EP 219: Building Talent Programs at Hulu, Activision, and Take-Two

Jessica Wheeler went from growing up in Vancouver, Washington to building talent programs at some of the biggest names in entertainment and gaming, including Hulu, Activision, and Take-Two Interactive. Now VP, Global Head of TA Strategy at Take-Two, she shares how scaling Hulu from 500 to 3,000 employees, leading through reputation challenges at Activision, and centralizing TA across 2K, Zynga, and Take-Two shaped her leadership style. 

Connect with host James Mackey on LinkedIn!

Intro (00:00)

Background (00:46)

Career (06:52)

Ta (29:22)

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Transcript

Welcome And Jessica’s Roots

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Jessica Wheeler with us. Jessica is currently the VP Global Head of TA strategy at Take2 Interactive. And Jessica, help remind me. So that includes 2K and which other firm? Zynga. Zynga, that's right. Okay, cool. Well, Jessica, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

So where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

I grew up in a town called Vancouver, Washington. So it's just north of Portland, Oregon, and south by about two and a half hours of Tacoma, Washington, or Seattle, Washington, which is about like four hours away.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Is it uh what's it like there?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Um, well, it's the Pacific Northwest. So it has four seasons that are very distinct. But small town, most of the people that, you know, are born and raised there, they know everybody. I mean, it's, you know, it's not like a thousand people, but it's also not like where I'm at now to Los Angeles. So very, very different. And I would say, you know, when I go back, I almost always run into somebody that I know. Um, and you know, my family is there, and so they can't they can't go someplace without knowing somebody. So, but it's a great, I mean it's a it's a it's a great little town for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

How often do you go back?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Um I go back actually. I go to Portland more than I go to Vancouver because the majority of like my friend group is in Portland, my family's in Vancouver, but I I say I go back a few times a year. I am a big fan of the Oregon Ducks. My daughter goes to university there. And so my husband and I have season tickets. So we we go up to Eugene, which is not much smaller than Vancouver, to put it into perspective. We go up quite a bit because we like to watch football. But um, other than that, I say to go back and visit family. It's you know, maybe a couple times a year.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

What were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Um I think I was very social. I was uh very active in my school, I was active in my community. Um I come from a family of there's uh four of us kids, and I was the youngest, and I'm significantly younger. So oftentimes I feel like I was an only child. And as a result of that, I had a lot of friends and you know, wanted to do all the things. Um and so I competed in sports, and I feel like I led a really normal, very great, fortunate childhood.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

That's awesome. So uh how much older were your siblings?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

10 years.

Family Dynamics And Growing Up Social

SPEAKER_01 2:52

10?

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, yeah. And then on up.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

On up. Yeah. Well, okay, so what was the biggest spread? 14. 14, yeah. My um I have a sister who's uh like 13 years older than me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

So yeah, it's um it's really great. Like as you become adults, you know, it changes, like the dynamics between you change. Um, and so I think it's a little bit uh it doesn't feel as drastic or as big, but obviously as a kid, you know, it's like my sister was getting married when I was in elementary school, so it's like that's a big age gap.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, I had like the for me, it was like the whole modern family situation. I had like half siblings and step siblings. It was we were all three years apart, and so I was the youngest of five in that situation. Uh, but I I hardly lived with any of them, like you were, you know, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like I had this weird experience too, where I felt sort of like on my with my mom, I actually was a single child, like I was her only kid. But uh two of them were from my dad's uh first marriage, which are my half siblings, yeah. And then two step siblings from his third. I was I was in the middle uh from the middle bears.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah, so it's weird.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

It's kind of weird. It's like you have siblings, but you sort of feel like a single child too, or only child. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Are you guys close now?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Um, are we close? Like with my siblings, yeah. And it's kind of like I don't know about your family. Mine's like so spread out. Like my sister's actually in Irvine, she's a professor at University of California, Irvine. Um, everybody's kind of off doing their own thing. And like my step siblings, like we didn't really like live together. We're like we keep in touch, but no, I wouldn't say we're like that close. I guess.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Same at Christmas, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah, the traditionals, yeah, yeah. I get that. I think then that I'm I'm closer to mine than you are to yours.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So yeah, you guys are close. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah, we are now.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

That that's awesome. When you ended up going to uh to college, you moved to the the east coast, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Where did you like end up moving?

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Yeah, um, so I was in I was in New York, and I think that you know, looking at the difference between the city and Vancouver is very, very, very different. There was probably Brooklyn is probably bigger than Vancouver, actually. So it was a transition. But you know, I think fortunately my um, you know, my mom was at a phase in her life where she, I think was, you know, obviously sad to see me go, but she was recent, she was newly married, and um, and she I think she kind of knew that like this was the path that I wanted

Moving To New York And Finding A Path

SPEAKER_02 5:46

to take. I wanted to get out of Vancouver. Um, and so she was really supportive of it. But, you know, it's a I now as a parent, I can I can only imagine like how that must have felt for my mom because my daughter is, you know, only a handful of hundreds of miles away. And I feel like she's, you know, in another country sometimes just because you don't see them every day. But I'm sure that she true that she really felt like I was in another country.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah, probably. Yeah, it's it's wild. It's wild when you start to have like this similar experiences to your parents.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

100%. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yep. Things start to fall into place a lot more. We start to, you know, understand yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

You have a different level of appreciation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

It all seems so simple when you're like, you know, starting out as a teenager, young adult, right? It's like, you know, like, why would XYZ happen to this, that, and the other, yeah?

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've had a quite a few of those moments as of late, and I'm like, oh, this is how she felt. Ah I can appreciate this now.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Uh I get it now.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah. Um, you initially started out in different, you didn't start out in recruiting, right? In a totally different industry, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yeah, and I don't know many people who actually do, right? Like, I don't I don't know that I've ever met somebody who has said that this was gonna be their job out of college or out of, you know, high school, because obviously not everyone goes to college, but or just in general, right? Like I don't know that people raise their hand and say this is the path that I'm gonna take. Maybe there's a few that do, but I think most that I know of kind of fall into it. And so yeah, that was my story. But no, I worked in like I worked at a record label and I worked in sales, and I I didn't really care that much for either of them while they were entertaining from time to time. I think sales was probably the closest to recruiting, just because in, you know, as you become a recruiter, you in a sense you have to sell your candidates, you have to sell the company. And if you work at an agency, which is where I got my start, you have a lot of metrics that you have to hit. So it's very similar to sales. But I I knew that like my calling definitely was not working at the label or working as an inside sales manager in sales in general. I worked at a Nordstrom was my first job, and I was in sales at Nordstrom, and I just remember thinking to myself, like that it was the greatest thing. But that was largely because I was getting a discount on clothes, and not because I was really good at it, but because you know, the little bit of commission that I did make, I was able to get some really great jeans for a highly discounted price. And so I think that at that point in time I thought that that might be my path, but that was also short-lived.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Nice.

unknown 8:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

What were you doing for the record label?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

I was in AR. So you got to deal with a lot of the artists, whether they were up and coming or, you know, otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

What's AR?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

It's like it's basically where you manage all of like their day-to-day artist responsibility, is what it is. But um, you know, manage like their day-to-day stuff. And it was um, you know, no, it wasn't like there was like these big names or anything like that, but highly entitled have all of these expectations, so it's you know, essentially like kind of babysitting the day-to-day.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

That sounds like it's it would probably be a pretty intense job.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Lots of hours, yeah, yeah, and and you know, and odd ones at that. But I think tough, no, you really have to like that industry and want to really grow in that industry because you just deal with shit. You know, like all the things that like you just I mean, it's babysitting essentially. And it's like being an assistant to somebody who's never had an assistant, so they don't know how to appreciate like what an assistant really does and what an assistant really means. Um, and so you know, imagine that with people who this is like the first time that they've maybe come into any sort of money, and in their mind, it could be $10,000 that feels like a lot, or you know, whatever. So I think that like it's not I think it's over glamorized in you know the world than what it actually is when you're in the job.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yeah, yeah, I could see that. So were you already in LA by the time you had that job, or was that in New York?

SPEAKER_02 10:19

That was New York. Okay and then um and then LA, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

When did you end up moving to LA?

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Um, the first time was in it was probably in like 1990 or 20 or 2001, actually. And then I moved back to Portland, Oregon, because I had met my I'd met my husband, who was I obviously he was my husband at the time, but I'd met him, and so I moved back to um to Portland because that's where he was from.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Cool. And then you you both moved back to LA, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah, it was for work, yeah. So I moved it, would have been it was 2015.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Nice. Yeah. Oh, so was that for uh Hulu?

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah, yeah. So um I at the time I was working for a company that was uh senior housing. It

From Private Equity Chaos To Hulu Scale

SPEAKER_02 11:12

was uh owned by a private equity firm, and that private equity firm they were really like um difficult to work for. And so I was very actively looking for something different. And Hulu had reached out. So nice.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Well, that was probably what, like uh, I'm assuming for Hulu, I can't was that like a really high growth time for them back in 2000?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yeah, it was it was. It was um so when I joined the organization, it was like I want to say like 500 people, and then we scaled it to roughly 3,000.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

500 3,000. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, granted, that scale was done, you know, roughly within like a three and a half year time period. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. Hulu was a great organization too. I mean, they just the culture there was like really, really cool. And coming from the culture that I had been in, which was again, it was the private equity firm that I think was, you know, running the organization like a private equity firm. And that's not speaking poorly of private equity firms, but I do think that like a lot of them have a reputation of, I mean, like they really are trying to be mindful of their spend, right? And so um it was we had to do a lot with nothing. Um, and you know, they expected you to work insanely long hours. And so you go from that to being at Hulu, which was a culture of like, you know, embracing your individuality and like coming to work as your true authentic self. And they really um appreciated the employees and like the work that they did, and they had so much fun while they were doing it. Um, it was very, very, very different going from, you know, like I I think I may have told you this, but I had a a manager, like my CHRO at the time. Um, he threw a bagel at me because he was upset with me at the way that I was doing something. So going from that to you know, an environment where you are fully embraced for, you know, meeting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

The craziest story that a leader you said it was a chro? Yeah, what yeah, somebody leading HR? Yeah, yeah, it was really world, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

What are they doing today?

SPEAKER_02 13:30

I wonder what retired this person.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Geez, that is that is insane. I um Yeah, I I've I've never heard of anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Yeah, yeah, it happened, and it was interesting because there was a whole group of people, um, including my team that was around and saw the whole the whole thing happen. And um our um our head of legal and our head of ER had reached out to me and they were like, listen, we, you know, we're gonna have him go to anger management classes and he's gonna apologize to you in like this, you know, public format, whatever, whatever. And it was like I didn't want him to apologize to me in a public format. That was really uncomfortable. I appreciate the fact that he's going to anger management, but at the end of the day, like he did what he did, you know, and so I think that there was a lot of concern that I was gonna file a claim. And I didn't, I actually didn't file the claim. And from time to time I've thought, I wonder if I should have, but I didn't because that just isn't who I am or who I was at the time. And so I took the letter of apology and I, you know, ended up looking for another job and my LinkedIn rep actually at uh Hulu. She was the one that reached out to me because she knew what happened. And she was like, hey, listen, Hulu's looking for a leader. Would you be interested? And Hulu was in Southern California and I was in Portland, Oregon. So I knew it would require relocation.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Did they end up firing this guy?

SPEAKER_02 14:58

No, they didn't.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

How do you not fire somebody if they throw a bagel at somebody's head?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Uh yeah, I I'm not, I don't know. You know, to be really honest, it was one of those. I think looking back now, I'm like, now that I know what I know, because you know, that was fairly early on in my career. Um, it was at a time where I was still like building my confidence as a leader and building my confidence as a person. Um, and so I think that there was, you know, uh I didn't feel comfortable in pushing the issue. And so now that I know what I know, I do wonder like how did it happen that way? How did he, and he was with the organization for many, many years after. Um, and it wasn't the first and it wasn't the last. And so I do wonder, you know, like why how that happened. And um uh I still don't know. Um, but yeah, he was there for many years.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

That is insane. That is insane. Well, I'm glad you landed at Hulu. It sounds like it was a much healthier environment.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Me too, me too.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Um well, so at Hulu, I mean you were you oversaw, was it basically most of the TA motion for the US market, right? Like you had a pretty big team working for you, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

It was a decent sized team um by the time that I uh departed there. But when I first got there, it was like I want to say it was like five, six people, something like that. It was fairly small. And then I think because we were in, you know, such a high growth mode, and fortunately I was able to put, you know, kind of a business case together to help our, you know, our leadership recognize that we needed to invest in, you know, more resources. And so ended up building the team out to in the end, I think it was 22. And then they scaled back a little bit as we got to, you know, kind of a more stable place in terms of, you know, the actual growth of the organization. But I would say that, you know, it was a fun team. It was a really, really, really strong team, actually. For the brand not being what it is today, but for what it was back then, because you know, this was 10, I don't know, 10, 11 years ago. They really didn't have the brand. They were still like they were just getting to that place of where their brand was very highly, highly recognized and very sought after. Obviously, you know, we ended up scaling back a little bit once we kind of stabilized. But I think that at the end of the day, I was really fortunate to have the team that I did because the brand wasn't as strong as it was as what it is today.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty cool experience. And so then you went to uh Activision and you were overseening the talent acquisition for uh Call of Duty, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yeah, when I um when I joined there, I um I joined just Call of Duty, got just Call of Duty or just um Activision. And there was a desire to build out a COE for TA.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

And COE is a center of excellence, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Yeah. So there was that there was a desire to really transform the entire HR organization. And as part of that, it was to build out a uh a COE for talent acquisition. And so I moved from

Building A TA COE In Gaming

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Activision to Activision Blizzard, which is the parent company, and I had um Activision Blizzard and King within my remit. And so we we scaled the organization. I mean, for those that know, you know, Activision or know Blizzard and even King for that matter, um, you know, they operate very separately. Um, but um, you know, I think within the different labels, they are, you know, they're very um, they do have centralized function. And so this is one of the first times where there was actually a COE that sat outside of just Activision or just Blizzard or just King. Um, and so it was there was some change management that went into that. And there was, you know, a lot of conversations and there were a lot of learnings. Um, but I think that, you know, ultimately the way that the model was structured, it worked until it didn't. And so then we moved back to a label model.

unknown 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

And that's when I went and led for just Call of Duty.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

What was the culture like there? I'm just kind of curious. Uh, Call of Duty.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Here's the thing. I I think that that was an organization that I learned more in my career than I've ever learned because they're able to pull in some of the smartest people that I've ever met. And I think it's because they do have such a big, strong brand. That said, we all had to stick together. Um, and we had to have each other's backs because a lot of the senior leadership there and the executive leadership, the stories that you have heard, the articles that you have read, the press releases that have come out, that's very accurate. And so it was a difficult time to be there because there was a lot of negative press that was coming out just from previous years and from previous times. And so it was, I think it was challenging because being NTA, you're the first line of defense for anything and you know, that first point of contact. And so we had a lot of people who had seen the press and who had seen some of the negative articles. And so my team was tasked with trying to continue to build the culture and to try to continue to, you know, build like um positive reinforcement within the industry as well as, you know, within like just our candidate experience. And it was really tough because we actually had to stop recruiting and we actually took jobs down because we needed to have a break from, you know, just all the questions. Um, and so what people have read or what people have seen, a lot of it is very true. But I think that when I when I joined in 2019, a lot of what came out happened in 2019, 2020, 2021. There were noticeable changes, I think, thanks to some of the some of the lawsuits. I think that my team kind of leaned into that and was cautiously optimistic that things were actually on the turnaround. And I would agree that like they were on the turnaround for sure. And then obviously the Microsoft transaction happened. And so, you know, basically everything halted and stopped at that point in time from you know, the the press and like the lawsuits and just, you know, some of the leadership behaviors. A lot of the leadership behaviors had actually stopped before I got there. But Things had just been brewing and then they came to light, you know, after I joined.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

When a company's going through like a transition, when things like that happen, and I actually wasn't as f familiar even when I asked you the question, uh, I just like looked some stuff up on Google and some of the the the issues that seem to have happened regarding harassment and whatnot. Um when a company's going through a transition, right, bouncing back from that, I'm curious, like how do you how do you approach that? Like when you're I mean, I suppose when you're recruiting and hiring, right, it's it's talking with candidates about how those things have been addressed and what changes are occurring. Um I I'm my assumption is that you had to have a a strategy there to get to make sure you're getting smart people.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

We yeah, we did. I mean, I think that that was one of the reasons why we actually had to press pause on any sort of you know recruiting and and recruiting marketing efforts because we did need to create a strategy. And I actually brought my team together because we needed to just have an opportunity to have like very honest conversations with each other. And I needed to allow a safe space for my team to just kind of vent and ask questions.

Recruiting Through Reputation And Crisis

SPEAKER_02 23:18

There's obviously a lot of things that because none of us were in the room at the time, we don't necessarily know what is true and what isn't true. And I think that, you know, they did the best job that they could in terms of like addressing it with the broader organization and helping the organization understand like what changes they were making. One of the things that I that I really tried to do was provide as much visibility to my team from that messaging as I possibly could. And I think that that's the way that you have to approach it, right? You have to be honest. Like, listen, there is some, you know, exaggerations in some of the, in some of the statements that were made and in some of the um, in some of the articles. But at the end of the day, stuff happened that shouldn't have happened in in that environment. And so I think that, you know, we needed to be honest and own up to it. And um, we just needed to also acknowledge the fact that there's, you know, three sides to every story. And so um, I think that by me allowing my team that safe space to just vent and ask the questions uh that helped. And it really allowed for them to kind of get some of those frustrations out. And then we, you know, I'm very much like, what happens, happens. Let's learn from it and move forward. And so that was kind of the same approach that I took in that situation. And I think that they appreciated that. And then again, we, you know, we partnered with our comms team and with our PR team to just kind of create some sort of you know, talking points that helped them at least feel like they were armed with ways that they could answer the questions. But the first, the first answer always was, yeah, you know, I wasn't here, but that's you know, I've heard the same things that you have. And, you know, me as a, especially as like a woman leader, I never experienced any of that. And I so I could genuinely say, like, I didn't ever experience that. And I've been here for, you know, three years or whatever it was at the time. And I think that that helped. And so finding people that would be advocates like that was, you know, another way that my team was able to like lean in and you know, kind of deal and answer with answer some of those questions.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Um, so what you're referring to is basically when you have independent cultures, like not only combining the systems and the teams, but uh how to incorporate and and essentially integrate the cultures together.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, for the most part, I think. I mean, being in environments or have being in a culture where you know it's it's very challenging, either because it's very intense, and you work with maybe the maybe the people that you work with um can be very intense and can be um, I don't want to say toxic because I think that, I mean, I've definitely been in those environments, but I would say that very high expectations, very high demands, and very, very challenging in terms of like the way that they treat, talk, and push back. So you have that environment, and then you have the environment where, you know, everyone has an opinion, everyone has a voice, everyone, they want everyone to be heard. I don't know that one of them is better or harder or worse than the other, but I'm

Blending Deadline Cultures Without Breaking Teams

SPEAKER_02 26:33

in a place now where I am actually bringing all of those experiences and bringing all of those together. So in gaming specifically, because there's there's a lot that's riding on a specific date. And this would be the case in, you know, film or in media and entertainment in general, because you've got these, you know, deadlines of like you have to have a trailer ready to go by this date, or you have to have milestones in building games. So there's a lot of pressure, and there can be some really difficult, hard conversations. Um, and then you've got, you know, a world where maybe those deadlines aren't as hard or as strict. Bringing those two teams together, that is hard because you've got these, you've got one sort of group that's like, hey, we're all friends, you know, like, yeah, we don't have to worry about that. Like that metric doesn't really matter. And then you've got another group of people that are like, bullshit, it doesn't matter. Like we've got $100,000 on the line here, or in some cases million dollars on the line, right? We have to meet that. And so trying to help both of them see each side, that's I mean, that's a lot of work. That's really hard. But the more that they interact, the more and the the better that they get to know each other. And I see it directly within my team, they've actually created a really great working relationship and they have really found a way to have balance between the two and lean into each other because one is a, you know, one's on the game team and they they know that like this is the deadline for this person to make this higher, to have this data set or this this point out to the business within a certain time. And so they've actually started acting as a resource for that person because maybe they don't have as challenging of deadlines or their metrics maybe aren't as as strict or as tough. But if I hadn't been in that environment, or for you know, either at Activision or at Hulu, where I've seen like very much both sides, I don't know that I would actually be able to blend the two together today.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Is one of the I'm just curious, like in terms of tactical ways of doing this, do you do you get the different teams together to essentially collaborate? Like, okay, if we need to find a uniform way to do X, Y, and Z, everybody meet up, chip in, figure out a solution. Like, do you give them like bring them together and then give them autonomy to s to problem solve? Is that that's sort of where my head goes in terms of trying to combine their cultures?

SPEAKER_02 29:07

Yeah, I would say um I would say yes, I do that. Where it starts for me though is me and my leaders, right? Like I have to be able to, and I we didn't talk about this, but you know, one of the like most critical things for me as um as a leader is understanding my business and understanding the business needs. And the only way that I'm gonna be able to do that is by being in the business. And I give my leadership team the autonomy to do the same thing because anything that they learn from the business, they can take back and they can provide that context to their teams. And that's how they're going to be able to really understand the dynamics of said team or of, you know, said launch or whatnot. I'm sitting in on a go-to-market strategy on Tuesday for NBA. And that is so critical to me because we also do the workforce plan. So we need to better understand like the sensitivities and where they sit within that go-to-market strategy and the people, you know, and the go-to-market strategy and the people that pertain to that go-to-market strategy. But if I didn't have the relationships with a business, I wouldn't be invited and I wouldn't be included. And therefore, I would be that much further behind in helping to set them up and their teams up for success.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

That's a that's a heavy lift. It's definitely a very heavy lift, but that's really interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah. Yep. And I I think anybody who does lead teams, especially like, you know, teams that are building something like what, you know, like what we are doing at take two, you have to, you really have to understand the inner workings. And you know, there's there, I know that there's some leaders that are not supportive of their teams sitting with the business. And in my mind, I can see both sides of it, but they if if they're going to sit there, that's how they're going to learn. And so that's the view that I have kind of taken is sit with the business and understand what they do so that they can take that back to like their day-to-day. A lot of times, we mean we've got we've got people on my team who will go to our mocap studio and just sit and watch and ask questions because that just makes them better at what they do. Um, and so giving that autonomy and that trust to do that, plus it's also good development for them too, right? It's not like there's like this huge path in a in a function that right now is in many companies is not growing. And so they have to find other ways to develop, and other ways to develop can sometimes be horizontal, not just vertical.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

I love that. I actually um uh so I own two companies. Um one of them is Secure Vision. I I started almost 11 years ago. Uh, and that's an embedded recruiting and RPO firm. So we you know embed recruiters as if they were essentially internal recruiters, delivery leads, so on and so forth. And um then a little about a little over a year ago, I started uh another software company called June, which does uh AI uh screening and interviewing. And um what's really interesting is that they they're totally separate companies, um, but June is piggybacking off Secure Vision's Go to Market engine, and so we do have a shared customer base, and we're actually going to be rebranding my services firm to highlight our AI capabilities that we bring to the table with June, essentially, um, which is um pretty interesting. But yeah, I mean it's kind of like the further I'm getting with with June, it's like the more to some extent it's like they're separate companies, but the cultures are kind of merging. Like we have, of course, like developers, and it we're at a totally different growth stage with June than we're where we are with with Secure Vision. That's you know a larger organization with uh that's worked with hundreds of companies, so on and so forth. Um, but yeah, I'm like I'm giving growth opportunities like horizontally, as you said. So we have one person on our go-to-market team who's sort of go-to-market ops who is really interested in potentially going more of like a product path. Um, and so like, well, hey, why don't you just join the weekly sprints, like stand-ups, like where they're planning, and you can start to hear our CTO talking with the engineers about tickets and product roadmap and the and these types of things. And then he's sitting with me on the product strategy side, and he's it's so it's just like that's a very easy thing for for me to be able to do. It's an hour a week for him, it doesn't mess with his productivity. And I know one way or another, like that's gonna ultimately benefit the the businesses. Like he's gonna be able to find a way to add strategic value and problem solve and and do it in a way that's different than the engineers would you know he'll think about things that we haven't, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

So 100%. I one of the things that I have found to be largely beneficial is, and this has happened to me at a few different companies, but where you have somebody who has actually been in said role before, right? So we have somebody on the team who used to be a game designer, and as much as they loved it, they also really loved like the people aspect of it, but didn't necessarily want to manage people per se. They now are a recruiter on the team, but they recruit, you know, designers. And um, so they can actually have like a very, a very good deep conversation about their skills. Now, not everybody is in that position, but I think, you know, similar to what you're doing, by giving them the opportunity to just like join some of these calls or some of these, you know, in your case, stand-ups, that what they can take from that and then bring back, that's irreplaceable. And that's again, that's developing a skill in them that they're not necessarily going to get in just their their day-to-day. But also, you know, in a world where like TA functions are quickly dissolving because people are going different routes or they're scaling back. This gives people uh kind of a way to feel like they are able to grow and to develop when they're maybe not necessarily getting promoted.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

So in your in your current role right now at Take Two Interactive, there are, as far as my understandings, it's a parent company, right? And you have three different labels funneling up to you. And there is in this year, you're looking at combining the essentially the operations of the three labels into one center of excellence for talent acquisition, as I I believe you put it. Is did I say that properly?

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Yeah, yeah, that's so that work has already been done.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

That work started last year of bringing the labels together. And so now we are one team, we are a centralized team or a COE, and we've been operating that way for um for a year.

Centralizing TA At Take-Two And Greenhouse

SPEAKER_02 36:09

And so anybody who's done that work knows that it is a lot. It's not as easy, maybe as one might think, in just you know, bringing three teams together because you've got three different cultures, you've got three different ways of working, you've got, in some cases, three different ATSs, you've got different tools, you've got three different budgets, you've got different leadership, and the way that they manage, the way that they, you know, performance manage. So it's not just as easy as bringing three teams together.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

What's like the the process there in terms of what's the first thing you do? Order of operations?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

I wish that there was just a first thing. Um the first thing that I did in this case, um, I brought my leadership team together because I needed to see how they interacted with one another, right? When I think about the labels like the 2K and Zynga, those are, you know, those are game studios. They are all over the world, they operate very independent from each other and they make video games. And so the way that their culture is is very different than if you are at take two and they hire for corporate functions. They very much have more of a corporate mentality in the way that you know their day-to-day is, and just like the way that they think about processes and the way that they think about budgets and people. And so for me, it was most important that my leadership team worked well together and they were able to understand and at least respect the way that each other worked. And so I started having leadership team meetings before we were even really operating as a COE. So they were still very much three separate labels, but they at least, you know, were able to start having conversations around the way that their like label or their studio or you know, their teams operated. And to see the dynamics between the leaders, that was where I was then able to see where did we have gaps just within my own leadership team and how did I fill those gaps or how did I build a bridge between those gaps? I kind of expanded out from there to understand then how did their teams work with other teams? And so I started having somebody that would sit within the Zynga label work on a similar role that they'd worked on for Zynga for 2K. And so I slowly started to like, you know, bring the teams in to start interacting with each other too, once the leadership team was solid.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

So within this transformation, what are you currently working on?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

It's more operations function focused now. There's a lot of really great things that have come out of each of the labels, and it's figuring out how do we take those great things and harmonize them across the other two labels or our ways of working for for one label or for a studio uh that we can implement at, you know, at the others. And so right now we've got three ATSs. They're not different, they're all the same, but they are different tenants. And so now I have to bring those together to one tenant, and that's as you can imagine, a lot of change management.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Which ATS is it?

SPEAKER_02 39:31

We use greenhouse.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Greenhouse.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Yeah. And so all three labels use greenhouse, but because we have three separate tenants, we have a recruiter if they're supporting the three labels or maybe two, they have to log out and then log in to a new tenant. And so now my goal is really to move to one tenant with just different permissions. So that's my that's a big focus. And then just thinking about processes and tools across the three labels and how can we harmonize to one agreement with one tool? How can we harmonize to one process? Obviously, geographic restrictions in some cases, but really how can we start focusing on making sure that everything is done the same way, at least as a baseline? And then if we, you know, need to pivot depending on where we're at, regionally or you know, geographically, then then we can do that. But that's my main focus for this year is getting operations to be smooth and and and working as well as you know on the recruiting side.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

One of the top takeaways that you had shared would be as a talent acquisition leader is that you you need to make sure you have strong leaders underneath you. Can you tell us more about how you think about that and how you ensure that you do?

SPEAKER_02 40:52

I think I've been really, really, really fortunate to have had some really great people on my team from, you know, previous companies. And so I have brought some of those folks over and they there was instant trust there. And for me, that was that has allowed me to develop the others that maybe are not at the level that I would like for them to be yet. The reason why I think it's important that you have strong leaders underneath you is because as a head of or as a global leader,

The Duck Test Strong Leaders And Succession

SPEAKER_02 41:25

you need to be able to interact with the business and have, you know, strategic business conversations with them. And in order to do that, you need to know that all of the shit underneath is not going to fall apart. I use the analogy of a duck, right? Like duck's legs are moving so feverishly under the water, but they just look so smooth as they're going across the water, right? And so sometimes I think that's okay. But other times I want to know that like it's just as smooth underwater as it is on top. And so for me, like, if I don't have that leadership team under me or that leadership team like within my group, then I'm gonna constantly be that, you know, that duck who's swimming feverishly and I'm gonna have to go underwater and then come above water. That's not scalable, not at least at the scale in which we operate. So for me, having that strong team that I know I can count on is really, really important. Like I said, I've been really fortunate to have a few of those folks on my team throughout the years that I fully trust. And I've either brought them with me or they were already there and I could tell right away because they've got high capacity and they are really strong with their metrics and they manage their team very closely, but yet they are very autonomous. So I think there's just different ways that I gauge someone's success as a people manager and I do skip levels too. And so for me, I get a lot out of those skip level conversations.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Love it. So I want to talk a little bit about the future and learn more about if you would be open to sharing who you're striving to become. Um, when you think about the next several years of your life, what comes top of mind?

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Um, I think my long-term goal is really to, you know, be a chief talent officer. And so I've been actually spending a lot more time on succession planning and talent management and talent development because that's ultimately like my long-term goal. And I think that it'll I need to have a successor in order to do that. I'm really focusing on developing my team. And uh, there's a couple of individuals who I think could actually be my successor so that then I can take on something more because I'm not in a place where I can take on something more right now because I don't have somebody who can step into my role. But that's like what my ultimate long-term goal is. And I say long term meaning within the next, you know, probably five years. And however I need to get there, I think the first place to start is really just with developing my current leadership team.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

I love it. Well, Jessica, look, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show today, sharing your experience, uh leading the charge at so many different great companies and uh uh sharing everything you've learned along the way. So thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Yeah, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

And for everybody tuning in. We'll see you next time.