you know, talk about all the parts of your day. It's heavy to lift tile. I went to visit a store. Y'all, I have been working out recently and they handed me a stack of tile, my arms literally dropped and I was like, "Wow, this is heavy." We get a lot of feedback on our review sites. It's a really heavy job. You have to be ready to lift. So that's on me. Now that I know that to start producing content, showing people lifting this heavy ass tile and having them understand this is part of the job. You need to be in shape or you will get in shape, right? You'll get your steps in. So for me, I'm on the far end of wanting transparency. I want an employee influencer program that's beyond advocacy where it's like, I'm not telling you what to say.


Nicole Stephens: I'm not giving you prompts. You have free reign. But although that's on us, I think it takes a lot of buy-in with leadership to explain to them, ultimately this will be good. You're gonna have to be okay with some bumps in the road, and that takes a pretty evolved and confident leader. So it's having a lot of conversations. What if this happens? What if that happens? And we've got to be ready to kind of back that up.


Chad: Yeah.


Joel: Why'd you look at me when she said, get your steps in? What was that about?


Chad: I don't know. It must've been...


Joel: A lot of talk about automation here at the conference and we're looking for efficiencies. We're looking to cut costs as organizations, but I think there is a risk that we lose humanity and the brand suffers for that. How do you look at automation in a way that doesn't hurt the brand that actually could enhance it?


Nicole Stephens: That's a good question. And someone in a session yesterday said something like, we're confusing AI with automation. Like artificial intelligence, is it actually helping us with decision-making or is it kind of a tool to help like an administrative assistant almost in helping us with that? Wow. Right. Mind blown moment because I was like, what a great articulation of what I've been thinking, but haven't been able to say. So we're saying AI and there are a lot of talks today and yesterday, and I'm sure they were great on AI, but are we really using them for decision-making or are we using something to automate things and make our days easier, which is great and calling it AI. I don't know that a lot of us saying we're using AI are really using it with the artificial intelligence versus automation. And when we do get there, we a 1000% need to think about the humanity and bringing our real voice and culture in, but I'm not sure that a lot of us are there yet.


Joel: Yeah.


Chad: Nicole, I want to thank you for coming to the Shaker Green Room. We've had a blast.


Nicole Stephens: Thank you.


Chad: Great, great discussion. Now, if somebody is listening, they wanna connect with you or maybe, I don't know, maybe they just wanna take a look at jobs. Maybe they wanna come work with you. Who knows? Where would you send them?


Nicole Stephens: LinkedIn. I spend way too much time on there like a lot of us do. LinkedIn or Floor & Decor Career site. Thank you guys so much. This is great.


Joel: Thanks for stopping by and hanging out with us, Nicole. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.


Chad: We out.


Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The Chad. The Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese, is so weird. We out.

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