In an organization as established as AAA, changing processes can be hard. People are wary of change — they like what they’re doing now, or at least like it more than the thought of paying thousands of dollars to learn something new.
But change is often necessary. Without it, organizations risk falling behind their competition in various aspects of the business, including hiring. We recently chatted with AAA Mountain West Group VP of Talent Acquisition Darnell Hill on how best to earn buy-in for new hiring tech, and how the regional affiliate balances AI with human touchpoints to hire frontline workers.
Tell me a little bit about why AAA Mountain West Group started down this road towards transformational change.
When I entered this role, I inherited a legacy setup where we outsourced a lot of our controls to different third party vendors. One thing I immediately wanted to do was bring work in internally, creating this one-stop shop within our TA team to advance all of our initiatives. So we started looking at our overall tech stack and where the opportunities might present themselves. And we noticed there was a lack of automation across the board, so we began to talk about how we could directly enhance that.
We were just putting a ton of demand on our team. When I think about our recruiting bandwidth, it very much ebbs and flows. One month we may have 150 open reqs — the next month we maybe have 250 open reqs. Watching my recruiters go up and down on a roller coaster trying to manage their day-to-day mindset, we realized we had to find a better support system for them. We had to take the manual tasks away. And that's where automation really came into play: aligning with recruiters to create a better candidate experience and keep the team engaged.
How do you pitch the addition of new TA tech to your leadership?
Oftentimes within an organization, TA gets lost. You end up having to remind yourself that TA is the gateway for everyone coming into the organization. It can't just be at the back end of a business plan. It has to be on the forefront. And honestly, it takes talent acquisition being a little brave to say, “We don't want to play from behind. We can’t always be running around trying to catch our own tail. We have to get ahead of the curve.”
But I think quite often when companies want to enact change, they don't pull forth enough data or support from the team to help leadership understand the “why” behind the change. If you want to make an impact with your C-suite, everything needs to come back to data. You need to support your overall approach and intended journey with facts. Get as granular as you need to down to the penny with overall spend so you know what’s working and where opportunities are presenting themselves. So that’s how you do it: You start with data, and then once you provide the appropriate level of data, you begin to gain an understanding that you're doing exactly what you need to be doing to be successful as an organization.
What about your own recruiting team — was there any initial fear toward adding AI into your tech stack? How did you gain internal buy-in?
One thing I've tried to focus on with my team is creating an environment where everybody has a voice. It's important that any change isn’t just a top-down directive being pushed to the team. Everybody, if you want true buy-in, has to feel like they have a voice in the day-to-day process. And they need to understand what's coming. They can’t find out at the last minute. They need to be informed so they can prepare for it, or they can offer insight into where there may be additional opportunities for change. When you get your team’s buy-in, it helps create a better culture and a better environment because it allows everybody to feel like they're a part of the journey.
f you want to make an impact with your C-suite, everything needs to come back to data. You need to support your overall approach and intended journey with facts.
And sure, there were a few nerves about AI. When you hear there's technology coming in that can do what you do, it's only natural to feel a particular type of way about that. But I think what our team found out — and it's something I've tried to enforce as a leader — is that AI isn’t going to take their job. They’re going to be able to utilize AI in the day-to-day concepts of their job to be more efficient. They're going to find ways to source candidates from a better perspective, to streamline it a little bit more, and to create more time for themselves to do the manual touch points. It allows them the ability to pick the phone a little more to talk to candidates that may be on the second or third phase of an interview process.
Can you lean into that last part a bit more? How do you balance automated steps with impactful human interaction?
Most top tier candidates are interviewing for multiple roles at once. If you want to be the company of record that hires them, you have to give them an offering that’s going to be beneficial to them. And even more, you have to make an impact. So I've tried to partner with my recruiters and focus on the personal aspect of recruiting. I tell them to let the AI do what it does from an automation perspective because now you now have the ability to reach out from a personal perspective and create a powerful moment for that candidate. That’s really my philosophy for TA right there. Focusing on people and putting people first is always something that's going to bode well.
How important is quality of hire to AAA Mountain West Group? Are you hiring the right people?
Very important. As organizations, we need to focus intensely on quality of hire. But the only way to do that is to be really selective. You’ve got to understand the impact — that every hire you make creates change inside of an organization, even one like AAA that’s been around for 100+ years. And I think the beauty of having a 97% offer acceptance rate is that it tells us that we're aligned in all facets of everything we’re doing. Our offering is aligned with what candidates are seeking in the market. And then you factor in the fact that our internal mobility percentage is just over 41%. That’s a story about career paths right there. Without even having to speak on it, you get a sense like, “Here’s an organization that’s really focused on how they’re advancing their top internal team members.”
