Life at Wilson | Greg's career path in RPO

Hi, my name is Greg McKeown, Senior Director of Solutions from Rochester, New York, and I'm going to be talking about my career journey and experience working at Wilson.

Yeah, so I have 15 years of experience all in RPO, basically split between two companies. I think I've held nine job titles in that timeframe. You know, I've been very fortunate to have, you know, experience in many different capacities, starting as a recruiter, moving into leadership, leading recruitment teams. I spent a few years in learning and development and also spent some time in our consulting business as well. Currently, I'm in a solutions role, really looking to translate a lot of that experience into helping companies maximize their performance as a talent function.

Yeah, my role at Wilson has changed tremendously. I came in as a recruitment operations manager in 2019. I led a few teams at the time and continued to take on more responsibility. I think everybody remembers the lows of COVID and how much uncertainty there was. We did some pretty creative things with my clients, kind of guided them through remote work, spread our work differently, courted candidates differently. At the time and coming out of the pandemic, it was a V-shaped recovery in the labor market and we were able to grow our partnerships and I eventually moved into an account director role. As we continued to grow, I had the opportunity to move out of our delivery function and help lead our consulting business. This was completely new experience for me in many ways, but at the same time relied a lot on the skills that ultimately made me successful in leading recruitment teams. Consulting was extremely rewarding. We were able to kind of focus on tackling problems that required some specialization or perhaps in some cases, you know, come in and do impactful work that maybe had been neglected for some time. I worked in consulting for three years and more recently have come over to our solutions team, really kind of focused on bringing that, partnership aspect with our new clients to build out their strategic utilization of RPO.

So 99 % of people who hear this already know what I'm going to say. I kind of just fell into it, but prior to getting into professional recruiting, I worked in college athletics and actually spent the bulk share of my time recruiting student athletes. Anyone who's been a coach before knows that it's all about recruiting. I looked at, you know, TA and said, well, if I can recruit a student athlete and convey the value of a expensive education. Surely I can recruit a, you know, and kind of flip the script on that to convey the value of making money. I ultimately got addicted to, you know, hiring people. when I saw how life changing it was for them to accept a job offer.

Communication, short and simple. It's basically the only thing that matters. Being able to effectively communicate is the foundation to any career, in my opinion, especially so in a leadership role. People rely on your communication to help steer them daily, help clearly define expectations, help them overcome challenges. Words and intent really matter and they're very important. Also being able to articulate ideas or a thesis on something is increasingly important.

We live in a short form world. So the skill of being able to articulate a view in a business climate is becoming more valuable as time goes on. It's almost the counterbalance to the short form world that we live in today. The other skill I found most valuable is empathy. I think it's fascinating to work in a global environment. You're exposed to so many different cultures, backgrounds, ways of doing things. Having empathy allows you to not only understand someone else's world, but really foster strong relationships. The perspectives of other people are what makes a team successful. and as a leader, being able to gather multiple perspectives and kind of synthesize those ideas, is what separates successful teams from not, in my opinion. Don't think cultures are sedentary. This has been true at Wilson as I reflect back to when I started. At its core, our culture is its people and our people dictate what our culture ultimately becomes.

We have a culture where we're able to speak freely, share ideas, challenge ideas, and this exists from top to bottom. I know firsthand this is unique because not all companies operate this way. Anyone listening to this right now could reflect and ask themselves, my ideas valued at work? When was the last time I had a great idea and someone listened? I would say the evolution of our culture is a reflection of our openness and willingness to adapt based on our ideas of our people. That's been monumental for me personally. I spend a lot of time, for better or worse, thinking about things that impact my work and my career. Many times it's not when I'm sitting at my desk. And I think to have a culture where I can come back in the next day and share an idea or a light bulb moment that I had when I was walking my dog, for instance, has been instrumental for me. Without a culture or company that is willing to listen to those ideas, I feel as though I would be stuck in a bottleneck of frustration. Being heard and being seen, not necessarily being right, has had a tremendous impact on my career.

Yeah. So the philosophy that I have on leadership is ultimately actions speak louder than words, right? And I think what that means, although communication is extremely important as a leader, I think the willingness to really kind of jump in and work alongside folks is extremely important. you know, in many companies, right, you have a variety of skillsets, a variety of, quite frankly, age ranges that you're working with, communication styles, preferences that people have. And I think that, you know, ultimately it's, it's up to the leader to be able to adapt to the environment in which they're in to create the environment in which you ultimately want. Right. And by that, mean, you know, working with people and managing people, is, so much about listening, active listening in particular. Right, and really seeking to understand what people's needs are, how they might want to grow in their own careers, and really acting as an enablement mechanism to help them achieve that. And the act of listening is the most important because when you start to focus on nothing but what somebody is telling you, you have a better shot of understanding what they want to do, where they want to go and how they want to be managed. And that's a really important part leading a team, leading a function, leading a company.

If you want to learn more about Wilson's culture, visit our careers page.