Meditz College of Arts & Sciences Dean's Series - The Future of Talent, Culture, and AI

Thanks for joining us. My name is Richard Greenwald. I'm [music] the dean of the John Charles Meditz College of Arts and Sciences. And this is our new episode of the deans series, the future of where we sit down with alum >> [music] >> um in different areas and industries uh with faculty and staff to have a conversation about how they wound up where they are and what they can [music] tell us about their journey that others can learn from especially our students. Today we're joined by Jason Laroo who is a graduate of the college politics major uh philosophy minor who is uh currently the national managing partner of talent and culture at KPMGUS where he leads the firm's talent strategy people operations and programs that support employee growth engagement and well-being. Um he's been at that firm since 2005 and before that um he worked in HR and recruiting for Bank of America and Management Recruiters International. Um Jason, thanks for joining us. We're also joined by Steph Gallow who is our director of career planning um at the Meditz College uh career office um our own office of career planning for just our college students. And Steph has been with us uh since before we created that office. She's been doing career counseling for many years at Fairfield over 10. Uh and um she is one of the folks who when I meet alum particularly in the last 10 15 years it's the name I hear most often um is so they always say tail Steph hello and thank her again for helping me launch my career. So, as we get started, Jason, thanks for coming down to to visit or up to visit with us and Steph, thanks for coming in for this. You know, uh, want to hear about your story, how what brought you to Fairfield, why you decided to major in what you majored in, and how you wound up where you are right now. >> Yeah, so I ended up in Fairfield, class of 1999. and I graduated from a Jesuit high school in Cleveland, Ohio and had decided I wanted to continue my education uh in the Jesuit system. I looked at uh different schools uh but looked at Marquette but decided it was going to be too cold to go to Milwaukee. Uh we joked about the fact that um I was looking at between Fairfield and Forom. Fairfield had no essay and so you know as a 17-year-olds make interesting decisions but the best decision I really made was the decision to continue my Jesuit education brought me to Fairfield. Um, I remember getting out of the car and smelling the uh the sea salt air and just thinking, "This is home. I'm going to love this place." And so I I came to Fairfield as an accounting major. Um, and I spent two years in the program and I really uh enjoyed the skills that I built while I was there. We can talk a little bit more about that. Um, but then ultimately made a decision that I wanted to transition into becoming a politics major. I thought I was going to go to law school. I did ultimately go to one day of law school. Um, and my um, I loved my time at at Fairfield. I met my wife on my second day of school here. We got married shortly after I graduated. She's class of 1997, Christine. And, um, I she and I were both on the Fairfield University debate team. So, and that's really I met her at the career fair or sorry, the the club fair when we first uh, came onto campus. Um, she was my debate partner for a year and uh, she and I got to do awesome things. So she debate took her to Ireland and to South Africa took me to South Africa and to Greece and you know in in addition to our classroom education the time that we had building relationships and getting to do debate were a big part of preparing us for the real world. And then when I graduated actually before my uh before I graduated in the summer of uh 1999 and 1998 I was uh doing uh work for Fleet Bank as a recruiting coordinator. So, and I had a choice that summer between selling knives and being a recruiting coordinator. I would have been really good at selling knives for KCO, I promise. But uh but I ended up uh making the choice to be a recruiting coordinator. And it was this super cool opportunity to kind of bring together the skills that I had. And so I actually built an access database that summer, some of my business school skills uh to help me coordinate all of the interviews. But then I was able to use um all of my critical thinking and relationship building uh skills to help me as I was navigating through actually scheduling all those interviews and working through the recruiting process. And so fell in love with recruiting. Um and when I graduated I went to work for Management Recruiters International. >> Well, that's we'll have to talk about the one day of law school at some point. Um but I'm interested in you know coming in as uh an accounting major and I I actually came in as an accounting major in college as well. So um what motivated you to go into that major and what motivated you to move into politics because our students very often are thinking about you know the the sort of professional majors as a career path and it's you know interesting to hear the story about someone who has risen with the the liberal arts degree. >> Yeah. So I came in as an accounting major in large part because my dad was an accountant. And so you know I see a lot of students even today who sort of follow their parents' career path and successfully if that's what they're interested in. And when I came in I enjoyed uh my coursework. Okay. And I really did enjoy kind of the foundational learning that I got around you know what is a P&L, what is a balance sheet? So how do we navigate uh through different types of business settings? But I found myself more drawn to, you know, what were the inter team dynamics as we were working on group presentations. And I loved being in front of a room and actually, you know, having conversations. I liked more of the classes that I was taking in my gen eds and the and the sort of deep thinking that we were doing around politics and philosophy and I just didn't think I was going to get that um out of the accounting side. Um I'm not sure that's actually a perfectly fair representation and we get to some of our other questions. I think we'll talk about some of the ways in which really the bringing together of those disciplines is what I see as the real power. Um and so I I had made that transition and determined that I wanted to to focus on political science instead and then I really was uh you know down this path of wanting to to potentially be a lawyer. So I taken the LSATs and was admitted to school but uh but ultimately kind of made the decision that what I really wanted to do was to lean into my ability to communicate well to build relationships and to influence. And so, and those were the things that made me a really good recruiter. All of which kind of are foundationally built on the ability to ask good questions, uh, the ability to think critically, and the ability to put together argumentation that helps to build up to a point. All of which are skills that I learned through my liberal arts education. So, I love to think about the fusion that I got out of both of these things. I'm really proud of my time here. >> Yeah. I mean, the fusion is an important part. We often talk about in the the college that it's a both and um and it's a curated education, right? It's not a division either or, right? And so many of our students um have a second major in another school or many of our students are second majors from other schools or multiple minors. So that curation is an important part >> and I think it's it's really important because you know if you don't go into a traditional technical business career path that doesn't mean you won't encounter things that people in business in in any field have to deal with. So if you're a doctor you still have to deal with billings. You know if you're an actor you still have to deal with negotiating contracts. So it doesn't really matter which field you're in. Having some of those core skills will allow you to be successful. And the same is absolutely true the other way around. Right? So, as you know, we'll talk a little bit more about it later, but you know, even if you're coming up through um an accounting degree and you want to go to work for an accounting firm, we're still asking people to come in and exhibit judgment and crit critical thinking, analysis, those types of skills that really when you bring it together, that's where the power comes from. One of the unique things I I feel like Fairfield does a really good job of is allowing students to experience things like being on the debate team and how that having that experience and seeing yourself um succeed in different moments on stage in a debate um and how that impacts your career. So, how has being how was that experience influential in your choice, you know, in your career? >> Yeah, a few different things stand out to me. you know, one is it it allowed me to build relationships that I wouldn't otherwise have had the opport so I have friends who are lawyers at big firms all around uh the United States and in you know different kinds of professions because my experience wasn't just about building relationships here on the community. I have those but I was able to build these you know sort of systemwide relationships that have been very valuable throughout my career. Second is um it gave me practice which gave me confidence right so I think you know a lot of uh students when they first go into the world of work they're they lack a confidence and that confidence can then sort of show up in a you know okay does this person really know what they're doing you know my am I comfortable giving them responsibility but I was sort of past that because I had been out in front of audience of hundreds and I had a chance to pursue winning in a different way you know you you often see that um you know students who also participate in sports and you know rise to level of being captains like they develop that sort of confidence and comfortableness that can be very valuable when they get into the world of business. Um and then probably the last thing I would say is is it gave me exposure to lots of different ways of thinking. So you know you you grow up in a community and your mindset is very shaped by those who are most close to you and you know then you have an opportunity to go to high school and you meet a slightly bigger community and you share values there. But as you move between these different communities and you experience different things, whether they're part of campus life or when you travel into New York City or take other trips, every piece of that is sort of shaping how you think about the world and how you think about problems. And so, you know, the more you can put into that soup, the broader of a thinker you can be and and ultimately, I think, the better decisions that you can make. So, those are some of the things that stood out for me. >> So many of our med students just think of KPMG as an accounting firm. How would you describe the firm's key lines of business today? And then I think more importantly, how has talent and culture played a role in helping those areas succeed? >> Yeah. So, so our core lines of business are audit, uh, tax and advisory or consulting. Um, but we tend to think about it more through the way in which we help our clients, right? So, um, if you're an enterprise and you need to attest to the accuracy and quality of your financials, then we're here to help you do that, right? So, we'll be your external auditor. We can also uh work with you from an internal audit perspective to ensure that you know the controls and other things that you set up are being appropriately delivering those outcomes. Um in the tax space, you know, we're helping organizations to optimize their tax department itself and we're helping organizations reimagine how they actually deliver tax services. U we help them navigate through uh different uh moments in their company history. So you might be buying another company, you might be disposing of something, deciding where to put a plant. Those are all things that we can help you with, you know, in the US and on a crossber basis. Um, and we can also take on some of those things for you as well. So, if you if you want to work in a co-source or a managed service or an outsource relationship, you know, we're able to to to basically organize our services in a bunch of different ways. Um, advisory is a huge line of business uh for us with many different probably over 40 different kinds of services. But again, when you kind of boil it down and you ask like what at its core are we out there helping clients do? Um, you know, first we're helping them navigate change. And so whether that change is from a merger and acquisition, a technology implementation, a process change they're looking to make. Um, you know, we can come in and help them to navigate those big transformational moments and get it right. Um, we're here to help them navigate the regulatory environment. So, I know you've had some experts on in in past episodes that are um regulatory experts themselves and and that's where we've uh been able to to build practices that can help folks navigate financial regulatory environment, healthcare, life sciences regulatory environment and so on. Um third is you know we are really experts in the transaction advice business and so you we have a a middle market investment bank but we also do um accounting due diligence. We help organizations to merge or divest their accounting financials and we help companies that are coming together to navigate those big moments. And so, you know, we have these kind of bigger triggers that we uh that we that we are looking for as we're helping clients uh run their businesses in the most optimal way possible. And of course, you know, the thing that we often love to help clients with is actually to decide what to do in the first place. And so, you know, we can come in and help companies at at the strategy level, whether it's the board, CEOs or management teams, and make decisions about, you know, what should we be doing with our organization? Where do we want to take ourselves on a go forward basis? And on top of all that, we're, you know, we're a big organization. We've got uh 250,000 people globally, 35,000 folks here in the US. Um, and so we have, you know, a large HR department, finance department, IT department, and all of those things come together to really deliver for our clients. So your question was how does talent and culture help with that? Um and I think there's maybe three big ways that we're focused on it. One is you know when you have a large workforce 35,000 partners and employees and another set of contingent workers there are just basic infrastructure things that have to work right you've got to have a way to recruit individuals you have to way have a way to onboard them. You have to way to pay them give them benefits assess uh performance navigate uh promotions uh drive the learning and so forth. And so we administer a relatively big component of the organization's um you know kind of talent supply chain, talent value chain to ensure that we're able to have the right people in the right place at the right time with the right skills. And this then we are also really serving as the voice of talent as we're navigating business decisions. And so we're at the table with leadership teams as they're thinking about what services do we want to provide, how do we want to shift those services, you know, where do we what types of clients do we want to pursue? Um how do we build the relationships inside those clients? And every one of those strategic choices has a set of talent implications that need to be navigated. And we're there to help think through what what will what capabilities are going to be necessary in order to achieve the strategic outcome. and how do we then unders take that knowledge of what's necessary and bring it to life. And then the last big thing that talent and culture does is it actually helps to advise on the culture of the organization. And so with a community of 35,000 people, we're super focused on this broad question of um you know what does it take to for this to be a place that people want to join, want to spend their careers and that people will talk well of us as they move on to other places, right? We have, you know, thousands of alumni who are CEOs and CFOs and COOs and and in other types of roles inside of organizations and, you know, we were a big part of their training ground. We help them to get their careers started. We value our alumni community so much. Um, and that's all part of, you know, what is the core essence of our culture and how do we make sure that people feel like they can thrive here, that they get from their career what they're looking for, and that we are what the market needs us to be. Right? At the end of the day, our brand is trust. You know, we started out as a core accounting firm and the markets, capital markets expect us to be able to protect that on a day-to-day basis. And so those are just some of the values that are core to our culture and talent and culture is really focused on making sure that we're helping to bring that voice into conversations and we're helping to shape things at an enterprise level, but also at a team and an individual level so people feel like it's a place where they can thrive. >> I want to pivot to um the elephant in the room and that's AI. Um you know there's been massive press coverage um you know around the disruption of AI into uh the workplace u you know the the sort of ending of whole career ladders and and and the like and you know recently a number of commencement speakers who mentioned AI were famously booed. Um you know I think the the college uh generation right now feels that unease right. So how do you see AI as a you know disruptor or augmentator of of of work going forward? And the second part of that is what would your advice be to students you know in how to um see AI and you know uh use it and or or not in what ways? >> Yeah. So we're we talk a lot about the future of work at KPMG both for ourselves and for clients and we talk about the work trifecta. So which is the idea that in general work is transitioning on three dimensions. The work itself is changing. So for us that's you know what we do for clients, how we do it for clients and how we support ourselves inside the organization. But then you also have the workforce is changing to go along with it and then workplace. So from a workforce perspective what we're seeing is the disruption of traditional career paths. not so much the elimination of um of responsibilities but a reshaping of how those responsibilities come together to deliver outcomes for clients. And as a result, you know, we're hiring for new skills. We're reshaping career paths. Um and we have a lot of accelerated learning going on to give people new capabilities with some of these tools so that they can deliver, you know, the outcomes the clients are looking for but in new, more efficient, more effective ways. Um, and as a result of that, we've had to say, okay, well, we've got to rethink, you know, what does it mean for who we hire into an organization? How do we incentivize people? How do we build performance expectations for them? How do we choose people for progression inside the organization? So, all kinds of the changes that are happening inside of the workforce. So, it's a super fun time uh to be in human resources because you're getting to navigate some of these bigger problems, but the workplace is also changing as well. So some of that is, you know, kind of everybody continuing to settle into what it means to be hybrid and whether your version of hybrid is, you know, four days a week in the office or one day or no days, right? There's kind of different ways in which the work is coming together. But hybrid or I should say but the change in the workplace is also about the the interconnection between human and AI, right? And the ability for humans to leverage AI to deliver outcomes in a way that they haven't, you know, up and through this point of their career. It's the sort of the the the reshaping of what it means to be an expert and how to use different tools in order to deliver your expertise to audiences. And so from a workplace perspective, we're having to to rethink, you know, how do we give people the right tools? How do we make sure that spaces have the right experience to them? And how do we create a how do we create the right kinds of humanto human relationships, but also the right kind of humantodigital relationships that are going to be enduring and maximize workforce performance. And so you know if you if you think back you know five or six years ago to the co moment and the disruption that we got coming out of there you can imagine that was largely a workplace disruption. So big we we imaging things change across all three dimensions. And so your so to your second question then you know what is my advice to students? My advice to students is to continue to lean in and to build um expertise, right? And so, you know, whatever that's going to be from your perspective, right? So, it's and expertise kind of sits at the intersection of sort of knowledge um skills and experience. And so, for all of our students, you know, I would encourage them to think about, you know, what sort of knowledge do you want to pick up? What kind of craft skills, you know, so that's the ability to communicate, to create a presentation, to do an analysis, those types of things. And then how do you get experience through internships, through classroom work, um, and eventually through your early career that will allow you to have that? And then the question is how can you use AI to amplify your expertise? So it's not a replacement for expertise in my view. It's an amplifier. Um, because it allows us to navigate through tasks more quickly, but I don't think it will ultimately replace some of the things that make us uniquely human. >> So what experiences with AI do you think our students should be getting? >> Yeah. So there's probably two primary things that I would encourage them to focus on. One is I think they should learn how to do research uh through AI, how to have levels of engagement with it, and then also how to fact check it and make sure that they're so I've listened to a couple other episodes of your podcast and you've had some speakers on who've talked about AI slop and and some of the other things that can come. And so the the nature of what it means to do research has changed now that AI exists, but it hasn't changed that ultimately whoever is looking for that product is looking for the product to be reliable. And the human in a loop, the judgment aspect of that isn't going away. And so I think encouraging students to figure out how to start their research journey, how to start their knowledge building journey using AI will help them. Um, and then but also figuring out how to turn that into something that people can rely on is important. And then the second component of it is I think it's figuring out how it can help automate um or improve routines that the students so if I'm responsible for developing code or if I'm responsible for running a multi-step process learning how AI can be used in order to change those kinds of things can be really powerful. We had interns who came in uh to our HR department um and they were uh they they spend a summer with us and they do a capstone project as part of it and they came and presented a continuous improvement analysis to a team um you know and they used AI to both understand the team to build their analysis to review it and then make a series of process improvement recommendations and they were able to do all of that without having worked one full-time day as an employee in the HR field. So now again, there's lots of things that those who have more experience are saying, "Okay, I can take that or maybe you need to adjust that." But the ability to come in early on in your career and make an even bigger impact if you can sort of master those two skills to me is a big advantage. >> One of the things we're really proud of is our um our outcome numbers. And last year we uh in medit, found a job within 6 months of graduation. Um, this is something that we're all thinking about as we embark upon this called the the new world of AI and how AI is really going to be impacting um early career talent and early and students leaving college. How do you see AI impacting those those first jobs? >> Yeah. So I I would just go back a little bit towards so when I graduated in 1999 we were kind of right at the beginning of the internet era was before the.com bust and we were having somewhat similar conversations around hey there's this disruptive technology and it's clearly creating some jobs over here but boy isn't it going to make it easier for my job to be done from somewhere else in the world isn't going to be make it so that a computer can automate what I might have done when I left here and so I I think the the story is yet to be written around precisely how it will impact um you know the you the United States economy and the broader world economy and what it will mean for jobs. But if you look back at the moments in history where new technologies have been introduced, there's always been a period of uncertainty followed by a fairly big boom in productivity that results in you know the creation of more jobs and and that's what I would anticipate will be the case as we navigate through this. And so, you know, I think on a a per individual basis, we will see productivity grow, you know, which if you didn't imagine that we were also going to take advantage of broader growth, would result in, you know, I need fewer people to do the work that I had before. But I think our hypothesis is that as organizations navigate this moment, they're going to need us more than ever and more than they did before. airgo we anticipate growing and so we think our workforce is probably going to stay the same or get bigger on a composite basis as we sort of step through this plus I also think that we there's going to be things that come out of this that we didn't even really envision at the beginning right so again when the personal computer was uh first created I'm not sure that we all envisioned that later that would move on to our mobile phone and that eventually it would have an AI chat so nobody sort of thought that maybe right maybe a relatively few people thought it right at the beginning and so I anticipating that several new career opportunities will emerge. And so if I were, you know, if I were advising, you know, a graduate, I would focus on, hey, you know, go out and get the first job that will allow you to begin to build skills, credibility, and relationships. So, and I think once you have those things, then you'll be able to see how the world is evolving and, you know, reshape your career over that period of time. So, as we've talked about a couple other time in this podcast, it's highly unlikely that somebody's going to stay and do the exact same job they did on the first day when they joined an organization. So, if you have that resilience, if you have that creativity, and if you're prepared to navigate sort of the uncertainty, then my hypothesis is that folks will be able to navigate and move forward. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, as a follow-up, one of the things you mentioned is judgment, right? And so, you know, technology, you know, has been a disruptor forever. Um and but the pace of the growth in technology and dependence and disruption seems to have been magnified tremendously, right? Um so you know developing that um that judgment is something that is really very very important as from what you were saying that you're looking for and that other companies are looking for you. How do you see doing that in an age of AI disruption where the hype around the new model, the new LLM, the new technology um is is sort of creating this um for lack of a better term, an attention deficit disorder around technology that yet why bother reading the book when you can just get it summarized? Why bother learning how to do a PowerPoint presentation? Why not just have, you know, one of the LLMs do that, right? What's to what's gained from that sitting and discerning and thinking through critically um the these issues? >> Yeah. And maybe I'll just first talk take a quick step back and say I think those who were sitting at the dawn of the personal computer era or the internet era. We're having a similar conversation about how those things were going to fundamentally transform the way that work was done. So and wasn't it going to result in people being less capable in some of the basic skills? And yet that isn't what happened, right? I think that people were able to marry what makes us uniquely human with the technologies of those moment to create a more powerful long-term outcome. So I think we can do that here too. Um and I think that the and and I think the the technology itself actually gives us some ways to be able to do that that we didn't have before. So one of the quintessential problems we've been struggling with is as AI becomes uh more capable of doing certain levels of tasks that used to be like uh auditing cash. So you know how will people learn how to do that? Well it's true that it can now do that more efficiently. It's also true that we can build simulations in AI that we can put people through that can give them reps, hundreds of reps that used to take years for people to be able to get through. And so our ability to use these technologies to actually rep to replace some of what it's be able to do so that we can still get to that part where people have the broad set of knowledge that's necessary to be good judges I think is really important. The second thing is I at the end of the day, you know, people trust other people. So, and I think even as we've introduced other kinds of technologies along the way, there's still an inherent expectation that the trust comes from the fact that somebody has certified this is going to work the right way. And that certification of trust is founded on the idea that somebody has a good enough judgment to be able to certify that it in fact will be okay. And so I think teaching people that if they want to be viewed as experts in their field, what they're really being viewed at as sort of is having expert judgment around these things, I think that will helpfully incentivize people to lean in and do more of that. >> Thanks. >> Sounds like talent management is really being greatly impacted by AI. So, and you've kind of pointed to this even your last, but how has how has talent manage management changed over the years? >> Yeah. So, I'll I'll start with the um with maybe some of the things that aren't happening because I think we get a lot of feedback from I see a lot of the news articles that say sort of AI is ruling me out or you know it's kind of making these judgments and decisions and at least for KPMG you know I think there's a recognition that um there there's still error rates inside the AI that don't give us enough confidence to be able to fully turn over judgment around you know who ought to be considered for a role who ought to be picked for a role setting pay at a particular level. So, I don't think talent decisions are ultimately going to be handed over to AI, at least not anytime in the near future. So, back to the judgment point, right? We're going to need people who have the the ability to be that human in the loop and bring that expertise to the table. What I do think it is uh is has allowed us to do across the different um areas of talent management is to move faster um in some of the different basic uh requirements that we have for those places. So if you think about in recruiting, it allows us to write a job description much faster than we could before. In the learning space, it allows us to to build trainings in minutes that used to take uh you know weeks and not always to the 100% level, but allows you to get that really good first draft so you can get out and moving faster than you were before. It allows us to synthesize, you know, hundreds or billions if you want of data points, you know, and do an analysis on that that helps you to understand correlations and causations, you know, between different um between different aspects of somebody or the way that they interact with a particular business environment to help you make better decisions around who you might want to pick or where you want to lean in from a learning perspective. So um I think that the technology um I have seen over the course of my career has only made it easier for us to do more sophisticated analysis than we were previously and I don't think that we have turned it over to the technology to make the decisions for us and I think that's a critical differentiator. Um it doesn't mean that that day won't come but I I really don't feel like we're anywhere close to it. So, when I started my career, I think I alluded to it in my intro, like there weren't applicant tracking systems, which is a place where resumes get stored and jobs get posted. Um, and then those got built and then workflows got built on top of that and then the ability to do assessments got built on top of that. So, in my my [clears throat] view, this is kind of just the next evolution of more sophisticated technology that helps us create a better experience and make better judgments along the way. And so I I think we've all got to pay close attention to it to ensure that it's actually doing those things the way that we want, that it's not creating a poor experience or it's not facilitating bad judgments, but assuming that it's doing both the way that it's intended to, I think it can be a really powerful force for good. >> Yeah. I mean, Steph and I were talking yesterday about the the fear that um college students have in approaching the job market and now he's speaking to um a college student um about 2 or 3 days before or late last week and um the strategy they were thinking of was is something I would call prey and spray that there's you know four or five sites that are out there. you have a a sort of one resume and one cover letter and you just apply to everything, right? Um there's a passivity that's in there. And part of it is the the fatalism that that many have many of the students that it's going to be screened by AI anyway, right? And you know um how can a student just getting something simple as a resume and a cover letter out how you know on your end when your company is looking for that screening you know a massive amount of applications for internships and and entry level positions. What do you look for and how can the human element break into that? Right. Steph was saying yesterday, something as simple as just calling um which which is seems like an aggressive act for many of our students who are used to sitting behind a screen, right? So, what advice do you have for them as they enter the job market, you know, or or thinking about that next phase? I'm going to need some tips on how to get my 25 and 20-year-old to make phone calls. >> I'm here for you. >> Okay. I appreciate that. the um so actually I was going to start in that exact place which is I I believe that relationships remain you know paramount so and I think that the rel so when you're on campus I had the opportunity to come down to Fairfield in the fall uh for the business school and meet with uh potential um potential recruits but also committed students and I would say the ones that stood out were the ones who took the time to came over say hello introduce themselves talk about what they were doing talk about why they thought KPMG was an interesting employer I think they're the ones who followed up with me afterwards, who connected with me on LinkedIn. It's the the indiv those who view it as a relationship building activity as opposed to, you know, sort of a a numbers game, I think, are going to have a a very clear advantage in the ability to get past the fact that there are a lot of applicants and, you know, we do have the opportunity to be selective. I think when you get to the resume side of the equation, you we're looking for a few different things. One, you know, we we're certainly looking for great academics. It's a big part of it. And so, you know, encourage you everyone to lean in, get good grades, do the work, you know. Um, second is we're looking for people who have been involved in secondary responsibilities because it demonstrates the ability to be multifaceted. And we love to see people who have taken on leadership roles in those secondary responsibilities. So whether it's a club or a sport, it makes a big difference to be able to demonstrate, you know, that you can go above and beyond and that you can lead teams, you can work through adversity. Um the third thing that we look for is individuals who are able to articulate why they are want it right and so you can do that in the cover letter which is great but I think sometimes there's an expectation from students that just being an accounting major or IT major whatever that's enough for the employer to select you. I think being able to articulate your value proposition. So knowing what your elevator speech is, you know, helping the person on the other, being memorable to agree, I think goes a goes a long way in terms of being able to get past uh that door. And then lastly, I I do think there is an element of persistence that matters. And you can take it too far to be sure, but I think as as you go through any recruiting process, you know, being willing to not just accept that I sent it in, I guess we'll see what happens, but you know, okay, no, I've made a phone call now. I've had an interview. I've sent a thank you note, you know, now I've I've reached out and I' I've read something and I've shared it on LinkedIn. Like, you know, how can you make yourself feel like you're part of that individual's community? And these are, by the way, the same skills that will make someone successful in getting their idea move forward inside of an organization, selling to a client, like these are these are the same kinds of skills that that will be um will be useful over the course of a career, and interviewing for a job is a good opportunity to practice them. >> Yeah. One thing I I heard you say is they how do you make yourself stand out, right? And and my worry and you know is that many students are using AI to craft cover letters and write their resumes and that's a predictive model. It it sort of it there's no individuality >> that's there. So what I'm hearing you saying that they should not do that. They should, you know, they could use it as a tool to help, but it ultimately has to be a reflection of that individual and have a bit of a personality. >> Yeah. So, I I had the opportunity, I'll give you a perfect example. So, I had the opportunity to write a position paper um you know, for work recently. And what I found it useful for was I had it write a first draft. So, for me, just I told it here's the thing I'm interested in, what I want to say. and I had it write a first draft and I read it and then I put it off to the side because it helped me to be able to surface some points I wanted to make but it totally was not in my voice and it wasn't how I wanted to tell that story. Then I went to a blank sheet of paper and I started from scratch and I wrote my whole narrative and then when I was done I I went back to the AI and I said hey um here are the key points that I wanted to make. Do you feel like I've done enough so it can be an interesting editor? And then secondly maybe this is too wordy or this is too short. Can you help me make some adjustments? So, I think the student, you know, who believes that AI is the only answer, write me a cover letter and I'm going to take it and send it in. To your exact point, right? These uh the models are designed to produce a fairly consistent outcome. And if it didn't, by the way, we'd be worried about it in a whole bunch of other places. So, it's actually working the way it's supposed to when it does that. Um, you know, aren't going to be able to stand apart. Those who use it as a tool to help them think about how to get started or to give them some feedback on what they've already done that those students, I think, are probably using it more in the right way. In our career class, we actually are teaching students how to use AI strategically just in the ways that you're doing it. We're like almost have a conversation with the LMN and and say here's the things that I did as a lifeguard. Here's the 15 responsibilities. Help me and here's the here's the numbers. Here's the as many people that I helped and all that and and using it to kind of work with AI to write compelling action forward quantitative bullets. and then you go back and read it and ask yourself, is this my lived experience? And if that's the case, then then it isn't just auto, it's not generated, it's working with it. The cover letter piece is challenging to teach students because you really don't want them to get used to writing. They they need to write, right? So, it is, you know, working again as a act as an editor, you know, how can you, you know, work with AI to help you produce something that's that's, you know, >> Yeah. And our students in the college are remarkable because they do have this curated experience. They are, you know, double majors and triple minors. They're involved in theater or glee club. They're student athletes, right? They volunteer. They there's a lot of experience. And one of the things Steph does in that seminar is is sort of teach them how to bring that together as a narrative, right? Um that it's not enough to say, I majored in this and I minored in that, right? particularly I would argue um in the college of arts and sciences because you know the pathway from politics major to your position now is not a direct one >> and you know um you know one of the reasons I majored in accounting was because there was a direct path right and so sometimes in in you know riskaverse students see that pathway as something more secure right and getting them to think about being more confident in their abilities beyond that major is one of our challenges, right? >> Yeah, for sure. And it's I think if we did a meta study and we looked at all the people who had a major and then they went into that profession and you looked at the percentage of them that spent their entire career in that profession, you know, it would be relatively low percentage. I think on one of your recent episodes, you were kind of quoting the number of careers that people are probably going to have. But what's interesting is and it's it's not just that they're going to switch companies and do the same job. but said they're actually going to switch jobs and that's totally okay. And so for me, I've done that inside of one organization. I started as a recruiter and then I was a divisional HR leader. Then I was a head of total rewards. Now I have this role. So but the the foundational skills that I built through this interdisciplinary education have made me very successful because it allowed me to be a good communicator, to be a good persuader. It allowed me to have the math and analytical skills that let me take on something like total rewards and, you know, see the connection back to the firm's financials. Um, it allowed me to think strategically, to think critically. It allowed me to be a good systems thinker. Like, I think if I were to, you know, kind of lean into one skill that seems to transcend a lot of different places. It's the ability to not just be able to complete a task, but to understand how that task fits inside a broader system and to be able to predict the second and third order consequence associated with changes to any given system. And so, you know, and all of those were things that as I went through the various aspects of my education here, I was able to pick up those skills and I wouldn't have had those kinds of words uh when I was in it, but it made a big difference. And you and I were talking about the other one that I think is very empowerful ahead of time which is the you know the psychology or behavioral science skills. I think that you know having been in the business environment for more than 25 years almost every business problem is at its core at least you know at least 50% and often more a psychology problem. It's a question of how can I get you know an individual or a group of people to follow my ideas or how are people going to interact with this system right? right? Are they going to love it, be engaged by it, want to follow it, or are they going to reject it? And what's that going to mean? And so the part of the reason why I loved my job in total rewards is it sat at this lovely intersection of behavioral science and psychology and you know sort of core math and analytics and it allowed me to think about how do you drive incentives that encourage people to help build your company and drive your strategy and so for sure there's so much that you can get out of Ninja education. I was thinking about our magis core which we launched a few years ago and and you know what makes it I think unique um is it has three signature elements right one is interdisciplinarity so that you don't just look at a problem from one lens you have to learn to look at it through multiple lenses um and one is also you know what we consider our social justice Jesuit imperative which is really to not just see things through themselves but to look through other lenses, other people's experiences to develop a sense of empathy which also builds teamwork and working across divisions and and the last is is uh writing and communication. So so many universities have one writing requirement that they often wave if a student gets a high enough AP exam score. um we have four requirements in writing and communication that can't be waved, right? And I think students appreciate that more as they're entering the job market because it does set them apart, right? They've done multiple presentations in classes. They've done research, their own research presentations in in forum. They've gone to conferences. they had that leadership moment where they're getting up in front of a room of experts telling them what they've done and what they found, right? Um how do you you know see that in comparison to some of the other um you know uh students that are coming in from other institutions, right? >> Yeah. So we um so I had the opportunity to go down to our faculty symposium. Uh so we have KPMG Lakehouse which is an amazing investment that the firm made 800bedroom facility and once a year we have an opportunity to invite about a 100 faculty from some of our biggest schools. Fairfield University was represented there. Um I got a cheer from the professor in the audience when I mentioned it on stage and um and we were having exactly this conversation and they you know when you're talking to accounting professor chairs or members of the accounting department traditionally it's a little more focused on sort of what technical accounting skills you know should we be building and to be clear we still need you know to hire students who have technical accounting proficiency and eventually building into expertise but the conversation was much more about what are the secondary skills that we need to be able to bring and many of which we've talked about today, judgment, critical thinking, persuasion, and so forth. And I and I think that the answer is it's it's it's considerably varied um in terms of what we get coming off of the different campuses. So much so that we're headed down a path of doing a couple different things. One is we're actually starting to do assessments as part of the interview process, formal testing, you know, around um critical thinking and agility, which we haven't really done before because we're trying to make sure that students are coming to us with the right capabilities above and beyond the book learning components. Um and then second is when we bring our interns and our first years in, we have them do a self assessment across I think it's like a 16 dimension uh skill um you know matrix and they use that in order to be able to uh decide where they want to focus their learning over the course of their internship or over the course of their first 12 months with the firm. So and the data would show you that we have uh extremely varied capabilities from the students who join us. Right? So some are coming in and they've really spent their in almost their entire time kind of focused on their core major and the the courses that come with it and others that are coming from more balanced institutions you know come with that expertise but then also come with these other components as well. Um, and so if you ask the question about, well, who succeeds over the long run? I think the reality is that although we do have students from some of those bigger schools that succeed, more often than not, it's the students who bring those secondary capabilities that are able to set themselves apart because the the the profession of of uh of accounting. So, and whether you're going into the audit world or going into the tax world or into into professional into the consulting spaces, you know, it always involves interaction with others, interaction with teams, interaction with clients, interaction potentially with regulators. And so your ability to communicate effectively, to think through a problem, you know, and to go beyond just what the core regulation is is really what ultimately sets you apart. And so, you know, back to the point you were making, it's it's a it's a sort of foundational desire for humans to be heard and understood, but if you can't communicate, you can't be heard and understood. And so, teaching students to be able to do that verbally and in writing is a really giving them a superpower for life. All of the students who go through our career program take um Clifton Strengths for students. Um and it's a big part of how I coach and so I'm curious, what do you do best? Like what are you best at? >> Yeah. So I um so I'd say my my superpowers are u I'm I've been told I'm a pretty effective communicator and I have the ability to do that in a variety of different spaces. So small audiences, bigger audiences. Um, and I can do it both in a way that's designed to persuade, to help people to understand, um, or just to build a relationship. And so, and I've been practicing it, you know, kind of my whole life, and I love it. Um, second thing is I am a very effective systems thinker. And so I have the ability to see problems at a macro level to zoom out, make sure we're focused on the right problem to begin with. Um, and then to narrow our way through, okay, what are the principles we're going to use to make this decision and then navigating through how any decision is going to have sort of second and third order consequences that we need to manage. Um, I think the third thing is that I I have I have been a very effective relationship builder. Um, but I do it in a way that's designed to do it on the terms of the individual that I'm trying to engage with. So some people are really good at uh being relationship builders because they just have a naturally magnetic personality and people want to be more like them. I think for me it's a little bit more that um I am u focused on trying to build a relationship with individuals on the terms that will matter to them instead. And so I'm good at being able to understand what motivates people um and and what will help them get to yes. So as a recruiter I've had tons of practice on that which is totally different than trying to sell somebody. It's really just trying to understand how they tick and then aligning values around the decisions that we're ultimately making. Um and then lastly is I'm I am fairly persistent and resilient. And so um you know I've I I had the opportunity throughout um you know my life to be the little bit of the underdog. Um you know I didn't uh you know I went to a prestigious school but I wasn't validictorian. I went to a great college um and I won things but I wasn't necessarily top of my class. I came in as a recruiter but I wasn't a highly recruited individual. And every, you know, way along I've sort of taken that with a little bit of chip on my shoulder that says, you know, I want to be the best. What do I have to do to get to the next level? So that persistence really drives me to want to get to there. And then maybe my last thing I would focus on is that I am curious. And so I I read a lot of different things, listen to a lot of different podcasts, all inside and outside of my fields of interest because that go back to the systems thinking, understanding how different pieces come together uh to paint a picture I think is what allows me to be able to make good decisions. Resiliency is one of the ones too I feel like is so important for this for the generation of students that that we're working with is encouraging them to have confidence in that process and and you're going to hit a wall and it's just being able to bounce back up and kind of push forward >> 100% ma mastering the mundane I think is another term that I had a chance to to put out recently or I think people are they're focused on the special moments the big moments and they for sure they matter but almost most special moments don't come with hundreds or thousands of mundane moments. So you know, so whether you're talking about it personally or professionally, you're investing one step at a time along the way. And when you do that, you know, it usually has moments of payoff, but in between it can be kind of boring. But if you are willing to master the mundane, you know, you'll probably outrun even the most talented individual who's unwilling to do that. >> Jason, we have students in the college who are interested in careers in HR and talent management. We also have a master's of science degree in industrial organizational psychology which you know students can do as a 4 plus one. Um what opportunities do you see in your field for students who are interested in that and you know what kind of preparation should they be doing for that career? >> Yeah. So I think the first thing that I always try to remind folks is that HR is not one thing, right? And so if you're a recruiter, you know, you're probably going to be more focused on sales skills, relationship building. Um, if you're in traditional human resources, employee relations, HR, business partnering, you might be a little more focused on, you know, core employment regulation, or you might be using the IO psychology skills in terms of how you build talent programs. Um, if you're uh in our analytics department, you might come from an IT or a data analysis background. We have an HRIT function. We have compensation we've talked about. You might come from core either. We have actuaries. We have folks who with math degrees, some who came up from a compensation program, others who come from finance and accounting. Uh Llobach was the former uh chief people officer for Google. He wrote a book called work rules. and he talked about constructing his HR team with kind of a mix of traditional HR practitioners um and consultants and then totally sort of asymmetric uh capabilities like uh data analysis or technology or um even folks coming from you know other kinds of fields entirely because that's what really allows you to bring together and kind of deliver that interdisciplinary outcome not unlike what we've been talking about relative to the university. So, uh, so the I guess the punch line of this for me with students is there's a lot of different ways that you can get into it. And so we for sure we love to see students who are coming with um undergraduate or master's degree in either core human resources, labor relations, IIO psychology um but like myself I think you can come from a wide variety of places and a lot of it just depends on you know how can you get your foot in the door for me that was to come in as a recruiting coordinator. Others come in as a as a a more of an HR coordinator. Some come in as sort of a learning specialist, some will start an HR service center. So there's lots of doorways into the HR profession. And then once you're in the profession, um the people that I have seen who have progressed the farthest are the ones who can combine sort of the core understanding of talent and human resources as a discipline with an understanding of business. And so back to some of the exchanges that we had earlier, I think understanding how business works makes you a far more powerful HR person. And so being able to take what you get from your liberal arts uh degree in education and combining it with an understanding of uh financials and other things will enable you to have conversations with business leaders uh that will set you apart from your colleagues and peers. And so yeah, I think uh HR is such a cool profession. I'm a big advocate for it. And I think there's a lot of ways into it. >> Yeah. And one of the things we're we're really proud of uh is this fall we're launching an executive coaching program for our students funded by the philanthropy of uh one family who's been uh really supportive of this effort. Um, and as we're launching this, part of the the thinking is that our students, you know, um, need to have that, you know, that that not just executives need coaching, but the students need that sort of individualized attention to get them to that higher level. So, you know, to get a student who's, you know, that uh, solid B student, how do they become that A student, right? What are the what do they need to work on? Right? So, what advice do you have for us as we're launching this to to think about that would, you know, um that when the students are through it and applying for positions, they'll be in a better better spot. >> Yeah. So, I I'm first of all applaud you for building that kind of program. I'm I work with a coach now. I've done it a couple of times over the course of my career and it's been a great moment to, you know, do some kind of strengths assessment, go out, do a 360, learn how other people think about you, and then put together a plan around how you want to navigate the road forward. So, any opportunity we can do to uh to introduce people to that I think is a really powerful thing. But there are maybe four sort of core skills or four things I'd encourage students to focus on coming out of a program, right? Around that one is to really make sure that they're prepared to be invested when they get into the workforce. There will be moments of difficulty. It will be hard. Um, you know, and you know, there will be times when you'll be working with somebody who doesn't see it your way where the the work is either boring or overwhelming. So, but if you're really committed and you're invested, you'll get through it anyway. So, do it anyway, I think, is a big part of what I would encourage. Second is be curious. So, we talked about the importance of that. Um, my favorite Ted Lasso quote from the early seasons in the darts episode is being curious and not judgmental. I think trying to take a step back and not react in the moment and understand well why did that person feel that way or why are they so passionate about that or why do they see it differently from me you know or just how are those two things related or how is your job related to mine all of those in the end will help you develop a much bigger picture that I think can be a very powerful accelerator for a career third is to be reliable so do what you say you're going to do um you know and then and don't do what you're not supposed to do so it sounds super basic uh but you but I've often been surprised by how careers, you know, early and, you know, later are derailed by the lack of reliability. And so if you are committed to something, see it through until the end. Um, you know, fulfill your promise. And I think that will allow you to fulfill your overall promise. Um, and the last one, and I guess this will be somewhat ironic, is to be coachable. And so the uh, so that coaching that you're giving to folks will be great for them um, in terms of being able to help position them immediately, but what I would hope more than that for them is that it will actually teach them the importance of being coached. Right? There's no professional sports team in the world that isn't doing coaching moment by moment. They would never let wait till the end of the game or the end of the year in order to give coaching. But I think a lot of people come out and because we go from an academic environment where everybody can get an A if they all fulfill the requirements to one where there is some level of co-opetition because you know there's limited access to promotional opportunities, limited access potentially to financial rewards. We go from this place where we're open to feedback and we want to learn more to a place where we want to hide the things that we're not as good at because if we do that, we think it'll help us get ahead. And instead, exactly the opposite happens. Instead, we don't learn what it is that we're not doing to fulfill requirements. And sometimes we don't even know what's going on. And so as students, if they learn to seek out feedback, if they learn to encourage their leaders to make sure that they're coaching them, if they're asking how can I show up the next time I do this in a 1% better way, then they're going to have fantastic careers. Yeah, it's funny when you're saying that. I kept thinking um you know on the faculty side when I joined uh here nine years ago um the one of the unique features and positive features of of faculty sort of um development is the faculty judge each other on their me mentor ability, right? um they they want to see colleagues who are continuously looking for improvement and feedback and taking that seriously. Right? So um you know one of the things that it reminded me is that maybe we need to tell that story a little bit to our students so they can see that that's a continuous process. It's not just something that happens when they're students or when they're in the workplace, right? It is something that that everyone is going through at different ways. Well, and just to tie it back to the somewhat one of the through lines of our conversation around how technology is disrupting the workplace again, back to the point of you're probably going to have, you know, more than one job, probably more than one career. It it's in part because the world is going to change and what the world needs from careers at different moments in time is going to change. And so, the only way you're going to be able to navigate that is to be agile. The only way that you can be agile is to be willing to learn continuously. And the only way that you can learn is through coaching and those types of things. So, it's all a connected system that allows people to be successful. So, I would say lean into that coachability. Um, and you'll find it'll take you a long way. >> We have a fresh group of students coming so soon. What advice would you have for the incoming class? >> Well, the first thing I would encourage them to do is just be ready to enjoy it, right? It's not going to be easy every day. You know, you might be um a little bit homesick. You know, you might not uh succeed in your first semester. uh you might not uh you know you might switch your major more than once as you navigate through it, but find those moments of enjoyment. You know, go and participate in a student event. You know, lean in and hang out with your friends. Um you know, I'm not saying don't pay attention to your academics, but I think making sure that you're able to do both of those things goes a long way. Um the second is I would encourage them to build good habits. And so when you when you leave the the academic environment and you go into the workforce and even when you go from high school to college, probably the biggest transition you'll see is the level of supervision that's over you on a day-to-day basis. And if you don't build good habits in terms of I'm going to show up here, I'm going to work like this, you know, and I can learn to work in an independent way, then you can really struggle when you get out into the professional work world. So I just encourage you to use this as your opportunity to build really good habits. Third is to make sure you're building relationships. So, um I have the advantage of having built the most important relationship in my adult life with my wife, but I have lots of relationships that I was able to build through my time at the school, whether directly at Fairfield or through the debate programs uh that I were at. And so, just encourage people to remember that these relationships are going to transcend the four or five years that they'll spend here at the university. And then lastly is I personally I would prioritize breadth over depth. And so I know that that's uh maybe a little bit sacriiggious and I I don't want to say that there shouldn't be some areas where you feel like you're on your path to a level of expertise, but the whole advantage of coming to an institution like this is the ability to be broad in a variety of disciplines and to see how they all work together to make a more powerful conversation, a more powerful decision, a more powerful moment. Um so those are the things that I would encourage them to do when they come onto campus. you know, one of the things you've talked about um is, you know, helping professionals and your employees navigate imposttor syndrome, which which I I found really fascinating. Um what um in you what have you learned through that process do you think can be transferred into the college experience? Because very often college students feel um as if they're supposed to have everything all worked out and have a life plan and know what they're doing and if they don't they feel like they've got to fake it because they're imposttors. Yeah. So the first thing I would share is that um I'm 48 years old. I've been out of school for nearly 30 years and I still have moments of imposter syndrome. So I would I would start by recognizing that it's not unique to that moment in time. um you know it's something that all of us will face anytime we walk into new environments. It's the rare person very very rare person who I come across who's just sort of lzair and comfortable anywhere you go um so once you sort of realize that that's the case you begin to appreciate oh okay if other people are going through this and I see that they're being successful that gives me some level of confidence. The second thing that I would say is um and I actually learned this through working with my coach is that there are different techniques for being able to manage through that depending on and so for some people you know digging deeply into it from an academic perspective whatever the situation is. I have to give a public uh speech or I have to pass a test or you know I'm interviewing for my first job you know learning about it uh reading about it is something that can be really helpful for other people. It's talking to folks about it, right? So, it's, you know, sitting down and having conversations with folks in a career office or with a professor or with an alumni to to to talk about what was that experience like? Can you demystify it for me so that when I get there, I'm not as scared of it as I otherwise would. For others, it's just repetition, right? So, if I'm I have to give a public speech and, you know, I want to make sure that I do well at it, then I'm going to go and practice it, you know, as getting as many repetitions as I possibly can. But the point is that if you want to be able to navigate imposttor syndrome, you have to begin to learn for you what gets you to the other side of it. Right? And the answer usually isn't I did it well and somebody told me I did it well. It's instead I did something to prepare and that gave me the base level confidence that I was going to be successful and then once I've done it and I got good feedback on it, now it starts to go away. So figure out what your trigger is. Um and I think you'll that'll help you to be able to navigate those moments. One one question I always ask folks, what what when you look back at your time at Fairfield, what was your favorite class? >> My favorite class uh probably was uh the philosophy classes that I took with Dr. Curtiser, who was also our um who was also our academic adviser for the debate team. And so I and I really liked it in large part because it allowed me to have these very esoteric debates about topics that weren't particularly practical in the real world, but strengthened my argumentation skills in a in a in a place that was relatively safe, right? So it was low stakes. And so then as I've gotten, you know, more into business settings and other places, it's given me comfort navigating semi foreign concepts and being able to sort of use the knowledge that I have of broader things to be able to still construct a coherent argument and use that to navigate through the moment. So he was uh great about letting us as you know 18, 19, 20 year olds sort of play in his space and he treated us like equals in some of these conversations and and I truly enjoyed it. >> Thank you very much. So, uh, I want to thank you for your time that you spent with us today. We hope to see you on campus many, many more times. Uh, and your wife as well. Um, you know, in closing, one of the things I always u remind folks who are listening in or or god forbid watching, uh, is that one of the, um, sort of, uh, focal points for a medit uh, college education is that we're focusing in on what we're calling the enduring questions, right? the the questions that we that generations have asked themselves repeatedly, right? Uh you know, and answered differently in different times, right? So, um we do that through um our honors program. We do that through our courses. We do that through a a series of events that focus in and around these things. getting students to see that they don't necessarily have to have the answer all worked out, but understand how um different thinkers have answered that question over time, right? And that sort of sense of evolutionary thought, right? That that people used to think X, now they think Y. keeping those things in balance from from what you were saying seems to be that that that um that intellectually curious and needed part that can set them apart. Right. So, I'm glad to hear that. So, on behalf of the College of Arts and Sciences and everyone in Medit, thanks for joining us. Jason and Steph, thank you for coming in as well. And until next time.