Handling the Great Resignation: Scaling Staff Training and Career Growth for 300+ employees

John Boyens [00:00:05] I’ll go first. Good afternoon. Welcome. I’m also Nashville based, so welcome. Please spend a lot of money in our cities so we now have to pay more taxes. That would be good. I’m. I’ve been in the corporate world for 22 years and the last 25 years I’ve been an entrepreneur as a business owner. Primarily sales productivity, leadership, effectiveness and strategy. But I’ve worked closely with credit and collections professionals for over 15 years during my time at the Credit National Association of Credit Managers in Los Angeles, as well as with TRW, now Experian. So excited to be able to bring some information to you and share some of our thoughts.

Moderator [00:00:44] Oh.

Jesus Romero [00:00:45] Okay. Hi, everyone. My name is Jesus Romero. I work at HPE. I’m based in Mexico and with Alhurra, I am in charge of creating and delivering the new higher training material and the ongoing learning and development of the company. One or the other organization. I don’t know. I’ve been on the job for four years, but I experience in grand collections four plus, six plus or something. I’m happy to be here. Not from Nashville and spending some money and having to come back.

Moderator [00:01:13] Good health.

Paul Hill [00:01:16] Hi, my name’s Paul Hill and I’m the president and founder of Job Search Intelligence. We’re a data firm that specializes in and analyzing educational attainment, career outcomes. And from an empirical perspective, and as a result of our our data work, we do actuarial work for student lenders. So sort of a long way around to being in the credit business.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:01:46] And last but not least, my name is Brigette Muehlmann. I’m a professor at Babson College. There won’t be a spelling test for my name at the end of the session. So I teach in the MBA program, mostly at Babson of mostly entrepreneurial leaders. So people come to us because of entrepreneurial leadership, or they want to or have already started a company. And so my courses are financial and sustainability, reporting and doing business globally. Highways and landmines, both of them. Have collecting money from customers as an essential part of the course, because without that there is no entrepreneurial existence. And on a personal level, my passion for customer credit goes actually back to my very first internship at age 15. Because I realized they had so many accounts receivable outstanding at that company. And I made it my part of my job to write letters, nice letters to these companies that had owed over due and I collected more than they paid me. So I figured, this is good. I, I pay for my own work. And strangely enough, they invited me back year after year. So very much looking forward to the panel. Thanks for coming.

Moderator [00:03:17] Right. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah. In fact, Brigitte is the latest addition to our Highako World. And we we set up a call with her and we immediately just bonded with her. The fact that you have someone in academia actually who cares about getting paid and actually realizes that the sale is not for sale until the money is actually in the door. It kind of blew our mind. So we knew she’d be a great fit for us. And she was she was happy to come on board and participate with us. So we’re very happy to add her to our roster of speakers. Okay. We’ve got a whole bunch of questions that want to see if we can get through. We’re starting a little bit late just due to the location, but I think we’ve got a good list of questions that will hopefully pick some dialog and some interest. And so let’s start out with this. There is a recent survey from Willis Towers Watson 20 to 2022 survey where they indicated that 44% of accounts receivable employees are job seekers. What do you think? These folks are actively looking for job opportunities or they wish to resign from current ones? How did you take the.

Paul Hill [00:04:26] Kick it off? Yeah, okay. Since we’re a data company, I’m going to start with a data perspective on this. I did a little bit of digging on credit analysts prior to coming out here. And for credit analysts age 29 years or less, they turn over at an average rate of 1.9 years. They quit on average for all employees, 29 or less in the finance sector is three years. So credit analysts are just more likely, substantially more likely to turn over to quit resigned from their position. Why is that? I know what happened. I can’t say I know why it’s happening exactly. Empirically. I do know they have people in finance, especially in credit position. They’re sought after positions. There’s a lot of stress, there’s a lot of demands on them and they have a lot of options. And that optionality is being exercised by especially by younger people. The turnover rates aren’t as high among persons who are a little bit older in the in the profession.

John Boyens [00:05:40] So I’ll give a little added color to that. We’ve got data now. We’re going to give you some of the other information to go along with it. I’ve got a close friend and business associate, Mary Lou Martin, who wrote her doctorate on employee turnover. And she talks about the 3 Rs of turnover, rewards, respect and requirements. And so if you think about the credit position and you look at those, if one of those 3 hours is out of whack, the person will start to get antsy. If two or more out of whack, they’re going to move on. So they could be lured away because there’s other opportunities or they could get into a burnout situation where they’re just going, you know what, if I’m not if I don’t feel I’m being paid what I’m being asked to do, if I don’t feel I’m being respected in my role, if I look at myself as a staff executive instead of a strategic partner within the organization, those are some of the things that cause people to go look elsewhere. They want to be you know, they want to be valued for the work that they do. They want to be respected. They want to be asked their opinion and they want to be listened to.

Moderator [00:06:43] Excellent. Good point. Look, let’s go to Brigitte and Jesus for this. One of the one of the major concerns for credit New York departments is retention of employees. Right. How have you personally approached basically taking in the attrition and turning it into an attraction? What are your thoughts on that?

Jesus Romero [00:07:04] Well, to me, it’s it’s simple, you know, making people want to stay. But it’s not simple enough to put it into action. So what we have done at HPE is to try to expand their knowledge and focus on soft skills, areas of expertize, and also be more transparent about how is their career growth. You know, what can they achieve for? Because a lot of the credit analysts or credit performance people, let’s say, they think that this is just a one way role. Right. And I’m going to be here and I’m going to collect forever and then that’s it. But there’s a lot of things that they can do. They can go to their support area. They can go to, you know, my role, for example, they had the knowledge area and they can do many, several different things. But if they don’t know about it, how can we keep them? Right. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing, you know, trying to get out the information so they stay and they are not trying to look for other data with what John was saying.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:08:02] I would like to add to that. The word purpose. I think there is purpose on two levels. One is the job itself, reminding people and helping them understand what critical role they actually play. I mentioned my my early internship before. Now I deal with entrepreneurs. They need to watch their cash every single day. The most frequent reason for an entrepreneurial company to have to discontinue is because they ran out of cash because they didn’t collect from customers. So that would be the the one thing. The other thing is something I’m doing for myself. And I’d like to share this with you of Babson College. The founder was Roger Babson over 100 years ago, and his definition of a career in business was to provide service to humanity. I dug that up ever since I found it. I have doubled down on my purpose in my job. Most companies that are existing have amazing founder stories. I’d like to encourage each and every one of you to find it.

Moderator [00:09:21] Excellent. Excellent point. Let’s go to remote jobs, remote work. There’s pros and cons. People coming back to work. People insisting on staying at home. And when you when you look at companies trying to deal with this today, what are your thoughts on how to approach this? Forcing people. Demanding people. What are your kind of your thoughts on on how to how to deal with this remote work situation we have ourselves in now in the, quote, unquote, return to the office? I think we have a. Oh Brigitte.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:09:56] Thank you. So being in academia, believe it or not, I have had a hybrid job ever since I started there 20 years ago following my consulting career. So I think it’s it just comes back to that purpose that we just talked about, because if I know that I’m doing something that’s important. I make it a priority. I don’t know about you or your your team, but if it’s one of those things that are not that meaningful, then other things may take precedence. And then we have a dilemma with priorities being at home. But I know Jesus has a very interesting perspective himself.

Jesus Romero [00:10:40] Well, I don’t enjoy the well, I didn’t enjoy it at the beginning. I thought it was like taking me out of my home, you know, my office was my home. And then the office came to my home and they got into my dog into to every distraction that could be available. But at this point, I believe that, you know, the purpose that you were saying, plus flexibility to be, you know, in a hybrid workspace where you can work wherever you are, like right now in a way here as far as we are. But you can answer an email or do something, but at the same time being true to what your own objectives are and not letting the work overcome you. Because when you say remote jobs, you know, you can you forget about schedule. You forget about what time you get in, what time you get out, because everywhere is work. Right. But you have to be true to yourself and, you know, try to keep that into consideration as well.

John Boyens [00:11:35] So I think another point to be able to think about here is there’s the research shows there’s not been a big drop in productivity on work from home. People are actually looking if you look at a lot of companies today, they’re either subletting real estate out or they’re selling real estate because they don’t need to be able to manage that. They’re not having that issue. And so I coined the phrase called environmental professionalism. And so what does that mean? If you’re in a work environment, a work from home environment, you need to have a place that you go that’s work, whatever that is. It needs to be an office. That that’s work. The door is closed, the dogs are out, the cats are out. The naked spouse isn’t walking back and forth. Right, all that kind of stuff. And so what you also have to make sure that you have is quality lighting. Quality sound system, good Internet connection, and then all of the tools that you would have used in the office are available to you. Cloud based. If you do those types of things, it will work out. And I’m going to give you one more. That is something that you may not think in a credit collection’s financial professional needs. You need to have a professional background. So whether you have one, you know, a drape, a bookcase, whatever, or you use a virtual background, need to have a professional background. Just remember this. Anything that can distract the person you’re talking to via Zoom will anything that can distract them will. So stacks of paper. Stacks of books. Messy office. All those other kind of things. So create a workspace because that is you professionally moving towards that other individual. It doesn’t matter if you own a big building. It doesn’t matter if you’re from home. You can get the job done as long as they view you as a professional.

Moderator [00:13:12] It’s a great point. Great point. Speaking of that, when when we’re dealing with employees who feel disconnected because they’re not in the office anymore, they’re they’re just on a zoom call. They’re not hanging out at the watercooler, at the coffee pot, you know. What are what are some suggestions for really reengaging or keeping people engaged when you’re in this type of environment?

John Boyens [00:13:32] We talk about checking calls. I mean, it’s always important to have those checking calls with, you know, with people that you work with, your peers, your subordinates or your superiors. In other words, you want to be able to have that checking call. You want to celebrate successes, find your team members doing something right. You know, even if it doesn’t get the end result right away, find them doing something right so you can compliment them on the right behavior. Too often, especially in the role that you all play, it’s all about the bottom line. And we know that the right activities. I love the part about the why. You know, Simon Sinek is a great author and he talks about the why is more important than the what, the how. And so if you can worry about the why and find somebody doing something right, it’ll keep them wanting to continue to do better and better. And that’s what I look at.

Jesus Romero [00:14:19] Yeah, I totally agree. I would also add that it’s important for your resources to know what they’re doing or what they’re impacting. And we created a program for HPE where we included in the new Harry training everything that creating collections. That’s for HPE. So what are the exact numbers that we’re hitting? You know what we do? Impacts directly on DSO, impacts directly on the cash conversion cycle. So they know now that their job is more than just picking up the phone or sending an email. They know that they’re impacting positively and based on if they do right or if they do well, their bonuses will get bigger at the end of the year. Right. And we can acquire another company. We can do something else with that. So we included that in the New Heart program. And I think it’s been quite a success because when I got here or when I got to HPE, I didn’t know any of that. Right. And I thought that my job was only to be, you know, here’s your portfolio here. Your customers go ahead and collect. And it changes the perspective of wanting to stay right now, because I know what I’m doing now. And whenever I’m asked outside or you work at HPE? Yeah. Can you fix my computer? Nope. Right. I’m a I do something else. Then let me tell you what I do. But I now I can do it. And before I couldn’t do that.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:15:28] So I’d like to add one quick thing. One of the dilemmas I have found, and you may have found the same thing, is scheduling a call with somebody else just to catch up. Minimum time, commitment, 15 minutes. So what Babson does once a month or every other month, we have a one hour with speed dating, and that is really good. So I like to share that.

Moderator [00:15:54] No sexual harassment complaints from this.

Jesus Romero [00:16:00] Okay.

John Boyens [00:16:01] Yeah. Don’t don’t worry. Is only being recorded, so I’ll get out of this. So the other thing that you want to make sure that you have is stay connected. You need to make sure that every remote employee has a hit list of who is doing what in what role, what’s their phone number, what’s their extension, what’s their email address? Because they feel disconnected. They don’t know who to go find to get help, and they spend a lot of time circling around. So that’s a real critical point within that, to be able to know where do I go? Who’s the answer person for this issue or these problems?

Jesus Romero [00:16:36] That’s absolutely exactly what I was going to. I was thinking about my special team or my teammates were all across the world. There’s seven people. And whether I have four people in Bucharest and two people in Bangalore, and sometimes even we as a team don’t know what the other person is doing. So we started implementing that to, you know, we call it Activity Recap, but every month we know we get together and say, okay, what are you working on? What are you working on? So in case somebody asked me, write something that I don’t know, I know who I can point that person to and, you know, have their question answer. And that’s also excellent.

Moderator [00:17:06] Yeah, huge points. So I know Paul has some thoughts on really how do you attract talent? What is career roadmap look like? You know, Paul does some amazing analytics in identifying what what courses people are taking in college, what degrees they’re taking, and then how does that actually parlay into the long run? And maybe I’m out of word here, but I figured you could talk about anything.

Paul Hill [00:17:30] That’s okay. Let me bring you back to a little document here. So we wanted to know where people are coming from when they enter their academic background, when they enter the field of being a credit analyst and collections and such. So 32% of credit analysts graduated with a degree in finance, 13% from accounting, 12% in Econ, 10% in business admin. So they’re basically all business functions, business and finance functions. It gets, I would say, quite interesting from there because you’re dealing now, especially with these younger people who if they’ve got a finance background, they’ve got a lot of options and they know it and they’re exercising those options. So you’re really competing against a lot of different businesses who are trying to hire talent. And the businesses are very, very interesting. It’s not just the industries that we’ve always dealt with over time. You’re dealing with a lot of industries that didn’t even exist a few years ago. One of them is blockchain. And think about this the majority of younger kids, people under 30 who are have a finance background. They’ve studied finance. They are at least invested in crypto. That’s more than half. And they are very, very interested in blockchain. And I don’t want is associating blockchain specifically or only with crypto, just all the applications, securitization, logistics, shipping, health care, record keeping. These kids are fascinated by it and they are also looking for employers who will allow them. This goes back to the question earlier. A lot of these kids, I call it kind of the to monitor for phenomenon. They’ll be they want to work from home. They want to have two monitors, one for their job and one for their other interests. And they think about it in those terms. And that’s just a reality of what you’re up against in many instances with these younger kids. They’re smart, they’re ambitious. They’ve got more and better options than they ever had, literally. And there is this new cool thing. And it’s it’s not just crypto, it’s blockchain, and it’s fantastically intellectually stimulating for them and they want to be a part of it. And many of our companies will be a part of it in the not too distant future in some capacity.

John Boyens [00:20:22] And if you add, you know, Paul was talking about the millennials in that group or Gen Zs as you looked at it, but it is understanding the generational differences. I’m the executive in residence at the Jones College of Business. So we have people that have gone right from their undergrad to grad school, and we have people that are 55 and 60 years old that are going back in the workforce. And so understanding what kind of benefits, understanding how to recruit the people in the right way, understand to be able to give them clear direction in terms of responsibilities and expectations. And so, you know, we all can sit there and talk about a generation that we’re not about how much better we are than they are, whatever that may be. Right. But if you look at the value of diversity, what’s the big phrase that you’re hearing today is DNI diversity and inclusion. Right. To be able to understand the value and be able to understand how that gives you a leverage or competitive advantage. So if I’m if I’m trying to recruit millennials for my role, whether that’s a credit analysts, a credit manager, etc., what do they care about work life balance, career development, opportunity, give back technology, right? That’s the kind of things they want to understand how they fit in the bigger picture. How does my role fit in the bigger picture? What’s the mission of our company and how does that relate to making life a better place, whether it’s an individual, a company, the, you know, government, etc.? So again, keep those things in mind as you’re looking at if you want to minimize turnover, improve employee retention and satisfaction, it’s by meeting them where they are, recruiting them where they are, you know, being able to create the culture in the environment where they can flourish and again be valued.

Moderator [00:22:04] That could go into the compensation. Like how compensation is different now than it was even a year or two years ago. And what are your thoughts on how does compensation fit into this whole process of a job, a career? What does that look like now?

Paul Hill [00:22:18] I can since we did it. Wages are up. Compensation is up 5 to 15% in the field for any given level and it’s continuing to rise. We don’t see the wage pressure abating. We see wage inflation continuing. I’m not going to say for how long. I can’t predict. But we can tell you what has happened. And the the workers know this. And that’s why there is the high turnover rate, one of the reasons why there is a high turnover rate. And they’ve also figured out this is especially true for a lot of the younger workers. They’ve figured out they can hop and get 5 to 10% more each time they hop. And that’s not going to comment on whether it’s right or not. But they’re doing it. They know they can do it. So it’s an issue that needs to be dealt with. So back to your point. You can only pay so much. There are so many other factors that are interesting to these workers that, well, the purpose, the mission, the quality of the employer, all of that.

John Boyens [00:23:32] Yeah. And I’m I’m in a 100% agreement. You know, I’m a big believer in pay for performance. But if you look at a lot of the functions, the staff functions today, most organizations have a large base salary and there may be some gain sharing or there may be some profit sharing or other things. But majority of the income is set right, whereas sales or other professions there’s a bigger variable compensation. So you want to be able to look at things like, Well, what are the benefits we provide? Go back to our millennials, you know, having, you know, in office child care, big example of things, flexibility and work from home that we already talked about. Big thing, help with tuition reimbursement or education. Big thing. Right. Those are all there. But remember one thing and I don’t know who said it to give credit for it, but it wasn’t me. But I’m repeating it. And people don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses. And so you got to understand that if that environment, you don’t create a culture. If you’re not there trying to help that person be the best person they can be, then there’s a higher risk that that person is going to leave. And that job that that has a hiring bonus or something else makes it even more attractive. Right. So I want us to be very, very careful about that.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:24:42] And if I may add something very quickly here. I don’t know if you maybe while you’re here, could take the opportunity to reflect back to where you started your career. Because what I’m learning is that today’s dreams we had them to. It’s just that the tools through which those can be realized have changed. So maybe we are not that different altogether.

Moderator [00:25:12] I think it’s a good point. You know, one of the topics that came up is there was a McKinsey survey about employees prioritizing relational factors, but employers are actually trying to focus on transactional ones. And, you know, from your experience, especially the audience in which you you work with these students, what do you see? What did they feel about the importance of those things? And how do you how do you kind of find a middle ground?

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:25:36] That’s a very good question. I strongly believe that we can work with the definition of an employee that the Internal Revenue Service uses, of all places, an employee’s and individual interests in the professional service business. And that’s what we are doing. So therefore, what I do with my students, I ask them to think about the pain points at their employer and then to use design thinking that’s what we do at Babson and to do the act, learn, build, and to really consider yourself as a service business, as an employee. And with that, their applications become more lively, and also the commitment becomes more lively.

Moderator [00:26:22] Right. So another topic that we have been talking about a lot is turnover. Right. So turnover on new hires that you’re going to spend a lot of time and energy training versus people who are tenured. Hey Jesus you want to kind of share your thoughts on? How do you identify what are the signs and what do you do about it?

Jesus Romero [00:26:38] Sure. Well, first things first is to, you know, make it normal. It’s something that happens. We’ve all been there. Every company has had turnover, especially from people who just join. Sometimes it’s a better offer or they were handling different offers at the same time and they just got in and everything is, you know, wacky or something or they didn’t feel like it was the right fit. But we’re more focused about what can we do to avoid that right now. So we have more streamlined hiring process. At some point in our history, we only like hire from the economic schools. Right? Like if you have a finance degree or a economics degree, we will hire you because it’s credit and collections, it’s money. But now we have let go of that, you know, and we have to start looking for more different types of skills. Not only the knowledge, you know, because for knowledge, well, they got me. I will train them to do whatever they need them to do. But one story that I was telling you guys about is that we have one person who is an actually really great employee and she studied art restoration. And like five years ago, six years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to apply HPE credit and collections and we would have missed out on a lot because she’s great and she’s amazing. But it was a weird to us when she told us, you know, yeah, I mean, our restoration, but this is not working for me. I need more. I need to be in more different than just one project at a time. So her soft skills or her other areas of expertize were more of need for us than the art restoration project, let’s say. So we took her and she’s amazing. She’s great. So I think we should, you know, expand her knowledge and expand our view as well as to who are we hiring so we can avoid having people leave. You know.

John Boyens [00:28:20] And I think another part is to practice behavioral interviewing. So when you’re interviewing somebody, don’t just ask them questions that’s on their resume. On the job application, you know, if this were to happen, how would you handle this when this takes place? What do you do when you get more things that you have to do than you have time in the day? How do you prioritize? Right? You ask those kind of situation or behavioral questions and what you’re trying to determine is this do they have the skill and the will to do the job regardless of the position, skill and will? And the difference between those two is the know how and they want to. Hey, this was just talking about they originally went to the know how right they have the financial background. They took classes in college to do that. But then they found out that somebody that was an art history was it that, you know, that person became phenomenal because he or she was able to communicate well, build rapport with the customers, do a better job on collections, etc.. So don’t limit yourself. Really try to understand. I ask people interviews regardless of title. One of the first questions I ask in an interview at the end of this interview. What are two things you want me to know about you? They will almost always answer personally or professionally. And I go, I don’t care. Because if you start to interview, they’re trying to play you and they want to give you answers that they think you want to hear. When you start out with that question, you know, if you found out that they paid for their own college education or that they speak three languages, or they adopted a child from a third world country. Right. You’re understanding what’s important to them, their heart, their why that Brigitte was talking about. And so if you can get that in place, combined with what Jesus is saying, you’re going to have a long term happy employee. And it’s great then for an employee referral program because you find more that look like that and your organization grows. I’ll ask this question to any leader in the room. How much easier would your life be if the worst player on your team was a B-plus player? And here’s the answer. You control that.

Moderator [00:30:20] Excellent point. Okay. On to our other favorite topic, differences in generational workflow. I think John’s got a lot to say about that. In fact, we did a session recently for us which is on echo dot com available to you all for your chart. But here’s the man. The myth.

John Boyens [00:30:35] The man, the myth. The legend. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think back to the point there is understanding everybody is managed differently and everybody is motivated differently. So if I understand the generational information and Paul’s data can substantiate this for you, that older employee lasted longer, almost twice as long in their job. Right. So you can’t manage everybody the same. You have to use situational leadership. And so when you look at that, the Blanchard study and the Blanchard information about situational leadership is this four different kind of management styles? And people like to go, which is the best one. It doesn’t matter. It really matters on the situation because you could use all four styles in the same day with the same person because the situation was different. Right. So am I going to be directive? Am I going to be supportive? Am I going to be a coach or a delegator? Right. The four different leaderships or management styles. It really depends upon where that person is in his or her lifestyle, his or her experience, what’s going on with them as an individual. So as I look at generational differences, understand what it takes to recruit them, what’s the environment, the ideal environment in the office where they flourish best? Or again, work from home and then be able to create a job and a challenge. So back I always use millennials because they get a bad shrift and I think millennials are tremendous to be able to have in the workforce if you understand where their strengths are. And one of the strengths that millennials have is that bigger purpose. And I think there’s that why discussion again, the bigger purpose, how does what I’m doing help make the world a better place? And so I can’t just say, well, if you pick up the here, you take the dollar day weighted average and bring that down. It’s no, that’s not what motivates us. That’s the outcome. Right. But if they understand why they’re doing it and how that helps. Now you’ve got a whole different employee relationship. So again, there’s a lot a lot of that. And I think the program we did was about an hour long with specificity about what the workplace environment looks like, how to hire, how to hire them, different ways to attract them, how to motivate them, etc.. So I think I encourage you to look at that.

Moderator [00:32:41] Absolutely. It’s great stuff. Okay. So we have one last question here, because I think we’re actually running a little bit low in time. And we’ve actually had been having conversations about this just over the last couple of days, talking about the requirements, the typical requirements of pass for you must have a degree in X, Y or Z and how that’s changing. And I’d love to get each of your opinion on the importance of a degree, the type of degree, what you think is going to happen in the future to that, you know, given that Elon Musk’s of the world are like, who needs college? You know, there’s a lot of opinions on that and kind of based on your your your career, your your present day involvement with what you do, you know, can you give us your thoughts on just kind of the the importance of a degree or the lack of.

Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann [00:33:24] So maybe since I’m in academia, I can start this. I love my students when they come and they know I love them even more when they finish on time and are really successful afterwards. I mean, in a transformation business. And so for me, if a college degree is the right one, whether it’s undergraduate or graduate, I’m very happy to be part of that journey. If it’s not, let’s talk another time.

Moderator [00:33:57] Great advice.

Jesus Romero [00:33:58] Well, I personally believe that we shouldn’t look at that so much. You know what I was telling you about the changes in the hiring process. There’s also one other thing where they do is like they have to be either about to graduate or have a college degree. And I’m actually been fighting that for a while because I don’t believe that it should be a measure of success. And I also don’t believe that should be a measure of whether you’re hire over other people or not. Sadly, and I’m going to speak right now just about what I know, which is Mexican labor force, is that if you have a high title, then you get a better job opportunity. And that’s it’s sad, you know, because I may have other skills that the person who has been a manager don’t have or lack of, or maybe they have other type of skills that can be, you know, for a more individual contributor role and so on and so forth. But we are also stuck in a way of this is the way supposed to be. And if you have manage people before then you’ll be a manager everywhere. But also, what about people who haven’t had that opportunity? They have been trying to get a managerial position for a while now, and everything is the same, you know, like all because you have never been a manager. Yeah, but I try. I give support to 300 plus people and they have to answer to me. I have to follow them into their training hours and do everything that they do. So it’s kind of like the same deal. Just because I don’t approve their vacations, I’m not a manager, you know? So it’s kind of like a thing and it has to do with that, you know, getting the degree, getting the extra degree, the MBA. And, you know, I think we put so much focus onto that and we shouldn’t, you know, but that’s my personal opinion.

John Boyens [00:35:29] And I think it’s nice to have versus must have. You all have to understand that in your own organization, is this a nice to have or a must that I’m going to take you one outside of the credit collection financial professional field. But I was working with a client that was trying to hire salespeople, and they were having a hard time finding good candidates. And in this one particular situation, they had must have a college degree. That was the criteria. And and they weren’t finding any good candidates. And I said, send me a list of the reject resumes. Let me take a look at this. And I’m scanning through and like the fifth one I pull out was the top performing salesperson for their number one competitor in the market. Didn’t even get an interview because they didn’t have a college degree. And so, again, you have to start thinking about what’s giving you the results that you want. What what processes have you put in place? What are SOPs, standard operating procedures that are giving you the kind of talent that you want? So, you know, why are you hearing a lot of stuff now about trade schools? Because not everybody is going to flourish going to college. You know, I look at my career, I was a policy history major. Right. I became a sales executive. You know, I became a business owner and have used none of those things in my entire career at 67 years of age. So, again, the old days, I mean, you used to have a lot of place or must have an MBA, right? To be like, why? You know, I think on the job training and your work experiences have a bigger play today than they ever have, and I would encourage you to just challenge the norm. Does it mean you make the change but challenge the norm? Why do we do it? It can’t be because we’ve always done it. Why do we do it? Because it’s the right thing and it’s giving us the right kind of personnel.

Paul Hill [00:37:14] Just going to add a little bit to that. There’s for about ten years now within the tech business, a lot of the most high profile technology companies in the world have been throwing the requirement for a degree out the window. And they’ve actually been kind of talking out of both sides of their mouths, actually, for their administrative staff, they’ve required a degree further it for their engineering staff. They’ve been going around colleges around the country and going to the computer. And they they deny that they do this, but they’ve been doing it for about ten years. They go to the comp site and the math departments and they say to the kids, you’re smart, you’re in your second year. We already know you know how to code. Come work with us. We’ll pay you 84, an equivalent of $84,000 a year. They’re talking to 19 year old kids. Okay, if we like you, we’ll keep you around. If we don’t, we’re going to send you back. Okay. So you can come spend the summer playing with the big kids out in Silicon Valley or L.A. or New York or Boston. Or you can keep hanging out here with the kids in college for a few more years and rack up more debt and get your degree. This has been going on for about ten years or so. And now with the the pandemic and all the the job losses and people just basically stepping off the end of the conveyor belt in the labor market, there’s so much demand. Obviously, employers are loosening their requirements. And the good news. Is of that is their kind of opening their minds up to the idea that they just need to think instead of this this blind, you know, degree requirement. They’re interviewing people they never would have contemplated before. And they’re thinking more broadly about the kind of skills that are applicable to two different jobs. And they’re getting better people. They’re getting more motivated people.

Moderator [00:39:21] Thank you again to everyone for joining us today.

Jesus Romero [00:39:23] Thank you, guys. Thank you for coming.

Moderator [00:39:29] Okay. It’s a wrap.