Marriott Hiring: 2 Weeks to 3 Days w/ Meghan Rhatigan

Marriott’s Two-Week Hiring Nightmare Cured in Three Days

Chad and Joel drag Meghan Rhatigan, VP of Talent Acquisition Experience at Marriott International, into the interrogation room to find out how a global powerhouse hires 200,000 people a year without losing its mind.  

Post-pandemic, Marriott found itself caught flat-footed with a "fat funnel" and slow hiring managers who took two weeks just to schedule an interview. To save the business, Meghan snuck Paradox's automation tech past her terrified legal team by calling it "automated scheduling" instead of using the scary "AI" word.  

The result? Interview times plummeted from 14 days down to three, and hiring managers were officially kicked out of the scheduling loop so they could go back to serving hotel guests.  

💥 Choice Cuts & Snark

• The 5-Million Candidate Bench  

• The Bonvoy Hustle  

• Dodging the AI Police  

• The Workday Shade

Marriott isn't tossing its $5 million tech stack out the window anytime soon, but they are finally treating high-volume recruiting like a real business.  

Go take a shower and wash off the guilt.

PART 2 - 5 Million Candidates

PART 3 - Recruiting Is A Business

PART 4 - No AI Scores

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:24.3 Joel Cheeseman: All right, let's do this. You're watching the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman, joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house, and we are chatting with Meghan Rhatigan, VP of Talent Acquisition Experience.

0:00:37.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes.

0:00:38.3 Joel Cheeseman: Meghan, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

0:00:41.4 Meghan Rhatigan: I know. I'm a little nervous and we're in the interrogation room, but I'm here for it.

0:00:45.3 Joel Cheeseman: We're here to make you feel at ease. So if we're not doing our job, please, please let us know. [chuckle] So a lot of people, uh, won't know you. A lot will know your employer, Marriott International, but give us sort of the elevator pitch on you and the organization.

0:01:00.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Absolutely. So I've been with Marriott for 14 years, always in HR, but doing different things. I started my career in talent acquisition, and then I did a stint leading our organizational change management team and came back into talent acquisition about two years ago when we were ready for some transformation in the TA space. And given my TA and change management background, I was kind of the person to bring back in to help lead some of that stuff.

0:01:29.2 Chad Sowash: So have you always been involved in technology with talent acquisition?

0:01:33.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Umm, in some way, shape, or form, yes. Like, umm, technology has been a key part of talent acquisition since I came into it. Now, that's not to say that I wasn't around during paper applications, 'cause I was, you know, despite how young I look.

0:01:47.3 Joel Cheeseman: No, stop it.

0:01:48.7 Meghan Rhatigan: I, ah, remember those good old days of faxing things. Yeah, I was there. But, umm, my first, uh, foray into talent acquisition tech was implementing, umm, Taleo, umm, at one of my companies. So, yeah, that was my, my first introduction to an ATS system.

0:02:06.5 Chad Sowash: And you're still alive, which is wonderful.

0:02:08.0 Joel Cheeseman: Still here, which is great.

0:02:09.9 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, to tell stories.

0:02:10.8 Joel Cheeseman: Uh, it's been a, interesting few years for your industry. Uh, COVID, obviously, was a punch in the face, uh, and Airbnb became an interesting competitor. How has that sort of changed your thinking in terms of recruiting and attracting talent?

0:02:27.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, I think I would say that COVID and the pandemic was probably the biggest driver of change for us. Uh, we were kind of minding our own business, enjoying, umm, all the candidates we could possibly ask for [laughter] prior to 2020. Like, we didn't really have to try 'cause people came to us and it was great. And we had, uh, you know, thousands and millions of candidates that we can choose from. And then all of a sudden, pandemic hit. Our industry was obviously pretty significantly impacted. We closed a lot of hotels for a period of time, but then we had to reopen those hotels and bring back people to work in them. Well, the problem is, like, we were going after the same people as everybody else was. So, uh, we had more jobs than there were people, but yet we had our same hiring process, our same technology from pre-pandemic, and honestly, we were caught a bit flat-footed. We couldn't hire fast enough to be able to get the talent into the door, and people were hiring faster. And at that time, speed was everything. Uh, quality wasn't, but speed was everything. And so we had to quickly adapt and look at our hiring processes and start to say, like, all right, like, what can we do differently to increase speed, conversion, like, all the things that we were not really having to worry about.

0:03:48.9 Chad Sowash: How did you, first and foremost, identify what the problems were? 'Cause it wasn't just one problem. It was a series, I'm sure. How did you identify the problems and then how did you, how did you figure out which problems to go after first?

0:04:00.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Well, I think the biggest problem was that we couldn't hire. [chuckle] So, for us...

0:04:05.7 Chad Sowash: The, the biggest problem.

0:04:06.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, the biggest was like, okay, well, we can't hire, and the reason we can't hire is because we're not fast enough. So, what we did was we looked at our whole talent acquisition process, and we started with, what's the piece of the process that's taking up the most time? And for us, that was the interviewing piece. So, we have what we call our talent acquisition ruler, and it kind of breaks down every step and how long it's taking all of our candidates to get through every step. And this interview process was taking, like, upwards of two weeks in most cases for people to get through. And the reason for that is, is because we had our hiring managers responsible for scheduling their own interviews, for actually conducting the interviews...

0:04:45.1 Chad Sowash: And these are high volume, for the most part?

0:04:46.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh, yeah. Like, we hire about 200,000 associates globally every year. So, definitely high volume. But we had self-service to the point of which, like, putting a lot of it in the hands of hiring managers, and hiring managers, they aren't fast. Even though they're feeling it and they wanna hire someone, they're not, they're not all that motivated to work as fast as we need them to. So, in looking at our process, interview was taking up the most time, and so that's where we wanted to first concentrate in terms of, like, our first, uh, step into automation.

0:05:19.5 Chad Sowash: Gotcha. So, what did you do from a solution standpoint to be able to, to fix it? 'Cause that was the big problem, you need speed. How did you create speed? Did you inject tech? What tech was it? Et cetera.

0:05:31.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So, the first thing that we did was we introduced Paradox. And I'll be honest to say that it wasn't an easy conversation to start, particularly in the compliance and legal realm, uh, because Marriott is not unlike a lot of companies, when you say the words AI, the immediate response is, "No."

0:05:49.4 Joel Cheeseman: No.

0:05:50.3 Meghan Rhatigan: No. [laughter] We're like, "Wait, wait, wait, no, we need this." They're like, "No." So, we had to kind of take a step back, and, umm, the, uh, the nice thing was that the interview scheduling piece, although that was the biggest pain point for us, nobody else really cared about it. And so, we knew it was AI, but the way that we kind of went about it and...

0:06:10.0 Chad Sowash: Packaged?

0:06:10.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, socialized it, we were like, "Well, we're going to introduce automation into our interview process." We didn't use the word AI, 'cause we knew that was a bad word. Umm, but we were like, "We need to do something different, so we're going to automate our interview scheduling. How does that sound?" "Great! Yay! Okay!" So, we actually started with a smaller pilot of about 200 properties, and then as we saw incremental success, we added more and more properties into it. But, umm, if we were to go out and say, "Hey, we're introducing AI, everyone," uh, that just wouldn't have flown with our industry. But we knew we needed to introduce some form of AI to make us faster.

0:06:48.8 Chad Sowash: What did success look like?

0:06:50.5 Meghan Rhatigan: So, our, honestly, immediately out of the gate, we went from double-digit interview time... So, I was saying, like, up to two weeks... Down to scheduling and completing interviews into three days.

0:07:02.9 Chad Sowash: Wow.

0:07:03.6 Meghan Rhatigan: So, it's, it was significant in terms of the reduction that we saw. Not only, though, did we introduce automation, but we also made some changes in our process where, as I mentioned before, we had our hiring managers pretty involved in deciding who to schedule, when to schedule, all of that. We actually took them out of the equation and started to centralize the scheduling of interviews through this automation platform and just had people show up for interviews.

0:07:30.9 Chad Sowash: Were they happy about that?

0:07:33.4 Meghan Rhatigan: I would say that it was, [chuckle] it was definitely a change management journey, hence why, you know, having my change management background and coming into doing this stuff was important. Umm, but now it's great. Like, they just interview, make decisions, and move on with their lives, which at the end of the day is actually better for them anyway.

0:07:50.1 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:07:50.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah.

0:07:50.9 Joel Cheeseman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They say no to AI, and they also say no every time I try to check into a Ritz-Carlton. [laughter] I don't know what the deal is with that, but, uh, if you could change that up, I'd appreciate it.

0:08:02.0 Chad Sowash: You're on the blacklist.

0:08:02.8 Joel Cheeseman: Yeah, it's called... I've got a life ban, I think is what it's called. Uh, was, was a boomerang strategy ever implemented? Because you had, you had to lay people off or furlough them, and you have a massive database of people. Do you, at least if you didn't, do you now farm those folks, keep them warm, and what are you doing to, to make sure that if you ever need that, that, uh, you know, that bench, that you can, that you can tap into them?

0:08:27.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, so our second step, umm, was actually introducing a new CRM, umm, provided by Paradox, same people who do our automated interview scheduling. And the nice, we actually didn't have a CRM before, which is crazy. But again, we were living in la-la land of millions of candidates, I didn't have to try. And then all of a sudden we're like, "Oh wait, we need to try." So therefore we need a CRM to help us. So we introduced the CRM about six months ago, but we have the benefit of about, I don't know, five-plus million candidates that sit within our ATS system. Wow. So we plugged all those people into our CRM, and now we use our CRM for retargeting. So to your point, like if we've got someone that applied that didn't get the job, or maybe someone that worked for us before that has left, and we have a job that meets their profile in a specific area that they live, we reach out to them using text message and invite them to apply and come back to us.

0:09:24.7 Meghan Rhatigan: So we have seen quite a high number of rehires. Umm, but I will say that it wasn't immediate. Like, umm, I think a lot of people post-pandemic were a little bit scared to go back into hospitality or retail, umm, in industries that were pretty heavily hit, umm, because they were like, "I don't know if I want to do this again. Like, this is, this is scary." And so I would say it took a good year for us to start seeing people come back, but eventually we did, and luckily we had the, the tech to do some of the proactive reach out that we, we needed.

0:09:58.4 Chad Sowash: You've already paid for, I'm sure, hundreds of millions of dollars in, in getting candidates. So how has that helped you stop paying for, uh, external job boards and going first to your database? Five million, I mean, that obviously they expressed interest that they wanted to work for you. Has that helped? Have you seen the, uh, ability to actually take budget from that and respectively push other areas?

0:10:23.2 Meghan Rhatigan: So we love organic traffic. Like, that is, organic traffic, not only are they free, but they also convert at a much higher rate and they stay longer. So we obviously, like, want to target and go after our organic, organic traffic. So do we pay? Of course. Like, we have a programmatic strategy that we use when we need to, but for the most part, I would say about 60% of our overall traffic is organic, and that's really where we focus because of the fact that we convert those candidates at much higher rates. So we're going to be introducing in two weeks a new career site, and that is, like, part of the strategy behind that is further, like, get, umm, expanding our organic traffic, getting more people in. We also have the whole SEO game that we're playing like everybody else and how important that is. So, umm, there's a lot going on, as you know, in the SEO space, and if you're not paying attention to it, you should, uh, because it has a direct impact on, on organic traffic.

0:11:25.3 Joel Cheeseman: What has Google, uh, for Jobs, Google launching their own sort of search engine for employment opportunities, meant for the business?

0:11:31.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. I...

0:11:32.6 Joel Cheeseman: What percentage of traffic maybe do you get from Google for Jobs?

0:11:34.6 Meghan Rhatigan: So honestly, very small. Like, single-digit percentages today. Google isn't really a huge source of traffic for us. The most traffic comes from our career site, so straight, like, people who want to work for Marriott come through Marriott Careers. And then we also have traffic coming through Indeed. But those are our top two sources. Everything else below that, it's, it's marginal. Even, like, LinkedIn, don't really get a whole lot of traffic through them. I mean, it's small, we get a little bit, but not, not near as much as, uh, straight organic and Indeed.

0:12:10.3 Chad Sowash: You have tons of brands. You have brands that are in different languages. You have all those things. So how many career sites are you launching? What's the breadth of this thus far? And, going a little bit deeper, is this a great, uh, footprint strategy for Google? Because before, you guys, you said you're not really getting the, the juice from Google for Jobs. Is it the strategy to be able to send signals to Google that, hey, now we're ready, send it?

0:12:37.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Well, we, we've, we want to be at the top, but we want to continuously be at the top, and we don't want anyone coming in to, uh, be on top of us. Indeed. So, like, who? Smith?

[laughter]

0:12:49.1 Joel Cheeseman: Subtle. I like that.

0:12:51.9 Meghan Rhatigan: So, yeah, part of what we want to do with our career site is we will have one career site, but then within that single site, we will have individual pages for each of our 34 brands. So we will have a St. Regis career site, a Ritz-Carlton career site, a Courtyard career site, a Marriott Hotels and Resorts career site, so that we have the individual brand flavor, but they all sit within the umbrella of one single career site. And, uh...

0:13:18.6 Joel Cheeseman: And you're, you're also launching a new hotel. Talk about that and how recruiting for that and how technology fits into that initiative.

0:13:25.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So, I would say one of the, the, the most interesting parts of being in talent acquisition is working directly with our brands and understanding what their individual talent profile is, and then how does that translate into, like, how do we source for talent? Or where do we want to go out and get those talents? So, like, for example, in the luxury space, we've got Ritz-Carlton, and so they are looking for people with luxury experience. So, uh, we have a new brand, as you mentioned, they're called City Express. That particular brand is for the traveler that wants to go in and get out. They're very [chuckle] much, like, centered around airports, free breakfast, but, like, get what you need quickly. So that particular brand is great for people who are having maybe their first job within the hospitality industry and just learning the basics of guest service and things like that. So we really have a brand for everyone and brands for all experience levels and different talent profiles and all that. So it's, you know, it's fun to be able to recruit for different things and different people with different backgrounds, for sure.

0:14:29.3 Chad Sowash: So when we talk about AI or not AI, or we don't talk about AI to our people...

0:14:33.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah.

0:14:35.0 Chad Sowash: Uh, what excites you most about the technology that you want to roll out, and you wanna see develop, those types of things?

0:14:41.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. I think for us, so one of the things that, uh, I, umm, would say doesn't make us unique, but that we focus on is we love AI because it makes us faster and we're able, able to convert quicker and all of those things. But we're still at the end of the day a hospitality company. So we will never take the human out of our recruiting process. There's always going to be a human involved in some way, shape, or form. So whether it's at, uh, during the interview process or maybe even a phone screen, whatever it is. So we're not willing to sacrifice the human interactions. But if there maybe manual tasks or administrative tasks that take up a lot of time, umm, by our recruiting teams, those are the things that we want to automate so that they have more time to spend with the candidates and our hiring managers have more time to spend with the candidates.

0:15:32.1 Meghan Rhatigan: So we're not going to be one of these companies that says, "Oh, we're going to automate from A to Z and get people hired in 30 seconds and have them start tomorrow." That's great, but we're a hospitality company. We want to know that people come in smiling, have great attitude. Umm, so human connection, human part of our process is important, and, umm, automating where we can to speed us up is really where we're focused. So for me, anything that makes our recruiters' jobs easier, our hiring manager, managers' jobs easier, takes away manual process steps, that's where...

0:16:03.5 Joel Cheeseman: So from, from an employment brand perspective, and I wanna dig into the whole Ritz versus Express. Yeah. I think there's a sense that, well, if we automate, the... The automation for this is the same automation for that, and maybe the audience for the Ritz is much different than some of the other hotels. Do you think... How do you think about in terms of how deep does automation go versus when they talk to the human being? Because I assume that the Ritz applicant doesn't want to deal with a chatbot as much as a City Express. Or am I off base there? How do you think about that question?

0:16:35.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So it's interesting that you mentioned that because, umm, honestly, like, that was one of the things that we had thought about initially, like, "I don't know, like, can we roll out a one-size-fits-all when it comes to interview scheduling across all of our brands?" Uh, but honestly, we actually haven't seen a huge differentiation in what people expect in something like interview scheduling when it relates to a luxury candidate versus someone who's maybe entry-level. At the end of the day, those candidates want something that's easy and quick and something that comes to them. Umm, and really, like, where we can differentiate is perhaps, like, in the language that we use to initially reach out to them to schedule an interview. So the tone that we would use for a luxury candidate may be more elevated versus someone that's coming in for their first job, well, we may, like, tone it down a little bit. So it's how we communicate maybe different, but the way in which we execute is the same, because at the end of the day, people want to, like, move as quickly as they can through a hiring process because they want a job. Like, it doesn't matter what brand you're being hired for.

0:17:41.8 Joel Cheeseman: Did that surprise you that they... That it didn't...

0:17:43.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Umm, yeah, actually, it did. Like, it, it did, but then when we started to see the feedback... So in addition to introducing interview scheduling, the other thing that we did was introduce, uh, like, a feedback loop. So after someone interviews with us, we go back to them within 30 minutes, send them a text and say, "Hey, how was your interview experience?" And it's, like, thumbs up, thumbs down. And despite, you know, whether they give us a thumbs up or thumbs down, we then give them an opportunity to give us open-form feedback. So for us, like, we saw a 93% satisfaction rate across all of our brands, and it didn't matter if it was luxury or otherwise in terms of their satisfaction with the interview. And somebody may say, "Oh, like, oh, isn't that kind of biased?" I'm like, "Yeah, but it... We've also seen people be pretty honest when they're not satisfied." So, like, I, you know, I feel like I have a lot of confidence in that, in that data point.

0:18:37.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah. So we've seen talent acquisition get comfortable.

0:18:41.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep.

0:18:42.3 Chad Sowash: And they buy tech, they set it and forget it, they walk away, and the next thing you know, it's not right because the market fluctuates. And if we don't have tech to fluctuate with the market, but we have to control the tech. So the question is, what is, what is Marriott doing to ensure that you stay up with the changing landscape with your technology?

0:19:03.0 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. So one of the unique things that we did that I didn't mention post-pandemic was, uh, we actually changed our recruiting model a bit. So we had a 15-year RPO relationship that handled all of our high-volume hiring in the US and Canada. We actually insourced that. So not only did we introduce new technology post-pandemic, but we also insourced, umm, all of our hiring. But what we didn't do necessarily was change the way that that charge model, if you will, worked with the properties. So, uh, we have an internal team doing the hiring that we think quicker, better, and, uh, more efficiently with the use of technology, but we still, like, go on a little bit of a pay-to-play basis. So what that allows me to do is have money to be able to play with to create efficiency and invest in tech to enable us to scale faster. So, umm, I think that was one of the things that I have the luxury of doing. We're not overhead. A lot of TA orgs are overhead.

0:20:11.1 Meghan Rhatigan: We are not that, we're pay-to-play. I have, you know, money to invest in areas that make me more efficient, and that's a bit of a luxury, but it's also a very, uh, I guess, uh, intentional strategy. Umm, so for me, I'm always looking at, at what's out there, what's gonna make me quicker, because when you're dealing with, I, I carry, let's say, like three to four thousand recs at one time, like, every click matters, every minute matters. And I equate clicks into labor cost, and so I'm always calculating dollars and cents, dollars and cents, and, uh, I can easily, uh, translate that into ROI for tech.

0:20:55.2 Chad Sowash: When we take a look at being able to look at it as a business, which is, I, I've always said that, you know, staffing treats recruiting as a business where TA treats it as a job.

0:21:04.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep.

0:21:04.7 Chad Sowash: Right. So you're looking at it as a business. Yes. So when you take a look at it, are you constantly looking at, uh, the savings and, and let's say, for instance, what kind of, how much more recruitment are you getting out of this database of candidates that you've already bought, you've already paid for, uh, percentage-wise versus what it used to be?

0:21:23.8 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Uh, so to be honest, in the, in the used-to-be factor, we didn't necessarily pay attention. Uh, because of the fact that...

0:21:33.5 Chad Sowash: Surprising?

[chuckle]

0:21:35.2 Meghan Rhatigan: No. No. Uh, like, we, again, like, we were living in the, in the, in the glory days of having as many candidates as we want, so we didn't necessarily need to look at, like, you know, source of applicant, what's gonna convert into better quality candidates, and what percent... Yeah, who cares? We're just hiring people, right? Uh, so when that whole thing changed, like, that's when we started to care 'cause we were like, "Oh, wait, like, we actually need to be intentional about where we're spending our money for candidates and how does that relate to quality and then conversion down, down in the funnel." And, like, we don't wanna fat funnel. No, we want a skinny funnel that we're, like, [chuckle] looking at quality. Like, all those things that are somewhat, like, table stakes. But there are a lot of companies out there that don't know what their data is and don't care. Uh, but for us, because we're running a business, it matters. Like, I'm not gonna go out and spend a bunch of programmatic spend when I'm not seeing the conversion. But if I don't know that, like, there's a bunch of companies throwing away a lot of money and not knowing what's happening.

0:22:40.8 Chad Sowash: Every day.

0:22:40.9 Joel Cheeseman: So, speaking of a lot of other companies, uh, a lot of other companies would be envious of the marketing budget that your organization has. Yep. Talk about how the relationship is with marketing, how you've taken technology and sort of scaled, uh, marketing, obviously video, social media, all those come into play. How do you guys look at marketing and bringing that into recruitment?

0:23:01.2 Meghan Rhatigan: So, I mentioned how important organic traffic is to us, and so organic traffic is driven by marketing, right? And driven by our employment brand. So, I, uh, myself and our employment brand leader, Shonda Zilich, have a very tight relationship. So, we just launched a new employment brand last year called Be, and that has been really, really important because it's all about, like, life at Marriott and, like, being you at Marriott, be curious, be courageous, all of these things. But along with that, we also launched, umm, uh, blogs, like hundreds of different blogs that are called Life at Marriott. So, it's, it's, uh, they're interviews with associates that are in different jobs at different brands all over our, our company, and we proactively put those out there. So, it's almost like a little bit of a realistic job preview but more, like, in a blog form.

0:23:57.4 Meghan Rhatigan: So, those actually get sent out through our CRM campaigns, they get sent out, like, in our new career site when you're, when you're on there, you're gonna see a blog pop up and you're gonna start to interact with that blog. And our hope is, like, that's gonna be marketing that wants you to, that you're like, "Oh, you know what? I connect with that person. I want to work at Marriott. Let me come on in." umm, so a lot of what we do is about, like, life at Marriott and what's it like to work here and then pushing those out. Umm, but on, we actually put a lot of stuff out through our, like, like, organic social channels, but we don't pay for a lot of social media. We don't see conversion there, so we don't spend a lot of money, but it's still important for us to use our, our own organic.

0:24:38.2 Joel Cheeseman: So will you see the, your, your chatbot on these blog posts as well? So, yeah, sort of indirectly funneling traffic into the job, the job posts?

0:24:48.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah.

0:24:48.8 Chad Sowash: Always a connection, always a strategy. So when it comes to marketing, you're a consumer company. You touch a lot of consumers who are trying to get a job at Marriott or one of the properties. Uh, does, does marketing understand the impact, negative... Positive or negative, that you and the team could have on the brand?

0:25:09.3 Meghan Rhatigan: So, interestingly enough, so one of the big goals for Marriott as a consumer brand this year is to enroll as many people as we can into our Marriott Bonvoy loyalty, uh, program. And our consumer brand actually came to us within talent acquisition and said, "Hey, like, can we somehow plug the ability for people to enroll in Bonvoy into our, like, recruiting process?" We're like, "Yeah, actually, I think we can do that." So just last week, Shonda shared a stat. We've enrolled 5,000 people into Marriott Bonvoy through our career channels. So, like, it's a lot of... To your point, a lot of times it's like... And we do, like, we work really closely with our Marriott Bonvoy team, but they came to us to help to get more enrollments and we've helped them, uh, which is a little bit of an interesting twist and something you don't typically see, but it's been, uh, obviously pretty successful in the 5,000 enrollments that we've seen.

0:26:07.3 Joel Cheeseman: So, tactically, how did that work? Did you just sort of blast email? Do I apply and then get invited? How'd that work?

0:26:14.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. It's actually a, uh, very subtle, umm, uh, at the end of our application process, it says, "Would you like to enroll in Marriott Bonvoy?" And they can check it and say...

0:26:24.7 Joel Cheeseman: It has to say, "To improve your chances of an interview."

[laughter]

0:26:27.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Nope, none of that. No, we can't... We can't do that.

0:26:29.9 Joel Cheeseman: No, that'd be a little... A little clickbaity, a little sus.

0:26:32.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes, just a little. Like, "Enroll in our talent community and sign up for Marriott Bonvoy."

0:26:36.6 Chad Sowash: So do you see a convergence? Because tech... It feels like tech is bringing all the departments together quicker. Yeah. Umm, because... So do you see a convergence with technology in being able to really meld all the different, not just marketing, but sales and all the different operation aspects of Marriott? Do you think tech is doing that, or you just think it's the landscape in itself?

0:26:59.4 Meghan Rhatigan: I mean, I think it's a little bit of... A little bit of both, honestly. Like, so for us, like, do we have a bit of a bubble that we live in within the talent acquisition space? But there's indirect benefits. So, like, for example, by us taking off of our hiring managers' plates the need to go in, review resumes, and schedule their own interviews, we're essentially, like, freeing them up to spend more time with our guests, spend more time on the operations. So for us, like, yeah, it's, it's an indirect benefit, but at the same time, like, we are... I'll say it again... A hospitality company. And so our hiring managers need to be on the floor spending time with guests, not reviewing interviews... Or reviewing resumes. So, like, for us, like, that's what we're looking at is, like, how can we create efficiency for them to be able to do what matters most and spend time with the guests? Umm, and I think for us, that's... It's our operational hat that we always wear. And of course, like, tangentially, like, of course we've got, like, impacts on the tech side, and our finance partners are always looking at what we're doing, umm, how much money are we spending and all that. But operations really is the name of the game and something we focus a lot on.

0:28:10.6 Joel Cheeseman: Let's talk about automation. We're seeing more hotels go to kiosk systems where I don't have to talk to somebody. We're even seeing robotics on the housekeeping side or, "Hey, if you don't want housekeeping..." Umm, how does Marriott view automation and replacing workers with tools that aren't human beings?

0:28:30.6 Meghan Rhatigan: So again, I would say that I think we have a very similar view, uh, as a company overall as I have, umm, personally within my recruiting space is that... And that's like, we're not gonna take the human out of things, and we're really gonna look at ways that automation can make us more efficient, umm, in the background or make it easier for guests to, let's say, like, order breakfast for room service in the morning or request housekeeping or get more towels or whatever the situation is. But I don't really ever seein', uh, see us in a situation where we're taking the people completely out of our hotels and we have a bunch of robots running around. Like, that's just never gonna work. Because then, again, I talk... Talked about that brand talent piece earlier and how important it is to hire people that, you know, are a fit for the brand and also a fit for our guests. Like, what's the point if we start to take people out? Like, it, it's just not... It's not aligned with our...

0:29:27.8 Joel Cheeseman: But people are expensive, Meghan. People are expensive.

0:29:29.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Yes, they are. But... And, and we get that, which is why we're looking for automation. But we're not gonna take 'em out of what they do best, which is, you know, interact and serve the guest.

0:29:38.5 Chad Sowash: And you are a hospitality company.

0:29:40.7 Meghan Rhatigan: We are. Say it again.

[laughter]

0:29:42.7 Joel Cheeseman: Let's make sure you pronounce it Marriott.

0:29:45.3 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, exactly.

0:29:46.5 Joel Cheeseman: Marriott. What new technology excites you? What are you looking to maybe add in the next...

0:29:50.5 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah, so, umm, it's interesting because I'm gonna actually start with, like, a space that I think there's a lot of interest in, but we're, like... We're just not going there to start, and then I'll talk about what we, what we are interested in. So, umm, we have a lot of candidates, right, coming into our funnel, and there's a lot of talk and hype around, like, umm, stack ranking, stack ranking, and how do you get the, the quality candidates to the top? We want that, but we don't necessarily want anyone to make those decisions for us and have any sort of score associated, uh, with that. So for me, I, like... I'm not, I'm not gonna touch anything that is, like, you know, Jimmy's better than Sally because this AI bot told me so.

0:30:38.8 Meghan Rhatigan: But what I would like to see is, like, I want people to be put in a bucket of, like, qualified because of certain questions that they answered or perhaps, like, things that they have in their resume. But I don't want anything scoring it. Uh, so for me, what I'm most interested in is, like, stacking but not ranking, uh, to a point where my recruiters can focus on quality candidates, umm, versus, like, a big fat funnel and they don't know where to start. So for me, on the tech side, that's, like... I'm talking to a few companies, try to understand how they can, uh, stack, uh, for me in a way that's not ranking and I don't get in trouble by the AI police or anyone else.

0:31:22.2 Chad Sowash: And NYC or CCPA or whatever acronyms out there.

0:31:25.1 Meghan Rhatigan: Right.

0:31:26.1 Joel Cheeseman: Funny side note, Fat Funnel, Skinny Funnel was the original name of this podcast.

[laughter]

0:31:30.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh, really? Really? Interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have... You know.

0:31:35.0 Joel Cheeseman: Buckets of candidates, binders full of women. So much, so much to talk about.

0:31:39.9 Chad Sowash: So, we're... We're here at this event. You've got a bunch of your peers running around. They're obviously fashion forward, much like you.

0:31:45.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah.

0:31:46.2 Chad Sowash: And they're looking... They're looking for AI, not AI, but just something that helps, that provides solutions. What are the top three that you've seen thus far? Not just yourself, but with... From your peers, the top three things that they're looking to try to solve for.

0:32:00.6 Meghan Rhatigan: Yep. Umm, so I think it's interesting because there's a lot of companies out there that are in different steps, depths of maturity. Not to bring, like, Josh Bersin into this, but the... The... The reality of the model is true in that, like, there are some people that are, like, super gung-ho about tech and have got a pretty thick tech stack. And then there are others that are, like, "We have Workday." And like, we're trying to figure out, like, what else is out there.

0:32:29.2 Chad Sowash: Like, in between, kind of.

0:32:30.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Right, exactly. So, I think for me here, there's a lot of people that are just dipping their toe outside of Workday and trying to understand, like, what's this... What is this automation thing, and what can it do for me, and how do I even sell it to my business? 'Cause that's a whole 'nother, umm, discussion. And then there are companies like us that I would say that we've got, you know, we've got the big ATS, and then we've got some things on top of it, but there's more that we can do to further automate. Umm, and I think you kind of... I'm seeing a little bit of in-between. Umm, but at the end of the day, everyone's here for the same reason, and that is to, like, what... What technology can make me faster, make my teams more efficient, and hire the best quality candidates? Like, we're all here, I think, looking for the same things.

0:33:17.5 Chad Sowash: So, in that being said, do you think everybody pretty much has the same spirit of, "We will implode our entire stack and/or process to be able to get this business running and rolling"?

0:33:28.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Umm, implode, I think, is a strong word because, umm, like Marriott, a lot of companies made a big, heavy investment in this big HCM. So the idea of imploding that is, uh, probably not something that our CFOs wanna hear, umm, and starting over. But it's more about, like, how do we complement? Umm, and...

0:33:51.9 Chad Sowash: You can tell she's in change management.

[laughter]

0:33:53.2 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, "Oh, we wanna implode a $5 million investment that we just, you know, implemented two years ago."

0:34:00.5 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:34:01.1 Meghan Rhatigan: "Sound good?" umm, that's not gonna happen. So I think, like, it's about, like, how do we take what we have, know what it does well, and then add on to it?

0:34:10.0 Chad Sowash: Gotcha.

0:34:10.7 Meghan Rhatigan: Yeah.

0:34:11.5 Joel Cheeseman: That is Meghan Rhatigan, uh, VP of Talent Acquisition Experience. Meghan, where can I learn more about Marriott?

0:34:18.4 Meghan Rhatigan: Oh, umm, so careers.Marriott.com. And we're launching a new career site in two weeks, October 22nd. I don't know when this is gonna be put out, but we're super excited about that. Uh, but if you go to Google and put "Marriott careers," we're gonna be at the top of the list. So, there you go.

0:34:33.9 Joel Cheeseman: Very good. And put in a good word for me at the Ritz, apparently. That is another one in the can.

0:34:40.0 Chad Sowash: We're out.

[music]

0:34:41.8 Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or, maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.