PeopleStar_Jacara Powers: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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PeopleStar Intro/Outro:
Welcome to the PeopleStar Podcast. We deliver leadership perspectives from industry experts on their people, architecture, routines, and culture as they solve HR's newest challenges. And now your host, Julie Rieken.

Julie Rieken:
Hello podcast listeners! Julie Rieken, host of PeopleStar Podcast. This is my favorite time of the week, getting to meet new people and having great HR conversations. And today I have a wonderful guest in Jacara Powers. Jacara comes to us from Duke Health and she has been in HR for 11 years. We've got some cool stories to share today and I'm pretty excited about it. Jacara Welcome to the podcast and would you introduce yourself to the audience, please?

Jacara Powers:
Yeah, hi. Thank you so much. Julie, I'm so excited to be here today. I guess, as you said I'm Jacara Powers. I am currently a program manager at Duke Health for Orientation, which is super exciting, something I love to do, and really a position that I just feel like this is for me. So I'm super excited to talk about my position that I have today, where I've been in HR, and just the journey as I've gone through it over the last couple of years.

Julie Rieken:
This is going to be a fun time for us to talk about this story and I want to hear about your trajectory, but you're at Duke Health. That's a cool place. Tell us something cool that's happened at Duke Health recently. And then let's get into your story and how you got here. Tell us something cool that's happened.

Jacara Powers:
Yeah, so Duke Health, that's actually my third real experience in healthcare. I always say that prior to Duke, I had never really known too much about healthcare other than Grey's Anatomy. I have watched Grey's Anatomy pretty much since it premiered, I always joke it's my longest-running relationship, okay, … that's mot really know much about healthcare, but we really pride ourselves at Duke Innovation and just doing new things in medicine. But I thought it was really cool, recently on LinkedIn, I read an article about how a Duke neurosurgeon is actually going to be doing some voiceover work on the show Chicago Med, and I was like, how awesome is that? It might make me start watching Chicago Med and cheat on Grey's Anatomy a little bit. So I felt like, that's a cool little tidbit that I just happened to read on LinkedIn and I had to open up the article and just find out some of the ways that Duke is just doing different things. And I thought that was really interesting to share.

Julie Rieken:
I love it. I just gasped for all of you, listeners, I'm also a Grey's Anatomy fan, and Chigao Med's so fun. What a cool story. Thank you for sharing that. It's an exciting place to be in.

Jacara Powers:
It is.

Julie Rieken:
I love this story. So one of the things that I think is interesting is you have been in HR for 11 years and I was thinking about the great resignation, which was last year, and now we have the great layoff or whatever, super different situation. But thinking about the past and how we all went through these personal journeys of, am I in the right place, what does it mean for me? And that meant that a lot of us switched where we were at or thought differently about our futures. And you have landed in a place at Duke Health that you really love, and I'm sure you've loved many things along the way, but I'm really interested in where you started and your personal trajectory because as HR people, I think this is a space that's constantly evolving and how do we get from wherever we are into the space that really feels like home? And I'm wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about how you started and just share with us, how did you get to where you are and what questions did you ask yourself so that you would land in a place that really feels like you?

Jacara Powers:
Yeah. So I started out in HR. I always say I fell into HR, right? I don't know too many people who graduate from college and they're like, I'm going to be an HR professional. I just, I've never met anyone like that. I think we always just fall into it or it's something that we just get into and we're like, oh, that's pretty cool. And that's pretty much what happened to me. I went to undergrad, I graduated from Albright College with the intention of being a journalist. I wanted to be an entertainment journalist, I wanted to be on E! News, that was going to, it'd be me and Ryan Seacrest, and we were going to hold everything together. That was what I knew I was going to do. But after college, that, that just didn't happen. I kept getting you don't have enough internship, that you don't have this thing, you don't have that. And I really wanted to move out of my mom's house. And so I said, what can I do? So my now husband actually encouraged me. He was like, take that temp job that somebody told you to look into. Take that temp job. You never know what's going to happen. And so I did. I listened to him probably for the first time, forever. I listened to him, and then I found that and a contract recruiter and I think they floated me out for two or three months. I was recruiting technician for like telecommunication. I think it was like satellite or cable installation, something like that. And I didn't love the industry, but I realized that I love talking to people. I was like, okay, I'm taking this communications degree that I have and I'm using it and I'm talking to people on a regular basis, I think I like that. And so I started to pick up a couple of things from recruiting and talent acquisition that I did, and I left that job after a while, there for a few years. And the way of the land in Philadelphia, especially during that time frame, was taking contract position. So I picked some short-term and some long-term contract roles downtown in very large companies, and then some really small companies too, like Comcast and Aramark. I did a couple of contracts like that. And I realized, okay, that's not really for me either, I'm not really sure how much I love bouncing around from different places. Personally, my husband had just gone into the military, so I was prepared for us to get up and pack up and move and live this nomadic lifestyle that I really didn't know what to expect. So while I'm doing recruiting, but I'm doing recruiting differently, I've gone from full-time to contract, now I'm doing remote recruiting for a couple of years. I had my daughter and I'm still staying in recruiting, but I felt, to be honest with you, Julie, I was, I was doing it because of what I knew. I wasn't sure if I was continuing because I loved it. I think that there were a lot of aspects about recruiting that I love that was, that I was able to keep saying to myself, take another position, we're moving again, do this, do that. But I often asked myself, do I actually really like it or do I just love the flexibility now that I'm working remotely? So that's what kind of went, some of those questions starting to pop up in my head. As a new mom and living the life that we were living, I was just happy to be making money. I was happy to be doing something I was good at, but I never really sat down and said, is this what you want to do for a very long time? And I don't think that question really popped into my head until we, we got out of the military, we moved back home to Philadelphia and we decided, okay, Philadelphia is no longer for us. We actually really loved living down south. We lived in Fort Bragg for about four years and we decided to move back to North Carolina. And that's when I started to say there's a lot of transitions going on in life. Maybe my career would be a good transition too. My husband was transition to kind of military to civilian, my daughters getting older, what do I want to do? So I started thinking about going back to school and I said to myself, I really like recruiting, but I think I want to do something a little bit more senior level. I think I might want to do something a little different. And then I said, maybe I don't really like recruiting that much anymore. And so that's when I started saying what I wanted to do. And so I thought maybe if I go back to school, I'll start to figure out what about HR I love and in talent acquisition and recruiting, is still what I love or if it's bigger, and I might just want to work on the different. So I applied to a couple of different programs, and I wound up getting accepted into Johnson Weil. And honestly, I just, just threw my application out there. There was really no, no real thinking process about where I was going to apply. I saw HR management programs and I said, I'm going to apply here, I'm going to apply there, I'm going to apply here. And JWU just seemed really flexible with the lifestyle that I didn't need it. And so I decided to go there. And that was an amazing decision. For me, the flexibility, the professors, everyone really made me think a lot, and I learned a lot in a very short amount of time, like 18 months. So during the time of all of this, here comes COVID, and COVID reared its ugly head and I got laid off during COVID. And that pushed me to wonder whether or not I wanted to continue in HR and then also if I wanted to continue with my grad school program. So I actually sent or the application for about a year and I remember my academics … there by asking me, are you ever going to start with that? Are you ever going to come back? Are you ever going to start, what? Look, I finally decided that I wanted to go back to school, actually start, and I wound up working at a wonderful company, I guess I can say, at Circle K, I was working there for a couple of years and that really opened my eye to what I didn't want to do, which was the retail side. But it also opened my eyes to I love talking to people as much as I did at Circle K. I love training, I love working with people. I love a lot of the things that I'm doing, but maybe I want to change it up just a bit and start focusing on the candidate experience. A lot of people would say to me, I wish that you were working at the store with me. Can I, can I have you all the time? Is this the last time we're going to chat? And I thought, all right, I think I might want to change it up a little bit to the after the recruitment part where I'm still around a little bit more and not just having a talent acquisition or recruiter role. I'm helping you with some of the step after you joined the company. That's when Duke Health, came along and last summer actually, I just decided, you know what, I think I really want to start doing something a little bit more on the training side, orientation side. What happens after you join the company is where I want to be. And so I filled the position at Duke for the orientation program manager and I was just finishing up my program and I said, you know what? I'm not going to wait until I'm done. I'm going to try to this position because who knows who could take it before me and, so that was not a plan, well I said, …. to hire me. And s I applied and it was a very long interview process, many rounds of interviews. But at the end I got it. And that was a chance that I took because, first of all, I never thought they were going to see my, write to me, this is Duke Health, they were not going to see my resume. A little old me, but they thought my resume and I and then they kept calling me back and they kept calling me back. And then finally I got the final answer of you got an offer? And I said, this is exactly where I should have been. This is what I should have done. I broke the rule that I said to myself, I'm not going to wait until after I graduate. I'm going to wait and fight. No, I just applied and I got the job. And all in all, I think that this was a lesson of taking a chair and really thinking about what you want to do and then just going for it. And I'm three months into my role and I honestly feel like that was the best decision for me. I'm just happy about the trajectory I really am.

Julie Rieken:
I am over here cheering … it's, … I'm here. There's so much here, Jacara. It's like the courage to make a change. The question that we all ask ourselves, Am I doing this because I love it or because I know it? Having the courage and I love that your advisor was like, so are you ever going to do this? Because sometimes I'll think, personally it's not just with the job or a program, … things, and then something triggers and we take that step and it opens new doors. And that's what it did for you.

Jacara Powers:
Yeah. Covid, don't get me wrong, Covid literally was the worst thing ever to happen to so many people for so many reasons. But I think for me, it just made me, it made me take a step back, but then it also pushed me forward. What are you waiting for? Okay, you've been laid off twice at this point. You have this acceptance letter to grad school, what are you waiting for? You never know what's going to happen. And I think that was just, that was just the catalyst that I really needed to push myself forward. And it's been really great. It has been. I'm still quite devastated that we had to go through that, but I'm just so happy that something very tragic pushed me to do something that I never thought I was ever going to do, though.

Julie Rieken:
This is such a cool story. Okay, now let's talk about your experience in recruiting and, now you're thinking about the candidate experience. What happens after you joined the company? Could you talk to us about what does good look like here with the candidate experience, when you're thinking about, I'm assuming you're bringing people into the Duke Health system and you're helping orient them into programs. Would you just tell or correct me? Tell us what that journey looks like and how do you think about the candidate experience based on what you've done before and where you are now? How do you think about it?

Jacara Powers:
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing between recruiting and what I used to do and what I do now is just, it's really about retention and it's really about what we can do to make them stay. Bringing it back to COVID again, the healthcare system took a major hit and so many people are overworked and tired and stressed out by all of the demand and working in a healthcare system, we know there's a nurse shortage and people have to work long hours and they're exhausted. So what makes us stand a comparison to other healthcare systems and other companies, and I think that the candidate experience and the employee experience and setting them up for success in the very beginning, it's what makes that different. And that's what my job is, to make them feel welcomed and wanted and assured that we're going to help you to feel comfortable and know the company. We go through everything from like history and facts about Duke Health to culture and well being, just some of the important things that we feel like you should know when you're joining a company that you feel like they want me here. And I made a good decision by agreeing to be here. And that's super important because we have people who have already accepted offer to the year like May, June, July. What is going to make them stay with us. And this onboarding program and this orientation that we have and where it all start. So my job and again, I'm three months in right now, so we're still doing a lot of transitioning, but my job is, as the orientation program manager is to welcome them with a smile, with a presentation that I do, and we work with a platform called PIX Connect. And I don't know if you're familiar with PIX Connect, but it's a virtual program where hopefully I'm explaining this right, if you can't see my hand. But it is a virtual platform in which they can walk into a room that we've created at Duke and help them to understand everything that we want them to know. For example, there is a room where they'll learn about the history and the fact about Duke Health, some of the innovation that we've done over the last X amount, and they will learn about all of the cultural and wellbeing programs that we have. They'll learn about our benefit and they're literally walking into a room, virtually clicking on things, the different content and media learning about it and then moving back out. And we also have a live … Session with myself where I ask them questions, I give them information, I tell them about different things about the company and what they need to know. So that, I guess, engagement is what we felt would really make people want to stay at Duke Health. They see a real live person who's in HR, I'm not necessarily behind a computer screen, the new email, the document, you see the emails, you can touch them in the room. You see me, you can talk to me, you can ask me questions. We are still revamping the Duke Health, tt's called the They Want It Duke Health Orientation Experience. So we're actually still working some things out and taking some feedback to make it what we want it to be. And it's officially going to kick off on February 13. So between my third date back in October and February 13th, we are taking everything that we can from different members of the Duke Health community, and just knowing what I know as, if you new hire, a person was recently hired to Duke Health and also with someone who had the recruiting background. I have a really great manager who had previous experience in healthcare and a great team who has a lot of experience and feedback. So we're taking everything, we're putting it together and we really just want to make it the most welcoming experience ever so that when people come to Duke Health, they can say, Jacara really cared about me, she asked questions. Duke Health really cared about me, they showed me this. I know this about Duke Health. Sometimes, we walk into a company, we don't know anything about it, we get a deck of papers and we're just like, sign this, check that, all right, you're done. We don't want anybody to feel like that. So it's really just about engagement and a sense of belonging and welcoming. That's something ….. I think that I can make everybody feel super comfortable.

Julie Rieken:
…. Thank you. And join Duke. I want them to come to Duke and I want them to experience what you're giving to them for as much as I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with you, I cannot imagine how these candidates must feel. They have to feel so welcome. And I think this is going to be a really important position for Duke. And it seems to me like, if I was working at Duke Health, I definitely want to interact with you. It's already fun.

Jacara Powers:
Thank you. And we, of course, we're definitely going to take as much feedback when people tell us how everything went and can see it optimized, and get better and better, but it all small talk with a smile. I honestly believe that it really does start from a positive attitude and letting people know we want you to be here. I just want to be the person that I wish that I had in every job. Like, I think that's how I go into it. I want to be that welcoming faith and voice that I wish I had in every single position I've ever held or every single building I walked into. So that's my mindset when I start these rehearsals and things that we've been having so far, before we go live.

Julie Rieken:
Jacara, this has been so much fun. It really has been the bright spot of my week already early on.

Jacara Powers:
Oh, thank you.

Julie Rieken:
I love it. And I've learned a ton about candidate experience. I love hearing people's personal trajectory, and I think it might be fun for you and I to put a date on the calendar in the fall. And just to say, how's it going?

Jacara Powers:
That sounds awesome.

Julie Rieken:
Wouldn't it be a fun follow up that we can figure out how are things going and what have you learned and what advice do you have for all of the listeners out there and the people that we interact with on how to create a great candidate experience? So maybe we can do that.

Jacara Powers:
All about it. That sounds wonderful. And I think that after this goes live, I'll have a lot more to say, a lot more to talk about, and just hope that I can bring the leap forward.

Julie Rieken:
That'd be great. Let's do it. Jacara, thank you for today. This has been super fun. Have a great one. Thanks for being in the podcast.

Jacara Powers:
Thank you. Thank you.

PeopleStar Intro/Outro:
Thanks for listening to the PeopleStar Podcast. For the show notes, transcript, resources, and more ways to get a seat at the table, visit us at TrakStar.com/Podcast.

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