A Conversation with Chelsea Baker, Director of Customer Experience & Adoption at Trakstar

Chelsea Baker, the Director of Customer Experience and Adoption here at Trakstar, is one of the most recognizable faces for employees and customers. You may have seen her on some of our webinars, heard her voice in our support videos, or learned something new from her in one of our Trakstar Learn courses.

She has one of the longest tenures at Trakstar, is one of the first to welcome new employees into our workforce, and is often the person we turn to internally when we need an opinion on something.

Let’s get to know more about her and the work she does here:

Can You Tell Us Briefly About Your Experience With Trakstar?

I joined 8 years ago, first as a Support person for Hire – back when we were called Recruiterbox. We were super small then, and I took over support from the CEO at the time – eventually growing out a support team. Several years later, we were acquired by Trakstar – and I came along for that journey – getting to grow and work on all of the Trakstar products! 

What Does Your Day-To-Day Look Like?

I spend my days helping our internal teams work together to solve problems for our customers – so that they can better enjoy our products. That’s a lot of words to say that I spend a lot of time in meetings and working on projects. 

Typically I have several adoption projects going at once – to help people get more use out of certain parts of our products. This involves:

• Making sure these parts of the product are intuitive and easy to use
• Ensuring we have education for our customers and for our internal teams about these features
• Helping shape the communication that goes out via email or in-app messaging for these features
• Meeting with everyone involved internally + our customers to learn what is working and what we should do next!

Along with adoption projects, I help our Educational Designer, Jessie, plan for upcoming Academy, webinar, and other educational offerings. And, with my long history in Support, I even pitch in if there is a tricky ticket, or someone internally has a question about how our products function. 

What’s Your Favorite Trakstar Memory?

In late 2019, I was bringing together a few different groups of customer success folks to work together on a new team, so I had been annoyingly asking them a question of the day to force them to talk to each other. 

A few months later, when we took our in-office people remote at the start of COVID, We decided to shift the question of the day into our “Random” slack channel – for the whole company to participate – for a few weeks, at least. So, I started creating a “random question of the day” at the start of my work day to keep people connected and give them something to chat about. 

3 years…and thousands… of questions later – it’s still my favorite part of the day – thinking of a question each morning that will get people talking, sharing, and laughing together – and then enjoying the answers as they roll in throughout the day. 

We Don’t Pick Favorites, But What’s Your Favorite Trakstar Feature?

I am so partial to our Hire product that I won’t even pretend to not pick favorites. It will always hold a special place in my heart – and I LOVE how it makes hiring so much easier.

My favorite Hire feature is Candidate Self Scheduling Interviews. This feature allows Hire users to send candidates a list of potential times for an upcoming interview, and then they pick the time that works best for them! This was a feature that was developed after I had been here for a while, and it was SO magical to roll it out to customers and watch them fall in love with how much time it saved them in the hiring process. I also use it for my OWN hiring, and it cuts down on the back and forth – making my and the candidates’ lives so much easier!

What Do You Wish More Customers Knew About Trakstar?

We truly care about customer feedback – maybe more than you even realize. We want to hear from you, talk to you, and get you resources to help simplify talent management. We have tough skin – so share the good, the bad, and anything in between.

Each time you leave feedback for our support team, answer a customer survey, or share a feature suggestion, real humans are reading those replies. 

Also, if you tell us we’re great, we have a literal channel in Slack that we share this with the whole company – so everyone can celebrate.  

What Should A Potential Customer Know When They’re Looking At Talent Management Options?

Dive into each piece of the talent management process before you pick a software – to ensure that the software you’re looking at has deep feature offerings for each part of the process – not just checks a box. Often systems will say that they, for example, offer an ATS, but once you get “under the hood,” you find out that it is bare bones – not allowing for configuration of things like hiring workflows or interview setups. 

Make your requirements list, and do your homework – making sure it has what you need, not just a pretty outer shell!

You Regularly Work Within Trakstar Hire – How Do You Make The Best Hires?

I LOVE HIRING PEOPLE – my goal in interviewing/hiring is to hire for the skills that I can’t teach. I’m looking for skills that are a part of someone’s habits and personality. I can teach you how to use a ticketing system or how to use our software, but I can’t teach you how to care about customers, even in difficult conversations, or how to be curious and excited to learn still 2 years into your job. These are the skills I tease out during my hiring process. 

Want to know more about Chelsea’s hiring tactics? Be sure to watch the replay of her recent webinar on DEI.

As A People Leader, You’re In Trakstar Perform. What Are Your Best Tips For Having Tough Conversations About Performance?

When I have to have a tough conversation about performance, I keep a few key things in mind. 

• Have the conversation early and often – you shouldn’t get to the point that you’re having a performance conversation and the employee is surprised – this means either you haven’t been having regular conversations about progress or you haven’t set clear expectations. 
• Being clear is being kind. There should be no room for interpretation once the conversation has happened. Be incredibly clear with what needs to be corrected and what you expect to see – and by when.
• Learn how your team best takes feedback – would they rather have the feedback in writing or verbally? Ahead of time to prepare questions and process, or in the moment, processing live with you?.
• Don’t be afraid of PIPs – people see the only outcome of a PIP as a way to exit an employee – but in my opinion, if you’re to that point – you’ve waited too long – PIPs are incredibly valuable tools that should be used early and often – to help hold everyone accountable to expectations in a clear and documented way. We have a support article that can help you! 
• And, lastly, document everything. If it ever crosses your mind “hm, I wonder if I may need proof of this conversation” – document it. It’s a whole lot easier to have documentation that you don’t need – than to have to remember or produce documentation that you didn’t keep up with down the line.

You Spend Your Days In A Ton Of Meetings – How Do You Find Time To Take A Break?

Most of my day, I’m on video calls. People often ask if I get lonely working remotely – nope! I spend all day talking to our internal teams or customers – there isn’t any moment of loneliness! 

I am an early morning person – so I like to have a couple of hours before work to exercise, read, and/or take a walk. This lets me start my day in a calm way – before diving into calls.

I don’t often have time to take a lot of breaks throughout the day. If the weather is nice, I do try to sit outside between calls while working on projects. If I have time to eat lunch away from the computer – you’ll usually find me with a fork in one hand, and my latest book in the other. 

Any Last Thoughts?

Thank you for visiting my little corner of the Trakstar world. If you ever want to talk about talent management, managing remote teams, or – your latest fictional read – I’m your person!