Chelle Johnson Podcast Transcript
Chelle Johnson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Chelle Johnson. Chelle Johnson is a first-generation college graduate who grew up with limiting beliefs, fear, and dysfunction. Through faith, resilience, grit, and determination, she achieved executive leadership roles in talent acquisition and human resources at Fortune 50 companies including Comcast.
Lockheed Martin, Quest Diagnostics, and Honeywell. She has lived and worked in Asia and Latin America, acquired her MBA, and speaks Spanish and English. She now helps small and medium sized businesses through fractional talent strategies and retained recruitment. She is also an executive career coach that guides high achievers and diverse allies to discover and amplify their strengths and purpose and realize abundance in their careers and lives.
Shelley founded the nonprofit Colorado Career Connectors in March 2021 and has helped over 1,700 job seekers and professionals with career development content and presentations.
Well, good afternoon, Chelle. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:09] Chelle Johnson: Thank you, Brian. I’m so pleased to be here.
[00:01:11] Brian Thomas: Awesome. Chelle, this is so cool. I know you’re in the mountain time zone, but sometimes. That’s a lot easier than traversing to, somewhere in Eastern Europe or India, which I’ve done several of those, but I appreciate you making the time today and thank you again, Chelle.
[00:01:26] Chelle Johnson: My pleasure. Can’t wait to get started.
[00:01:29] Brian Thomas: Let’s just jump in then. Chelle, you’ve got quite the career in talent management. You’re a senior executive, founder of Colorado Career Connectors, and now the founder and CEO of Best You Talent Advisors. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:45] Chelle Johnson: Well, I am inspired by passion, following your passion, helping out communities and really aligning people to their true heart and soul inspiration. And my growth has been attributed to asking a lot of questions, putting myself and taking risk in different situations. And I actually love doing presentations.
So, speaking and interviewing when it was uncomfortable, doing interest interviews, and being really curious. Curiosity is actually one of the top five soft skills that hiring leaders now look for. And that curiosity to explore different things so that. You can be a problem solver to bring solutions to issues that, people have, I think, those soft skill attributes, and then just really having that entrepreneurial mindset of, I would rather be the owner of my time and my ability to prosper and align those communities. Colorado Career Connectors is a nonprofit and we have helped over 3,500 people in the past two years by holding about 48 virtual events. And so that’s how I help my community and get out there and speaking. Best You Talent Advisors does executive career coaching and executive recruitment.
So, I get to be on both sides of the table and help people to reach their job goals. But then also on the recruitment side, I get to help small to medium sized businesses hire the best talent.
[00:03:30] Brian Thomas: Thank you. And gosh, that’s a lot of great work you’re doing to connect that many people with Colorado Career Connectors. Love to hear that story of you stretching and pushing yourself getting out of your comfort zone to make things happen. And that’s awesome. But on top of that, you’re helping others, which we love to hear those stories on this podcast. Chelle let’s switch gears then let’s talk about the talent landscape today.
It’s dramatically changed over the past three years, as you know, obtaining and retaining talent is top of mind. Could you tell Uh, what top companies and HR consultants are looking for in these hard to fill positions and retention strategies?
[00:04:08] Chelle Johnson: Sure. So, we could have a very long conversation about this, but let me try to keep it very simple.
I talked about soft skill sets. Companies want to hire others with the right attitude that then they can teach the technical skills. Sometimes in business, when you hire for technical skills and the soft skills or the right personality isn’t aligned, it creates huge employee morale issues, which then creates retention issues.
So, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this, Brian, but there’s an equation out there that is EX plus CX equals TX. Let me define that. So, awesome engagements, employee engagement and employee experience. Plus, amazing customer experience equates to that total experience where employees want to come and work for your business.
Potential employees want to work for your business. So that’s part of the value proposition of the acquisition of employees. The retention piece is when you are listening to your employees, you are growing and advancing them. You’re focusing on their mental health. You’re focusing on allowing them to be their authentic selves through belonging and inclusivity.
Those two things, again, employee experience and client experience. What the external customer sees and how they focus on leveraging the business equates to total experience. So, HR consultants or companies that are out there looking to acquire or retain really need to work with the current employee base.
What makes the company the best? How are the executive or C-Suite members? walking the talk and not giving lip service to important topics. How is the growth of the business? All of these different characteristics really help to build the brand for the business from both an employer standpoint and an employee standpoint.
[00:06:20] Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate you breaking that down. You want to call an equation formula or whatnot. I had not heard that. So, I appreciate that. And that’s going to be a great jam that we can extract out of the podcast this evening. Chelle, we are a technology platform, podcast, et cetera, right?
I’m a techie. We ask this of all of our guests. If you’re leveraging any of that new and emerging technologies in your business, you know, we hear about all the time. If you’re not, that’s fine. Have you maybe found a cool tool or app you might share with us today?
[00:06:49] Chelle Johnson: Well, everyone’s jumping on the AI band.
I am leveraging ChatGPT. For giving me some information for social media posts, or even looking at job seekers can use it to look up jobs that are currently out there. So, artificial intelligence is really, I could do a whole hour on just AI and where we’re going with it and the human connectedness to it and what it does to cognitive.
Psychology so I guess I’m kind of a nerd too in this space. I use Asana for project management. That’s. Obviously been out there a long time. My team uses different CRM systems. And for your listeners, I think. Really engaging in. As much automation as you can, whether it’s be for lead generation, client outreach that for them not to forget that, that human interaction is probably the most important part of any type of engagement, whether it goes back to employee engagement, like we talked about before, client engagement, which people want to know people not just use the latest and greatest technology.
[00:08:01] Brian Thomas: Thank you. And we’ve talked about that a ton here on the podcast about the tech is great. It augments a process or what the humans are doing in their particular processes. But you’re absolutely right. At the end of the day, it’s that human touch human relationship is got to be maintained and you leveraging the technology could put that time back in our hands so we can focus on the human relation piece of it. So, I appreciate your insights.
Chelle, last question of the evening, can you share something from your career experience that would be helpful for those listening, looking to grow their career in either talent management or entrepreneurship?
[00:08:38] Chelle Johnson: I’ll start with the entrepreneurship arena. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.
Being in corporate is totally different value proposition and focus. Being in entrepreneurship, you have to take risk. You have to get faith over fear, and I’m not talking about just the religious faith, although that’s nice. I’m talking about the faith in others, the faith in your network, the faith in your relationships, the understanding of your business acumen, because as an entrepreneur, you really are wearing so many multiple hats.
So being ready for that and learning how to go And how have agility in your life and not such linearity and methodical structure is what I have found at least in entrepreneurialism. And as far as talent management, advocate for yourself. No one else is going to advocate for your career like you do.
And that means networking when you don’t need to. That means building your community of peers and colleagues and friends and family, and nurturing long term relationships, that is going to be the most useful part, whether you are working in an employer, you’re an entrepreneur, you are freelancing, you’re part of the gig economy, really leveraging your network, nurturing relationships, and knowing your story of what you provide.
That’s what’s going to get you ahead.
[00:10:10] Brian Thomas: Thank you so much. I appreciate you breaking that down again. We’ve extracted some amazing gems out of the podcast this evening, Chelle. Chelle, I want to let you know, it was absolutely a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:10:26] Chelle Johnson: Thank you, Brian. Have a great night.
[00:10:28] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Chelle Johnson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
