Reimagining Your Talent Approach: Unlocking Skills and Potential

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In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by Chandra Sanders, Founder & CEO of Heels N Hustle and Author, to discuss her insights on transforming talent strategies. Here are some key takeaways for HR executives:

Skills Above All

Chandra stresses the importance of skills-based hiring – evaluating candidates based on proven skills and aptitudes rather than just credentials. This opens doors for non-traditional talent.

By taking an honest assessment of skills gaps on your teams, HR can determine which roles are best suited for skills-based hiring and pilot programs to shift away from degree requirements. The benefits? Wider talent pools, new perspectives, and increased diversity.

Growth = Sustainability

Chandra introduced a vital concept—human sustainability. "If you don’t grow, you cannot sustain," she noted. To retain and maximize our people, it's essential to nurture their continuous professional and personal growth.

HR plays a key role in shaping a culture where employees feel empowered to upgrade their skills, pivot into new roles, and bring their authentic selves to work. Introspection exercises, journaling, mentorship programs, and hosting real conversations about purpose and fulfilment can uncover the right pathways for our people.

Walk the Talk

According to Chandra, "Team members want to see organizational values in action." Efforts like skills-based hiring demonstrate to employees that their unique value is recognized.

As HR trailblazers, we must be purposeful in challenging the status quo and ensuring our talent practices align with our people-first values. This builds critical trust and retention.

The time is now to reimagine how we attract, develop and advance high-potential professionals from all backgrounds. Are you ready to hit upgrade? What steps will you take today to pivot your talent strategies?

Episode Highlights

How to Build a More Inclusive Talent Pipeline: Implementing Skills-Based Hiring
How to Cultivate a Growth Mindset: Introspection, Journaling, and Bringing Your Whole Self to Work
How to Reimagine Your Career with Purpose: Pivoting and Upgrading Yourself

Recommended Resources

Follow Chandra on LinkedIn
Learn more about Chandra
📕 Pre-order the book

Hire for the right person in every role

From sourcing to structured interviewing and onboarding, Greenhouse gives you the tools to make better, fairer and more confident hiring decisions.

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🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript

Christopher 0:00

Hi Chandra, welcome to the show. How are you?

Chandra 0:01

I'm wonderful. How are you?

Chris Rainey 0:03

I'm good. I'm good. I love your jacket, by the way. Thank you very cool. We'd like to push shoulders. Love it a

Chandra 0:08

little bit of denim, since that's also in right now.

Chris Rainey 0:11

Love it. But um, how are you anyway? How are things I'm great, I'm

Chandra 0:14

in a great place, I'm happy. You know, we're making great changes in society and through People Operations everywhere. So this is actually a great time to be in this space.

Chris Rainey 0:24

Amazing. Before we get into the podcast in more detail, telephone a little bit more about you personally, and your journey to where we are now.

Chandra 0:31

I am a purpose driven leader, mission driven leader who is on a mission to really help reimagine the way we hire, right, there is an extreme representation gap for women, for people of colour for any other underrepresented group out there. And so I am on a mission to really help reimagine how people get hired and reimagine, qualify, and I'm doing those things through human sustainability initiatives, such as my book, I'm helping to change people. But I'm also helping to help I'm also helping to, to change and innovate in the workplace as well so that we can bring both people and people operations corporations together seamlessly to create value for both the people and the organisations.

Chris Rainey 1:18

Today, I want a bit more about a book quickly, as you mentioned, it does then

Chandra 1:21

yeah, the book is called the essential upgrade a journey of purpose, pivots, and power. I'm a huge proponent of growth, both professionally and personally. And I'm also a proponent of just really helping people figure out who they are and live their best lives, right. And so, this the purpose of this book, which is right here, upgrade, is just to really provide some guidance to those who are really wanting to embrace change and take their selves, their lives, their families careers, to the next level.

Chris Rainey 1:57

What is it that took you on this journey? Was there a specific specific moment in your life that you kind of came to this point? Like, what was it that inspired this new journey and Iran and the book?

Chandra 2:07

Oh, goodness, a new journey, I would say that my entire life has been a series of essential upgrades, and I will continue to upgrade into that ultimate upgrade at the end, but what's the the ultimate upgrade?

Chris Rainey 2:23

Is that gonna be your next book.

Chandra 2:29

You never know, but in progress, but honestly, it is like going through different upgrades again, I started in foster care was adopted, married, divorced, now a single mom, but not just that, that's my personal life. But even in my my professional life. I started my career as a high school Spanish teacher a long time ago, but made multiple strategic pivots to leading product development and multiple fortune 100 companies also unlocking seven over 17 million in economic opportunity for mothers and women of colour across the United States through upskilling, holistic transformative programming, and things of that nature. So again, it's about upgrading, you should never stop. Life doesn't end until you end really honestly. So this book is just a guide to continue to upgrade both your professional life and your personal life.

Chris Rainey 3:20

What would you say is the biggest challenge in people in terms of giving themselves that permission to upgrade or to to allow themselves to be better to, you know, not just sell,

Chandra 3:32

believing in themselves?

Chris Rainey 3:34

That's the biggest challenge.

Chandra 3:35

That is the hardest. That's the only thing that no one can do for us. And whatever we believe we bring to fruition. So either you believe you can or you believe you can't,

Chris Rainey 3:47

you're right, either way. Yeah, you're writing. I love that one. I love that same by the way, I'd something if you believe we can you believe you can't, you're right. Evil right

Chandra 3:57

away. But even you know, just, you know, I launched the book September 1, but so many people just didn't understand that they didn't realise I kind of forgot about themselves and who they are and the dreams that they had previously. And all the tools that they have kind of gathered throughout their life, they can really still continue to use and move forward. So that's just a little bit about the book, but it's a human sustainability book. It's about growth. It's about transformation. And again, it doesn't end but it's a guide to keep you moving forward throughout your life

Chris Rainey 4:30

and throughout your journey. Yeah, what is human sustainability,

Chandra 4:33

it's about your wellness, taking care of yourself, but also growing. It's about how you grow throughout your journey because if you don't grow, you cannot sustain just think of a plant that doesn't grow, right? Or it's a tree that's cut, right? Like you have to continue to grow throughout this life. And to me, that is what human sustainability is. It's about growth. It's about wellness. It is about transformation and making sure that you are sustaining yourself If, so that you can help sustain your company, so that you can add value to yourself so that you can add value to your company throughout your journey. And that just does not stop, you have to continue to grow, you have to continue to pour into yourself, you have to continue to invest in yourself, in order to sustain. No, I

Chris Rainey 5:18

love I love that because I feel like that's something I've always struggled with and continue to struggle with, like, you know, with my challenges with mental health, for example, I realised only not too long ago really that in order for me to be the best version of me, for my for my wife, the best dad, the best husband, the best CEO, the best friend, I need to invest in Chris and take care of Chris first. Whereas for the longest time, I had this impression that I need to take care of everyone else. And I'm sort of an afterthought, if that makes sense. As well, which is quite hard to kind of make that switch,

Chandra 5:50

it is so hard to make this. But that is why we have so much burnout, especially in leaders, especially in our C suite, right and those who are really, you know, the brain power, the strategic forces behind world changing products behind world changing services, all of those things. So if you don't take care of yourself, you will not be able to continue to add value to your company and to your family and to everyone around you.

Chris Rainey 6:18

When you think about human sustainability. How does that flow into work life balance, work life blend, loads of versions that people use now,

Chandra 6:27

work life balance, and then went to work life integration. But it's all about who you are as a person. And if you don't take that time to figure out who you are and what works best for you, what career works best for you, what job works best for you. What type of environment works best for you, whether that's an office, you know, at home, something hybrid, you really have to figure out what works best for you.

Chris Rainey 6:55

What's a practical way of doing it, because when I had this conversation with friends and family, they don't know what they don't know. They don't know what career that she is going to excite them empowered. They don't know what wherever they want, it would rather work from home or, you know, in office, what was a practical thing that people can do to discover that.

Chandra 7:11

Number one, let's start with your purpose. And if you don't know your purpose, you need to spend some time in introspection. I'm a huge proponent of introspection, that means looking inside, there are so many things in the world right now that want to take our attention away from us and who we are as people, as humans, as moms as dads as whatever, right. But we give so much of ourselves to everyone else. And we don't spend any time alone, we won't know which direction to go forward in will be distracted, you know, thrown off course, fall in a pitfall who knows, right? So introspection is so important, where you can just spend 10 minutes away just in silence, taking a little walk, you just really need to dig deep down inside of yourself to find out who it is you are, what you want. And your next What's your next move. So introspection is the key.

Chris Rainey 8:04

That's it, what kind of questions should it be asking yourself? In those moments?

Chandra 8:08

What did I like to do as a kid? What in what excited me as a kid, right? Because when we were children, which is why I love Disney movies, when we were children, like we were taught that you could be anything like there was a world of possibilities, the sky is the limit. But as you get older, you have all of these other external forces that are saying, oh, you can't do that, oh, you can't do that. Because you're a woman, oh, you can't do that. Because you're a woman of colour, or just whatever. Everything's telling you what you cannot do. I can relate to

Chris Rainey 8:37

that, by the way, because I went on a sort of a leadership getaway retreat. A few years back and it was around it was called purpose to impact that was one of the the workshops that we did was kind of revisiting your childhood, and your point, figuring out what you really loved and enjoy it. And then I realised that it did actually flow directly into my current role. So I'll give an example. As a kid I used to paint I used to draw arrays to sculpt, I used to love to create things out of empty boxes and sculptures and stuff like that. That's what I do. Now here at HR leaders. I create content, I create moments I create which favourites video or audio, so and that's what gives me energy and what I love to do. And I didn't even realise that connection. And a lot of the things I was doing was actually sucking away energy. And now I've replaced myself in all of those roles I've ever hired in those roles, or my co founder Shane has now taken on. So now I'm kind of really leaning into all of the things like sales, I love sales and business development. I love creativity, anything creative, and all of a sudden our business just started growing so much quicker. And we same thing for Shane he realised a lot of things that he was doing is actually the opposite of me where he's kind of into finer detail. He loves managing all of the programmes and building and managing the operations and the finance, but we had to take a long look Look Back in order to look forward. Exactly. If

Chandra 10:03

you don't look back, you don't know where were you going?

Chris Rainey 10:05

What about so I know something you're super passionate about is skills based hiring is something we talk about a lot on the podcast. Firstly, what is skills most hiring,

Chandra 10:14

skills based hiring is hiring and sourcing for skills, not degrees, not job titles, all those traditional things, right? You are looking for an attitude and aptitude skills that they've done, you're looking for real life experience, right? I mentioned earlier that I started my career as a high school Spanish teacher a long time ago, but made multiple strategic pivots, multiple pivots, right? high school Spanish teacher, then I went and you know, developed online programmes for universities. Then I developed a training material for doctors who were doing robotic hair transplantations, right, and then it just keeps going on. But I there are these building blocks these skills that I collected my bag, and I take with me along my journey, right. And just because I may not have had a title of, let's say, marketing manager, doesn't mean I'm not a marketer, because I've been doing it my entire life. I've had businesses before previously. But I've also, you know, led marketing through other initiatives that I've, you know, undertaken. So you want to ensure that you're, you're not losing those skills. But also, you may get someone who has all of the degrees in the world, all the certifications, all the credentials, but they've never actually even used it and have no real life experience to apply and be able to be agile and pivot when needed, especially during the pandemic, pandemic when many businesses you know, went under, because they could not pivot had been doing the same way. But same thing for so many times, you know, doing the same thing for so long. But having a team of individuals with different types of skill sets, many different types of skill sets, right? different lived experiences, all of those things can come together and really create magic, and I've seen it happen before. Even I've pivoted multiple times that I've like, been able to pivot, because someone's hired me because of my skills, not because of the degrees that I've had extremely important. But again, it is allowing and creating pathways for non traditional talent for underrepresented talent. And for really those who need it most.

Chris Rainey 12:30

But how can companies implement the skills based hiring approach? In your organisation?

Chandra 12:35

Yeah, definitely. Number one, let's do an assessment to figure out where the skills gaps are. Let's figure out if there are any biases in your hiring practices right now. Let's also figure out what jobs may not it may not be every job that can do skills based hiring, right, but let's figure out what jobs that we can start with to really dig in and kind of see where we can make some magic happen, right. So it starts with an assessment, which roles would be best for this. And then we can grow from there. But at least you really have to start and you really have to be committed to creating pathways for non traditional and I really am still, I'm looking for another word for non traditional talent, because I'm a non traditional, non traditional life. But just creating pathways for something different for something for the future for sustainability of the company, for sustainability of humans, for instance, inclusivity, it all goes together and skills based hiring is really the way in order to achieve many of those pillars in that framework.

Chris Rainey 13:37

Do you see any drawbacks to the approach,

Chandra 13:39

I would say the challenges would be more of corporations who have been doing things one way for years. But those startups those who want to be innovative, right, they are ready for the challenge. They want to learn. And they want to be at the forefront of something new and something groundbreaking, I would say challenge large corporations who have lots of red tape, who may take like 10 years to change. But we do have those startups we do have those smaller companies. And also, I've worked with major Fortune 10 companies who are also leading the way in this skills based hiring ie Google has a new upskilling initiative, right row with Google their upskilling initiative, but they are also leading the way with helping companies understand why skills are important what upskilling is important, but also why hiring non traditional talent and finding new ways to bring new talent in is beneficial.

Chris Rainey 14:44

We're also doing it because it's good business, right? They're not doing it just because of the kindness of their heart. Right you have the diversity of thought that comes in which leads to new innovation. You also if you're not hiring for skills, you're missing a huge pool of talent. If you're only hiring Because this person has these specific degrees, you're missing a giant pool of incredible chapter talent that you would have you would otherwise miss out on. Now companies are being forced to do that, because they're like, Wow, okay, we're really missing out and lagging behind the competition, if we don't have a skills based hiring approach, and then of course, they're using technology now. And there's many great platforms out there, like greenhouse software, who we both know a friend of ours, that allowed him to systematise that and make sure you have a process that doesn't have bias creeps in. And that's I think that's one also the one of the benefits of skill, I suppose, by servers is, is the lack of bias in the process, right? I've been guilty of that myself, like, you know, where I'm super busy as an executive, I've got my friends in my network that I know that sort of easy to reach out to, right. And it's sort of tempting to just make a quick, okay, I can spend, you know, a few few weeks and do it the right way. Or I could take a quick, I could hire my friend over here. I know or someone in my network. That makes sense, right? Who may not necessarily be the best fit, but they're the most convenient fit. And wherever people want it wherever, wherever you want to admit that or not, you know who you are listening. Right, right now, we've all been in that position, right? How do you think that this impacts employee satisfaction, in terms of them working in an organisation where the company has a skills based approach,

Chandra 16:22

there are a lot of factors in employee satisfaction, right? But when companies and this is what I've done in the past, right, especially when companies have put out statements on their Dei, or put out statements on st whatever they believe in, right, team members want to see that in action. So they want to see you bringing in diverse talent, they want to see you bringing in non traditional talent, they want to see it in action. And that really helps them understand that you value them as people, you value them as employees and that you really, you know, walk the walk that you talk, which is extremely important. It helps increase the trust that your employees have in you, but it also helps increase the retention rate. People are

Chris Rainey 17:08

proud, right, they're proud to work for an organisation that values them and they can really bring that true self to work and feel like you know, this is an organisation that can be proud to work when you when you wrote the book, what was the main thing that you wanted people to take away from it,

Chandra 17:22

that you don't have to stay where you are, don't have to stay where you are professionally, professionally, or personally, I again, high school Spanish teacher pivoted multiple times. But in 2014, I made the decision to pack my beds, my family up from Louisiana, because I couldn't get what I wanted the job that I wanted. It wasn't there at the time, it might be there today. It wasn't there at the time, the life that I want, I couldn't get. But I packed my bags and I moved to San Francisco Bay area. In that journey, I journaled. I have two notebooks that I keep with me all the time, like I journaled the process, the good, the bad, what did I do to keep my head above the water? What did I do to keep and to remain positive? Through all these challenges? What did I do to learn to get skills I kept two journals through 20, since 2014, that detailed my journey, and how I was able to overcome and I turned it into my book. Oh, wow.

Chris Rainey 18:15

So that's a good already a good practical thing for everyone. Listen, journaling. But listen, we have to say the rest of the book for everyone. Before I let you go sort of one parting piece of advice. And then where can people grab a copy of the book and also connect with you if they want to work with you personally,

Chandra 18:29

let's reimagine how we work. Let's reimagine how we live, let's reimagine who we are, let's not forget who that is both at home, and at work. And let's do whatever we can to really make the next phase of life and society even better. And we can do that at work. And at home. Let's bring the two together. And you can find me at Shandra sanders.co, or Instagram, all those things officially Shandra

Chris Rainey 18:56

and Denise say follow change on LinkedIn as well. I'll add that one in for you, as well. But wherever you're listening, everyone does the link wherever you're watching or listening. All of those links are in the description. So make sure you go grab a copy of the book or connect with ginger as well. Listen, I love your energy. I love what you're doing. I always love speaking to people that are living their why and their purpose. Clearly you're on that journey as well. And I wish you all the best as we speak but I appreciate you coming on.

Chandra 19:21

Thank you I appreciate you