Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Kierston Vaughn SVP Operations at TigerPistol. Kierston talks about her progression from a Consultant at Accenture into her career in Human Resources and Talent Experience and then onto executive SaaS Operations.  She is a proud graduate from Purdue University and during our chat shares some great insights for individuals developing their career path:

• Bundle curiosity with persistence! Never being afraid of asking that one critical question.
• The impact of working in Professional Services on other career opportunities.
• Building a collaborative onboarding experience will lead to improved company performance and team satisfaction.
• Advice for staying competitive in your job search.

Summary transcript of our interview below:

Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Podcast Kierston Vaughn SVP Operations at TigerPistol

[00:00:00] Ron Laneve: Hello and welcome to Episode 20 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent video series. Today’s guest is a great friend and a long term co-worker of mine in a couple of different places. She’s built a career in Human Resources and Talent Management. However, today she’s an operations executive at a marketing technology software as a service company. I can’t wait to share her story of her non traditional path into HR. Very excited to introduce Kierston Vaughn SVP of operations at Tiger Pistol!

[00:00:39] Kierston Vaughn: Thanks Ron

[00:00:41] Ron Laneve: Ironically, you’re the second executive from Tiger Pistol joining me so I feel pretty lucky.

After my basic introduction of your background, as I ask all my guests, can you go into more detail from the very start of your career, all the way to where you are now?

[00:00:56] And as I mentioned, you’re unique in all the professionals I’ve known in the talent management space in that you started out as a consultant, I think, working for Accenture and moved your way into the space we’re in now. So that that evolution is something I’m really interested in you sharing and hopefully you can talk through that.

[00:01:14] Kierston Vaughn: Yeah it’s intriguing. I went to school at Purdue and as most people who know me know, I’m a pretty proud alum from being from small town, Indiana and making it to Purdue. But with that being said, like, when I went into school, I was accepted into the school of management, and had known my aunt was always into business.

[00:01:31]  She was a traveling exec for Calvin Klein and Kodak and all these other things. And I was like, wow, like I’m going to be that. I had no idea what she did. But when I went into school, I realized that there was a lot of finance and a lot of math and everything in the career path, every time I’d go meet with the counselor, she’s you have more math and you have more accounting and you have more. And I was like, no, that is not what I wanted. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. But as I went through it the first year, I was like, really, this just isn’t for me.

[00:02:05] And at Purdue, they had a different school, so I completely had to change my school of management over to the school of technology awkwardly enough, and oddly enough, if you will. Because in my head, Human Resources and what I was trying to accomplish wasn’t really a part of tech in that space. This is the nineties, right? I’ll admit how old I am.

[00:02:24] And when I went and moved and flipped into my organizational leadership and supervision degree, it was all about more of being a supervisor at manufacturing facilities back in that day. And then they had spinoffs where you could learn a lot more about true HR, Learning and Development, really about people management and a lot of those different things. And as I continue through my career at Purdue, it just became more and more that was where my heart was. But breaking into HR back then was just really hard to do. HR admin positions weren’t really a thing back then. You fell into where you moved into HR.

[00:03:02] So I ended up going to Anderson Consulting back in the day and I got to see them flip through Anderson Consulting Into Accenture away from Anderson worldwide and that was pretty amazing. But I was there for about a year in consulting and I got to work with a ton of amazing ladies who had also been in consulting and they moved into HR and I got recruited into it. Which was like this ideal dream because I had wanted that very badly and just had to let it happen, which, as me, I’m not very patient. So was a very kind of a long road in that beginning that first year.

[00:03:37] And then, it was really just very much a path of luck where I fell into that role. I got recruited into it. Had some great mentors. Somebody went on a maternity leave. They needed me to take a backfill for a role. It ended up being a role for what at the time was called Natural Resources. So it was mining metals and forest products. It was the smallest business unit at Accenture, which meant it was global, which was unheard of. It was only 200 people at the time. It was doing staffing across the globe, but all the people were in the U. S. And I spent six years doing that role.

[00:04:14] And that was just such an amazing experience. Because it was so niche, nobody at Accenture really knew what to do with me from an HR perspective. So every program, everything that they would roll out and change, they would send over to me and go this doesn’t apply to you you’re just gonna have to go figure it out with your leadership.

[00:04:32] And it just fit me perfectly, meaning that I don’t like to be told, “hey, go, here’s the thing, go do it.” Instead, I got told “here’s the thing go figure it out.” And we really got to modify that and make it our own. I’m thankful and grateful to the mentors that I had because I had so many men that just really and I say men because at the time, natural resources was all men. I think there were like two or three women that were in that group out of the 200. And so them taking me under their wing when I’m in my mid twenties and just saying, have at it was pretty phenomenal.

[00:05:07] There’s some tidbits along the way that I definitely learned like calendar stalking and paying attention to Hey, I saw you were in this or, going into the office and paying attention to what, who was meeting with whom and saying, “Hey, do you mind if I sit in on that?” And never being afraid of asking that one critical question “Hey, Do you mind if I check that out?”

[00:05:27] And then from there I moved into this role and it was all U. S. based. I think I had 2,000 or 2,500 people under my watch. And I had a team of eight HR people. And I hated it.

I absolutely hated it. Because they gave you the program. You had to go roll it out. You had to make sure that everybody met the needs of what was happening, but it really didn’t meet the needs of the people, nor did it meet the needs of the individual business departments.

[00:05:53] And, a friend was at a company called Brulant and said, hey, I’ve got this thing over here. It’s 250 people. We need to add an HR generalist. Pivoted myself back into that original role. We got tossed into chaos. Or you were already in the chaos. I’ve joined the chaos in 2006. And then it was this wild ride to 2015.

[00:06:15] And from that, it was we grew from 450 people to well over 1200 across the U. S. We were in Cleveland in two different locations, and all of a sudden we have New York and New Jersey and then the West Coast. And we just kept acquiring companies, and we just kept having more and more challenges of how do you bring those folks together? And how do you recruit differently? And everybody’s opinions are different at the leadership levels.

[00:06:40] It was just an amazing and wild ride that taught me so many things just about how to take care of people and why I was so comfortable in this role.

In meaning that I always tried to put myself in other people’s shoes, and I always tried to ask, like, why is this working? Why is it not working? And what do we need to do to change it? And really just listening to the people themselves on what was working and what wasn’t.

(that) Didn’t mean we I met everybody’s needs by all means, there was no way in hell I did that. But I feel like that’s what one of the keys to my career has been is just taking that time to always listen to people.

[00:07:20] And I also got to do some amazing roles there because of just the relationships I built. And when Brulant ended up selling to Rosetta, sold to Publicis, then divided and conquered us into a bunch of different things. I ended up moving out of HR when some of our Brulant and Rosetta leaders left and ended up in this Ops / Mergers and Acquisitions role.

[00:07:41] That was still one of the pinnacle points of my career that I look back on. And I fell into that role simply because I had outgrown my role, not from an outgrown it, meaning I had done all I could do. It was more, I brought up these people in and was able not to, I didn’t bring them up, they continued to grow. And I allowed them to go do that without me being in their business all the time. And by doing that, then it really put me in this role where I was like, Tom (Adamski), I don’t have anything to do. And he was like, Oh yes, you do. Come here. We’re going, you’re going to China. You’re going to India. You’re going to go here. You’re going to go here. And I’m like, what?

[00:08:19] But what it ended up being was what we called a global acquisitions role. And my remit, was not to actually do the acquisitions. It was to go assess the acquisitions. Tom was really big on culture. He was really big on people and how we take care of them. Much like all of my predecessors I felt like until I got to this point from the guys at Anderson and Accenture to Brad (Wertz) at Brulant and working with you and Len (Pagon) and everybody else. So it was just phenomenal.

[00:08:47] But the intention really was I’d walk in, meet the teams and try to get to know them and then come back to Tom. And he’d be like, “All right. Are we doing this acquisition culturally?” And I tell them the truth. And these were heartfelt moments, phone calls from all places of the world, but no, we’re not doing this one and here’s the three reasons why. We can storyboard any reason we want, but here’s the real reasons why. And the reason I can still come back to that pinnacle or say that’s a pinnacle is because I feel like. One, he trusted me and that was because I’d built strong relationships with him. But also because, all of those relationship moments that I had throughout my career, finally had come to realization, a very apparent realization that I have a decent way of being able to walk in and assess the situation and understand if we’re going to be able to make this thing work.

[00:09:35] We saw a lot of ebbs and flows and our acquisitions days to be able to give that level of experience. From there, Tom moved on from Rosetta. Which case I quickly followed. I took some smaller stints doing some smaller company things and then went into doing consulting on my own was scary, was fun, was exciting, was very eye opening, meaning that, hey, I can do this and I can make that on my own. But I really don’t want to.

[00:10:04] Ron Laneve: Yeah, that’s one of the key parts of starting your own business. That’s for sure.

[00:10:08] Kierston Vaughn: Yeah. And so then I came into working with a good friend of ours, the other executive here at Tiger Pistol with Paul (Elliott).

[00:10:15] And just found that ease again that I had previously, which is being able to be trusted. Know that if I have something that I need to run with, I can go do that. But also, if I need to have a good conversation about, should we do this? Should we not? He’s there and we can be able to do that together. And I also found that, while my heart of hearts will always be with the people with all of the things that I’ve learned along my career and being able to ask that question of hey, what are you doing over there and can I learn more? That allowed me to slide into this SVP of operations.

[00:10:48] And I find it’s comfortable because it just really is a pinnacle of all those other pieces that we talked about. And I’m always asking questions. But in most cases it’s just trying to learn more and continue to grow my career. And be able to do something that’s broader than where I have been in the past.

[00:11:05] Ron Laneve: I want to break down a couple things. I’ve never been a fan of the term HR because I don’t think it fully encompasses what that role is and at least what I’ve seen you make it which is pretty huge. And I also think sometimes HR is a negative connotation towards it. But let’s talk about all the different facets of hr that you employed or directed during your tenure. i’ll seed it with a couple: performance management recruiting, staffing management, et cetera. There’s, payroll, operations. Is there any of that I’m missing? And then maybe pick the top 3 where you excel and really built your brand around.

[00:11:48] Kierston Vaughn: I would definitely add in Learning and Development. In general the talent experience. So the moment they interact, all the way through to when they leave and how they feel about that. I don’t want to use the word culture because it’s completely overused. So that environment, right? The employee experience, the team member experience. I think those are some of the bigger ones.  I definitely built my career on staffing and how do you take and understand people and put them in the right positions. And, that’s primarily aligned to services based businesses. But what you learn from that and what from services based business carries into all of those other areas and it’s a matchmaking of sorts.

[00:12:33] There hasn’t been a company since I left Rosetta where. I haven’t done the same thing where I walk in and I try to sit down with every single person there. Even if it’s 15 minutes, if it’s a half hour, an hour, I don’t care how long it’s really about them. And it’s the, this moment to be able to have a connection with that person and allow them just to talk. Tell their story, right?

Because all too often in any new business, everybody, from a talent perspective walks in and they tell you. Here’s how the people are, here’s how the thing is, and it doesn’t give you the ability to make your own assessment and really get to know the people.

And, a couple of the key questions I’ve always asked or tried to is, what do you think is right in going well here? What do you think we should be learning from and evolving? And if you were in my shoes, what would you, where would you start?

So all of these different aspects of HR, I really value but I find that relationship is the key to it all. Because somebody can be an expert at any of those one individual things. But to be able to see the bigger picture, you have to start with the root of the person and the people. And I feel like that’s where it best hits home for me is that’s the connection. So I would say staffing was definitely that where I started it.

[00:13:52] Performance management is where I continued to really evolve my ability to think about how to evaluate people’s happiness, or even that the company’s happiness with those individuals. And I thankfully I’m glad that we’ve completely evolved in majority of their cases where performance management is no longer those bell curves and the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 readings and the go to person, which was my I cringing term that was always used for so long.

[00:14:23] But it’s more about what are we as a company doing to empower people to do their jobs I hate handbooks. They’re not my thing. Yes, we have one. It is not very long. I want people to feel like they’re human when they come here and that they’re an adult. And I want them to know that if they have something going on at home that we don’t need to go to a handbook and see how many days off they get for it.

[00:14:45] It’s an open dialogue and let’s just see what happens. We had, some situations here where Austin got hit with snow and people were out of power. And so I just called Paul and I was like, listen, I’m going to put these three people up in hotels because they don’t have power at their apartments. I’m not worried about them working. I’m worried about them being able to have heat and water and food.

[00:15:06] Those are moments when I was proud of getting to work for a company that we could do that or stop doing it. So that’s where I think it’s even evolved to today is that, that relationship and thinking about the people and why they’re here. And that it’s that they’ll give you what you need if you give them what they need. As we all know, you spend way too much time at work to not have that be some level of a good experience. And why not?  People take advantage of it, sure. We’ll deal with that. But that’s not the intention. You don’t have to be guilty to be proven innocent. And that’s too often I feel like where HR is been. Is here’s all these negative things. Here’s all the policies, all the things that have gone wrong in the past. So now we’re going to hold all of you accountable to that. That’s just terrible.

[00:15:53] Ron Laneve: Yeah, I would say you turned Uh-Oh, here comes HR into oh, boy, like now we get to talk about me and my career and where I want to go and how I can develop and have more opportunities here. I would say that would be my characterization of you and your brand for sure over the years.

[00:16:09] And then the other side, I want to unpack in your current role. As SVP of operations, what does that entail?

[00:16:15] Kierston Vaughn: So I like to say it has any, it’s nothing to do with Finance or Admin. And not day to day with clients and everything else. If I can eliminate roadblocks for people not being able to do their jobs, that’s really what I foresee. Whether that is the building maintenance, to the software programs that we’re utilizing, to what we made a decision on staffing or even just staffing in general somebody leaves and somebody who’s coming in. How do we manage that? Creating that experience. What does onboarding really look like?

[00:16:45] We’ve done a lot here at Tiger Pistol really to make that an experience. And we get so many great reviews on it, which has been humbling to say the least, but when you walk in, you don’t know what to expect, right? So how do you create that experience to where you’re not trying to be thrown into work on day two? But let me learn about Tiger Pistol as a company and what we all do and get to know some people so that once I actually do have questions and I’ve absorbed enough after the first couple of weeks, I know who I can go back to and reference things, and talk to.

Again, it’s all about these experiences, at least in my mind. And I feel like to your point earlier from my, what do I want to do with my career? How do I get there? And which path do I want to go? How do I, how do we as tiger pistol create that experience in that safe environment, which I’ve learned by so many other places don’t have that.

[00:17:37] But create those safe environments where I can have those open dialogues and ask those questions and feel like I can say it without it being a negative. Oh, my God, I just I don’t want to do this job. So therefore I’m going to get fired. What is that? Right? There’s so many opportunities within a company that you should be able to get exposure to things.

[00:17:53] Ron Laneve: So thank you for that. Shifting gears a little bit. You’ve had a ton of experience working both with interns and college students and individuals entering the workforce as well as interviewing, other people out there that have been in roles for a while and are in career changes, et cetera.

[00:18:11] First, let’s talk about, students in college, or students entering the workforce soon, in today’s world, today’s technology, what would you tell somebody on how to think about, what programs or disciplines would you suggest they focus on in college? And you gotta have when you come out of school? And, what’s what would you also suggest to them to lay that baseline for entering the workforce.

[00:18:38] Kierston Vaughn: So it’s interesting. I have seen that circle of life, if you will, with even what colleges are offering again. A few years ago, and literally, when I say a few, I’m talking five or six. People didn’t have exposure to managing their calendars or managing excel or powerpoint or google sheets or pick your your platform there. But a general understanding of that’s what’s used in business.

[00:19:06] And so if you don’t know how to do the basics of calendar invites, and Excel and running some, simple formulas or creating a PowerPoint, depending upon what your discipline for work is. Those are the things that matter. They seem like they may not be fundamentals, but they are. Just like with any sport or with anything else, there’s fundamentals. And those are some of the basics that if you can get that level of exposure and take some of those classes it’s just going to behoove you. You’re going to be ahead of other people around you. And it’s interesting when you go back and you look at now colleges are starting to make those more of the baseline again, because it’s the reality of what we live in. Right wrong or indifferent it’s a necessary evil, as they say.

[00:19:46] The other thing is, when you graduate college, you are at the top of where your pinnacle is, but you’re going back into the beginning again I remember going to Anderson Consulting thinking okay, I’m gonna get staffed where I want, I’m gonna want this project, I want this thing. Within the first three weeks I was humbled So hardcore that I literally called my dad crying that I’m I can’t believe they haven’t fired me yet. Like just that realization okay, I’m back in the minor leagues going back trying to get up to the majors again.

[00:20:17] And I think..

it’s okay to have that humility and that humbleness and still be hungry and ask for questions.

So don’t forget that there’s that balance between the two things. Like I said, calendar stalking again, if you know how to look at calendars and do things, you can also figure out how to stalk them. I don’t mean that in a negative sense, but truly calendar hopping and viewing is a big deal and in a good way to understand what other priorities are your managers and leaders around you up against? So that you’re not constantly trying to compete with those other priorities, and rather you’re helping to enable them and remove some of those blockers for them.

The more you can understand what the business priorities are in and around you, the better off you’re going to be. And knowing that the value that you bring is the job that you’re doing but also your understanding of that job and how it fits in the bigger picture.

[00:21:11] Ron Laneve: So be humble and understand the context what you’re getting into?!?! For experienced people you’ve done a lot of interviewing. I’m sure you’ve seen bad examples of people trying to put their best foot forward and good examples. Can you reflect on things you’ve seen that you remember or that have really set other people apart from each other in the interviewing process?

[00:21:34] Kierston Vaughn: Yeah it’s a finding a new job, or finding the right position…the right role for you is a job in and of itself. So spend the time, and that time will be apparent on The questions that you’re asking, the way in which you’re approaching the interview and the way in which you even approach the applications and how you go about that.

[00:21:56] We just opened up a role. We have over 500 people. I’m not able to go through and read each and every single one of those resumes, but there’s different things that I’m going to look for. One of them is when we ask questions on those applications, those aren’t meant for just nice to have, they actually mean something to us. That’s the first place I go is I look at those first and then I’ll scroll back up and look at your resume, because if you take the time to be thoughtful through some of those questions, then I’m going to be thoughtful about your ability in going back and looking at your resume.

I think the other thing is ask the same question or questions to the people that you’re interviewing with and see what answers you get and how they vary. I think that is one that people too often as they’re interviewing, don’t understand it’s a two way street. You’re interviewing the company as much as the other way.

And I know with the market, the way that it is today, that can always seem a little overwhelming, but going into a bad job is far worse then going into the right situation in the right culture for you.

[00:22:56] We’re a hybrid model. People get their work done. We’ve got people that are on at nine o’clock at night, and we’ve got some that aren’t on until 10 in the morning. I don’t care. I’m not watching. But if you’re not getting your work done, then that’s gonna become apparent. Make sure you’re comfortable in that environment before you go into that type of a company. If you need structure. Go into structure, make sure you know who you are and what you want before you go into some of these interviews and don’t be afraid to talk about some of this stuff.

[00:23:21] If you’re in the first interview and they never want to talk about compensation, you got to wonder why? So can’t we just get that one out of the way to make sure that we’re on the same page? Because if not, then we’re taking everybody’s time and yet we might be completely off.

[00:23:35] So I guess my biggest thing with this is just to make sure that you know what you want. And don’t be afraid again to ask those questions. Just by asking questions, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just trying to get to the right answers for you and make sure it’s a match across the board.

[00:23:48] Ron Laneve: You brought up a good point that I’m hearing over and over again from candidates. I applied to the job and there’s 500, 800, 1000 other people that applied. And I have advice for those candidates on how to maneuver through that. But, for you, for someone on, on, I’ll say the other side trying to weed through those resumes, What else would you advise to individuals trying to make it through that, massive wave of candidates that they’re competing with?

[00:24:15] What can they do to differentiate themselves or find you in a different way?

[00:24:20] Kierston Vaughn: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things. One is to be able to understand how you fit with the role. We are a SaaS based company. And in a lot of those instances, we get a lot of people who don’t have SaaS experience.

[00:24:31] That’s just going to be hard for you to break through. Point blank. And if that’s something that you want to break through, I would say to do it through your network, go into a company where you know people to where you can start to gain some of that experience. If that’s an industry that you want to be able to be in. So to break into a company without having the network and without having that is just going to be really hard and especially in this market. When there’s so many more candidates. So one, just make sure you understand the industry and that there’s an alignment there and then back it up.

[00:24:59] Go in and reach out via LinkedIn and connect with who you think the hiring manager is and who you think the HR or the talent or the recruiter and recruiting person is that’s making those decisions. I’ve gotten a handful, but those handfuls stand out because everybody else just has applied.

[00:25:14] And then I went back and I looked and saw whether or not they’d actually filled up some of those questions. Of that handful of people, three of them did not. So you missed the boat. Like you did this thing over here, but you didn’t do the thing that mattered to me, which is, answering those questions that we asked. And it’s not like they were 25 questions. It was two. So if you’re going to make the effort to go find me on LinkedIn, definitely try to make sure you fill out the one or two questions that mean something to that, the hiring team.

[00:25:42] Ron Laneve: Great advice. And I’m glad you said that ’cause that’s exactly what I’m telling other people. So thank you for, and that was not a setup at all, .

[00:25:48] Kierston Vaughn: It was not. But I’m not surprised that we would be thinking the same about that.

[00:25:52] Ron Laneve: Correct. Correct. Correct. Kierston, I really appreciate your time and sharing your story with us today and wish you the best of luck in your new adventure at tiger Pistol, and thanks again for your time.

[00:26:03] Kierston Vaughn: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it, Ron.

[00:26:05] Ron Laneve: All right. Talk to you soon.

 

November 28, 2023