EP90: MGM Resort International - How to Tailor Recruitment Process

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes. I’m your host, Lydia, and with us today is Justin Fronberg of MGM Resorts International. Welcome to the show, Justin.

Justin: Thank you, Lydia. It's an absolute pleasure being here. Thank you for having me.

Transforming Guest Experiences into Candidate Success

Lydia: So, tell us a little bit more about your background, Justin. I know you've been in the industry for years, but what's kept you in this space, particularly in the last seven years or so in the show with MGM Resorts?

Justin: Before I go into that, I have to go back to how I entered the industry because that was critical in terms of the time that I’ve spent at MGM. I started within the industry as a Front Desk Agent, believe it or not, and aligned myself with hotel operations and spent about three years in it. Coming into that role and navigating that environment, the one thing that has stuck with me is a focus on the guest experience. There was so much emphasis and learning on the guest experience, how do we personalize that experience? How do we align their experience to our brand, and ultimately make sure that they’re walking away satisfied and wanting to return?

Naturally, as I came into recruiting, there was an opportunity to go into recruiting, not necessarily your normal recruiting role, but it was a role that was really focused on the candidate experience. What they were looking for is, ”Hey, you’ve done this with our guests, how can we translate that experience into our own candidates and our own employees?” 

I found that fascinating in many different ways because it was an opportunity to really help differentiate ourselves from the market. Our candidates, instead of going through a traditional interview process, what we’re trying to do is immerse them into an experience in order for them to effectively make a decision to be hired by us.

That has been at the forefront of everything I’ve done in terms of my career. As I’ve looked at MGM and had the opportunity to come into this company about seven years ago, that was a huge main focus for me. What are they doing from a candidate's experience and a people's perspective? What’s amazing about this company is it truly is differentiated. It’s in a differentiated part of the industry. They’re very progressive. When you think about this organization, looking at its diversity inclusion program, they were one of the first in the industry to create a formalized program around that.

When you look at talent and the changing landscape that we’ve gone over just in the last three years, let alone seven, being from an organization as large as this, it’s extremely agile and adaptable. One thing that was important for me as I entered into this organization was, ”Does this organization share my values?” Because that was critical to me in order for me to look at my career and the way that was going to be moving forward. Do they believe in the same things that I do? And the answer was yes.

Naturally, coming into the organization, I was the Executive Recruiter for all executive-level roles for domestic and international hiring. That has progressed over the years to the position that I’m in where I’ve overseen the Las Vegas properties, executive recruiting technologies, sourcing, as well as our corporate hiring as well. It’s a large span of responsibility, but it’s truly a satisfying opportunity because there’s so much going on in all of those various spaces. We continue to change and adapt organizationally. So, it brings a new adventure every single day coming in. That’s why, as I look at the last seven years, it’s definitely been exciting and thrilling.

Engaging Teams in Transformation from The Leadership Perspective

Lydia: That first experience that you had, those three years focusing on the guest experience and bringing that perspective into your role, and now your position as Executive Director leading to transformation, I would imagine, inside the Talent Acquisition space. How do you translate that? How do you inspire your team to have that sort of perspective towards Talent Acquisition as well?

Justin: So, I think in terms of inspiration, my role is really focused on people leadership at this point. It’s about making sure that they’re engaged. We’ve gone through our transformation, and so in post-pandemic, like most companies, we were faced with looking at how we are hiring, what does that look like? Companies were looking at coming back online as quickly as possible. It wasn’t this slow, progressive way of coming back online, it was, we’re coming back online, and we’re coming back fast.

What’s great about our organization and our industry is that a lot of people were in their homes, and they weren’t able to go anywhere. So, the first thing that they were able to do when they were able to go somewhere, they wanted to come to Vegas. So, we really needed to look at our hiring practices and our hiring philosophy because we had a lot of volume. Ultimately, we were in the same space as a lot of other companies as well.

We undertook a transformation coming into this role. We knew this was going to be a three to four-year transformation. One aspect was to really look at our hiring philosophy, our hiring processes, looking at our technology, and really looking at our Talent Acquisition operational model. How are we positioning ourselves previously versus now? Then what do we want to look at in terms of the future?

When you talk about engagement, that constant and rapid change, such as what we’ve gone through for the last three years, it can be difficult.

As a leader, it’s about having the ability to communicate and provide clarity to their team around what that future looks like, and what that strategy looks like. So they can understand what we’re trying to accomplish. They also feel part of that strategy. But in addition, it’s really making sure that you’re empathetic to them in terms of their needs because they’re the ones actually doing the work.

Partnering with the managers and leaders to hire their talent, implementing and executing some of the practices or processes that we have in place, and really making sure that we’re getting their feedback on a consistent basis, and we’re recognizing them through highlights of success. That’s what we found has been tremendously successful in terms of a very large transformation across TA.

Lydia: So, there is the transformation element, and there’s also that broad scope that you mentioned earlier. Looking into practices and technologies that are put in place to hire fast and really maintain the differentiation inside the industry itself, what may be some key areas that you’ve prioritized at the moment, given all these different aspects that you have to look into?

Justin: I think the biggest thing is people first. So, leading from a people perspective, are we aligning ourselves to the TA model by which we have implemented, and really helping support and develop the team that’s in place to make sure that they’re executing on that and that level of transformation?

In terms of the experience, going back to that, from a transformation perspective, it’s also about how we elevate the hiring manager and the candidate experience. That can be in terms of feedback for candidates in a very quick manner. We know nowadays that when you’re presenting an offer, candidates usually have three to four offers in hand by the time you actually present an offer. So, it’s important and critical for organizations and leaders to make sure that they’re communicating with those candidates quickly. We’re arriving at that decision, whether that is to move forward or not move forward. We want to make sure that we’re providing that level of expectation and transparency to that candidate.

That stems in terms of how are they engaging our brand within our career site. How are they looking at our branding and our employee value proposition as our recruiters are sourcing and what is out there in the market? From the first touch point to the last, what is that engagement like? We’ve focused on all of those efforts across that scope and process in order to improve it holistically.

I’m not going to sit here and say everything is fixed. But we have in the last few years dramatically increased that level of experience surrounding the candidate, as well as to the hiring manager as well where our recruiters are providing support to them.

Quality Candidates Over Experience Is the New Hiring Paradigm

Lydia: So, when it comes to hiring, how do you balance seeking out candidates with experience versus those with potential skills that can translate to other roles?

Justin: It’s been an intriguing question, something that has been discussed across the industry at length, and I think that it’ll continue to evolve.

As organizations continue to evolve, they’re looking at quality candidates. When we think about relative experience, we think about, do candidates have the necessary skills to be able to do this job? Or can they translate what they currently have done or what they currently are doing into what we’re looking for and what that position entails?

What we have found is that the answer is yes. We have seen that quality candidates and in order to measure quality, it means a variety of different ways or different things. What we have found is that candidates who demonstrate our values and align with us culturally are ultimately the best fit for a specific position, whether they have the experience or not.

That seems to be the key emphasis. How are we measuring that? How are we evaluating that? And ultimately, do they have the necessary skills to translate into that particular position? It’s a question that every organization has had to face post-pandemic because they’ve had to look at talent differently. Previously, prior to the pandemic, you align yourself and you have a position, you’d have aligned somebody with that position with their experience.

But nowadays, as you’re looking to get creative, there’s been so much constant change, people have changed careers, and into different industries, and they’ve had to make life choices. Making sure that if they’re changing careers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, they’ve actually done what we’re looking for just in a different way. That can actually translate into this particular role. I think that there’s value on both ends, but we have found a tremendous amount of success around relevant experience.

Lydia: Experience aligned with values, ultimately.

Justin: Yes, absolutely.

Lydia: You mentioned, coming out of the pandemic, and all these differences that we’ve seen in people’s life choices as humans should, and also the trend to a more distributed workforce. Are those working remotely or hybrid? How have candidate expectations evolved? And with that, has the approach towards hiring changed? You’ve answered this, I think, but has the approach towards hiring changed within this industry?

Justin: I think the answer is yes, the candidates’ expectations have evolved, and they evolved in a very significant way. All in all, candidates and employees are looking for work-life balance. So, organizations have had to face this question; how can we provide that work-life balance? That’s going to be different amongst a multitude of organizations.

We’ve had a focus on how we are really making sure that the candidate experience is the emphasis and the center of everything that we do. So all your processes, everything you do, systemically and from a technology standpoint, center around the candidate experience. Your brand, your employer brand, how can they picture themselves essentially in the role? As you’re telling that story, or as the recruiter or endorser, how are you branding that?

We’re really making sure that we’re elevating that experience, but we’re also streamlining those processes as well. We’ve found that a lot of candidates have multiple opportunities in front of them. So, we want to make sure that we’re the first one that they think of. Are we getting back to them quickly? Are we making sure we’re providing them with the right information?

A huge focus for candidate expectations is looking at work-life balance, but also looking at lifestyle. So, benefits are a huge key focus for organizations, and that has been able to really progress the conversation forward in terms of how we innovate. How do we become more progressive from a benefits perspective? Because ultimately, we know that that’s going to be a competitive factor, not necessarily just compensation, but more from a benefit standpoint.

Lydia: The holistic package, really just looking into them staying on it that I would imagine also contributes to the retention rate for employees.

Justin: Yes, absolutely.

When employees believe in the company and feel that it provides for their needs, you’re going to find that there is going to be more retention. Having great leaders who motivate their employees, encourage them, develop them, and grow them also contributes to this.

There was such a thing called ‘the Great Resignation.’ A product of that was that leaders weren’t necessarily providing a great candidate experience all the way through onboarding. They’d hire them, communicate with them, they come on board, and then reality sets in. They’re now part of the team and they’re off and running.

But really, what you have to do is care for that employee for the first at least 90 days. Make sure that you’re continuously selling the company and the benefits and addressing their needs on an individual basis. That’s helped contribute to the retention factor as well.

Lydia: We were talking pre-show about how the candidate experience and the guest experience aren't quite all that different.

Justin: Now, it's truly aligned in many ways. What's great about being in hospitality is that we specialize in this space and we can simply carry that over of what we do from the guest standpoint to the employee or candidate side as well.

So, we've taken a lot of great learning and aligned ourselves operationally, from a recruitment perspective to what we've done in operation because there's a lot of centralicity there.

Building a Reputation as a Preferred Employer

Lydia: Now, travel and tourism are obviously coming back. We've seen it return in the past few years at least. So, how do you anticipate the demand for talent evolving in this industry? Is there stiffer competition that you are going to be looking at next two, or three years at least?

Justin: Candidates have options nowadays. They continuously have options. With unemployment being low, especially in the US, there’s a continuous search for jobs and companies are continuously hiring.

We understand that they have these options, and it’s going to be ultimately competitive. So, we’re really focused organizationally on being an employer of choice. Again, going back to offering some of the top benefits and what’s going to differentiate us from that perspective.

One of the differentiators, I think that we do well, is that we really solicit feedback not only from our hiring managers but also from our employees. What is their experience? What are their needs? We continuously do that to ensure that we’re able to adapt. A lot of our innovation, one would think, in organizations, especially large organizations, a lot of the innovation and the decisions are made at the top. But that can’t be further from the truth. We really look at soliciting that feedback across the organization, even at the line level position on an operational position, beginning level management role, and understanding what are the pain points that they’re going through in order for us to be able to enhance that experience for them, get them the right resources that they’re actually needing.

We understand that the differentiator, and why is that a differentiator, is because they talk to other people within their networks. As we look at candidates in the external market, when they come to work for employment, nine times out of 10, they probably know somebody who actually works for our organization. When they are able to get that feedback and understanding, like, ‘My voice matters.’ That’s powerful. That’s something that a lot of people would want to be a part of.

Integrating Technology for Strategic Talent Acquisition

Lydia: Technology is obviously transforming so many aspects of business today in terms of operations, in terms of data analytics, and how decisions are made. So, how do you envision technology shaping the future of Talent Acquisition, especially in the hospitality industry?

Justin: We are really focusing on the conversation around technology. Technology seems to be at the forefront of all of the conversations that I’ve been a part of, not only within the industry but also outside of the industry. It’s all about how technology adds value to our guests and our candidates. So what does that mean, in terms of experience, in terms of process, and efficiency? Again, technology is not to eliminate jobs, it’s really to make sure that we’re bringing it in a well-thought-out manner that ultimately allows us to do more.

In terms of our approach to technology, how are we looking at that in a way that is responsible, but ultimately, it is elevating and supporting the overall strategic strategy? I think a lot of companies look at the shiny new toy that’s out there, and they want to bring it in. Then now you have a variety of different technologies that don’t necessarily talk with one another. So it’s important for an organization, especially in recruiting, to start with the strategy. What are we trying to accomplish? That needs to be at the forefront of the direction, and then technology is coming behind it to help support that experience and during that process.

For recruiting, it’s going to be around how we source quality talent. Where are we finding this talent? It’s really about how are we looking at technology in a way that is meaningful and engaging to candidates. Then how are we looking at technology in a way that helps our recruiters be more efficient in their approach and their process so they can focus on sourcing, communicating with the business, providing expectations, and guiding the leaders in a way that’s meaningful? That’s how I see that being shaped. But ultimately, technology at the end of the day should be supporting the overall strategy, not leading it.

Lydia: And as you mentioned during the pre-show as we were talking about moving the mindset or the the thinking around Talent Acquisition from administrative to strategic, has technology played a role in this and how far have you gotten that transformation?

Justin: It relates to technology and our recruiters. It’s critical as a leader for me to make sure I’m providing the resources to them. When there are those resources available, that allows them to do their jobs effectively. They have to see the value-add in the technology that they’re utilizing. If they don’t see that, they’re never going to adopt it. Ultimately, if they’re not going to adopt it, now you’re stuck with paying for a technology for a period of time because you’ve contracted with that company.

It’s really about making sure that we’re advising them, teaching them, and developing them around that piece of technology, how that aligns to their specific process in their day-to-day, and how they can utilize this in order to be effective or even more effective than what they are doing now. They have to see that level of value. So, it takes a much larger, intentional effort from leaders to really make sure that their recruiters are utilizing it in a well-thought-out and meaningful way in order to be effective. That’s ultimately to get the manager’s candidate.

So whether that is sourcing tools, whether that is a CRM, whether that happens to be brand marketing tools or any other tools, it’s about making sure that it’s succinct within that end-to-end process and making sure that they understand how to utilize that product.

Personalizing the Candidate Experience to Create Connections

Lydia: I’ve been meaning to ask about the show. How do you go about talking about that story or how do you present that? How do you really turn that into something that a candidate will be able to envision themselves in?

Justin: We’ve done a large amount of work around our employee value proposition. There was a lot of work around what that looks like and how can we articulate that from a recruitment perspective, or recruitment marketing standpoint. So, really translating that exposure to that branding in the marketplace, whether it happens to be with our recruiters for roles that they’re working on, or holistically from our career site all the way through to the end of the recruitment process.

We’ve looked at that in many different facets. One of the things that I think has been truly valuable is telling the stories of our current employees in the market. If I’m a security officer, I want to be a security officer. When it’s not your normal security officer position that you might find at a corporate space, but more so now, it’s a security officer that’s ensuring the safety of our guests, it’s ensuring the safety of our employees, but it’s also to make sure that we’re providing skill and experience to our employees or our guests as well, and making sure that they’re providing that experience in a safe environment.

How do you tell that story? Well, the best way to tell it is from our current employees. We’ve been able to showcase that through employer branding and marketing efforts, that are really aligned across all of our messaging, whether that happens to be through communications via LinkedIn, our job postings, or even just really on our career site, as well.

Lydia: So Justin, you've had a wealth of experience in this industry and also within the space. You've had a great story of moving or shifting your experience from those initial three years into a Talent Acquisition space. So, what advice would you give someone who's starting out in the people space today?

Justin: I know this might sound simple, but continue to focus on the people. At the end of the day, as a recruiter, as an HR professional, or a people professional, your job is to service and lead people and guide them in appropriate ways. So never lose that focus. I think it’s very easy from a day-to-day perspective to do. It sounds, again, really simple advice, but it’s really making sure that you’re providing that emphasis on care. As a people leader, you have to care for employees, you have to care for people, and what they’re going through on a day-to-day basis. So, it’s really making sure that they’re at the forefront of everything that you do, and never forgetting that.

Lydia: Thank you so much, Justin, for your time and your generous insights. I'm sure whoever's listening in might want to pick up a conversation with you. So, where can they connect with you?

Justin: Yes, please connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m available on that, and I know the link will be posted on this chat and definitely happy to connect, and if there are any questions beyond this, or just want to have a conversation, happy to connect with them and looking forward to it.

Lydia: Thanks again, Justin. We have been in conversation with Justin Fronberg of MGM Resorts International. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In Recruitment.