Boom. Now we're recording. All right.
I would hate for that to happen again.
Again.
All right. We are live with another episode of CJ and the Duke. Corey, what are we talking about today?
Man, duke, today we got a special guest with us, Philip Elliot. Philip is a HR guru. It's one of my good friends. I met him a long time ago. We were working on an, an HR project. it made him decide that he wanted to do more of it and made me decide to not do any more of it. Um, and so here we are.
Hey. Hey.
Isn't that kind of funny how it works out over time? Instead of finding skills, you find people
Yes.
Yes.
and you're like, nah, nah, it's not for me, but I know a guy
Yeah. I got a guy for that.
Yeah. Alright, so Philip's our guy, our HR guy. so Philip, why don't you tell us how you got there?
first it's an honor to be here, to just to, you know, connect with you all. Um, I've known cj, I don't know, for like six years or so.
Yeah, it's been a minute,
Yeah, it has been. You kind of part of my ServiceNow journey. But to answer your question, so my wife and I, we lived in Cambodia, overseas in Asia, and we came back and I was trying to figure out a job, what I'm going to do. and then I got connected to a recruiter who said, okay, there's a utility company that needs somebody who has. Some sort of, development skills, because they had been looking for ServiceNow people.
You know, this was back in the Fuji days, there wasn't that many ServiceNow developers out there, and trying to find somebody and they couldn't find anyone with ServiceNow skills. So they were just like, Hey, anyone who has some sort of development skill and can actually communicate, well.
So I went in to interview, just talked about some web application, projects that I worked on using my SQ l and, started joking in the interview, and they were like, okay, we're gonna bring you on and teach you about ServiceNow, whatever that thing is. And I need you to get up to speed on what ServiceNow is. And so that night after, hearing that I got hired, I just spent like a couple hours trying to figure out, okay, what is ServiceNow? How do I actually, what is this thing?
Because I, I'm thinking, Hey, I gotta come in and actually do some work once I get there.
Yeah. Why not learn how to swim on the deep end?
Right. Just drop right on in there. Man. I love stories like this
Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, fast forward in terms of how I got into hr. as CJ mentioned, we were on this crazy project where, scope creep out the wazoo. CJ was in charge of ITSM and hr. You know, the work on there. And I came around and I was just, I had a lot of different questions, about what we're doing and what's going on.
And eventually I just took over the HR side of it because there was so much stuff going on with, the ITSM and I had never done hr, so it was another sink or swim. and. We were dealing with just a, a real aggressive client who we, our standup meetings, which we were getting yelled at constantly in terms of, okay, we got this, but it was just trial by fire. and then just jumping into what HR was, and I just started enjoying it.
because just there's a people aspect to hr, that a lot of developers don't really think about much. and so. That's how I just got into hr, and that's a lot of what I've been doing for the last, well, pretty much for the last six years.
wow. Let me get this straight. So, so it was your first rodeo on ServiceNow and also your first rodeo on HR
Yeah, so prior, yeah. Well it's just, yeah, it's crazy. Yes, it, it was definitely crazy. But I like getting in there and actually trying to understand things. So I was constantly asking questions and like, okay, so what's the next story I need to work on? Or what does, how does this connect to this? and so what are we doing here? And since I was asking so many questions, they were like, well, I just need you to take over this, you know,
That it's always the curse, ain't it?
yeah.
oh, oh, you, you care about this. You own this.
Hey, this is yours. I was like, dang it. Needless to say, I didn't get much rest during that whole project. It was, ugh, crazy.
And you forgot to mention the part where we had leadership resigning every other week
dude, yo. It was like we'd get a new pm. He'd be excited like, yeah, we're gonna fix this. We're gonna do this like a month later. Okay, I'm done.
and like I, this, this project was literally chasing people out of the company.
yes it was. But at, you know what? At the end I actually became friends with, the PM on the other side.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, we actually did, probably, probably, 'cause I think she thought I was very young and so she felt for me, she was like, okay, you're probably young, new to this. It's not your fault, you know?
Hey, look, anytime you can actually get through a horrible project like that, get it actually delivered, and then actually still have friends on the other side of the table. Man, that is a success. So kudos to you for that. I bailed.
Hey, you were smart. I think I just like getting punished. That's what it.
So what was the hard part about it? was it people hard or technology hard?
When I say technology hard, it's more in terms of being new to hr because I had done ITSM work like catalog work, request request items, and I was new to HR case management and like how HR functions and the actual architecture of what HR is. So. I was brand new to that. And, and you know, in ServiceNow you can do anything, in a, in a, in essence. and so I still had that kind of mindset and so I was like doing a lot of scripting over coding things and not realizing I could just configure.
So that's from a technical perspective. And then there was a people aspect of it where, I was in a position where. They thought I knew more than I did. So that's, that's one. And because of that, the other side was very aggressive in terms of asking a lot of questions of me. And so, in terms of just their requirements of how do HR task work? You, I wanna do, I wanna do it this way, I, I want to consider. many HR services for all these things that should just simply be tasked.
Um, and I was just saying, okay, let's do it. but not really understanding that it's because I didn't understand, because I didn't really understand them. I couldn't explain it in a way that they could understand. And then also, From the resourcing perspective, we didn't have enough developers. because I think there, I don't know how many, there wasn't a lot of HR developers out there, per se, who actually had the certification for this.
And so we just didn't have people were ramped up enough to actually do it. so I'm learning. The other two guys I had with me are learning. we're supposed to be the experts in this stuff, and so the company we're working for. They're looking at us like, you don't know this. You're the expert. Why don't you know this? You know? so it was just a little bit of both.
Man, this is like a candid behind
Very canid. I'm like,
right?
you how much I appreciate that. But it's, it's important, right? Because everybody's got a story like
Yeah, yeah.
Right. And I don't think people, understand how often something like this can happen. I. Where you find yourself as the expert, but you don't consider yourself an expert. Right. And the, the folks you're working for are like, just make it work, right? we gotta deliver this thing for the client and it's gotta work. And you just wanna do the best job you can for both parties, right? But it does drop a lot of stress, on the folks who are charged then to implement.
Yeah, exactly, because, just consider the pace at which you have to ramp up for this stuff. especially if it's an, application that you hadn't had a lot of experience with, you don't have to, to waste, And so I spent a lot of time on the docs trying to understand things, like asking other devs questions in terms of not even so much, like, okay, how do you deal with hr? How do you develop this?
But in terms of like, how do I deal with the client's, requirements, how do I help them to understand, best practice of ServiceNow, that we, we just can't do that. I.
We shouldn't, right?
It's gonna affect your performance and this is not gonna be what you want in the end. And so it was a great project. I, I will say, like I learned a lot. I learned that in meetings, you have to come confident. You have to be confident regardless of if you know it or not. because the client is relying on you to fulfill what their needs. They're looking at you as the expert and the expert needs to have that like level of confidence.
and even if you don't know, it's like a sense of, okay, hey, I, I don't know, but let me get back with you. I'm gonna get the answer for you. 'cause that's what they expect from you.
Man, that is, that's a jewel right there, right? That confidence that you have to hold in front of the customer, like they are expecting you to know. And so you have to appear to know, and even when you don't know, like you have to be confident in the way that you present that lack of knowledge to. Like that is not a complete lack of knowledge. It is a very targeted, pointed lack of knowledge around this one particular thing. But I know how to figure that out for you. Right.
You know, just to wrap up the segment on that previous project, what I heard from you, and what I've, know as having experienced these things in the past is, is that these things can be, make or break for a career. Like this could be the thing that makes you decide, I am never, ever, I'm out of, of this, of this ecosystem. Right? Like, I'm done. If this is how it rose, no, I don't wanna deal with this.
Or it could be one where you make it to the end, the thing gets delivered successful, you know, everybody is tired and exhausted, but they still celebrate The cake comes through, right? And,
Yeah.
the, and the next thing you know, like you're now the go-to guy for hr. And obviously in your case it became the latter. But, I wonder how many folks have a story where, it didn't quite end up like this. where they didn't become like Philip, the HR guy. And, they just were like, man, I gotta take a step back from this. this is crazy.
Anyway, I, my point, there is just, there's a lot of folks who are gonna listen to this, who are gonna find themselves in this sort of position at some point in their careers. I think the lesson that I'm learning here is that you just really gotta push through. if you want this right, if you want this to be your career, if you want to excel in it, push through, figure out how you can be successful. Put in the time, put in the effort.
Right, because you said before you spent a lot of time down on the docs, right. You know, the docs dot Service now you were getting all the information and, the clients were pre presenting you with stuff you didn't know. And where do you go? You go and figure it out. I'm sure not all of that happened, in the nine to five that you were put in, right?
Yeah. No, not at all.
You know, but you wanted that success, right? Like, you wanted this to be successful and you wanted that growth that was gonna come out of that. And I wanted to highlight that, for our listeners out there, who might find themselves in a situation that's challenging, right? push through it, If you get to the other side of it, man, are you gonna be straight?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yes,
Speaking of, the other side of it, how long did it take? I have a somewhat similar story in the SPM realm. but I had, close to a decade of ServiceNow experience. I. Before somebody asked me, Hey, do SPM we know you don't know how. so I could talk a lot about the other aspects of the platform and I had a sense of, I already knew how to figure things out on the platform. So how long did it take before you went from, holy cow, I gotta figure this out.
'cause tomorrow versus like, walking on with that swagger that comes from, yeah, I know this stuff now. How long do you think that took?
It may have taken me like a few months to really get my sea legs in because you, as you're learning things, you start to feel for lack of better words, confident at that specific niche that you're working in. for example, we're talking about hr, like once I really understood that, like HR services and how those are configured. I felt really confident I understand HR services.
And then, as I was moving forward and within this project and other projects, I started to understand, how are we gonna secure these? 'cause requests are coming in we want you to secure it. How does it work for hr? and so. That was, I can't say another month of figuring that out, but maybe a couple weeks of understanding that. So, it took me a couple months to really just fully, get my sea legs. But as I was doing it, it's, it's kind of like, I wanted to run a marathon for example.
and the first mile, it feels terrible because your body really isn't ready for it. but as you get into it, you get into the groove and you start to understand it a little bit more. and it's still hard, but you feel like you're making progress. So it took me a couple months to really fully get my sea legs, but Even before then, I was like, oh, you know, I'm understanding this. Okay, I understand that.
and I was actually making real good progress to where, it propelled me to continue to wanna go, even though I wasn't, I knew I wasn't like there all the way in a sense.
So it's the growth, right? It's the growth that keeps you going.
Yeah.
I can definitely see that if you don't feel like you're, progressing, then, you start to lose confidence, right? You start to feel bad, right? Nobody wants to feel bad. Yeah. Nice. So tell us about hr. So I'll tell you like I noted out of that project for different reasons, right? I didn't leave, leave. there was a reason behind it. we're not disclosing to people, but the, they were callous. I had a family situation going on.
it was an emergency situation and they were calling me while I was at the hospital, with someone. and when I explained the situation to them, they were callous in their, treatment of it. And so I quit at the hospital while I was on the phone with them. And, I know not everyone has that privilege, but I did. But I would encourage everyone to work to try to get that privilege.
because there's family is everything, and you should never let anyone, come between you and your family, especially when it's an emergency situation like I was experiencing. So that's why I left the project, but I also left HR behind at the same time, but not, not for that reason, just because I didn't really like it. Um, so, so tell us, Philip, tell us why you like it.
For me, the central thing about HR is the services is in terms of like, what service is this human resource department actually supplying to their employees. and everything just builds on top of that. in terms of. What aspect of this HR department is providing this service? in HR we have a thing called COEs, or Center of Excellences, which are all this, the HR tables, like there's a payroll talent management, workforce admin and a couple others.
and when we're developing for HR and getting requirements, we're asking the HR teams, or even people operations teams 'cause. Different companies call their department differently and look at it differently. And I can explain that a little later. but we're considering what services are we providing? who are the entities within HR that's providing that service, and what are the inputs for them to fulfill that service?
So when I say inputs, I'm thinking what are the routes at which this service is going to be requested, whether it's through record producers or is it through some sort of inbound email action, or is it just through a call or what have you, to actually provide that service to fulfill. and then looking at how is it secured? Who, what group is actually. Going to be fulfilling this. And we think about assignment groups. the thing I like about HR is that it's about people.
and I enjoy work dealing with people. so let's say I'm a parent and I need to understand my benefits. I, how am I gonna engage with the HR department? Uh. Through, you know, through the HR system. and so when I think about that, I'm like, okay, when we're designing the form for you to fill out, does it make, will it make sense to you?
and I think that's one of the biggest difference between, in my head, between it SM and HR is that, it, you're thinking of IT systems, you're thinking about the network and such like that, not so much. People related. I mean, obviously there's people in IT involved, but not as people centric as HR is. And so when I think like what is hr, it's central to that. Like what services are we providing? Who are we providing to these services to and who are the service providers, for that?
So it all starts with the people when it comes down to hr
Yeah.
so, first of all, great explanation, right? I've never heard it broken down like that and never thought about it that way. kudos, For being a developer who actually likes to talk to people. I mean, it's like three of us on this call and I, we might be, most of us.
You've done stuff on the ITSM side
Yeah. Yeah.
What's most surprising about the transition to hr? From ITSM? what would surprise most ITSM folks about what goes on in the HR system?
when we think of ITSM, we think about the different, records in ITSM. We think about, there's an incident there. There's the change record. There's the problem record and such. And, we think about it in a sense of, oh, an incident is an incident is an incident. Whether it's a major incident, whether it's a small incident, a problem is a problem is a problem. You know, it. Several incidents that create a problem.
But in hr, a case isn't, a case isn't case, like each case is related to its service, that the service offering that is connected to. and I think that's what surprises people from ITSM coming into HR is that it's not every record is the same. obviously from a ServiceNow developer's perspective, a record is a record is a record in ServiceNow,
Yeah. Yeah.
you know, um.
you saying they're like task extensions?
Yeah, so they're all extended from task in general. In terms of HR case versus an ITSM incident request or requested item. or lemme take that back in terms of requested item. But anyway you're dealing with case management. And all the workflows that come off of that particular case. and the flows that come off of how this is fulfilled, in terms of different tasks or, other things involved in that.
versus thinking about it in terms of, I have a break fix issue and I'm creating the incident form that's going to, highlight what that break fix is, or, what's the priority on that. in terms of, Who it was opened for or who requested it, I should say like in hr you're thinking who opened this and who's the subject of this actual case? and how to think about that is the subject is what the ca who the per the case is about.
So for example, let's say I'm a manager and I wanna pro promote my employee. So I put in a case for promotion. So I am the open for, and my employee's the subject. And however, I may not want my employee to know that there's a case for him that he's gonna be promoted, it's a surprise. and so in the, in case management, we could separate out or not allow the subject person to actually read that case or see those cases that are about him. Subject, you know, terminations you.
Yeah.
I remember the good old days where nobody actually like, thought that through, and it was all of a sudden like, oh man, I probably shouldn't say this, but I worked for a place where a C-suite person. Found their own termination record before they were Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Like, I can't scream out loud. I'm screaming inside.
Oh wow.
Wow. That's crazy.
So I love that, that they make that distinction right off the gate. There's
Yeah.
and it took a while for the platform to get there, I would say. But it's this idea that there is the person, there's like a, there's different types of customers, right? There's the person who's who I'm interacting with, but then there's the person, this is about.
Yeah. And an amazing thing about what ServiceNow has done with hr. 'cause obviously from a technical perspective, they went from just a global application to a more scoped application. now there were, they started to consider these features that we're talking about in terms of the open force subject person in terms of the security around the case who, security, not so much even security, if the. Open for subject person, but also the security of which groups have access to this case.
in terms of, securities and such. And, and in one sense, they were thinking about human resources, which is about hiring, onboarding, like payroll, like termination, those things. But then they shifted into more of a people operations thought process, which is more about the people and the culture. It's about, skill acquisition, and goal settings. And they do that through a thing they have called employee journeys, where you can create tasks and.
A journey for your different employees to, to gain specific skills, and such and whatever the employee's goals are. so they're like evolving as they're going through this and seeing the market out there and what the market is looking for. it's quite amazing their thinking on this stuff.
Tell me more about this. Is this like a way to modernize your workforce as you go or something? Or,
Yeah, it's a philosophical look at your, organization. and it's more in terms of understanding that an organization is not just about, Making sure the workers are there to do the work, but it's really taking care of the workers and making sure that the workers feel taken care of, get a sense of loyalty towards the company. And it's a company considering, alright, how do we. Help our employees to reach whatever their career goal is.
so it's now it's beyond just, do we have employees who are doing the work to get it out? Now it's thinking about how my employees growing. are my employees growing in a way that want, I have these skills that I need do. Um. Like creating an avenue so that my employees can reach the skills they need to meet continuing demands out there in.
And so, ServiceNow started to consider that's where, HR departments are going into, and are starting to call themselves people, operation departments, and having a different philosophical look at their organization and how, these departments run and work. And so, ServiceNow is just capitalizing that and giving organizations that the tools to do that.
What is interesting to me about that is the evolution of this, right? And I think that evolution of looking at the folks who are working for a company as more than just the hours that they put in, but also, as more holistic individuals who have career goals and pathways and objectives. And really working on that to so that they can fill some additional fulfillment out of their, career and association with the company, I think is really pretty awesome. And having it all.
Wrapped up and into one segment of the platform and all on one platform, I feel like is probably something that is, um, well, I don't know. I'm not an HR guy, but it definitely feels desirable. and I don't know, is that revolutionary, is that like something that ServiceNow is uniquely, enabling or is it, just where the market's going and ServiceNow say, well, we need to do this and then we're gonna do it better because we're who we are.
Yeah. And I think they're really seeing that's where the market is going. because in a lot of these HR conferences that, and I'm not talking about ServiceNow HR conferences, but just HR conferences, that's what they're talking about. they're talking about skill acquisition. They're talking about their, these, their employees and, and the culture of the company and such. because they understand that if you have good company culture, your company's gonna do great.
If your employees are enjoying their work, they're going to, they're. They're gonna do well. and so like, how do we best do that and how do we best position ourselves to, to do that for our employees? and ServiceNow is like capitalizing on that. and you know, it's, and you see it through just different new ServiceNow offerings through hr.
I mean, this one isn't brand new, but there's employee document management, which is basically ServiceNow is becoming more of a electronic, file cabinet, so to speak. To where when employees email or add documents into ServiceNow, there's now a filing system where I can say, okay, here's all my employee documents. And easy be able to access those, that information and add a level of security to that.
Nice.
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm saying, and again, and, um, considering like, what's the legality of how long I have to hold this document? Uh,
that one's important. I know that one from, from ITSM writing in legal holes, and sometimes, there's a thing with an employee and it's like, ooh, right, but you gotta right. Man, you, you know, Philip. what strikes me about this conversation is how much, you know, not just about the technical aspects of HR as it exists in ServiceNow, but also about HR processes as a whole. I. Like how HR works in general as it would be implemented in a number of different tools or even absent a tool. Right.
Do you find that is a significant benefit for you as you implement HR on the ServiceNow platform?
Yeah, I do. Because the thing is when we're getting requirements, we have to first think, agnostically in terms of system agnostic, because if you go straight into. You know, let's just say you get requirements where the person says, oh, I need this task, this, I'm doing this task, this task, and this task. Then you're thinking, oh, if you're thinking just ServiceNow, you're like, alright, I need to create a task for this.
Let's create a task for get employee documents or create a task for, verify this and. and you're not thinking in terms of what the actual real process is that is happening. 'cause you don't want to take that and just translate it directly into ServiceNow. And now you're creating this cumbersome flow, that the end users won't even like using. it's really like understanding where the client is coming from, from an HR perspective. Like what are they trying to do?
Who are the people they're trying to serve? and so understanding that how can I make this easy for them, to where you're actually getting good requirements, not, this kind of mess that, that can happen that I've seen happen, in the past.
Yeah. No, I, that's a good, really good point. It's amazing how often, and I think this probably stretches beyond the HR realm, right? it's just amazing how often we are as the tool builders go into situations and we're asked, Hey, build a tool for this process. But we may or may not, have a whole lot of knowledge about that actual process. but the client looks at you as an expert, right? And while you might be a ServiceNow expert, they also.
Feel that you are a expert on the process that they're trying to get built in the ServiceNow, which may or may not be the truth. it is those situations, I think when you're able to combine both that process knowledge with the tool knowledge right. Then where, customer success really does shine through and I think that's important for folks to hear, right? Because it takes some time to become an expert, but it doesn't take time to seek out knowledge.
And so, if you're asked to implement incident management, there's a ton of information out there that you can read up on about successful incident management processes and how they work and things that have been tried. Things that I. Don't work very well, things that work very well in a number of different places. Right. And at least you have now a grounded level of knowledge that you can come in these conversations with and, help facilitate them through.
And the more then, and then the more that of these engagements that you do, the more you obviously grow your expertise.
Yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree, especially if we wanna call ourselves architects for example, it's good to understand the underlying business process, to really architect a, successful solution for the client, that you're working on.
I've had my HR certification for a long time and I've met a lot of people who have HR cert, well, a number of people who've had HR certifications, and the only thing that I would say is missing is just really understanding that the kind of people you're working with in hr, HR people are different from it. People like it.
I, oh, preach brother. Preach. I just, because that goes for all of the non ITSM apps. Like, when I was doing SPMA lot, the thing that they told me they liked about me was we get these other resources to do SPM, they keep on talking about this thing called CMDB and they keep on wanting to know about like escalation and prioritization. And we're like, man, like I care about dollars and time, you know, that, that's what keeps me, or, or risk, like how do I quantify my risk and.
It, it, there really is a different set of things that keep people up at night and just knowing that alone, just tell me what's a nightmare scenario for You can teach you a ton about how you do the implementation. I.
Yes.
Oh yeah. Yeah. It is. I mean, even think about that example you talked about earlier, the CEO who found out that he's getting fired. I've seen a situation where the employee found out that they had a, employee relations case against them. You know, it's like a nightmare scenario. Like, oh my, you know, especially if it's your employee and something against them.
But yeah, but once you get down to that and you figure out, okay, this is the driving force behind this client and what they're working on. You're better in a sense, like once you understand like their driving force, because you can lead them to a, like a real successful, implementation. when you understand that.
Right. because then you'd know what they're trying to get out of it. And so you build the system in a way that helps unlock that outcome for them. I just think that's really important for folks to know, right? It's, that it's not incident management, is incident management for client a. It's not, change management. It is change management for multinational client C. Right? These processes, it don't, exist in a vacuum.
You can't just bust open the ITIL book and then drop the generic process in there, right? that's your start about how generally these things kind of work and flow. But the next thing is like you and Rob were just talking about, It's about what keeps folks up at night, right? And why are, why am I even here? Like, what prompted you to make this call to ServiceNow, which prompted me the next call to me, you know what I mean? And, and so right.
Knowing that helps you really, get the best out of, the requirements, gathering what your, with your client, and also put the best into the platform so that everybody's successful. Love it. Good stuff.
Gosh, almost, three, seven minutes of record. Phil, are you independent?
Yeah, so right now I am independent. and so I'm under the name Cloud, CTW, that's my organization. One of the biggest things I'm trying to do is get, just get out the knowledge about what HR is and how to, at least the configuration of hr because I know what it is when you're a new developer. and so I've put out a number of YouTube videos, not long form videos. They're very short form because we only have but so much time to learn these things and, I'm doing on YouTube, slash at Cloud ctw.
and then each week, every Friday, I put out a new video on hr.
All right. We were gonna have those links for you in the description below, as well as an email how you can reach Phil. Phil, any last wisdom for our audience? I.
Yeah, I think anyone who's willing to learn HR does. HR is amazing. I've pretty much made a career out of it and I don't think you can't do this without a, certification. I would say obviously go get your certification, but look for opportunities within the HR space. If I can do it, anyone can.
I don't know about that, but we'll see. Oh no, and that's just my faith in you, man. I've seen you work. It takes a while to get to your level of expertise. Kudos for that. Why you make sure we put that out there. And, Philip, it's great having you on the show. It's been a great conversation. I learned so much about hr, and I'm still sending everybody to you.
All right folks. If you wanna get in touch with Phil, if you wanna check out his LinkedIn, give him an email or check out his YouTube. we'll have a links to the description below. Everybody take a shot
That's right.
on the.