Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Danielle Cobo: Are you ready to take your career by the reins and achieve your ambitions? Today we discuss how to make meaningful courageous steps forward in any organization. We discuss visibility boosting tactics that will get you noticed, plus practical ways of staying up to date with industry trends. So your one step ahead, if you are seeking a career advancement, this episode is for you.
Danielle Cobo: Today's guest is Chief People Officer Erica Ro. Erica Klein, the corporate ladder from individual contributor role to C level executive in just 10 years.
Danielle Cobo: Hi, Erica, welcome to the podcast. Excited for you to join. You come from a background in hr, but what I really like is your title, chief People Officer. Please share with our audience, in our listeners about your background and your experience in hr and what led you to where you're at today as a chief People
Erica Rooney: officer.
Erica Rooney: Oh, absolutely. And what I would say too, what we call HR at my company is employee experience because HR is this just old. Ugh, kind of title. Nobody likes it. I think they were gonna do a show one time called Linda from hr, and it's the place where all the problems go. But what employee experience really is for me is the entire life cycle for that person.
Erica Rooney: We spend so much time and so much energy with the people that we work with and doing the work that I want it to be a positive and impactful experience from the moment that they apply online. All the way until they leave the company, it should be filled with positive moments that matter throughout that employee life cycle.
Erica Rooney: So that's what I think about when I think about HR slash employee experience. But I landed in this role completely by accident. I actually started my corporate America career in health and wellness, working for Verizon as a health and wellness coordinator. And when I tell you that was my first job outta college and I got it and I was like, I can't believe I have the job I'm gonna retire from.
Erica Rooney: Right? Like the rip old age of 24, however old I was, except for, I also have this very big growth mindset and very quickly in health and wellness, you can only go so far up the corporate ladder before you hit a ceiling. And I hit that ceiling in my late twenties and I was like, you know what I. Keep doing this cuz there's nowhere for me to go.
Erica Rooney: So I dug down deep and I applied to hundreds of jobs. I had no idea if I wanted to do project management or anything else, and. I talked to somebody in HR and they said what they really loved about it was that they got to talk with people and help people. And when I thought about my career in health and wellness and in fitness, that was what I loved about fitness.
Erica Rooney: I was helping people reach their health and fitness goals. And I thought if I can transfer that into hr, but have it be about their career goals, that might work for me. And the corporate ladder's big. I've got a long way to go. And I very quickly climbed the corporate ladder, landed in this eSuite as a chief people officer, and so now my day involves really coaching and guiding my team and then my C-level individuals so that they can impact the employees all across the company.
Danielle Cobo: I love how when you talked about the employee experience and the employee experience, even before they become an. There's so many times when I will talk with people and candidates are looking for jobs and they won't have a great experience through the interview process. Maybe they'll go through several interviews and then they get ghosted by the hiring manager.
Danielle Cobo: But what I'm hearing you say is the engagement with the employee starts right from the beginning, and it's a continuous journey even beyond when they leave the organization as well. It's all about helping the.
Erica Rooney: Absolutely. Think about it. Everybody has a dream company that they've never, ever worked for.
Erica Rooney: They have no idea if it's gonna be good or not, but they have this dream company because of what they see online, what they read on Glassdoor, what they hear from other people. So it really starts before that. And then they wanna go and they apply online. They want it to be easy. Nobody enjoy. Putting a resume in and then having to manually fill out all of their previous experience and what they did.
Erica Rooney: That's frustrating. So there's all of these different steps, right? And so let's say they make it through this interview process. number one, that should be hands down a great experience because you should be interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing you. And so all of the managers, executives, whoever is doing that interview, should be coached on the culture of the company.
Erica Rooney: They should be coached on what questions to ask so that they can make sure. They are a culture ad. I don't like to say culture fit because that really excludes any kind of diverse hiring. Brene Brown is the one who said the opposite of belonging is fitting in. And that resonated so much with me because if you're trying to fit in, you're not being your true, authentic self.
Erica Rooney: And that starts in the interview. And D E I B is so big right now, and it's so important to have diversity of thought, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of experience, that if we're just looking for people to fit into our culture, we are missing out on so many amazing candidates.
Danielle Cobo: And also missing out on candidates, but also thinking about as the organization, as the business evolves, If we're wanting people to just fit in how we are now, then we're gonna be stuck. We're not gonna grow into the future. Part of growing in innovation and creativity within the future of an organization is, as you said, bringing people in from different backgrounds and experiences and in cultures and taking that organization to the future, not currently fitting in as to where it is.
Erica Rooney: Absolutely. And so that's why we wanted to look for who could be a culture ad, right? Who is going to make this experience better for the entire company that we bring in? Whether that's an individual contributor all the way up to the executive, you wanna make sure that what they are bringing to the company, Is just as much as amazing as what you are offering them.
Erica Rooney: But you know, we touched on moments that matter, and this is a piece of the employee experience that I'm so passionate about because there are your basic moments that matter that people can call out, right? Your first day. That's a really big moment that matters because you come in, you're. Excited. You're nervous, you're anxious.
Erica Rooney: You want that to be a positive experience. But there are other moments that matter that are often missed in companies, and those are moments like you've applied for an internal promotion, but you didn't get it. What happens next? Right? Do they treat you with respect? Do they show you a growth pattern? Do they talk to you about why you didn't get that internal promotion?
Erica Rooney: But here's what you can do to continue to grow. Moments that matter are also issues like, Hey, my paycheck was messed up today. I don't have the funds in my bank account for whatever reason. What do I do? It's making sure that, hey, I don't know what happened. I'm gonna look into it. I'm gonna get you those funds right away.
Erica Rooney: Intriguing that person and their problem with urgency and attention and respect so that they feel like their issues are being handled. So there's so many little moments that matter that employee. Really kind of hang their hat on when they talk about how much they either love or hate a certain company.
Danielle Cobo: We are both Brene Brown fans. I just finished her, book, dare to Lead, and in her book she talked about a phenomenal book. In her book she talked about it takes a long tame to earn trust, but it can be quickly broken. And when you're talking about the moments that matter, Those are exactly the moments that matter.
Danielle Cobo: Where if we're not at being attentive, if somebody goes for an internal position and doesn't get the role, but we are not there to support them through the process afterwards and what that journey looks like, that can be broken trust. And it's those big moments that quickly erode trust.
Danielle Cobo: and trust is a big portion of whether somebody. The job, the company, the people that they work with, it trust is big in an organization.
Erica Rooney: Psychological safety is so important and I think that people. Overlook that because hey, we're paying you, show up, do the work. But when you're talking about employee experience, when you're talking about trust and psychological safety, and it's so funny that you made that comment about, trust is so easily broken.
Erica Rooney: That is the second time today. I've heard that, and I was listening to an audio book by one of my keynote speaking friends, Ryan Leak, and he was talking about this because, Not every company is a great company, right? And we do not all have the privilege to just quit and walk away. You know, we've got children to feed, we've got responsibilities.
Erica Rooney: So I get the question a lot about what do I do if these moments that matter, these experiences that I'm having. are not good that I don't trust my leadership. I see them acting without integrity. I see them backstabbing people to get ahead. What do you do? I've gotta feed kids. I gotta do these things.
Erica Rooney: And so it's not about walking away because we don't all have that luxury. But what he said in this audiobook that I was listening to you, I thought was so impactful, was, you now have an opportunity to show them. That you can win and act with integrity, right? You can win and be honest. You can do all of those things and stay true to your core values.
Erica Rooney: And I thought that was such a positive spin on it and such a great way to look at it that hopefully you can start to change the environment around you. these toxic cultures fester over time. They don't just pop up and that is the hard part, and the change is not gonna happen overnight either.
Erica Rooney: But as long as you are acting with your integrity and your core values, nobody can hang anything over your head either, which is so powerful for you as an individual.
Danielle Cobo: Yeah, it's important to be within your being with integrity within your core values. I know one of the exercises that I do through part of the leadership program that I work with organizations is we go through core values and they do an exercise where they look at what their core values are.
Danielle Cobo: Then they make mission statement based on their core values, and that's the barometer to know that any decision that they're making in their personal or professional life, Are they living in integrity to their core values? Because you're right, there's, people can ask us to do certain things, but if it's not in line with our core values, we have the option to say no.
Erica Rooney: What I love about core values is so many people think it's just an organization exercise that just people in corporate America, that's what we do so that we can say we're diverse and we believe in this. And I thought that originally, I remember being like, okay, everybody has their pillars and their core values.
Erica Rooney: Not only should you be looking at a company's core values though, but do these exercises for yourself because that will help guide you on all of your decisions when things get tough. And it was so funny for me, it was like this hindsight, exercise that when I finally was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do my core values cuz everybody's talking about it.
Erica Rooney: And I sat down and I. And I wrote out that courage was one of my core values, right? Doing the courageous thing, whether that's having the hard conversation, doing the thing that scares me, whatever. It was so easy for me to recognize when I wasn't acting with courage because I took the moment to stop and say, what is it?
Erica Rooney: And I never would've sat down and identified courage as one of my core values to begin with. And the hard thing about core values, I'm sure you know this, is you have this list of 200 plus words. There's millions that you could choose from. You don't cross any of them off, right? Like if honesty is on there, nobody wants to cross honesty off,
Erica Rooney: Nobody wants to cross off. Something like collaboration, but maybe you're a very individualistic person and you like working alone, so you have to really get like very clear with yourself and not take yourself. Like not treat yourself too harshly when you're going through those, because that was a hard piece of it for me was crossing off some of those words.
Erica Rooney: It doesn't mean that you are not those things. It doesn't mean that you're not an honest person or collaborative when it calls for it. It just means that that is not the thing that guides you. If you are an very much someone that thrives off of working alone and collaboration is not gonna be your guiding light, and that's okay.
Danielle Cobo: I like how you mentioned that it's, okay when you're crossing it off. It doesn't mean that you are not. that's not part of one of your values, it's just not one of your core values. And when we do this exercise, we do it. Each person goes through the core value exercise, and then collectively as a leadership team, they create their leadership.
Danielle Cobo: they go through the core values exercise, and then they create a mission statement as a leadership team as well. So it's a collaborative exercise as well, which is a lot of fun for teams. we're gonna shift a little bit. we talked a little bit about internal promotions, possibly going for roles within an organization, and I know that you are writing a book, which is really exciting, and in that book theme you're talking about.
Danielle Cobo: Get seen, get heard, and get promoted. Yes. I know our listeners out there as well as many others want to know how can they get seen, get heard, and get promoted. So please share with us what steps they can take to achieve
Erica Rooney: that success. The biggest step is putting your fear aside and talking about it from day one, asking about it from day one, and I'm not even talking about like just that immediate next step, right?
Erica Rooney: If you're an individual contributor wanting to be a manager, Tell your leader, I wanna be a VP someday. Tell your leader, I wanna be a C E O someday. Right? We don't have to have these baby step dreams. Those are the stepping stones. So when I work with my employees, I talk about like, what is that big scary dream goal that you have?
Erica Rooney: Is it to be an executive? Is it to be a subject matter expert in a certain field? Because not everybody wants to do people leading. What is it? I can't tell you how many people only give me that next step, and I'm. Is that the top? That's where you wanna go. And they're like, well, no, I really wanna do X. And I'm like, then tell me that.
Erica Rooney: Because when you are looking at an organization, especially for people in hr, we are looking at succession planning. And if I know that you wanna be the next chief people officer or the head of talent, or that you wanna be the head of delivery or whatever it is, Then I know that you have that dream and that goal, and I will start to expose you to those areas in the organization that you need the exposure to.
Erica Rooney: I will start providing the mentorship and the coaching. I will bring you to the meetings that even if you're just sitting in the meetings, so you can observe. That's a great learning experience. So the very first thing that I talk to people about is like really coaching them out out of that very baby step, next step, which may be a big step, but it's not where they're trying to go.
Erica Rooney: So that's step one. And then I also tell them to lay out a plan and do it with their people leader if they plan on staying within the organization about like, let's talk realistic timelines. What does it take? How many, is it the years of experience thing? Is it a certification education? What is it?
Erica Rooney: Because those things shift all the time, especially within organizations. So I tell them to have that roadmap down, figure out what they need to do during those stepping stones, what they can do to either accelerate the timeline, if there's any possibility for that. I tell them to reevaluate that every six months we don't know what we don't know, and if Covid taught us anything, the market is crazy.
Erica Rooney: And so we're seeing more than ever now that education doesn't matter as much as experience or certifications. So things are changing so quickly that you have to evaluate that six months so that you can pivot to take those next.
Danielle Cobo: Evaluation is extremely important. I know that when I was working for an organization, the qualifications to get promoted changed almost every year.
Danielle Cobo: So it was a constant conversation. And also the value in having a lot of times, companies, managers, and employees will, the only time that that discussion about the future of the career happens at the annual performance review. And yes, while that is valuable, A lot. I always say like, a lot can happen in 365 days and if your goal is to get promoted within one to two years, then you wanna put that plan in place and actively work that plan on a consistent basis.
Danielle Cobo: align yourself with a mentor. Have conversations on a regular basis as you had shared, get some opportunities to get exposure, to send in on meetings, get involved in special projects, but that is something that is gonna. Those actions are gonna take place on a continuous basis, not just that conversation once a year.
Danielle Cobo: Yeah.
Erica Rooney: And don't, forget to be your number one advocate. It is not up, and this is controversial. I get a lot of heat for this. Sometimes it is not up to your manager to promote you. It is not up to your manager to know what you wanna do. It is not up to your manager to give you an. In an ideal world, every single manager would know exactly how fabulous their person is, how much money they should get, and they would give it to 'em.
Erica Rooney: But that is not how it works. You have to fight for yourself. So one of the biggest things that I do when I talk with people about getting seen, getting hurt and getting promoted is to keep a weekly. Of the amazing things that they are doing right? What is within their job description? What is above their job description, and what are the ad hoc tasks, right?
Erica Rooney: We all know what those are, those random side projects that just kind of come through and they somehow fall on your lap. Keep track of all of those things because when that mid-year or annual review comes, you forgot you did it. Your manager forgot you did it. They're managing 10 people. So write those things down so that all you have to do.
Erica Rooney: I do mine in an Excel sheet and I do it by month. You can just pull that up and you just type it all out and it is there and you are proving your worth. And I cannot tell you how many times myself included, I've had people on my teams who have really detailed it out and I was like, wow, I forgot that you did that.
Erica Rooney: You do deserve 5,000 more dollars. Absolutely. and the point is though, if you don't make those dreams, those aspirations known, if you don't talk about it with your people leader. Another thing I tell people, talk about it with hr because people, leaders come and people leaders go. They're good people leaders, they're bad people, leaders.
Erica Rooney: The more people who know your goals and dreams, the better it is for you. The more opportunities you may be exposed to. I can't tell you how many times I've had a meeting with a group of people and they've talked about we may need to hire somebody for this. And I'm like actually, you know, who's interested in that?
Erica Rooney: Who's been going to, night classes, this person? But nobody would've known that unless that person came and talked to me. So a lot get seen, get heard is being your number one advocate.
Danielle Cobo: Someone once told me, no one cares more about your career than you do. And it's on the forefront of your mind because we, get to remember that it's not always on the forefront of everybody else's mind.
Danielle Cobo: And that's exactly what you said where Yes. we'd like our managers to always know what we want. Absolutely. But we also get to be mindful that our managers have their own career that they're thinking about, and they're also thinking about what are the needs of their team and also the customers.
Danielle Cobo: As a senior sales manager, I would share with my. I don't always know what you're doing day to day. We don't go into an office. I don't physically see you every single day. I actually, more often than not, would Sam once a quarter during our field co travel. So my exposure to what they're doing was based off of the reports that I would receive.
Danielle Cobo: But I love to hear their success stories. Not only because it was an opportunity to celebrate it with them, but it was also an opportunity to hear, Hey, that's what you're doing real really well. Fantastic. That's the strength of yours. Let's see if there's different areas that we can apply it. And maybe you can mentor people within the organization.
Danielle Cobo: Maybe you can take on a special project. Hey, that's a skillset that would support if you get promoted into this particular role. It's part of those ongoing daily conversations.
Erica Rooney: One of the things I would say too that is so just impressive when I see it happen is when somebody comes to me and they have done almost a gap analysis on their department, their team, their organization, and they come and they say, I see this need.
Erica Rooney: And here's how I can fill it. And that can be by getting new skills, right? Send me to this class to get this certification. I will be able to do X to a completely different role. And I have a woman on my team, this is one of my favorite stories to share. She was hired as an admin assistant. This was right before Covid hit.
Erica Rooney: So she was kind of like, Admin office assistant responsible for making sure that the kitchen was stocked, the copiers were taken care of, covid hit, we all went remote. We had no need for this role. Right? We were getting real creative, kind of finding things for her to do on the admin side, like behind the scenes.
Erica Rooney: But she to me and she said, I don't wanna do this with my life. She's like, but this is Covid. This world is changing. And I think that this HR team, this company, could really use like a communication specialist. What do you think about that? And I was like, that's really interesting. And I was like, tell me more.
Erica Rooney: And we talked about it. And she kind of identified where her skillset was, how she could apply it. And then I said, you know what? I'm gonna do one thing different. We really need an internal communication and engagement specialist. We need someone to work with us to focus on the changing world with Covid.
Erica Rooney: How do we engage people in a remote workforce? And that is a role we need. So we took her dreams of internal communications. Coupled it with a big need for the organization, and now she has her own role in a totally different career path than she ever would've had.
Danielle Cobo: So that leads to saying that even if the role doesn't exist, doesn't mean that you can't create it.
Erica Rooney: Absolutely. And I tell people all the time, we don't know what we don't know, and I at that moment had not opened my mind up to the fact that, hey, we need this role. And she has an amazing career now ahead of her that is gonna be super in demand wherever she goes, after she leaves me and one day she will leave me for bigger and better things.
Erica Rooney: you have to fight for it. You have to look for these things. Be creative and don't be scared to do it. And this is where I pull in one of my core values of courage. But don't be afraid to ask for it because let's say worst case scenario, I couldn't offer that to her for whatever internal reason, cuz this happens sometimes I at least then know where her dreams and her interests.
Erica Rooney: And as her manager, I can then start to pull her into all of those meetings and say, Hey, do you wanna take on a special project of this, as it relates to internal communications, and we can work through that. So even if the answer is no, remember it's not a hard stop. Go back to the way things were.
Erica Rooney: There is still possibility.
Danielle Cobo: It may be a not right now, and it may be a not right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've given such valuable advice to our listeners to be seen, to be heard, to get promoted. Is there anything anything else that you want to share with our listeners on how they can step into the roles that they want to, that they can create their dream job, their dream career?
Danielle Cobo: There's so much, right?
Erica Rooney: There's so many things, and I would say just always remember, and we touched on it a little bit, be your biggest advocate and do not be scared to make connections on LinkedIn and reach out to people on LinkedIn. That is the best professional platform out there. Do not just cold call people though, do not just email them and tell them, I'm interested in your company.
Erica Rooney: Figure out how you can serve them. First, it is about service, so if you reach out to somebody, show interest in them. Hey Erica, I see you post a lot about gender equality. I found this great article. I thought you might find it interesting. That snags my attention a heck of a lot more than, Hey Erica, I saw you posted a.
Erica Rooney: So figure out how you can connect and how you can serve on LinkedIn so that people want to engage back with
Danielle Cobo: you. LinkedIn is a powerful, powerful platform and I agree with you a hundred percent that if you want to have a thriving career. Today, tomorrow, and in the long term, be on LinkedIn.
Danielle Cobo: Even if you have a job right now. I know people who have had a job have been very happy. Were not looking for a job, but it happened to be the recruiter. They started posting on LinkedIn. They started to share, the areas of expertise, their wisdom. A recruiter reached out to them. Now all of a sudden They've had a huge career jump. all because they were engaged on LinkedIn. What I often see is people will be. they're in their role and then all of a sudden the company goes through downsizing or restructuring or it's a toxic work environment and they end up leading the organization. And understand this cuz I've been in this situation before, all of a sudden it's like, oh no, I need to get my LinkedIn profile up to date.
Danielle Cobo: I need to all of a sudden spend time doing it. And what I found is, wow, if I would've, I'm grateful that I took the time early on in my career to do my LinkedIn profile cuz. I never had to look for a job. I was recruited into different roles, but I've also seen the power within this past couple years of the community on LinkedIn.
Danielle Cobo: the sharing of expertise on LinkedIn, the personal and professional development based off of the content that people post on LinkedIn. It is the number one platform that I go to, if I wanna go learn how. Contour my makeup or new styling tips. I'll go to Instagram. I've then sucking. There you go.
Danielle Cobo: Yep. Been sucked into that a little bit recently. But other than that, I spend majority of my time on LinkedIn. I love the content that people share. It's a good barometer to know what's going on in the workplace right now, cuz a lot of people will, share, recent trends or kind of future, what's coming to the future in the work?
Danielle Cobo: And I would say
Erica Rooney: too, for anyone who's not sure how to use LinkedIn, I will send you the link to this, but I have a free course. It's only 20 minutes, and it's all about how to optimize your LinkedIn because so many people think it has to be about their company. It should not be about the company you work for.
Erica Rooney: It should be about you, your personal brand, your core values, and what you stand for. If you go to my LinkedIn, you will see my favorite. You will see what I loved and what I'm passionate about, gender equality, bringing women in into positions of power and keeping them there. You will see all of that because that's me, and I can do that at any company I go to.
Erica Rooney: So I'll send that to you. You can send it out to your, people and your team, but it is a great way to just kind of get you started on LinkedIn if you're not.
Danielle Cobo: Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Erica, for joining. I really appreciate it. This is gonna be a powerful episode that I know a lot of our listeners are gonna take value from.
Danielle Cobo: So I appreciate you joining.
Erica Rooney: Oh, I'm so glad we talked.