IAM1133- Founder Helps Companies Improve their Hiring Practices

Hilliary Turnipseed, Founder of Hill Street Strategies, is an experienced talent acquisition leader, with a deep background in early-stage technology startups and social impact organizations. She seamlessly integrates diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies into her client needs, with an emphasis on improving team performance, creating frameworks, and meaningful employee engagement. She takes a strengths-based, human-design approach to identifying and retaining top talent.

• CEO Hack: Self-awareness and looking up to human design
• CEO Nugget: If something doesn't make sense, then it's not true
• CEO Defined: Taking control of your life and creating the change we want to see

Website: http://www.hillstreetstrategies.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilliaryturnipseed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hilliaryt

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:48 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. Av Hillary, turnip seed of Hill Street Strategies. Hillary, it's great to have you on the show.

00:58 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Thanks for having me.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Hillary so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Hillary is the founder of Hill Street Strategies. She is an experienced talent acquisition leader with a deep background in early-stage technology startups and social impact organizations.

She seamlessly integrates diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies into her client's needs with an emphasis on improving team performance, creating frameworks, and meaningful employee engagement. She takes a strength-based human design approach to identifying and retaining top talent.

I love everything that Hillary's doing because diversity, equity, and inclusion are something that is necessary, I think, for businesses and at least, the very least, to be aware of. So I love the work that you do, Hillary. Super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:45 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Absolutely. Thank you again for having me.

01:46 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited. Before we kind of jumped into what you do, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:55 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Yeah, so my background has always been in talent acquisition. I had been a recruiter since I honestly my first job out of school, once I graduated from college. So it definitely wasn't anything that I went to school for, but it was a happy accident. And I've sort of been hooked ever since And about probably 4 or 5 years ago, I got bit by the startup bug and really was able to get that seat at the table and really see how companies are built and maintained and how they scale.

So after helping a company go from roughly 30 to about 150, I realized that I could kind of do this on my own too, and take a lot of my learnings and best practices and frameworks to other organizations that are using technology to really sort of make an impact.

And yeah, so that's how I got started into the journey of Hill Street Strategies and really kind of taking all of those best practices and really working with other founders and leaders at various stages in their journey in their company growth and scaling and really helping them build more consciously inclusive hiring practices. As it is not a pipeline problem, I believe it's fundamentally a people problem.

03:23 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And that makes so much sense. So I love the work that you do because I think so many times, I say we all often forget that we're in the people business. So how we can change and kind of be more aware of certain things and more cognizant of things that we're doing or not potentially doing as leaders is pretty much a way that we can start to see that change, but also to get the talent that we need within these organizations and these big ideas that we have?

03:48 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Yeah, I mean, truthfully, people are your most valuable asset in an organization. And so I really try to help create environments where folks are really kind of leveraged for their strengths and really can not only be set up to survive but really kind of thrive. Because startups, I like to say, are definitely not for everyone. But I also think that any interview process or hiring process should be a two-way conversation to really kind of de-risk for both ends.

04:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah absolutely And I feel like if you create that, I guess that relationship or even that 2-way street, as you said, so well in the beginning, even like during the process or even probably during the search process, you create that opportunity for that person to come in. And as you said, thrive in the organization and thrive as a result of it.

04:35 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Exactly.

04:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so I know you touched on it a little bit and how you work. Could you tell us a little bit more about how that process goes and how exactly you support the clients you work with?

04:46 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Yeah, so in my experience in working with large organizations and small, it's riddled with you know the whole kind of decision of how to hire, what you need, what questions to ask. It's really more of a reactive sort of process. And in that sense, I often see a lot of unconscious and I think conscious bias that really impacts the ability to really stretch outside of your comfort zone and hire what makes you uncomfortable as opposed to comfortable in terms of kind of, I think we tend to hire folks who remind us of us or come from a trusted network as a way to really activate quickly, make decisions quickly, and also be really comfortable with that.

So my philosophy is, hey, before you even get to the point where you need to hire, you need to scale, let's take a step back and really think about as a leader, how you want your employees to feel. How do you want to empower them? How do you want your workplace operating philosophies and values to really be sort of defined? So that way, when you bring on anyone, regardless of how they're designed, they can really focus on why they were brought in, to begin with, and be leveraged for their strengths in order to be able to do that.

And so what I do is I take each hiring manager or founder through the process of really articulating those must-haves versus those nice-to-haves. And creating a structure that's very fair and equitable, but also diverse enough in terms of the questions that you're asking and the processes in which you kind of go through the assessment process.

So that way, regardless of how a person is, whether they're the loudest person in the room or suffer from imposter syndrome or a lot of underestimated talent I think sort of suffer from it's really about assessing the candidate for who they are what makes them as opposed to this sort of one way just join a process where it's like this is the need and we're viewing you based on the task at hand as opposed to the human behind the person that's actually delivering the work.

So it's definitely a process of self-awareness, self-advocacy, but what I really do is ask kind of those tougher more uncomfortable questions and then kind of create some policies and also philosophies to really sort of set the team up for long-term scalable success.

07:21 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And I know the organizations do as well too, because this might lead into what I was gonna ask, like your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of such a part of makes you unique. Is it that ability to be like, you know, as you said, an advisor or even a partner to the organization, not just checking a box, but making sure that that person can come in and hit the ground running and make that impactful change? Do you feel like that's what kind of such a part of makes you unique?

07:45 – Hilliary Turnipseed

I think it's a part of it. You know, I'm definitely not one to just sort of come from a place of always, yes, I feel like you're hiring me for my expertise. And so you will get my opinion, my informed opinion, whether you want to take it or not as a business leader, that is definitely a prerogative, but I definitely don't.

I think I'm hired for a lot of my transparency, but what I think sets me apart is that I really try to balance the company's needs and the candidate's needs and sometimes lean a little bit more into more of a candidate advocate approach because a lot of my workforce and a lot of the community work that I do, especially in tech, is really about elevating those underestimated voices and really making sure that I can help companies create a more fair, inclusive, and equitable hiring process where they can realize that there are incredible senior level female engineers, people of color that are out there.

It's just a matter of, do you know where to look? Do you know how to articulate your employer brand in a way where you can really showcase why someone would want to work for you and with you as opposed to another organization because it is highly competitive out there? And so I think the expertise that I bring a little bit more is that knowledge of what candidates are looking for ultimately when assessing a new opportunity and being able to translate that into kind of more business needs and more objectives just because of the community work that I do.

09:23 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, appreciate that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple Book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:35 – Hilliary Turnipseed

So I am a firm believer that the more self-aware you are, the more you can have an impact. I am in the people business ultimately, And so it is my job to really understand human behavior and human design and adapt myself to those different types of design to really make sure that I get my point across.

And so I am, you know, this is where like a little bit of the woo will come out in me, but I'm the big believer in kind of looking up your human design and kind of doing that self-work of really understanding what you need as an individual, as a leader, to not only survive, but to thrive, to be able to then be able to define and articulate the types of people that you need to surround yourself with in order to make sure that you're removing any blockers or blind spots, but also you can really be articulate and really explaining and defining what you want and what you need in order to be set up for success.

And I think that ineffective communication is really a leader in why things really sort of fail and don't work. And so if you take the time to look up your human design chart and really start that process of your unique human design and skill, I think ultimately that will just help you show up more conscious in sort of your work and life.

I mentioned that because there are a lot of personality assessments that are out there, but what people fail to realize is that those answers and responses actually change over the course of your career and where you are in your life, but your human design will never change. And so that's always been a great kind of North Star and grounding force for me to really kind of validate the feelings that I'm having. And then also helped me come up with different solutions to really combat any blockers that I might be experiencing because of that.

11:26 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:37 – Hilliary Turnipseed

So I am a big, and this is just a little bit more about me. I'm a big fan of Judge Judy. There is just, I've grown up with her. I just think that she's just the smartest human being in the world. But she says this phrase, if something doesn't make sense, it's usually not true. And that allows me really from a day to day to continue to try to separate kind of facts from feelings, whether it's, you know, overcoming imposter syndrome, or really trying to figure out, you have 2 sides to every story and then sort of the truth.

And so that's always kind of been another kind of grounding mechanism for me in terms of kind of how to activate. And so that kind of internal kind of gut feeling. I usually ask myself like, does this make sense for me to really sort of activate on it? So that's my little nugget.

12:25 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that nugget. And I think, you know, so many times we can go against, you know, that, I guess that intuition and the thing that we think so many times, but if you have that understanding of that, then it's a really good exercise to know of. And I love the visual of having Judge Judy saying it as well too. I think that hits the nail on the head for sure.

You gotta listen to her. I can actually hear her saying that which I think definitely, you know, hammers it home for sure. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Hillary, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:04 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Being a CEO means really taking control of your life and what you've defined it as and not what someone else has defined it for. Yeah.

13:21 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. I think so many times we forget that we have the ability to be able to do that, to kind of create our own lane, create our own world, create the change we even hope to see in the world. I think when you start to lean into that you understand that then it's an extremely powerful place to be.

13:35 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Yeah, I mean if you're going to be at the top it's because it's your input, your unique human design that is supposed to be there. And so if you mute yourself you're not, you're doing everyone a disservice. And so being at the top really commands that level of self-awareness and self-advocacy, but also really kind of holding onto that authentic truth because I see a lot of decisions being made, especially at the top where it's based less on kind of that gut intuition and more about what they think other people want and will make them happy, but that's often misinformed. And I see a lot more assumptions being made than actual direct conversation.

14:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Actually what was coming to my mind is the responsibility as a leader, especially too, and having the impact that CEOs can have or business owners, entrepreneurs, startup founders, whatever title it might be, at the end of the day, there's a responsibility because of the impact that you can have to take those steps and be cognizant of that.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Hillary, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

14:52 – Hilliary Turnipseed

Well, thank you so much. This was a great chat and anyone out there can definitely learn more about me and what I do through my website hillstreetstrategies.com and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And for those underestimated founders out there, and I'm specifically talking to women and women of color If you haven't picked it up already, there's an incredible book called The Memo, Securing Seat at the Table by Minda Hartz.

And that is a book that I recommend every woman of color to read, but also from an allyship standpoint, I think it's just a great read overall and sort of the Black woman's response to Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. And it's definitely kind of in this new normal that we're in in terms of really understanding how to make workplace cultures more equitable. It's a book that I think everyone should pick up.

15:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I definitely appreciate that and we will definitely have the links and information below you know for your site and also for that book as well too so that people can follow up and read about it and learn about it And I think that I love how we talked about kind of like that, that 2 way street and how it's so important that we have conversations, we have actions, we have all of those things and awareness as well too, towards creating this change. And I appreciate you for of course doing that, reminding us of how important that is. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:17 – Outro