Talent Management Strategies Across Two Local Companies: An Interview of Human Resources Professionals at Market Street Trust Company and Corning Incorporated
Alexis Lake MGT 5005 Human Resource Management and Development November 30, 2016
Talent management covers a broad range of responsibilities for the human resources function including recruiting, retaining, and developing employees. Given the competitive job market, talent management programs and initiatives from human resource (HR) managers are becoming not only commonplace, but essential in today’s business world. According to the Harvard Business Review, “practically every company these days has some form of program designed to nurture its rising stars. With good reason—these high-achieving individuals can have an enormous impact on business results” (Martin & Schmidt, 2010). Talent management programs are also very important to me as a young professional. My career is in transition from Corning Incorporated, to Elmira College, to possibly a small to mid-sized company in the near future. Understanding how I as a potential candidate or employee could be recruited, managed, and developed has a great deal of influence on the next step in my career. In order to better understand the overall talent management process and different company approaches I interviewed human resource professionals at two very different companies: Market Street Trust Company and Corning Incorporated. Before diving into the specifics of each company’s strategic approach to talent management, it is important to compare and contrast the human resources structure and responsibilities at each company. Laurel Eschbach, a Human Resources Generalist at Market Street Trust Company, is the sole human resources employee and leadership figure at the company. Her role is fairly new and she has served in it for two and a half years. Market Street Trust Company, a wealth management firm, currently has 39 employees between office locations in Corning, New York and New York City. The company is looking to expand that base to 50 employees over the next two years. Almost all the employees at Market Street Trust Company
are salaried, with a few exceptions for administrative assistants and clerks. In contrast, Tracy Brozovic, Division Human Resources Manager in Corning Incorporated’s Environmental Technologies division, is responsible for approximately 1, 600 employees from the company’s 35,000 total employee base. This division, which produces ceramic substrates and filters for catalytic converters, has various office and plant locations in Corning, New York, Blacksburg, Virginia as well as international locations in Germany, China, Japan, and Africa. Tracy, who has been with Corning for almost 10 years, manages a team of four HR specialists at each domestic site where there are salaried and hourly, as well as union and non-union employees. While these two companies and HR professionals appear to be in stark contrast to one another, their overall approaches and strategies toward talent management are very similar - starting with recruitment. As mentioned, Market Street Trust Company is looking to expand its employee base. For Laurel, this recruitment process begins by understanding the strategic goals of the company, conducting multiple job analysis processes, writing job descriptions and engaging with thirdparty recruiters. Laurel stressed that having a clear, open and trusting relationship with recruiters is very important to her company’s overall talent planning initiatives. Market Street Trust Company is focused on obtaining experienced, high-skilled, financial investment experts to primarily fill roles in the the New York City location, where there is a large and competitive talent base. Being a one-person department, Laurel does not have the time needed to sort through thousands of online applications or have a full working knowledge of competitive wages, benefits, or other compensation options available to the desired talent in New York City. By using experienced recruiters in New York City, who understand the investment and financial industry, Laurel’s recruitment efforts can be faster, more strategic and targeted to the company’s
needs. Laurel expressed that she is in daily conversations and contact with her recruiters to review resumes, create offer letters or packages, and schedule candidate interviews. These relationships and dialogues with the recruiting company ensure that top talent is identified and brought in for interviews at a timely fashion. At Corning Incorporated, Tracy also leans heavily on third-party recruiters to help fill the division’s biggest talent gap, which is a highly skilled engineer with about three to five years of experience. These engineers are hired to fill technical supervisory and management roles in the plant locations. For Tracy, these are especially challenging positions to fill because the this talent pool is in high demand across not only the company, but across the country. New talent is typically recruited externally rather the internal company transfers or promotions. This is simply because other division's across Corning Incorporated are also facing this talent gap and are very reluctant to “lose� experienced engineers to another division. Another a recruitment obstacle for Tracy is that while Corning Incorporated has a strong corporate reputation, the mostly rural area of Corning, New York can be a deterring factor for many candidates. The area, while beautiful, is challenging for attracting this young, mobile, fast paced professional base. Tracy and her team have found that if a potential employee has ties to the area, they are more likely to stay at the company versus a candidate who is from a big city or across the country. This helps guide the recruiters to target engineering talent from Mansfield University or Alfred University, versus Stanford University or University of California at Berkley. Similar to Laurel, Tracy relies on a close relationship with her external recruitment team and actually includes key members of the recruitment team in discussions with hiring mangers in the early stages of job analysis, and drafting job descriptions. This level of involvement with an external vendor was initially
surprising to me, but Tracy stressed that this ensures the field recruiters have a better, clearer understanding of the needs and expectations of the division. Once the candidates are identified, the interviews begin, which is a process that both Laurel and Tracy recently evolved and drastically improved. When Laurel first joined Market Street Trust Company, there was not a clear structure or organization for the interview process. Multiple managers and team members lead the interviews and asked very similar, generic questions. Candidates were brought in for a few hours to a fullwork day. Laurel began to address this problem immediately after joining the company. However, she did not receive full support from the management team to change the interview process until three employees, who were largely viewed as top talent, each resigned over an 18month span. This relatively large turnover at the small company was unfortunately the motivation the management team needed to endorse and support Laurel’s recommendations to evolve the interview process. Today, interviewing at Market Street Trust Company is much more efficient. Candidates are interviewed on four topic categories based on the company’s strategic goals. Each topic area takes 30 minutes and includes one or two people conducting the interview with a specific set of pre-determined situational and behavioral questions. At the end of candidates’ visit, the larger interview team comes together to discuss their findings and make a decision. Very similar to Laurel, when Tracy joined the Environmental Technologies division from another Corning division, she found that the interview process was very repetitive and time consuming. Interviews were also taking full-work days just for one or two candidates. Sadly and strikingly similar to Laurel’s situation, Tracy did not receive full support to change the interview
process until the managers experienced some turnover and employee performance issues. Based on Tracy’s guidance, now the interview process includes a 30-minute panel interview with set situational questions and a 30-minute presentation by the candidate. The interview concludes with 30-minutes for the candidate to ask questions or for the panel to ask additional behavioral, or as Tracy described them, probe or probing questions. While Laurel and Tracy both faced challenges and initial pushback, the feedback from the hiring managers is overwhelmingly positive. Managers and supervisors feel the interviews are more effective, clearly structured, less repetitive, and more time sensitive for their busy schedules. Tracy mentioned that the old process only allowed the division to interview 46 candidates in three months, now they can do four interviews in a day and complete the process in less than two weeks. This is a significant improvement. As a young professional, I appreciate Laurel and Tracy’s efforts to streamline the interview process to ensure the time is valuable and spent on the key responsibilities of the position. This ensures a clearer understanding of the position and how to base your career decision. Both Laurel and Tracy highlighted that the interview process improvements ensure that their companies swiftly extend offers to competitive, top talent and transition those candidates into employees much faster as well. At Market Street Trust Company, Laurel has taken great strides to develop and institute transition plans for every new employee and their hiring manager. This takes a great of hands-on time, but Laurel stressed that it is extremely valuable to ensuring that new employees become familiar with their roles and the company culture. Managers are also trained to gradually increase the amount of tasks given to the new employee over their first five to six weeks as to not overwhelm them too fast. By having clear and set job descriptions, Laurel can aid each manager
in establishing and measuring success in training plans for the competencies needed in each role. In terms of feedback and development, all employees discuss and review their performance with their managers on a quarterly basis. Managers and employees are given specific evaluation criteria, performance scorecards and templates for career planning which all help guide these quarterly discussions. On an annual basis, employees are tasked with requesting feedback on their performance from colleagues in a 360-degree review. The employee and the manager then review all of the feedback, and the employee has the opportunity to elaborate on the review with a self-evaluation and summary of key accomplishments. If there are specific development areas needed, either the training is conducted internally or the employee attends an external conference or session. For example, in one review cycle several managers and employees expressed a need for greater skills sets in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. Laurel contracted with an external agency to offer an off-site training day. This ongoing and collaborative approach to on boarding and development, which may only be feasible in a smaller company setting, really speaks to me as a young professional. While I have gained many valuable skills and experiences in the professional and academic realms, I will always need new training and career coaching. It is encouraging to know that local employers like Market Street Trust Company prioritize this training and development need as well. This area of training and development is something that Tracy is actively working on at Corning. She has recently started collaborating with an HR manager from another division on a “straight-talk� series for hiring and supervisory managers focused on simple, straightforward methods for training and engaging employees. The series is also tailored specific to Environmental Technologies to emphasize the division’s goals for open, or transparent career
planning discussions between managers and employees at all levels. Division specific sessions focus on how to have transparent career conversations, the types of questions managers should ask, and how to respond to employee questions, especially when opportunities for immediate advancement may not be an option. As a former Corning employee, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that these talent discussions are mandated at division level within Environmental Technologies. While working into two different Corning divisions (Corporate Communications and the Emerging Innovations Group), my career discussions and development opportunities were strictly resigned to annual review meetings with my manager. Within the Environmental Technologies division, Tracy and other members of the division leadership have included not only the typical annual review process that the corporation follows (a digital 360-degree approach almost identical to Market Street Trust Company), but a quarterly talent review and planning meeting where the managers share information from employee career discussions and the team maps out advancement plans and timeframes for individual leadership promotions. This process then helps inform any future gaps in the talent pool, areas for further training and development, and starts early recruitment efforts. At the appropriate time, the employee is engaged in the process and aware of the timing, next steps, and decisions involved. What really impressed me was that by having these quarterly talent planning meetings, Tracy and the HR department now have division organizational announcements done and recruitment efforts under way roughly six-months before the promotion occurs. This ensures that top talent is retained, developed, and backfilled by qualified employees. Talent management encompasses recruiting, retaining and developing employees with HR managers at the forefront of these efforts. Prior to completing this interview project, I believed
that HR practices and approaches to talent management would significantly vary depending on the size of the organization. From speaking with Laurel and Tracy it seems the principles, concepts, and tactics are fundamentally the same. Thorough talent planning, communication, and transparency are essential to better recruit, develop, train, and promote employees. This includes transparency between hiring managers, external recruiters, top leadership, and employees. Truthfully, before this assignment, I was also a bit skeptical that a smaller company, like Market Street Trust Company, would have such detailed talent and training programs. This assignment and discussion with Laurel certainly (and pleasantly) proved me wrong. By having her as a dedicated HR professional, Market Street Trust Company can ensure employees are hired, trained, and developed appropriately to better avoid turnovers in the future. This interview project also demonstrated to me that there are significant variations in how talent planning and management programs are coordinated among the different divisions within Corning. Tracy was not my HR manager during my time at Corning, but I deeply admire her efforts to evolve, adapt, and transform how Environmental Technologies prioritizes and implements talent management. She is certainly a thought leader within the broader HR function at Corning Incorporated. Overall, as a young professional, this project made me much more optimistic and excited to engage with HR managers in the recruitment process and next steps in my career.
Contact Information:
 Tracy L Brozovic, Division Human Resources Manager
 Corning Incorporated, Environmental Technologies
BrozovicTL@corning.com 607-974-9000 10th Floor | C-Building One Museum Way Corning, New York 14830 Laurel A. Eschbach, Human Resources Generalist Market Street Trust Company leschbach@marketstreettrust.com 607-962-6876 80 East Market Street, Suite 300 Corning, New York 14830 Bibliograpy: Martin, J., & Schmidt, C. (2010, May). How to Keep Your Top Talent. Retrieved October, 2016, from https://hbr.org/2010/05/how-to-keep-your-top-talent Questions: • Describe your overall role and responsibilities. • What are some of the projects you are working on today? This week? This year? • What is the general framework or structure of the HR team? Describe the employee base and size. What are some of their specific HR needs? • What does talent management look like at Corning/Market Street Trust Company? • How are employee objectives and roles defined? • How are employees evaluated? • How do you measure employee satisfaction? And how is that information used • How do you retain employees? Reward employees? • How do you identify areas where new skills or employees are needed? • How do you recruit new employees? • What are some of the challenges of retaining employees? Challenges for recruiting employees? • Do you feel there are ways that you could improve talent management policies or procedures? • How do you interact or collaborate with the communications and marketing team? • Describe the most rewarding areas of your position and/or HR career.