Register here for our free webinar on using AI in Talent Development here.

Welcome to the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, where we explore innovative strategies, technologies, and best practices for unlocking the full potential of your organization's talent. In today's episode, we have the privilege of welcoming Sarah Tilley, Senior Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition and Development for ServiceNow, a leader in skills intelligence and talent management.

Sarah joins us to discuss the exciting possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) offers in automating and enhancing talent development processes. From pushing targeted campaigns to offering personalized career advancement opportunities, AI is revolutionizing the way we nurture and empower our workforce. Sarah shares her expertise on implementing a skills intelligence strategy, the fundamental skills every employee should possess, and the role of AI in achieving career aspirations.

We'll also delve into Sarah's experiences at ServiceNow, including their recent acquisition of Hitch, the integration of AI into talent management, and their collaborative, high-quality culture. So, whether you're a talent development professional or simply curious about the future of AI in talent management, this episode is packed with insights that will challenge and inspire. Let's dive into the world of talent development with our phenomenal guest, Sarah Tilley.

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Welcome to the Talent Development Think Tank Podcast, the

number one podcast for learning and talent development professionals.

Now, here's your host, Andy Storch.

Welcome to the talent development. Think Tank podcast. I'm your host, Andy Storch, and

I'm excited that you're joining me for another episode to help you up your game

and improve your capabilities in the world of talent development. And

I got to tell you, over the last several weeks, I've been interviewing lots of

different people from different facets of talent development, lots of great interviews we've

published, and many more coming. And I often ask people about the trend that they're

following or excited about. And it has been consistently

AI across the board for, I'd say the last three to four months,

if not longer. I've been doing this for five years, and I have never

seen anything like this in the past where everybody is

talking about the exact same thing. Certainly there's been some commonalities, there's been some

trends that are mentioned by multiple people, but usually

it's a smattering of lots of different things. Over the course of

several weeks, if I go back and look at the history of this podcast, people

have talked about lots of different things back in 2018, 1921,

22, as I was recording this. But in

2023, it has been almost 100% people

saying AI is the trend that is captivating them, which means that if

they're thinking about it, you're thinking about it. Andy, really, everybody is trying to figure

this out. How do I take advantage of this in talent development?

What does it mean for me in my role? How can we best utilize

this new technology that's out there's so many different platforms and

things going on. So I have two different things for you. Number

one is that I am hosting a webinar

coming up on August 29 at 01:00

P.m. Eastern Time with my friend Josh Ermler

about AI in talent development and how learning and

development professionals are using AI to get five X more work done and

lowering their expenses, all while developing a healthier work life balance.

This is going to be really fantastic. It's really the first time I've ever done

a webinar before, and hopefully you have time to catch it by the time you

hear this or at least come sign up and get the replay because we're going

to cover some great stuff. You can find out all the information for that at

TDT us slash AI. That's

TDTT us slash AI. And

then the other resource that I'm giving you is this interview today, because my interview

today is all about leveraging AI in talent development

and talent acquisition. My guest today is Sarah Tilly, who is the

Senior Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition and Development for

ServiceNow, the digital workflow company with over 24,000

employees. In her role, Sarah is responsible for leading a

newly integrated talent organization which includes all external

recruitment and internal mobility, learning and development inclusive

of leadership development, talent and succession planning, and all efforts to

lead ServiceNow forward on a skills based talent strategy. Sarah's

team is responsible for holistically looking across the talent lifecycle for

employees to ensure delivery on what matters most to them, while also meeting the

talent needs of ServiceNow's critical business priorities. Prior to

ServiceNow, Sarah spent 16 years at the Walt Disney Company, where she led enterprise

talent strategies and efforts including centralized talent acquisition and

sourcing functions, corporate talent management and diversity and inclusion, and the opportunity

to lead several company wide functional talent and talent acquisition strategies.

She has done a lot of really interesting stuff, and throughout her career, Sarah

has earned a stellar reputation for creating new opportunities for top talent and

fostering an inclusive environment where teams can thrive.

As a working mom, she understands the importance of flexibility and tailored career

paths for all people. And Sarah has a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University

of Arkansas and a PHR professional in Human Resources

certification as well. And Sarah, since she came to

ServiceNow, has really dived deep into all things AI

and how ServiceNow especially is using AI

to help themselves. Andy other organizations with talent development and

talent acquisition. In this conversation we are covering

lots of topics around this, like how organizations can

start to think about the skills that are needed in the future, how to assess

what skills are needed and what skills already exist in an organization, how you can

leverage AI for a talent. You know,

fair to note that Sarah comes from ServiceNow, which is

a big player in this space. They acquired a company called Hitch, which is

involved in building talent marketplaces and the platforms that

you may need to build your own talent marketplace inside your company. So

take it with a grain of salt. It is coming from someone in an organization

that is heavily involved in this, but I thought it would be great to talk

to somebody who's right in it, seeing what's going on in her own

organization with many thousands of people, as well as working with other

organizations as well. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm going

to invite Sarah also to come speak in the talent development think tank community to

share more about what's going on, because just so many interesting avenues

to explore here. So keep an eye out for that if you're a member. If

you're not, come check us out. Our website is TDTT us

slash community. All right, without further ado, here is my interview with

Sarah Tilly from ServiceNow. All right. I'm joined now by

Sarah Tilley, who is senior vice president of global talent acquisition

and development for ServiceNow. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Andy. I'm thrilled to be here. I am really excited

to have you on because I know that not only are you in a very

senior role in talent acquisition and talent development, and

I always love interviewing and having conversations with people

who are in it and leading it and thinking about the strategy behind

it. Andy doing different things because that's what the show is all about, sharing the

strategies and the tactics that are working and even not working so that we

can help other people in talent development improve their skills and

abilities and find more success in their careers. But I'm especially

excited because I know that you have been heavily immersed in

AI and using that for developing, hiring the right

people, developing people, and identifying the skills of the future. And that's

something that's on just about everybody's mind, no matter what level they're

at. So I'm excited to dig into that. But before we do, I'd love to

just start with a little bit of background. How did you get into this field

of talent development and acquisition in the first place? Sure,

like, I think a lot of people, it wasn't the

career course that I mapped out for

myself. Found my way into talent acquisition, started

working on the agency side for a couple of years outside of

college, then moved to a large retained search firm, Hydra.

Andy struggles in their media and entertainment practice, then

in house for almost five years at Warner Bros. Entertainment. And then the

last well, not the last year and a half at ServiceNow,

but about 16 years at the Walt Disney Company,

where I oversaw a couple of enterprise talent

functions. So I think I've always had

1ft squarely planted in the talent acquisition side of the

house. When I was at Disney, there were some of the work that we did.

So, for example, centralizing the recruitment of

technologists across all of the business units. So if you think

about an engineer in our theme parks or

ESPN or Pixar, whatever, it was

basically realized that we needed to be a lot more

coordinated and organized. And as we got clear on how do

you compete for technologists from a hiring

perspective, we also realized, oh, okay, there's a lot that we need to do

from a talent development perspective to attract

technologists, to keep them, et cetera. So that sort of expanded my

role into some talent management leadership

responsibilities and then some other hats I wore on and

off in the HR function over the years. So made the

move to ServiceNow, as I mentioned, about a year and a half ago.

And it was really the experience with

the technology talent that made me kind of lift my

head up and think, all right, if I were to think about something

beyond Disney, which I absolutely loved my

experience there, and the people it was. Okay, I think I'm going to go

for a pure play technology organization and

got introduced to Jackie Kenny, who is the chief people officer. We know a lot

of the same people. And then the rest was history. Really? Yeah. Oh,

that's curious. You know, Disney has such a strong brand and

reputation, not just a consumer brand, but I think on the

working side of having a really strong culture that maybe some

people don't like, a lot of people love. And I'm sure there are many things

you learned from working in that experience. What are some things that you learned from

that very strong Disney working culture that you take

with you? Yeah, it's very strong.

A very strong culture in terms of, I

think the people dynamic of it.

Everyone really supports one another.

Andy, you're very much expected to

operate in a collaborative way. That's how the connected

business strategy comes to life. If you think about

intellectual property that sort of spans across

all of the different business units, trying to think of a recent one, and

Frozen keeps popping in my head, which is not super recent,

but it's a

film, television, consumer product, theme park

experiences, et cetera. So you have to really be connected to create the

franchises across all. So it's very collaborative, it's a very

optimistic culture, very polite. I think

I already mentioned the word supportive. And some of the things that drew me to

ServiceNow from a cultural perspective, what I definitely learned at

Disney is there's a very high bar for quality. So

everything that you do and it's something that you learn pretty quickly. In fact,

my first year, I thought, I don't know if I'm going to make it

because there's a lot of

attention to every detail, because the

creative process sort of bleeds into everything,

where you really have to have a high bar. And so

I would say that's definitely what I learned. Right? Yeah, it makes sense. I've heard

that about the culture, Andy, the standard of

quality and things like that, which comes with pros and cons. I'm curious

after moving to ServiceNow, if I understand correctly, it looks like

you started in running talent acquisition, but then picked up talent

development. I work with a lot of different organizations, and

often those two are connected but run by different people.

How did that come about, that you ended up overseeing both. Yeah, so I

definitely didn't expect, when I joined, to be

leading both, but there were some changes that happened in the organization,

and Jackie and I started talking about what we felt

were the benefits. Andy really just pressing ourselves,

like, does this make sense? Do we lose focus or

do we gain more by having an integrated organization?

And we really ruminated on that for a little while and realized, okay,

now we think we have a real opportunity, especially with

Skills. I mean, skills was kind of the motivating factor, too, as

we think about it, a skills intelligence strategy to say, all right,

what is the connected thread from

everything from branding to executive

development. Really?

Andy, we said, to your point, I think there was a lot of

collaboration that was happening, but we felt like we could drive

it a little bit further and a little bit faster with an integrated organization.

And I've realized it is a bit of a growing trend and

talking to some really talented colleagues in the industry. But I think a

lot of people are still trying to figure out how is it truly integrated

and not just on paper. And I do think the skills piece of

it is the key. Yeah, it's all part of the employee

lifecycle, right? You've got the acquisition, bringing people in, and then we want to keep

them not only engaged, but keep developing them so they feel like they're growing in

their careers and they stay engaged and with the organization longer. So

it's obviously all connected. You mentioned skills. This is something that's coming

up more and more often. Skills mapping, skills development,

identifying skills of the future. Another topic that has been coming

up almost every week when I run interviews is

AI, of course, right, in generative AI. And I know it's something that you and

your team has been leaning into and using a lot. So I'm curious,

how has AI impacted this and how do you think about

skills development in the workforce? So I think

it's interesting because this is

the topic of conversation. Right. I attended, iforcp

I read the white papers, all the

conferences, all the conversations that are happening. And at

first I was a little intimidated thinking some of these

organizations seem like they're pretty far along on their

journey. And then as you look under the hood a little

bit more, they conceptually know where they want

to go. Some organizations, I would say some just see it as kind of an

abstract idea that's elusive and they can't really figure out how to get there.

Yeah, we'll let others figure this out first or something. Yeah. I think

what has become abundantly clear is that you can't

do it without the underlying technology. I mean, that seems like a no

brainer, but I think a lot of people were starting from a very manual process

in terms of, okay, how do we actually

get to a set of skills as a baseline? Right? And I

think you've got to have a skills intelligence system

that helps predict, identify, and

ultimately tie to how you deliver the talent.

And so I think you've got to have a skills intelligence system that's actually powered

by AI and ML

and then that helps bring everything together and connect the various

systems and teams. So I think

if I'm going to get a little technical here, I guess I'm going to try

to keep it simple. And by no means am I the

expert. I think this idea of

skills intelligence strategy and how do you take it from

abstract into reality? First and

foremost, I think organizations, some organizations have realized,

all right, we actually do have a lot of information on the

skills of our employees, like a lot more than we

realized. And it sits in so many different places. But I'll take an

obvious example. So if you think about a job

description that correlates with someone in

role, so you can pretty much determine what are the

baseline skills that this person has because they're in this role.

And then using technology to

actually pull and aggregate to create a skills

architecture. And so I think it's like one using

AI to pull from all the existing places where, you know, you

have some information on skills. Again, there's external

resources and databases too that

hold information around skills. But at the end of the day,

what you're trying to do is break down every single job

description into a set of skills that ultimately rolls

up into the skills architecture and then break down

every individual into a set of skills. Like how do you

help them some of it has to come from them.

How do you help them break down their experience, their

capabilities into a set of skills? And then you use

AI to really ensure that you're doing all the things that you want

to do for them, for their leaders, and

ultimately for the organization. Yeah. And because you're

talking about new skills that are being identified and needed

in the future as things continue to change, it's not just what

skills already exist in the organization, right, but what potential do you have,

what are people interested in? You really need to find out from the people

that work in your organization. So you've got to find a way to create

some type of talent marketplace or platform where people can

identify and look for those roles or those

upskilling or development opportunities. Right. Do you think about how do we take the people

that we have and help them get to where they want to go in roles

that will also provide more value to our organization? Yeah,

100%. So there's some of the back end work that is

required that I was referencing and then

ultimately you're using that to feed into or we are right,

and we do have the very fortunate benefit of

having the ServiceNow platform. And

we acquired a company called a Hitch last year which

had already figured a lot of this, how to leverage

AI to match skills to roles, to

trainings, to opportunities, so that you can more

effectively and intentionally develop the talent, the

skills that they want right. For today and the skills that the organization

needs for the future. So we reengineered

the Hitch technology into our platform. So I

think that is part of the reason that we are so far in front of

this and ahead of the game is because we have that advantage. But

ultimately all of that, our platform feeds into

apps that do what you're talking about. So they create a connected

experience for employees to say, all right, because here's the

skills that we have. Right, and so to your point, it's matching to existing needs

if I'm our CTO and I

say we need to strengthen our cybersecurity, I'm making this up, right? We need to

strengthen our cybersecurity skills, then today you're limited to those people

that have that title, right? And this is going to open

up a whole world of people that have some skills

that wouldn't be reflected in their title. So you can use it to help

meet the business needs of today. But to your point, then you

can see, all right, ultimately

organizations will have the inventory, a full

picture, what skills exist across the organization,

and then where the gaps are. And then in turn, you can also use

the skills intelligence for people's aspirations. So

here's what I have today, here's what I want. Oh,

boom. AI serves up well, then

here's how you can develop those things, whether it be content from a training

perspective or programs or serving up matching

mentors, et cetera. So I think it's meeting

the needs of today but also tomorrow. And that's really

how we think about it. And of course, naturally, because and I'm not trying to

shamelessly plug service now, but we can't talk about it

without talking about our platform because it's underpinning everything we're

doing. But then we're also selling it to customers. So we think about it, of

course, from an employee perspective and also

from a manager hands on manager perspective.

And then at the C suite level, organizations.

So how are you quantifying within

those three areas and what are the priorities? Because I think

there's a lot of emphasis on the employee experience,

naturally. So tremendous benefits that are being less talked

about for leaders and C suite

executives. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. CEOs even,

right. It's every level, but especially at the top. And

I didn't realize I should have done more homework. That ServiceNow

had acquired hitch. We had the hitch. Founder

Kelly Steven Waste. Oh, I know Kelly well. Podcast quite a

while back. I looked it up, episode 164 that was published

in June of 2020. So just over three years ago,

she was on here and has obviously done some remarkable work there in

developing that platform. Andy, of course, we've been talking with other people about

different platforms and companies that are looking to develop their talent

marketplaces. Talent mobility being a hot topic. Getting back to

skills for leaders and talent development

professionals, listening and thinking about this, what's the best way for them to

go about maybe don't have all the technology yet, but how can leaders assess

the level of skills and what's needed for the

future? That's a good question.

We're customer zero for ourselves on some of this stuff,

too. But I think it really is about

starting to get your arms around

what intel you have already. Because I

think about some of the conversations that I've been in over the

years, and I think a lot of organizations sort of default

to self reporting, right, for individuals

from a skills perspective, which I think is a

component in it. But I think it's again starting

to think about how do we stockpile what we

already know about all of our

employees. I know you said without the technology,

but I think if without the technology, it's going to

be years and years of a very manual

process. So of course I think ours is the best.

But whatever the approach, I don't think you could do it

without a digital platform to help sort of pull,

aggregate, analyze. But I think it starts with getting your

arms around all of the information, just really

thinking creatively about all the places where you already have

skills, intel. You need some form of data analytics, basically like take, let's

take all the data we have, whatever technology or platform you're using, find

somebody in your organization who has some skills around analytics so that we can

look at this data and see, okay, what skills are becoming more valuable?

What are people talking about, what are leaders asking for? What's more common

in the roles that we're posting? Are there ways that we can leverage the skills

and abilities and experience we already have in this organization before we start looking to

hire from outside? Yes, that's right. So I'm

curious, I know you work obviously there directly

running talent acquisition, talent development there in HR, but also

talk with people from other organizations. How are the best HR

leaders using AI powered skills

intelligence or AI tools in general to be more effective in

what they're doing? Well, I think what we've obviously

seen is that where I see

the most obviously is organizations that

are using our platform. But I will

say it really is about, okay, there's the

skills piece of it, right? But even if you were to do something and

this is where I think organizations I was just having a conversation this

week, organizations

recognizing that there has to be,

even if it's a portal, right, something way more simple for

people, to employees to access all that's

available to them. So I think one is, even

without the skills intelligence piece of it, how are

you getting a more coordinated sort of

approach to everything that's available to

employees, to leaders? And I think there's some creative things

that some organizations are doing in pockets to use AI

for that. I had another thought too on that and

I forgot it. I think

what I'm seeing too is people are getting a lot

smarter about how to build

the business case for it. So I think,

again, I can't give a lot of examples of like, all right, this is

where it's really cutting edge outside, of

course, the work that we're a part of. But I

do see more and more people getting smarter about

how to articulate the business case

for gen AI, for a skills intelligence

strategy. And I think it is

A, acknowledging that HR

is moving away from being transactional,

like difficult to measure and

really understanding. Okay, we've got the skills

shortage. The reality is we have that globally

and helping the most senior business leaders in the

organization understand, hey, the business strategy is the

talent strategy, and the talent strategy is the business strategy. And without

this, we're not going to get very far on our business

strategy. So I'd say that's kind of the thing that

I'm impressed by in my conversations with

organizations. Yeah. And I think it's going to be interesting because

we're talking about leveraging AI in talent mobility

and hiring and talent development. And I want to get to talent acquisition in a

moment. But I'm also thinking that with AI being

such a hot topic, every organization is scrambling to figure out, okay, how do we

leverage AI better? Not just in talent development, but in everything that we do.

And we need more workers who are skilled and

knowledgeable on how to use these tools right. And how to leverage these tools so

we can grow our organization. And that's becoming a huge need. And

then we need to figure out, okay, how do we identify the people that either

have the skills, which they're probably not enough of right now,

or can develop those skills pretty quickly to be able to help

the organization leverage AI more. Yeah,

that's a great point too, because interestingly,

as we're standing up this skills intelligence strategy,

one of the questions that we're asking ourselves is what are the baseline

skills that we think most every employee in the

organization needs to have? Right.

Some of them can kind of skills can

span across attributes, capabilities.

It's interchangeable to a certain degree if you're talking about

technical skills. Yes. How do we equip

employees and leaders with more from a gen AI perspective, but

it's also a mindset too. So it's like if you're

sitting in finance, right. What is the

fundamental knowledge you need to have, even no matter what

role you're in from a gen AI perspective? So we've said, okay, one of the

core skills that we know we want to equip everyone with

is exactly to your point on this topic of gen

AI and then to what degree where,

right? So where do you go deeper, et cetera. But I do think there

has to be for us and for a lot of

organizations, a really coordinated effort to make sure

everyone has the fundamental skills on the

topic or else it's going to get stuck in places in

the organization. So we are definitely spending a lot

of time on, okay, yeah, we've got the engine going now, right? What do we

want to feed into the engine? Ironically, the first thing is gen

AI, right. How do we get the right people there and find the

people within our organization? And then obviously, if you're

growing or you don't necessarily have the skills in your organization, then

you've got to go and hire from outside so let's talk about talent acquisition for

a moment. I know this podcast is mostly about talent development, but there are a

lot of our listeners who are involved in talent acquisition in some way or some

that manage both like you do, especially in smaller organizations. So

how can skills intelligence enable recruiters to

match candidates with job requirements more effectively,

leading to making better hires? Essentially, I mean, I would

imagine everyone sees the opportunity from an objectivity

perspective, that's one, two

is it opens up the pool. You sort of touched on this earlier.

We were talking about not just looking for

a line for line match to a job description

against someone's resume, which I think is what we've been

trying to do in the Ta function for many years and

through a somewhat subjective lens, right? Because this is human beings

that are trying to do that. So I think know

a lot of organizations are pretty early on. Some are worried

about kind of the compliance and ethics

issues of it, which we all should be. But I think

there's just some really basic things too that we can

do to ensure that we're getting some of the manual labor

out of everything from the actual initial creation

of a job description to ensuring

that actually what is listed as a

requirement can truly be vetted as a

requirement. And that we are looking at

an individual relative to a set of skills as opposed

to a collective body of experience that they have.

And so ultimately, I think it's going to

remove a lot of the biases in the process and

it's going to open up a big pool of talent. So, for example,

we have an initiative called Rise Up, which is basically

there's a number of different components to Rise Up, but one of

the things that we're looking to do within Rise Up

is take individuals from

less traditional paths

and get them on a career path to be a

technologist, which they may not have access to. And

so to me, it's a really fascinating thing to think that

corporations or even gen AI can help to address some of these

social issues that get in the way of people having access to

opportunities. Because ultimately, if you say, okay, here's someone who

didn't have a traditional four year degree, right, didn't go to a school

that we all recognize and know, but they did

gain a set of skills through alternative methods. For

us. It's the Rise Up program. And historically it's been really

hard for leaders to then figure out, well, how do I translate

this? And it feels risky, right? Because I can't really

validate whether or not they've got the

basics to do this job well. So it's taking the risk out of it

for leaders and therefore opening up new pools of talent,

which I think even before the market turn last year,

organizations, I should say even after the market

turn last year. Organizations still recognize there's not going to be

enough skilled individuals on the

planet to meet the needs of corporations if we don't figure

out a way to get more people

into the workforce. Right. There's so much in the news

about AI taking jobs, and yet all these new jobs are

being created all the time, and we don't have even enough skills and

experience or people to fill a lot of the jobs that are going to be

needed, especially if things start ramping back up in the economy.

I always chuckle a little when I hear about some of the fear

around that because I feel like since the beginning of

time, there has been

new skills that are needed to do whatever

fill in the blank is required. So whether it

be from way back in the agriculture,

at every point there's new

skills and of course, in recent decades, new

technology that's introduced that makes

some other skills outdated. And so it's not a

new sort of concept that there's this coming into the

marketplace and that people are going to need to

people organizations are going to need to reskill upskill.

I do think the irony is that Geni is going to help

organizations do that a lot more effectively. So it's like, okay,

before it would be like, well, now here's this scheme that has a

set of outdated skills and we don't know what to

do. Right? Well, it's like you're going to be ahead of that

because you're going to see the trends using the analytics that you

referenced and using AI to say, okay, here's what we've

got, here's what we need, here's where we got to go.

And so I actually think it can be used for good

in so many ways. Oh, totally. And you brought up

skills. I think that we are sort of entering a new

era where the skills, because it can be more proven and identified,

like you said, by AI, become more valuable. And

we might be sort of at the end of a 50 to 70 year era

where getting a college degree was sort of table stakes to get any type

of professional role. People

can debate the value of college degrees and what that's going to look like in

the future. I'm sure they'll be around for a long time. But the

fact is there's alternatives now. And I think more organizations

are coming and saying like, oh, it'd be great if you had a college degree,

but if you have these skills that's actually more valuable to us because

at the end of the day, the degree doesn't really matter. It's what skills do

you bring to the table that can help us, that can provide more value to

the business? 100%. I remember

we were talking a little bit about this. I'm a razorback.

I graduated from the University of Arkansas wupe Suey

with a degree in psychology. And I knew pretty quickly after

I graduated or actually while I was still in school, I was like, I don't

know that this is the path that I'm going to take. Not quite sure what

path I'm going to take, but I remember so many people telling me, you've got

to complete the degree, even if the major is

not relevant to the direction you're taking. Because it's one of the few

things that employers can use to gauge whether or not you have the ability

to complete something like significant like this. And I was like, oh,

that's the indicator that companies are using. But it

was quite some time ago.

But it's true, I think that was like without

experience, you're naturally going to default to other

indicators that help you understand whether or not someone has the

skills and capabilities. And that's all going to change now. Again,

it's subjectivity in the process. Yeah,

I know we talked about I went to a rival, big state university

and when I graduated, I don't know if I really had any skills other than

being able to party five, six days a week. Well, I mean,

I may have obtained those skills as well. Social

skills are important. We're learning, right. More and more. Josh Burson calls them

power skills, right. Like it's our people skills that are going to actually be the

differentiator in the future. But getting back to hiring

and skills and you talked about in the past

identifying people who went to the name brand universities that we know and

love. Obviously there are lots of people who have not had access or the

ability or maybe the knowledge to get into some of those schools or to go

to college. And yet they're now able to gain

skills in different ways. So you say that AI also has the

power to kind of level the playing field. Right. Andy eliminate some of

the bias that's out there and increase diversity. Right? I

mean, again, I'm a

big de andy advocate. I had the

ability and what's the word, the honor

really to play a role at Disney for a number of years,

helping to lead the corporate de I function. And you know,

it was apparent to me pretty early on

that again, sort of if corporations aren't

helping to solve some of these social

issues that get in the way, we're not going to make progress.

We're just not as a society, as a global

community, right. We've made a ton of progress. There's still a lot of biases

out there. Right. And if we can use technology to

eliminate those and really level playing, that's kind of the goal in the end,

right. We want the best people and the best jobs. We want equal opportunities, right?

That's what the E is all about. And create more diversity at all levels. So

it sounds like there's tons of potential there for this. Yeah,

data is the key. Let's just get back into

development for a moment here. One of the goals I think for a lot of

people in talent development is creating a better employee experience, improving

productivity and engagement, and helping people grow in their

careers so that they are engaged and want to stay around a lot longer.

And AI is certainly the topic

that is being brought up over and over again with people wondering, okay, how can

I leverage this better? Can AI help us improve our

productivity and engagement inside organizations as well?

100%. This kind of goes back to what we were talking about in terms

of the different prongs. Right? So

employees, of course, we've talked about the employee experience. They can track their skills,

they can express their aspirations, they can build personalized growth

plans. And then AI again helps

recommend the relevant trainings, mentors, mobility opportunities

based on the skills they have andy what they need. But

organizations, I think, can build a much more data

driven talent management strategy that ensures

that the investments we're making from a human resources

perspective are actually helping us

to have employees that now can

demonstrate they have the skills that we need and the greatest impact

on the business and closed skill gaps. But I think,

again, managers with

AI, you can really do a lot more in terms of optimizing your

team performance, your team engagement, your team

output. Again, we kind of touched on ta everything from hiring for

relevant skills, but then also

it enables you to see again, what

do I have? What do I need? And you can also

actually measure manager sort of

effectiveness if you will too. Right. Are managers, you've got

these tools that help support what we call quarterly

growth conversations? Are they happening? Right. Which managers are

actually spending the time doing the things that

we know make an impact on an employee experience

and ultimately an employee productivity because

the two go hand in hand. So I think it is

definitely managers

and ultimately organizations.

My team is close to 400 globally, right?

So ultimately I can see

using AI, like the aggregate sort of output of the

manager behavior, the sentiment of

employees and all the correlating sort of factors

there. Yeah, that's interesting. The last thing I want to ask about is this idea

of career development. We talked a little bit about talent mobility and putting people in

the right positions. Career development is something that I think a lot

about and work with organizations on, especially the mindset side of teaching

employees to own their careers. I know that the number one thing that people want

is to know how can I grow in my career here? Right? How am I

going to grow if I work here, if I stay here?

How are you using AI or how can people use AI

to guide employees andy managers through career plans,

development goals? You mentioned kind of measuring, are they having more of those career

conversations? But we want to make sure that people are putting some type of goals

or plans together and taking advantage of the resources that

are available so they are able to continue to grow and develop in their careers.

Yeah, I think we've touched

on the AI in terms of underpinning all of

that. To your point, it's what,

today or yesterday, I should say, for

us, you would have a campaign, right?

So let's say we're going to push out the latest manager

excellence training, right, to everyone that fits this

persona. And so it's a very kind

of manual effort to figure that out. Whereas

tomorrow, with an AI sort of powered, it's all

automated, really. So it's like you've

captured what your aspirations are. So if the

goal is to be moved laterally or into a different area

or to move up, AI is serving all of that

up. Now, I do think that there's an important

overlay to all of that, which is something that we spend a lot of

time on, because you can build it, right. But you still have to

bring people to it and they still have to be inspired by it.

And so I do think that it requires kind of a

consumer grade marketing strategy on top of

it all, to your point, to create awareness, but it is going to be a

lot more automated. So if, Andy, you

decide you want to be the SVP of Talent Acquisition and

Development ServiceNow and

you capture that as your Aspiration, then it's a lot more automated

in terms of how it's served up to you. Yeah. 100%. I

can see that as we continue to develop more of these

tools, there's so many more things available. I know it can seem

overwhelming to people. Sometimes they're like, oh, where do I start?

But you got to start somewhere. Start with the data you have, start with the

objectives, the goal, the problem you're trying to figure out. Ask your colleagues, talk

to friends, listen to this follow up, look for other guides and

resources. Our community, we're talking about this all the time in the talent

development think tank community. What tools can we use to

better development, provide development opportunities to our people,

to develop our managers, to help people continue to grow

so that they're moving into the roles, Andy, that we need, developing the

skills we need to be more successful in the future of work? 100%.

Well, Sarah, this has been really great. I appreciate you coming on. I have probably

20 more questions, things we could talk about, especially with related to

AI and talent mobility and the work that you're doing there at ServiceNow.

But this has been a great start and I really appreciate you coming on and

I look forward to talking more soon. Thank you for having me, Andy, truly.

And we're deep in this journey right now. We're learning,

we're capturing sort of our learnings and our journey. So

if you want to reconnect in the coming months, we could share more

about where we are because it's coming to life in real time.

Yeah, for sure. Well, we've got our Bonus Q A, and I'd love to have

you come speak in our community as well and get a discussion going about how

we can better leverage these tools. So we'll talk more about that soon.

Sounds good. Thank you, Andy. All right, take care.

All right, that will do it for my interview with Sarah Tilly from ServiceNow. I

hope you got value from that interview from that conversation. We certainly

covered a lot of ground there with regards to using AI

in talent development. And I want to remind you that in addition

to all the great content you got here, I'm also hosting a

webinar with my friend Josh Urmler about AI in talent development.

And it is coming up next week on August

29 at 01:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you want to register for

that for a link in the show notes or go to TDT

Usai. That's TDTT

usai. I'm also going to be inviting Sarah to join us in

the talent Development Think tank community to speak about using AI in talent development.

Josh will also be doing a follow up session in the community about

using AI in talent development, so stay tuned for those. If you want to find

out more information about the community that's at TDT us slash community.

If you have any questions, reach out to me. I hope to talk to you

soon and stay tuned because next episode, it is my Bonus Q Andy A with