EP 3: Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn's First Chief HR Officer and Founder - Cadigan Talent Ventures

Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn's First Chief HR Officer and Founder of Cadigan Talent Ventures, joins host James Mackey to discuss:

• the future of work
• how he helped build LinkedIn with a people-first mindset
• a modern approach to employee tenure,
• his new book Workquake,
• and a whole lot more!

Steve Cadigan is a highly sought-after talent advisor to organizations such as Google, Salesforce, The Royal Bank of Scotland & the BBC. Top VC & Consulting firms, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, KKR and McKinsey regularly retain him for his insights. Throughout his career the teams, cultures, and organizations he has built have been recognized as exceptional, “world-class” performers by the Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine & others. In 2021 he was recognized as being among the top 200 Global Thought Leaders in the world of People & Talent.

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Transcript

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James Mackey  0:00  
Hi, and welcome to episode three of Talent Acquisition Trends and Strategy Podcast. Today we're joined by Steve Cadigan. Steve, thanks for joining us.

Steve Cadigan  0:07  
Hey, it's great to be here.

James Mackey  0:09  
Absolutely. Would you would you mind sharing us a little bit about your background and what you're working on right now?

Steve Cadigan  0:14  
Sure, James. So my background has been mostly about 99% of my working life has been in the talent world. I've worked in about six different industries. I started as a recruiter in fashion, then became an HR generalist and insurance, got into high tech in the 90s on semiconductor and then moved from that to Cisco Systems.

In the hot rising you know .com boom of the late 90s, which was really fun. And then the.com bubble burst, and it wasn't so fun. We moved from hiring to firing. I had a chance during that run to live and work in Asia, I was the head of HR for Cisco Asia for a couple years. And when that six year run at Cisco ended, I moved to Canada. And it was the first chance for me to be a head of human resources for a fortune 500 company, which is great as a back in the semiconductor world at PMC Sierra.

Had three kids during that run in Singapore and Canada. So one a Singaporean in two Canadians, Made in America, but born in those countries and move back to California in what was it 2008, I think it was and took a role with Electronic Arts. They were going through a new CEO who wanted to be very acquisitive. And then the second mortgage crisis hit and my job got really less interesting than it was. And I decided to listen to other opportunities. And then I was offered the first chief HR officer role at LinkedIn, and was there for periods of, you know, massive, massive growth from 400, to about 4000 people in just under four years. We went IPO It was great. And I left in about 2013. And for last nine years, I've been really, on my own, doing a lot of thinking around how to help leaders and companies build great talent strategies.

So and a lot of that is around the world of recruiting and, you know, employer brand, and called building great cultures. And it's been awesome. So that's what I'm been doing. To sort of the capstone of my time, being independent, I published a book last year called Workquake: leveraging the aftershocks of COVID-19, to create a better model working.

And that sort of brings me to sort of what I'm really focused on today, which is, I feel over the last decade, it became increasingly apparent to me that both employers and employees were getting more and more frustrated with a model of work that we're having. And what I tried to do with my book is reveal why I think that's why I think it's broken, what I think are some really different approaches we can take to find more meaning for both employers and employees, and different ways of creating value. And that's what I'm helping you know, organizations think through today, I spent a lot of time speaking and teaching at schools conferences around the world, which I love doing. And like you, I ventured into the podcast universe, when COVID hit, I have a podcast series. And it's been a really fun learning journey, right? With all this new I've never had a soundboard before these headphones are microphones. And now, this is our world, right?

James Mackey  3:26  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, thanks again for being here. And, and I've really enjoyed my conversations with you over the past couple years and guiding my own development, while I'm taking on different strategic roles with growth stage companies. So this is definitely something I'm very excited about. I've been looking forward to for a few weeks now. And I think to start us off, it would be great to hear from you. And I know you're working with a lot of startups, a lot of growth stage organizations, specifically getting a little deeper into some of the challenges that they're seeing right now, when it comes to attracting talent, retaining talent, and ensuring that they have the best fit talent on their team to scale their organizations. What are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing right now?

Steve Cadigan  4:08  
I'm seeing the growing incapacity for organizations to find what they think they need, and to find full qualified talent. You've been in the industry, I've been in this industry of trying to hire technology workers for the last decade or so it is just so competitive. And, you know, I think that many organizations that I'm talking to today are in domains where they've never had to compete like we've had to in tech for four years. Right. We've seen every company's experiencing higher turnover than they've, they're used to than is the norm.

Not just people leaving but people taking a different direction. You know, they're not going to do the same job somewhere else are actually going to move from a sales role to a nonprofit role or something like that. And so that's really, in the pandemic really serve to accelerate how people think differently around work and their relationship to their lives in general

It's a beautiful thing for an individual to revisit their whole life circumstances, it's scary as hell, if you're trying to build a company and everyone that you're employed, like thinking about the world differently, right. And so that, that's the moment that I think a lot of organizations are challenged with, is that I think they're also challenged with, what skills are the skills I should be hiring and growing, because the new technologies and the new platform is being developed, continually put pressure on, you know, making sure that you're trying to be as ahead of the curve as you can be? Right. And so, you know, I think they're, everyone's trying to do - you and I've had really good conversations around this -like, how do we create, you know, solve recruiting, but also address diversity challenges, right, in our portfolio?

And so, you know, they think the everyone wants to hire people really, really quickly, and they're learning, that's not so easy. So that's probably the some of the biggest challenges I'm thinking about. And honestly, James, if I, if I peel it back, you know, what I'm having these conversations with people saying, I've got a big recruiting problem. And this is more so less than the startups but more in the medium size to large size enterprises. The conversation goes something like this, "Steve, I got a recruiting problem". I said, "how do you know?" "Well, we got all these reqs, we can't fill it". I said, "Well, have you got an internal talent management system?" "No." "Okay, so how do you know that you've got a recruiting problem? If you don't know already all the skills of the people in your company?" Like, how can you even tell me, you've got a problem if you don't know what skills you have? Or how you can translate or leverage skills from different parts of your company in different, you know, areas.

And so in nobody's at fault here, but we just never have looked at that, because we haven't faced that competitive pressure that we have today. And so what I'm trying to help organizations recognize is you you may not have a recruiting problem, yes, you have a recruiting problem compared to how fast you're able to fill positions before. But I think the bigger way of framing this challenge is, it's a creativity challenge.

You know, so for example, I was talking to one client the other day, and they say, Hey, you know, we, we've got all these open reqs, you know, and this is really a problem. I said, Well, why don't you hire contractors to do some of that job while you're looking for full time. And by the way, a contractor is the greatest interview process you could possibly have to see if they're good. And if they like working, they're like, oh, no, Steve, we can't do that. It's going to really wreck our culture, you know, all these mercenaries, you know, running around short timers, not our culture. To which I said, Well, how's your culture when five people are doing the job? 20? Because you can't fill your reqs? How's that culture working out for you? Because people are burning out? Like, which trade off do you want to make? And so for me, that's why I say it's a creativity problem, like, you may have people from other parts that company that could do work that you don't think they can, because you're just not aware! And secondly, why don't you reconsider that work can be done in different ways other than having a full time employee do it? Right?

James Mackey  8:21  
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, are you seeing in terms of one of the reasons why companies are hesitant to Bring It On contractors is maybe they don't have the right processes and outcomes outlined for each specific function where maybe it's they just don't have the right infrastructure built out to where people can come in on a contracting basis and be successful? Or what do you think is the primary reason why leaders and hiring managers don't feel like contractors can be a better solution to their problem?

Steve Cadigan  8:54  
Yeah, there's probably a few things, I think you you highlight a really interesting one, which I think is a muscle that most organizations will really benefit from in bringing in contractors, which is, if you're bringing in a contractor, you need to be able to explain what the work needs to that needs to be done quickly to somebody, right? Like, you don't want to hire a contract, it's gonna take six months to teach how to do the job, right. So what that's doing is it's putting pressure on organizations to maybe revisit jobs, and maybe re engineer how jobs are structured.

And in a more fluid world of work, where people are leaving organizations faster than ever we're seeing this all over every geography in every industry is experiencing higher turnover. You need to be able to onboard people faster. So contractors are great, a great place to try that because it's a really good, you know, a safe environment where someone from the outside comes in and say how fast can we get this person making an impact? And so, that's, you know, probably the one of the most interesting and opportunistic areas of, you know, leveraging the contractors. But to answer your question more specifically, so why aren't more people doing this, it's just a mental model that we have where I feel as an organization, I'm just speaking as if I'm just, you know, corporate America, I only feel that I can create value, if I own an employee, and they work for me dedicated full time that I'm uncomfortable, someone may have other clients, someone may have other priorities, and I won't be number one to them.

And I think if we've learned anything in the pandemic, the workforce has spoken and said, my freedom, autonomy, independence is more important than anything, I would rather have that. And I will quit before I go back to the office where I'm more distracted, and more bothered. And, you know, there's I don't see the reason that I can be more productive their. When I just showed you for two years, I could be more productive at home. And just I mean, I'm not talking about every job, because a lot of jobs were frontline, and couldn't do that. But for the places for many knowledge workers who can and did work from home. Like, why are we asking them to go back? Which, which is another big, you know, question mark, and challenge for organizations to deal with? I mean, I don't know about you, but all the other recruiters I talked to, when you say, hey, what's the one thing candidates are saying today? They didn't say three years ago, the first question, Can I do this job remotely? Maybe they don't necessarily want to do it all the time. But that's sort of a litmus test of how evolved? Is the company with their talent strategy thinking, you know, are they comfortable with that?

James Mackey  11:31  
And I think a lot of companies are making the mistake of thinking, well, this is a candidate market, it's going to shift back, it always does. And so we don't actually really need to commit to these changes, or even if we do, we're gonna, it's just gonna be on a temporary basis. And next year, we're gonna go back in office, but I think they're, they're missing the point. The point is, you want the best fit individuals to be on your team. And you have to create compelling employment opportunities for them, whether it be contract or full time, because at the end of the day, your team is going to thrive and succeed when you have the best fit people engaged in that they want to work with you. So it's, you know, I think that businesses are, to an extent are almost over optimized toward revenue functions and investing and customer journeys, but they're not necessarily slowing down and investing on employee journey or contractor journey, thinking about what types of experiences and outcomes are we investing in optimizing and to create for employees that are working with our team?

Steve Cadigan  12:29  
Yeah, well said, James. Well said absolutely. And I think that's a really, I like to highlight and underline what you just said. I mean, I think this is the biggest question I asked when I'm when I get an audience of non HR people and CXOs is okay, how do you guys create value? And they say, "Well, with our people", Okay, that's the most important dimension and element in your organization to create value "yeah, people". Okay. So did you spend more money on your people systems than you did on your accounting? Or your CRM? "Nope". Okay. Is it the first thing you talk about every business meeting is a people related to how can we build a great team? How can we thrive? How can we unlock magic and our employees? "Nope". So last thing on the agenda, most companies that I work for.

So why is that? Why is that this is the most important lever for you to be successful. It's the least invested system. It's the lowest priority on your business, you know, operating tasks. Why is that? And so, you know, when I go in, and they say they said, we have a recruiting problem, okay, well, where's that on your list of priorities? Right? Like, or if I'm negotiating with somebody else negotiator, they say, Hey, can you come and talk to us about the future work? It's the number one concern of all our leaders and our board of directors and say, Yeah, I'm happy to like, what's your budget? And they're like, "no, no, can you just come in and talk about like", for free?! The most important thing and your company!? You know, so there were I think we've always had the ability to talk about people are number one. But we have, unfortunately, most of us have worked in few companies where we really saw what that looks like, when people are really, operationally number one. And I had one company, my last one that I worked for LinkedIn, that really broke the mold on that, and was the first thing we talked about every meeting, every company all hands meeting, build a world class team, it wasn't to sales revenue, it wasn't the new products that we're introducing, it wasn't our acquisition strategy. It was build a world class team first. And if we didn't, if we had a problem that wasn't tracking, well, we never got to the other stuff. Because the other stuff didn't matter if we didn't have good leaders, you know, good development strategies in place, right. And unfortunately, you know, most of us don't get to see what that can look like. And as you say, we talked about the targets, we talked about the quarterly numbers, and so forth, and we just ride the bike.

James Mackey  14:54  
Yeah, it's, it's words, we're seeing a lot for growth stage organizations, we're seeing a lot more benefits and perks that are catering toward employers really starting to own at least the ones that are winning right now, or owning the fact that employees and contractors are going to hold them accountable to helping them get the most out of life, not just professionally, but personally. And we're seeing more emphasis on PTO, we're seeing minimum PTO policies become more common, you know, what good is an unlimited policy or a four week PTO policy if nobody feels empowered to take it. So we're starting to see more minimum PTO policies, we're starting to see companies understand that part of the content that they they need to produce on social as well as on careers pages needs to be centered around capacity planning for certain functions. I mean, you know, even if you have a minimum policy, but you don't have the right capacity planning on a function level, to ensure that people can actually take time off, it can be difficult to so we're starting to see a bigger emphasis there. We're starting to see some of the top companies offer more holidays off, recharge days, mental health days, we're starting to see these types of benefits come in as well. Because again, the expectation from employees is no longer a you know, it's not just what's how much money am I going to make? What's my title? Where am I going to be in three years? It's, it's also what's this experience going to be like? And how, how does it interact? And how does it? How can it integrate with my personal life, in my personal goals, and again, we're seeing more of this, but it's still not a lot. I mean, we're seeing, I would say, the top 90th percentile companies doing it. But a lot of companies are still missing the mark here. And they're stuck in that old way of thinking of like, oh, this is a candidate marketing market, it's gonna come back around, we're not going to need this, but they just don't understand that it doesn't matter. Even if you're in an employer driven market, a players that best fit individuals are always going to have the most options.

Steve Cadigan  17:00  
Right. Here, let me rephrase what you just said, James, and I hope our audience really listened. So you captured that really, really well. We're seeing the personalization of work. The you know, we've always, you know, we'd seen before the pandemic, cafeteria benefit plans, you know, no one's ever razor, rarely a sudden razor and say, Wait a second, my colleague has five kids, and you're going to cover the their kids for free on their medical plan, I've no kids, and I'm not getting an offset. They're like, that doesn't doesn't feel equitable, you know, I'm happy for my colleague and their medical care. But my circumstances are different. And I would appreciate maybe a little more contribution to my 401k. You know, so that, when, when, and if I do have children, you know, I can have the ability to, you know, pay for their college or whatever it is, you know, and so that personalization now has, is moved from benefits. And now it's so interesting to me, because the benefit, what's in that package now was moved to, I want more freedom and more time to discretionary time to do what I want, when and where I want. I want you to trust me more like the I agree with you on the unlimited PTO is like, that's as unlimited as the trust you have with your boss. Right? Why did he do what do we do that and a lot of people really uncomfortable asking for it. Right? And so you look around and say, you know, how much do you think I can get away with or, you know, what's really the Okay, number, right. And that's really, that's hard.

You know, I've broken more policies, as an HR person than I've made and feel very, very proud. And I think that's a signature of my career path, if you look behind me, because I feel like we've over tried to prescribe every circumstance to avoid some outcome. Rather than just say, let's just address issues when they come and try to be as fair and transparent as we can. It doesn't mean making the employees happy all the time. It just means trying to have some sort of fair, transparent decision making practice here. You're there. We're gonna, that's not going to stop. We're going to continue to see I think the personalization of people circumvent you know, what days you work, when you work, where you work from, what what your hybrid schedule is, you know, maybe we're seeing some companies now oh, gosh, she was I forget who it is says we can have your base be x and your bonus be a target of this or we can take the bonus and put it right into your base. And what do you want, you're going to have more potential upside if you have the bonus separate, but you also have the potential for downside right. It's like companies say do you want options or RSUs you know, if you get options you get more but there's no downside risk. You get RSUs you get less but there is zero downside risk you know and so you know that I think we're gonna see a continuation of that no, it's a you know, a benefits managers nightmare come true! 

But everyone's needs are different in what people, what the pandemic did for people, it made clear like, No, this is these are new things that are important to me, you know, and that's a that's a really that's A really great thing is putting enormous pressure on organizations. But Canva look what Canva has done. Canva sort of threw it down and said, Okay, we're letting our teams decide where and when they work, we're not going to one size fits all this right? Which what you're speaking to is a one size fits all, it's over. Like, if that's what you're trying to build towards, it just doesn't work. I remember one time, I was throwing out this notion of a more flexible benefit package to an audience of HR people in Seattle. And one woman raised her hand say, hey, that's really unfair. And I said, Well, let me ask you a question. Do you pay everyone the same in your company? She says, No. I said, Well, that's really unfair, I go, you're already making variability in how you reward people. So this is just a little more of a natural extension of that.

James Mackey  20:46  
So, quick follow up question on that. So flexible benefits packages at scale for mid market enterprise companies? How do you really make that scalable and deliver on that? Because I could only imagine from an operational perspective, that is going to require a lot more heavy lifting? Is it as simple as just saying, you're just you need more more investment? And HR, you need more...a larger team to manage that? Or do you recommend specific technologies or processes that, that help companies implement the strategy?

Steve Cadigan  21:17  
So what I would do is, it's a great question, I would I would elevate the conversation to include everything, say, Okay, do we believe the personalization of work is happening, and that we would benefit? Being able to attract greater people and maybe getting them stay longer? If we did that? Yes. Okay. So if we don't do that, people may leave sooner. And we may not get the high quality people, we could if we don't offer more flexibly? Yes. Okay, what's the cost of people leaving sooner? What's the cost of, you know, more, more recruiting budgets, more empty jobs, you know, jobs left open, because we can't fill them, you know, and so forth. And so I would say, you know, in terms of looking at as a benefit costs, that is not the full way that you should be measuring, is this a worthy investment for you to do more. And then what I would say is, and there's lots of different organizations that can consult on doing stuff like this

Netflix has already been doing this for over a couple of decades now, where they say, we're valuing your job, James, all in your job is worth about $320,000, you decide, if you want to take some of that money and buy some Netflix shares, you decide if you want to take some of that money and top up on your benefit plan, you decide, because we don't know what's important to you, you do? Or you can take this, you know, wheelbarrow full of cash, what do you want? Right? And so, you know, and that's what I would say is, you know, come up with a number that's, that's based on data and based on some of the research of your of your benefit consultants and say, what is a reasonable number that we think someone can draw from? And then what are the choices that they make, and then just build a website where people just sort of decide, and then figure out how it works, the danger, or potential, you know, an unintended consequence of this is what happened at Netflix. And that is two people doing the same job, having vastly different outcomes with their choices, okay. So for example, you decide you want to double down on LinkedIn on sorry, on Netflix shares. And so you, you allocate a lot of your money, we have the same number, whether it's 333 20, whatever it was, I use, you say I want to 50k to buy Netflix shares, and I say, Oh, I the stocks definitely going to come down, I'm going to hold off on that. I've got six kids, I'm going to go and buy a bunch more benefit stuff. All the Netflix stock goes through the roof. And now your package is way more than mine. But I made that choice, you know. And so as a company, now, I'm worried about Steve, because Steve didn't make the choice that James is in James is showing up in his Lamborghini, and as doing bought the vacation, home and Tahoe. And now that's a problem, potentially, you know. And so that's the dark side of choice is different outcomes for people. Right, which is super interesting.

James Mackey  24:06  
Yeah, I think that's incredibly insightful. I'm glad we were able to dive into that a little a little bit deeper, but I still feel like people would prefer to be able to make those choices. Overall, there's going to be cases, potentially something something like that occurs, but I think by and large, the positive outweighs the potential downside

Steve Cadigan  24:23  
Right. And, you know, here's how I look at this, James, and this is applies to recruiting, it applies to talent strategies applies to benefits. We are in an era of experimentation, we've got to try new stuff, you know, because we know the domain that we used to know which is hire people who are more qualified than they are people stay longer than they than they are today. We know those things are changing. So we're going to have to revisit and I find the fear and the resistance to that is higher than I think it should be right now. When we should you know just try to do it. And here's the thing, if you're hiring knowledge workers particularly software developers, this works for software developers, because software developers create through a B testing, they're used to experimenting, right? And so they will value you, if you say, Hey, we're gonna try this bonus plan, it may not have the outcome that we think it does. And if it doesn't have a favorable outcome, well, then we reserve the right to get smarter, and we'll adjust it. And I think that's about trust and transparency. And, you know, knowing letting people know, like, Hey, we're not perfect, but we're gonna try to be and we're gonna, you know, admit when we're wrong, you know?

James Mackey  25:31  
Sure. Yeah. And I think this would also be a good time, I know, we have about probably 5-10 minutes left. So I really wanted to touch on a subject that really resonates with me something that I heard you talk about a couple years back, when you're talking about retention, talking about average tenure of employees, and you had what I think a lot of people in HR or talent acquisition would consider kind of like a borderline radical perspective on on average tenure, and how companies should should talk about tenure and think about tenure, when they're hiring and looking at people's background, and weighing previous 10 years into the equation, if they want to move forward with a higher, I was hoping you could just share with us your general philosophy on tenure. And we could riff on that for a few minutes.

Steve Cadigan  26:13  
Yeah, this is a hard topic for people today, because 10 years declining radically. I mean, the median tenure for people between 25 and 35, in the United States is 2.8 years. That means half that number is less, okay, half the demographic of people that age. And so I'm not thrilled about that trend, but everyone I talked to doesn't think it's going to change. So what that really means is, you know, let's look at organizations who don't have high tenure and what they're experiencing, and can we learn some things. And if we look at this, just take some really big brands and technology, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Airbnb, Oracle, those companies, none of them have a median tenure over two years, okay? None of them and look at the valuation, look at the profits. Look at the creativity. And so listen, I'm the first person says, I want to keep my best people as long as I can. But insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome. And we all know, people are not going to stay as long. So there is big value in new people and new ideas and new energy coming in in new ways of solving problems. And I think what I'm trying to help people understand right now is, I think maybe we've overvalued tenure. And if you have benefits that reward people, just for time, they're not outcomes of being there. I think that's a missed opportunity. And, you know, in Silicon Valley, we don't have 10 Year celebrations, we have 10 months, you're still here. Oh, my God, can I get you a Starbucks? You know, it's, it's, it's like that it's that crazy. But let me let me share a last observation here. And then I'll turn it back over to you. What is let me just ask you a hypothetical. What I hope is a hypothetical question, when you think of the world, and the one geography in the world that has the greatest innovation, the most number of unicorns, the most number of intellectual property produced the most number of highly successful highly valued companies, what part of the world is that? Silicon Valley? Okay, right. Is it a coincidence or not that it's also the area that has the highest turnover of any part of the world. So that's sort of like my mic drop moment, the most fluid part of the world is also the part of the world is producing the most disproportionately successful outcomes to a 10x magnitude, right? So what's going on there, people are moving, networks are growing. This is the thing that I say, like, someone moves, they grow their network, that's good for them, maybe not so good for you if they left, but it's really good for the ecosystem. And so there's power with people changing and iterating ideas and building relationships, and building trust in that domain in the community, not just in your organization. So I'm trying to help people, like, get a little more comfortable. It's, oh, it's not all bad, that people are leaving. But wouldn't you all want to work for someone that cares about you for your whole career, not just when they work for you? That's another part, right? It's like, yeah, it's someone who cares about me from old career. Okay, well, then stop the, you know, what I call the Tony Soprano School of HR, which is the only care about you when you work here. When you quit, you're dead to me. Like that's so short sighted because you've got more alumni than ever. And you should curate it and nurture it. Right? So yeah, it's a little bit radical. It's a little bit crazy. I've had people say to me after I tell them I like Who invited you here. Like, we thought that was taboo that we could never talk about that but but we have to talk about it because it's a moment we have a moment now, after the pandemic, to create better talent strategies. Let's use that opportunity. Right, let's build something better.

James Mackey  29:56  
So yeah, and I actually completely agree with you. So it's, I think It's something that whether companies want to admit or not is definitely the direction that we're heading. So particularly in tech, so I think just one one final question, before we jump off is just at a more tactical level, how can companies be successful and thriving environment where employees are likely going to be giving notice and sooner than maybe anticipated? what can companies do to to be successful in that model and to scale and to have the growth that they're looking for?

Steve Cadigan  30:32  
Have more discussions with your employees about what their plan is at LinkedIn? There your first interview, we're saying, okay, when you leave the company, what do you want to be doing? Be more, have more honest conversations? So you know, so that if someone's thinking, like, Hey, I've got two years or one year, that if it's, if it's okay with you, then I say, all right, fine, let's agree to that. And then always have a pipeline. Like, if you're recruiting, start recruiting, when someone leaves, it's too late, just like I tell my friends, hey, if you're looking for a job, after you got fired, it's too late, like you got to start, you got to always be looking for talent. And so you know, that's our number two, people want to grow, people want to learn, and I think that's the biggest driver, why people are leaving, because they think somewhere, they can learn more, grow more, make sure you're filling that hunger and that thirst through rotations, new opportunities, and assignments, because that's what people really want. And if you've got a medium to large size enterprise, you've got different offices, locations, countries, departments, to feed that. So build your own, and and expect people are going to go build a talent strategy that expects it. And and so and then, you know, keep in touch with your alumni to like, they may come back to you. Right, and or they may be sources of goodwill, referring candidates to you, right. So that's, that's why I say like, we've got to think about creating value beyond just when someone's working for me beyond just an employee, look at it more broadly, because that whole ecosystem is going to benefit you and be wind at your back. If you do it, right.

James Mackey  32:03  
I couldn't agree more. And this, this has been so much fun. We're coming up on time here, just for our listeners, how can they find you? Where should they follow you online?

Steve Cadigan  32:14  
Great. So I've got a website, SteveCadigan.com. Please go there. If you're interested in signing up for you know me to push to you more information or what's on my mind, go there, connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on LinkedIn if you want to. I also have a tic tock channel, which is filled with a series called true stories in corporate America. We're starting a new program where we're going to be asking people to share their stories which I can share on their behalf on tick tock so super fun. And also I just show you my book here, it's workweek. You can buy the book anywhere books are sold. And we sold a ton on Audible. People are listening to to it more than they're buying it. I guess that's that's what people do. Now. I'm the only guy in the neighborhood that gets a newspaper delivered still. So one of my friends like how do you know there's old people neighborhood they get a newspaper delivered? Okay. Guilty, guilty as charged. But, but James, thanks for having me on the show, man. It's really good to see you and we need to catch up off air to some more.

James Mackey  33:10  
Absolutely. And thanks again for being here. And for everybody tuning in. We'll see you next time.