Rob Stevenson 0:05
Welcome to top talent to me, a podcast featuring the most elite talent leaders on the front lines of modern recruitment. We actually want to understand the themes of someone’s life. We want to understand how they make decisions where they’re willing to take risks and what it looks like when they fail. No holds barred completely off the cuff interviews with directors of recruitment to VPs of global talent CHR OHS and everyone in between once I went through the classes and the trainings and got the certifications through diversity and inclusion, I still felt like something was missing. Talent Acquisition. It’s a fantastic career. You are trusted by the organization. You get to work with the C suite and the security at the front desk and everybody in between and everybody knows you. I’m your host, Rob Stevenson. And you’re about to hear the best in the biz. talk down to me.

Rob Stevenson 0:58
Hello again. All of you wonderful talent acquiring darlings out there in podcast land. Welcome back to top talent to me and I am truly excited about today’s guest because she has a litany of experience in our space. She was in fact the very first vice president of HR at Salesforce. She then left Salesforce in 2006 to found human capital consultancy Connery consulting, and from this consultancy spun out an additional her latest venture compensation intelligence company open comp, where in addition to being co founder, I’m chuffed to report she’s also co host of open comms podcast. High Growth matters available wherever podcasts are streamed. Nancy Connery, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Nancy Connery 1:40
Thank you for having me. I’m doing great. Thank you.

Rob Stevenson 1:44
So pleased to have you. Did I leave anything out as I was kind of giving the SparkNotes of your curriculum vitae there?

Nancy Connery 1:50
I think you did a great job.

Rob Stevenson 1:52
Thank you.

Nancy Connery 1:52
You’re hired.

Rob Stevenson 1:53
Good podcast. I appreciate it. How are you today? I’m so glad you’re here. There’s so much we can talk about. But I guess how’s your week going?

Nancy Connery 2:01
Week is going well. We’re a little soggy here in the Bay Area. Anybody who follows the News knows that we’ve been having these lots of atmospheric rivers lately. But you know, it’s good for us. And we’re just staying dry are trying to and working hard and working hard on the consulting business and open comp as well. And excited to just chat with you today as well.

Rob Stevenson 2:21
Yeah, I would love to know how you managed to do both of those at once running your consultancy, co founding open comp? Can we maybe speak a little bit first? Why the split or the spin off? You? Right? Because it sounds to me, like you realize through the consultancy that there was opportunity for the company opened up is that correct?

Nancy Connery 2:39
Yeah, absolutely. So 17 years ago, started Connery consulting. And as you said earlier in our podcast to, you know, boutique, HR consulting practice, and we have multiple pillars to the business, one of the main the compensation piece, and my partner Tang, who’s the CEO and co founder of open comm is really kind of the brains behind the whole compensation piece of the business. And what we found was that we were doing a lot of work manually, that we could automate that there was a real product opportunity there. And as we started to think about it, and talk to others, and talk to investors outside and also having built so many companies, alongside incredible founders, really realized the value in separating it out to make it its own product company that was not kind of in these murky waters between a services business and a product business. And so we made the decision to do that a few years ago and never looked back. And now we’re in kind of double startup land, if you will. Yeah, sounds like it. So what is the core offering of open comp. So open comp is compensation intelligence platform that really helps companies figure out what and how responsibly they can chart out their compensation path. And that’s really, you know, from the elements of the cost from the people perspective, from looking at your diversity and understanding where you fall and how you’re doing in terms of that. And also to responsibly really build the foundation for compensation that can grow and evolve with the company as the valuations change and grow. And as you think about attracting, but also retaining the right talent. And it’s just a very, very simple product at the end of the day that gives companies just a wealth of information, and does it in an automated and easy way.

Rob Stevenson 4:32
Now, we jumped in here at the very end, which is a little naughty from a storytelling perspective, but I wanted to set some context around you know, what’s keeping you busy now, but maybe let’s pop back in time. We’ll end up right back here at open comp perhaps. But I’m curious about the early days for you. You worked with Marc Benioff at Oracle once upon a time and from there left to join Salesforce. Could you share a little bit about those early days at Salesforce, how did you become their very first VP of HR?

Nancy Connery 5:04
Yes. So it is true. I did, Mark recruited me to Oracle, I was I think at the mere age of 23, you know, quite quite young, very early in my career, he really took a chance. And then when he left to start, Salesforce, I went with him, I really believe that he fundamentally changed the way that the tech industry views the people aspect of the business as it relates to people ops and HR, he put a stake in the ground and said, I’m gonna hire my head of HR as one of my very first employees, because this is going to be a people company. And so from there, I think that we saw just kind of this great evolution where companies really said, wow, they did that. And they did that really, really well. I would be lying to you. If I said there weren’t days when I said to myself, as I walked into, you know, our little apartment at Coit Tower, where we used to interview people, where I, you know, question, What on earth did I do when I left this beautiful, you know, tower overlooking the water at Oracle, you know, they had the cafeteria, very cushy, yes, and went straight into startup land, but I don’t regret it at all. And I learned so much I really, really learned a lot on the fly, too. There was no playbook for it at that point, because that was really kind of the beginning of the whole startup world in 1999.

Rob Stevenson 6:26
Yeah, even if you look, 1015 years later, a lot of companies probably even now aren’t necessarily making that hire early on that investment in someone to lead the people function so early. And I think it’s a mistake. But back then, you know, some companies are even behind now. But 20 years ago, yeah, it was completely unheard of. What were some of those early conversations like when you when you said, Okay, Mark knew that he wanted it to be a people focused company? How did that determine the way you did your job?

Nancy Connery 6:55
I was really involved in everything. I mean, I interviewed every person that was coming into the company, and he did too. But if he didn’t, and if I didn’t, you would ask me, Did you interview so and so on? If my answer was no, he would hand me back the paper and say, well, here you go. And so you know, we had really a lot of conversations about not only, you know, the experience with these people had, but also their value set to what could they bring to the table from a culture standpoint? And are we really creating this company, you know, with the right people. So really trying to be very, very thoughtful about that. And then we made mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. And so and it’s fine to make those mistakes, but clean them up and fix them. So if you hire somebody into the wrong role, is there a right role as the company grows and evolves? Or is it the right company for them, and there’s always a very graceful way to handle that. And so we just had a lot of conversations really around building this incredible foundation. And if you could fast forward 1020 years, with some of those core folks still be there. And they are still there. In fact, they’re running the company today.

Rob Stevenson 8:06
Yeah, speaking of the people running the company, I imagine at some point in your journey, investors, or whoever else, peers in the space, told leadership at Salesforce, hey, at some point, you’re gonna need to hire an executive for the talent function. Like we know that Nancy is great. She’s been doing an amazing job, but she doesn’t have the experience, we’re gonna have to hire someone with 1520 years, who has a see in front of their title. Did that ever happen? Did you ever get leveled along the way?

Nancy Connery 8:33
No, I wouldn’t say I got leveled. You know, Mark is really somebody who sees hard work for what it is and sees your talents. What we did do, and I guess maybe you could call it leveling, but was at one point, we did break out the talent and the retention piece. And sorry for some listeners, but I will say to me, kind of the talent and the retention piece of the people ops and HR function are really kind of the exciting areas. And you know, that was about really bringing in the best talent, how did we retain the best talent. And so we kind of created that as its own function. That was the last role that I was in at the company, and kind of took out the operational aspect of HR. And that was run by somebody else. And truth be told, I was just fine with that. And I think it’s really, really important as people think about the evolution of their careers to really think about you don’t need to run everything, what are the core areas where we you really, really shine, and can really help get the companies to the next levels.

Rob Stevenson 9:37
It’s really impressive that they never brought in someone above you. And part of that sounds like you had this mentor, this leader who really believed in you. What else do you think was responsible for them never needing to hire an executive search firm to bring in a C level VP level person.

Nancy Connery 9:53
Fundamentally, to mark at that, you know, in I’d say the first 10 years of the company, the most important thing aspect of the people function was recruiting and retaining the best talent. And we really did do that. It wasn’t always easy to do that, especially at the beginning, when people didn’t know what was Salesforce, you’re building a tech company in San Francisco. Good luck with that. If I had $1, for everybody who said that to me, you know, I think that would have would have paid off in spades.

Rob Stevenson 10:23
You’d be a VC. No,

Nancy Connery 10:25
Exactly. But I think the fact that we just really stayed focused on that, and that we also knew that when talent wasn’t right, we knew how to gracefully fix that. And I think it’s important to know that you need to fix it, but to fix it in a graceful way, luck, it was not always smooth sailing. And I think, you know, one of the most important things to everybody out there is just during those hard times, you know, do you put your head down? Do you kind of push through? Do you figure out maybe you didn’t do something in the right way? And what do you do differently the next time. And I think whether you’re a first time executive running HR, whether you’re seasoned in that, I think always to kind of carry that advice with you, I think is critical. And Mark is my mentor, dear friend. Now I kind of call him a brother, if you will. But at the same time, like I said, it’s not always easy, but you can agree to disagree, too. It’s so weird, Nancy to imagine Salesforce, like as you said, in startup land, because now it’s the most noticeable feature of the San Francisco skyline, right and Salesforce tower. tremendous growth over the last 15 years, most of what you were there for? What do you think changed? When it comes to how the company view talent or the talent department, the talent function, as it scaled up? Did attitude shift where they it sounds like they were able to keep that priority the entire time. But how would you kind of characterize that evolution? Yeah, I’d say it’s not that dissimilar to what you see is kind of your typical big marquee tech companies grow and scale, you know, at the beginning of the company, you kind of get your people who are serial startup folks, and they kind of go from one to the next. And they do very, very well in that world. And they have kind of their time period, if you will, before they will go on to the next startup. So you have kind of that bucket of people. As you become larger and more corporate, you need to really understand how to assimilate the more corporate bigger company people into the equation to work with the earlier stage people. And in my mind, it’s a constant evolution. And it’s really is an art, it’s really I kind of call it akin to putting together a really good puzzle that you want to put together and that you want to keep on your table. And if you can do that, in my opinion, you’ve done the talent function, right?

Rob Stevenson 12:49
Yeah, I like that imagery of the puzzle. And the retention piece pieces, I suppose to continue the puzzle metaphor, obviously, so crucial. It’s interesting to hear that as time went by Salesforce broke that out into its own separate function. If you could do it all over again, would you do that? Do you think that it’s a necessary evolution of a talent org to have retention to be its own dedicated function?

Nancy Connery 13:11
I do think it’s very, very important, just like when you build a product company to think about not only acquiring your customers, but how do you keep them and I even remember, are really, really early days in Salesforce and some of our executive staff meetings that were you know, every Monday morning at 10am, where we would talk about that we didn’t really understand that you had to think about not only getting the customers but keeping them. And I think that you need to think about employees, and as you grow the company in the same manner, not only recruiting them, but also how do you develop them? How do you retain them? And can they grow with the lifecycle and stages of the company. And so to me, it is equally as important as the recruitment and onboarding piece for companies. The HR kind of operations piece is also very important, I don’t want to minimize that in any way, shape, or form. But I also think it’s a little bit of a different skill set, you know, that you go after, I got very, very lucky to have all this under my umbrella and learn how to kind of toggle between the HR ops piece of the equation as well as you know, the talent piece of the equation. But as you’ve seen in the evolution of the industry, as well, there really are a lot of people who specialize just on the HR side, just on the talent side, there are a lot of companies who actually never combine those functions as the companies grow and scale.

Rob Stevenson 14:33
You mentioned offering development opportunities and helping people upskill and there’s one piece of that where you collect all the resources and all the perks and what have you and offer it to folks. But as the old saying goes you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it take a Udemy course. How much hand holding do you need to do to make sure people are basically being retained if you think of retained as a process by which you make want to continue working there? It’s not enough to just offer this stuff out, right? What is the active process you take and making sure that they’re going along with this process? You’ve ideated. Take me back to that time and your decision making How did you know that you wanted to leave and that it was time?

Nancy Connery 15:14
The truth is that I really prefer the building and formative years of companies versus the more corporate. No. And I might even go so far as to say predictable years and cycles in a company. Maybe I thrive in chaos. And so, you know, I really felt like I had been there to make a key contribution to the company over the first seven years of the company. I had also just had my second daughter, I wanted to kind of soul search, figure out what was next. I really don’t sit still very well. And you know, as you referred to, yes, I could have had the great title, the beautiful office, you know, the lunches, the this the that, but that’s actually fundamentally not me, you know, if I get too comfortable, then I pushed myself. And I did, there absolutely. were moments where I said, What on earth was I doing and creating and running this business on my own, but I truly have that entrepreneurial spirit. And it didn’t feel alive at that stage, because the company was global 1000 employees, you know, talking about the big corporate pluses and minuses. And for me, I wanted to parlay my experience into helping all of these early stage companies that never had done this before, because I had that experience firsthand. And so I always say that it was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time, but also executing really well.

Rob Stevenson 21:31
So you understood this value about yourself that you like to move fast to be iterative, that you didn’t want the predictability of a larger company. Did that take time? Were you just always twitchy? Or did you wake up one morning like, Well, I’ve been really bored for six months?

Nancy Connery 21:46
Well, I would say I was never bored. But it was more if you wanted to kind of do something. And there were three, four or five people that you had to kind of run it by you had to kind of iterate a lot, think about it, you know, versus being able to just kind of try things and then move forward and course correct in case it wasn’t the right thing. And so I do say it took me two years and two kids to actually convince mark that it was my time, my time had come. And then he went on to be actually one of the biggest supporters in the consulting practice in terms of companies that he invested in and one of our incredible referral resources. And to me, there was almost nothing more rewarding than that, you know, that he was kind of saying to me, yeah, do this. And by the way, I’m going to be one of your best customers out there. So risky? Yes. But to me risky is exciting. Then if you think about open comp to was it a little bit risky? Is it a little bit risky? Yes. But exciting. And do we have the skills and the tools to build a company? Yes. So there’s kind of that evolution, if you will?

Rob Stevenson 22:50
Sure. Sure. When you have that conversation with Mark, hey, it’s my time to leave set me free. Right. We’ve had a good run. What was that conversation? Like?

Nancy Connery 23:01
I had many conversations with him around that. And every time he would convince me to stay a little bit longer, even to the point that he used to like to send me to say, you know, go clear your head, go have a few days in wine country, I finally got to the point, right, so this is no longer about going to wine country.

Nancy Connery 23:22
It’s time and he agreed. I remember, I was waiting to have a conversation with him. It was over the phone when I really, really finally was putting my foot down. And I came home, I think I had just been out to work dinner for Salesforce. And I ended up talking to him for two to three hours. And I just said you really have to listen to me. Mark is incredible. But you know, he it’s a little hard to get in a word edgewise. He listened. And at the end of that my diatribe or whatever you want to call it, where I spilled everything out. He said, You’re right. The time has come.

Rob Stevenson 23:55
Yeah, I had a conversation similar to that with a boss, obviously, not as high profile, but it kind of came down to the same thing. It was like, Look, boss, I know it’s good for you if I stay, right, like I know that you would prefer this for but like you have, like you have to do Nancy, right? You have to like, what are your long term career goals? And I like that he was gonna find ways to talk you into staying or like, oh, well, you know, we’ll send you off to wine country, take a few days, clear your head. And you’re like, my head is clear. And by the way, it wasn’t getting clear drinking Chardonnay, thank you very much. But like, yeah, it’s just time and it’s really nice to hear that he became the supporter and that’s how you want to leave it. You don’t want to leave. I’m like, Oh, well, good luck out there. You think you’re gonna because there’s that version of a two there’s like, you will never succeed outside of these walls. Like I made you who you are. There’s a very sort of cartoonish version of that conversation that can happen, but it sounds like that wasn’t the case at all.

Nancy Connery 24:45
No. And in fact, he is one of the lead investors in open calm time Ventures is one of our leads, you know, so was it scary at the time. Did I have any idea how any of this would play out? No, but I also you know, see currently kind of thrive feeling a little bit like the underdog and a little bit like, well, I’m going to prove to everybody that we can do this not only do it well, so there’s a lot of self satisfaction and pride in the fact that I did make that leap from something that was extremely comfortable to the unknown.

Rob Stevenson 25:18
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s where thriving happens, right? Like outside the comfort zone.

Nancy Connery 25:23
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Stevenson 25:25
So you got outside that comfort zone, you founded Connery consulting, when you think back at the last several years working with all these organizations and providing this consultancy? What are some of the themes of challenges, your customers are facing? What’s going on out there?

Nancy Connery 25:39
Path to profitability? You know, I think that we definitely companies really got away from understanding the importance of watching where every dollar goes, because there was a lot of money flowing into these companies. And so, you know, I had one CEO that I work with last week told me, Well, I need to recruit this role, but I want to down level at one level, because, as everybody, I’m trying to do more with less. And so you know, I think that that is absolutely fundamentally a pattern out there. Sadly, there has been a pattern and you know, reducing your workforce. I don’t necessarily think that’s such a bad thing. I think it’s a bad thing when you do it just to kind of follow what everybody else is doing. But I think it’s also given us companies an opportunity to look at who are our top performers, why are they here? Do they carry the same value set and the same commitment that we want going forward? There was a lot of hiring during the pandemic that went on of, you know, sight unseen, never met people. And companies got a little bit away from kind of their core values. And so I’m seeing them really go back to that. And, and really also question if an executive or hiring manager comes in, says, I need 10 people in my organization next year, as additional ads, people are questioning that, whereas before they didn’t, and so I’m also seeing, you know, I’m a silver lining person, too. I’m also seeing from the employee side of the equation, a lot more appreciation. You know, we had this great resignation here, what, like a year and a half, two years ago, I have a lot of people who actually have left us over the years who come back our way. And that’s okay, they should go see what is on the other side. And when they come back, they bring to us a more well rounded skill set, and a new appreciation. And so I’m seeing a little bit of that as a pattern in the market, too.

Rob Stevenson 27:36
With this reality of hiring managers, team leads, what have you requesting large headcount numbers? There’s pushback, which is healthy. Do you think they are incentivized to want hires to want headcount? Is that some weird cachet they hold in the organization? They have lots of reports, why is there like this over requesting for talent happening?

Nancy Connery 27:58
A couple things, maybe you didn’t hire the right executive, because especially early stage in the company, the executive has to be willing to roll up his or her sleeves. I think that sometimes they think the larger the number of folks that they have under their management, that’s a positive, it’s not always a positive at all. And so I think that there’s that. And then also, like I said, Is this the right executive to take the company to the next several stages?

Rob Stevenson 28:27
Right, Makes sense? When you think of the boomerang employee, you mentioned a moment ago that maybe they leave they upskill they come back, because you left on good terms? How has the attitude of talent changed over the last, let’s say five years? I mean, obviously, there was a big change, probably because of COVID. And locked down in the rise of remote work. But what are you seeing and just the mentality of talent out there and their approach to work?

Nancy Connery 28:49
You mean today? How is it today?

Rob Stevenson 28:52
Yeah,

Nancy Connery 28:53
Because I would say how it was a year ago versus where it is today is very, very different. A year ago, I think you had people really commanding quite high salaries and packages, making moves that were maybe more financially focused, then really kind of the true looking at is this a product that I really want to be a part of and grow with. Now, you know, you’re finding I’ve even had a couple people come back my way who said I don’t ever want to carry a wreck again, I don’t want to recruit. I just want to oversee the organization. Guess what? Now they say I will source for you if you want. So, you know, we’ve definitely seen a reset that I don’t think is a bad thing. Because if you think about that we know that you just defined and if you think about a younger workforce, which typically is a lot of these folks have never seen a downturn. Now kind of where we are today. There’s a lot of world factors that come into play and every kind of downturn is a little bit different. But I think I’ve had like three or four of them in my career.

Nancy Connery 29:59
We’re so you know, you’ll get through it, your hard work will pay off, stay focused and keep the core values that you always have, and you’ll be just fine. And so that’s kind of how I’m I’m looking at it.

Rob Stevenson 30:14
That reset from I don’t want to ever carry a wreck again versus I don’t care I’ll source is that an economic reality? People who just want a job? Or is that just a reset in the understanding of what the role entails, what leadership entails.

Nancy Connery 30:28
Both. And a lot of people right now don’t want to lead. They say, I want something stable, predictable. And the stuff that you as leaders have to deal with and manage right now is kind of next level.

Rob Stevenson 30:42
What are those next level things like layoffs or what?

Nancy Connery 30:44
Yeah, I mean, you have to kind of be in the nitty gritty of, you know, as I kind of mentioned a little while ago about doing more with less. And so really, companies have cut, but the companies that are still cutting and going back for another cut another cut, are cutting into kind of their core, do you want to be a leader that’s doing that that’s very, very hard? Do you want to figure out be a part of that executive team or that leadership team that is kind of watching the bank account go down? Understanding that financing is not coming as easily as it was maybe a year or two years ago? And so kind of back to this? How do you do more with less, it’s not for the faint of heart. But I also encourage everybody to think about it as a cycle, and a cycle that you can learn from. And I spent a lot of time reflecting on that and thinking about what can we learn as we hopefully start to kind of come out of this cycle in tech, and make us even better kind of this next time around?

Rob Stevenson 31:42
What advice would you give to folks who may be on the individual contributor side, talent teams may be facing layoffs, companies don’t have as much hiring going on? How can they weather the storm?

Nancy Connery 31:52
Be flexible. I mean, obviously be mindful of of your costs. And your expenses vary from kind of the personal side that’s for, you know, for people to manage. But there are companies out there that continue to hire, there are companies out there that continue to get funded. And so if you’re really good at what you do, you will find the right opportunity. So yes, there will be hard days where you get discouraged. And you had four conversations. And you know, nobody’s hiring. All it takes is one good conversation. Last week was a really good example for me from the consulting practice business where we had three really good new business calls. For us that used to be like in a day. But I said at the end of the week, wow. I’m a little bit encouraged. There were three really good calls this week. And so just really kind of keeping that perspective. This isn’t forever. There are good companies out there, there are companies getting funded, and network, the more conversations you have, the better. And even if you don’t get that one opportunity that you prepared for a new interviewed for, what did you learn from that interview? What can you take to do your next interview and do it better?

Rob Stevenson 33:00
That’s fantastic advice. And, Nancy, before I let you go, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to share a little bit about your podcast, high growth matters. Tell us about the show and what you cover.

Nancy Connery 33:10
Yeah, so my co host, Caitlin, who is also the VP of Marketing for open comm is my amazing partner in that venture. We started it several months ago. And we really focus on talking to folks who are kind of experts in the compensation, HR field talent field, and really to share their wisdom during this very interesting time that we’re seeing in the industry. And so we’ve been very, very lucky to be able to cherry pick incredible leaders who have really grown and scaled businesses from the talent side. And to me, the real real value in there is the insights that we can provide to people in the marketplace, whether you are an executive building a company, whether you are a candidate trying to get recruited for a company, and the topics are quite a wide range. And so the audience is is wide as well. It’s been a real pleasure for me.

Rob Stevenson 34:06
I love it. I love meeting a fellow podcaster show sounds great. And pay a rising tide lifts all boats. There’s enough room in HR space for lots of HR podcasts, certainly both of ours so everyone listening should check it out. See what the podcast is all about. It’s called high growth matters. This has been top talent to me, Nancy, you have been an amazing guest I’ve loved chatting with you today. I would have you back on anytime. Thank you for being here.

Nancy Connery 34:30
I’ll come back anytime I’ve really enjoyed it too. So thank you for the opportunity.

Rob Stevenson 34:36
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