In her current role at LinkedIn and Microsoft, Jeanne Schad (Class of 1994) specializes in employee engagement. So it's not surprising that she's part of the team that's working to make the WJPZ Alumni Association and Hall of Fame more inclusive.
We start with our favorite native Iowan's backstory. Jeanne's parents owned a radio station, and she had her FCC license before her driver's license! In high school, she researched the best broadcast schools, and had good instincts - she picked Syracuse over Northwestern and Mizzou.
She started at WJPZ in the news department and tells the story of being suspended in her first semester. She felt this "knocked her down a few notches," and she got to work - also in music, promotions, and was on the air at Y94 by the summer before her junior year.
If you were at this year's Banquet (or get the emails), you may be familiar with our group's efforts in the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) space. It's no secret that our Alumni Association and Hall of Fame are dominated by white men. And while it's important to point out that nobody has ever been intentiionally exclusive, this thing can happen when there isn't a specific effort to be inclusive. Jeanne says this conversation has been happneing for several years, and the timing is finally right. So a group has been formed to reform some of our processes. And it's on all alumni to help in any way they can. The goal is to move forward, even if it's not perfect.
Following her career at Syracuse, she talks about learning from failures. She did sales in Jacksonville, Florida, learning how hard it can be to do that job in a market you haven't spent time in previously. This led her to the agency side and TBWA/Chiat/Day. That led her to Dallas and Katz Media, and eventually on to Los Angeles.
While in LA, Jeanne took what she had learned about belonging and inclusion, and became certified in executive coaching. This allowed her to reconfigure her network and career - selling for a global consulting firm, before being hired by LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) in 2022. She now specializes in employee engagement and works with their GLINT product, part of the Microsoft Viva suite of employee experience tools.
In this role, we ask Jeanne what she wishes more employers knew. She talks about flexibility - too many C-suite executives are waiting for the pre-COVID office life to return. It's simply not going to happen. And employees should think about their careers like a chessboard. Don't think about what's "next." Think about what's "next next." She explains.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. I'm really excited today because we have one of the best business minds in the alumni association as a guest. That is Jeanne Schad from the class of 1994. Welcome to the podcast.
Jeanne: Thanks, Jag. What a great introduction.
JAG: I'm really excited to have you. And I didn't know you so well as to your business acumen until I was between careers. And I remember a couple of years ago I was picking your brain and what to do next. And I'm like, how is this a resource and a person in the alumni association that I don't know as well? I need to get to know her better. And I'm glad we have over these last few years. I'm sure I'm not the only one you've given advice to.
Jeanne: I'm glad we got to know each other as well. And, yes, you are correct. You are not the only one that I have had some kind of career conversation with.
JAG: And we want to get to your career, but of course, we'll start at the beginning as we always do. You are, to my knowledge, the only native Iowan in our illustrious group of alumni, at least the active ones. How do you end up at Syracuse and then Z 89?
Jeanne: Yeah, I think I am the only Iowan that is a Z89 Alum, the story of me getting to Syracuse, when I was at Syracuse, there were only, I think, four or five of us that were from the entire state of Iowa enrolled at Syracuse. And we found each other. We all found each other. But the way I got there is through just having an interest in broadcasting. I was born into a broadcasting family. I worked in radio from the time I could legally get my FCC license. My FCC license is stamped two weeks after my 14th birthday, so I was in 8th grade.
JAG: Your FCC license came before your driver's license because you were born into it, right?
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. When I was in high school, though, my parents were already moving their radio station into a new business. They'd started a second business out of that, and they were in the process of selling the radio station. And being a 16yearold, I decided I wanted to work at the big rock station that all my friends listen to, not this small podunk town radio station. So my last two years of high school, I drove 72 miles each way to get to a job in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: Actually did it full time the summer before my senior year of high school and lived there. So by the time I got to Syracuse, when I was looking at schools, I looked at Mizzou, I looked at Northwestern, and Syracuse had the best program with Newhouse and was the farthest away from Iowa.
JAG: There was some appeal in that last part, I'd imagine.
Jeanne: Yes, there was.
JAG: Fair enough. So I would imagine you found JPZ pretty quickly after getting the campus already having that background.
Jeanne: I did, in fact, in my visit in the fall of 1989. So when I was a senior in high school, I wandered into the station like many people have talked about, and Jen McLean Tuberosa was there at the news desk, and she was the person I talked to, and she later ended up being my roommate my junior year.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Jeanne: Yes. I was drawn in by even just the walls of the radio station looked like the walls in my bedroom covered in bumper stickers from radio stations around the country.
JAG: And so when you get to JPZ and you met the news person first, but what did you end up doing when you got there? How did you start, and what are some of the things you did at the radio station?
Jeanne: Yeah, I first started in news. I was a broadcast journalism major to start with. That's not where I ended up graduating, but as a broadcast journalism major, I started doing news in the morning, and it was actually kind of a tough beginning for me because by that point, I'd been on the air for almost five years on the weekends and had done news on Saturday mornings and weekends and everything. But I made a mistake my first three weeks at JPZ that got me suspended.
JAG: Are you able to share what that was?
Jeanne: Yeah. I did not properly use the word allegedly in a news broadcast, so the news director at the time called me up and had a pretty grandiose story around it. And what I was told was that we had been threatened to be sued.
JAG: Because you didn't say allegedly.
Jeanne: Because I didn't say allegedly. And that the attorney for this particular person had called us and then threatened to sue us.
JAG: Whoa.
Jeanne: I don't think any of that happened, to be perfectly honest.
Trying to just scare the freshman into never making that same mistake again. Yeah.
Jeanne: So I was devastated. Honestly, I was absolutely devastated. This is my third week at Syracuse, and I don't think I came into it with a whole lot of swagger, but I thought I kind of knew what I was doing, so it really knocked me down a few notches. So I eased my way back in other stuff, too. I did news my freshman year, and then sophomore year, I started getting the itch to get back on the air again.
Jeanne: And so I started, like everybody else, in the 02:00 AM. To 04:00 AM shift and did that and did that my sophomore year. And by the end of my sophomore year, the summer after my sophomore year, I had started working at Y94. So I kind of pulled back a little bit from my shifts at the station, but still stayed involved my junior year in promotions.
JAG: Who were some of the folks that you worked with at that time? We were joking before we started recording. You got you and Jay Nachlis and Matt Friedman from the class of 94. And then right behind you, you had the illustrious class of 95 that has 50,000 alumni show up every single year. Before, during, after your class, who were some folks you worked at the station that you made pretty lifelong friends with?
Jeanne: There are too many to name, of course, and in fact, if I tried to name them, I would leave somebody out. So if you attended the banquet this year or if you have been getting the emails, you know that inclusivity and belonging is really important to me and is something that has kind of risen to the top as something I've been trying to contribute to the Alumni Association and to the Hall of Fame process. So in the interest of inclusivity, I'm not going to try to name names because I know I will forget somebody.
Jeanne: But let's just say that they're an amazing group of people, an amazing group of friends that I made there and that has transitioned into friends that I've made in the Alumni association as well. So it's almost two different time periods, two different groups of people. As many relationships as I carried over from the time at the station, there have been brand new relationships that have been built as an alum.
JAG: Jeanne, I'm really glad you brought up diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, because this is something that I wanted to ask you about in this new effort from the Alumni Association to be more inclusive in the Hall of Fame process. I know you've got several people on this board with you. Talk to me about how the idea came together, how the team came together, and what you're doing, if you're comfortable.
Jeanne: Absolutely. It was something that the time was absolutely the right time for us to make some changes. And in fact, maybe a few years ago, maybe even before COVID, would have been a good time to make some changes. So I think what was happening was without anybody intending to, and I want to say that very carefully because I know everybody involved here, I know what's in their hearts, and nobody intended to leave anybody out.
Jag: Agreed.
Jeanne: And without attention and intention to the opposite of being inclusive, we were accidentally excluding people from the Alumni Association and from the Hall of Fame process. So my experience being a woman, watching the orange Jackets, being awarded to man after man after man just made me feel like there was an exclusive club that I just wasn't going to belong to.
JAG: Wow. Okay.
Jeanne: And I wasn't going to belong to it. Not because anybody was excluding me, but because I wasn't coming back every year for a banquet. So I didn't have the visibility that other people had that may have been located on the East Coast, because for those of us west coasters, we can get to Hawaii faster and cheaper than we can get to Syracuse.
JAG: Which, by the way, I'm really jealous of because my wife and I love Hawaii. But continue.
Jeanne: Yeah. So, I mean, it's a commitment, right, to come back to a banquet.
JAG: You coming to Syracuse is me going to Hawaii. Got it.
Jeanne: Exactly. It's not like we could just hop in the car and drive a few hours. Yeah, so that part of it. Part of it was just, for a long time, just not feeling like it was a group of people that I belonged to. I just felt like an outsider. It's just little things, like when you go to a meeting and somebody stands up and you have no idea who this person is and everybody else does.
JAG: Yeah.
Jeanne: And so I had some of that experience, and I started hearing from other people that they were having that experience. And then there was actually a pivotal moment about eight years ago. And, Jag, I think you were part of it. So I might surprise you here. There was a panel that was speaking to the students in the Friday afternoon about careers, and it was all single white men on the panel. And I think you were one of the panelists.
JAG: I indeed was a single white man eight years ago, so that's very possible.
Jeanne: So the discussion was all about your career and how if you want to move up markets, you need to move markets and things like that. And there was a group of us women sitting there. I didn't have children at the time, but many others did. And we're all looking at each other like, that's not my experience. That's not an experience I will ever be able to have. And so that, I think, began a process where a number of us just started expressing something that was being felt behind the scenes.
JAG: So how does this feeling and this thought that so many of you are sharing at the same time turn into action?
Jeanne: I think first the timing had to be right.
JAG: Yeah.
Jeanne: The world is now ready for that kind of conversation. And I don't think that was the case eight years ago when this first came up. So when you look at everything that's happened in 2020, from the George Floyd murder to the #MeToo movement, there's a lot more awareness now around diversity, equity and inclusion and what that means. And it's expanded beyond just being gender based or based on ethnicity or race. It is everything related to seen and unseen disabilities.
Jeanne: It's LGBTQ people. It's mental illness. Making sure that all of those people are part of the organization. Because what's so magical about JPZ is that it attracts the misfit toys to begin with.
JAG: That's come up so many times in this podcast. Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeanne: So when you have that group of people that have this common denominator of a love for broadcasting and a love for radio, that group intentionally needs to make sure that it is diversifying itself and including people and operating in a way so that all are welcome. So when you look at it, it goes all the way back to if you want to look back at the entire roots of how did the orange jackets get to be worn by disproportionately white men, you can trace it all the way back to Syracuse not recruiting enough diverse people of color and all the way back there.
Jeanne: So we looked at where can we start?
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: And so this is the start of a process. Now I think more needs to be done. I just had a conversation with Mary Mancini about this, about making sure that we are being more inclusive in the alumni association itself. And even looking back to the recruitment at the station level. Now, I will tell you, I am extraordinarily impressed with what the current station staff is doing around diversity, equity and inclusion. They've been trained on this.
JAG: They grew up with it.
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. And they are operating with more principles of equity and inclusion than the alumni association. So if we look at how do we solve a problem as big as this, we're inching in the right direction. But I think it really starts with having these very difficult conversations.
JAG: I'm glad you said that. This just happens to be top of mind for me. I'm not sure when we're going to publish this episode, but I just did the recording with Maddie Doolittle and Grace Denton, the PD and GM currently of the station. And we talked about this in the episode. So I would encourage you, if you're listening right now, to go back and listen to the episode with Maddie and Grace, because they're both just dynamos and unbelievably impressive. And I think so many of us look back and say, I wasn't that with it at 20.
JAG: These girls are amazing. These women are amazing. So who is on this committee with you? And I know it's kind of still being formed as we record this Jeanne, but who is on this committee with you? And what are some of the things that you've thought about or putting out, as best you can say at this point, as we record on April 3?
Jeanne: Sure. So Jeff Wade is leading the group as the leader of the Hall of Fame process, and I have to say has been extraordinarily open to inclusiveness, to influence, to helping us to solve this, and has recruited a pretty diverse group of people. So I mentioned Mary Mancini, who is part of class of well, technically class of 1995, but also from the mid 80s. There's a story behind that. Neon Dion is part of this group and TJ Basalla is also part of this. And in terms of who's part of this, every single Alumna is part of this. Every single alum and Alumna, all of the alumni are part of this because we are inviting open dialogue around this process, because we have to find a place to start.
Jeanne: Mary and I were just talking yesterday, and I was expressing to her that we want progress to happen, even if it's not perfect. We don't want perfection to be the enemy of progress.
JAG: Yes.
Jeanne: I don't know that we'll get everything right, right away, because I'm coming in with my lived experience as a woman. Over 50 other people are coming in with their lived experience as people of color, as LGBTQ, as people who have lived with seen and unseen disabilities. Those are all different aspects that make the makeup of the station, I think, very magical. And we need to make sure that all of that is being celebrated. We're not just celebrating the norm being the center.
JAG: Yeah. And I think to what your point earlier about Syracuse not recruiting well. And I think historically, through the first, I don't know, ballpark half, of the 50 years of the radio station, there were a lot of white men that were running the radio station. There were a lot of white men that came back to Banquet. There were a lot of white men that were active. There are a lot of white men that networked with other white men, myself included.
JAG: And I think it's so important to be making these connections between all these different people, as Matt DelSignore said in his hall of Fame induction speech, people that check different boxes than I do.
Jeanne: Exactly.
JAG: I think that's a really great way of putting it, because it is such an inclusive group. And I feel like I've told the story a dozen times in the podcast, but the first time my wife came with me to the Banquet, she was like, wow, what an amazing, welcoming group that is. Because they're like, oh, you're Jag's girlfriend. Come on in. Welcome. And everybody was very welcoming to her. But it needs to be that for all people.
JAG: And I credit you and the group that you're part of, as well as the alumni association as a whole for recognizing that yeah, there are some things that we need to do better with going forward.
Jeanne: Exactly. And it doesn't mean, again, that anybody was intentionally excluding. These are just the things that happen by default without attention to inclusion.
JAG: So to put a bow on this piece of the conversation, Jeanne, where do we go from here?
Jeanne: The next step is really to open up nominations for the hall of Fame to anybody who is a WJPZ alum. So being able to cast that net wider, I think, is an important part of the process. Now, there will be some process that we will need to follow so that we have an ability to compare candidates to each other.
JAG: Sure.
Jeanne: But we've already diversified the makeup of the committees, the two committees, both the nomination and the selection committee. And that is the root start of this. I credit Jeff wade for a lot of that. He did a lot of that work in advance. And so now it's really just opening up the nomination to everybody. So when we think about our experience, we're not just going to think about the people that we see, the people that are present, the people that are in front of us, but everybody who was included and who made a difference at the time during the station and or has gone on and done incredible, successful things.
Jeanne: And there are many people that have diversified their careers in various different directions and are doing some very impressive things in the world that have nothing to do with broadcasting anymore. Melanie Kushner, who is now Melanie Kushner Papalardo, works for a system in the city of San Francisco to help with prison recidivism.
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: So she helps people to make sure that they are not going back into the prison system. Now, she is a master's level therapist who has spent many years doing therapy of prisoners, and she was pivotal in the music direction of JPZ at one time. So I think just celebrating stories like that, there are some pretty amazing humans.
JAG: Her name has come up in several podcasts. Indeed. Speaking of what varied careers all of our alumni have, let's focus the microscope back on you, Jeannie. Tell us about your career since graduation, since finishing up at Syracuse, because it's pretty fascinating from the piece of it that I know.
Jeanne: Yeah, it has definitely been a career lattice versus a ladder, which is not my term. There's somebody named Beverly K who is famous in the career development space that coined that term. But that has definitely been my experience. And it comes from, I think, a couple of different influences. One is curiosity and the ability that I have to just follow things that interest me. And the other is some really spectacular, amazing failures.
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: Each of them has led me in some various directions. So from Syracuse, I did the broadcasting thing all through college, even while I was a student at Syracuse. I mentioned earlier I was working for the New City stations. And about my junior year or so, I started working in the sales department. By then, I had changed my major to TV, Radio Film Management, and it seemed to fit me better. So I was doing nights or weekends on the air, but also working in the sales department. So actually, the summer before my senior year at Syracuse, I did the craziest thing ever.
Jeanne: I worked overnights at Y 94. I then stuck around in the morning to produce the morning show for one of the greatest humans I've ever met in this industry, Glenn “Gomez” Adams, who was just a great, great guy, and I stuck around, produced the morning show for him. I then went home and got my first shift of sleep. I then went back to the station and I worked in the sales department in the afternoon.
JAG: Oh, my gosh.
Jeanne: And then went home and did a second shift of sleep and then went back and did nights somewhere in there. I also worked at Bennigan's as a hostess and totally spread myself very thin. This is back to part of being curious, but also just needing to make money to get myself through school.
JAG: And having the stamina to work 24 hours a day and sleep in split shifts when you're 20 years old. I'm exhausted just thinking about that now.
Jeanne: Yeah. And you know what? At the time I did it, I think because of the challenge of it, looking at it now through adult eyes, I can see why my mother was so upset with me because it's insane. I mean, it took a toll on my health. It really did. It really did.
JAG: Yeah, I bet.
Jeanne: Anyway, so by the time my senior year rolled around, I was really kind of into the sales world of broadcasting. So I was working in the sales department in a research role and actually had an intern at the New City stations. I had an office I went into. I had pictures on my desk. And had an intern and then was going to classes in between. So by that point, my senior year, I wasn't very involved in JPZ, but I was definitely into radio sales.
Jeanne: I graduated. I moved to Jacksonville, Florida. That's its whole other story. I was 22, and there was a boy involved, but nonetheless, it was an interesting time.
JAG: Many of us have been there on both sides.
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. Northeast coast of Florida, and I sold radio. I found a job coming in from completely outside of the market, found a job at the station. That was the sister station of the flagship station for the Jaguars, and it was the inaugural year for the Jaguars.
JAG: I was going to say they were just starting up at that point in time. Yeah, okay.
Jeanne: Exactly. So I sold local radio in Jacksonville, Florida, for six months, and I fell flat on my face.
JAG: Really?
Jeanne: So six months, my draw was up, and it was time for me to be pulling in commissions. And I had hardly anything. I had closed some deals, but had hustled, had done everything. And I really discovered, in hindsight, it was a hard market to come in from outside of the market. And certainly coming in with my northeastern US education did not help things very much in Jacksonville, Florida.
JAG: I mean, so much of sales is relationships, and if you'd never set foot in that market before, I can see why that'd be so challenging.
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. So I ended up tempting for a few months to just make some money and pay my bills. And soon after that, a friend of mine worked at this ad agency called TBWA/Chiat/Day that was based in LA and had an office in Jacksonville. So I very much accidentally landed in what was arguably the hottest ad agency in the world at that time.In a very small role. So that ended up keeping me in advertising for the next eight years.
JAG: Wow. Okay.
Jeanne: So that job moved me to Dallas, and I loved Dallas. It was a great time to be in Dallas. When I was in Dallas, I moved to two other agencies. The last agency I worked for was an amazing lesson in management and that belonging that we talked about earlier, and that keeps coming back as a theme for me because it was a place I did not belong.
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: I had some friends that worked there, and I thought I really wanted to work there, but it was very, very structured and rules based. And I'm more of a creator. I am more of a person that builds a process, doesn't necessarily follow them. And this one was full of so many unwritten rules, I could just never figure them out.
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: And not only that, I had a great manager that I worked for when I was there, that hired me, and we did some amazing things while I was there. And he left. I was inherited by another manager, and in three months, I was fired.
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: That agency at the time followed this philosophy of cutting what they considered to be the people that didn't belong. And they were really curating the organization down to those that operated well within that structure. And they were right. I did not operate well within that structure. But it was devastating.
JAG: Sure.
Jeanne: It was absolutely devastating. Here I was at age 32, 31, 32, something like that, with a mortgage at a house and all these expenses. So I spent a little time just figuring out what I wanted to do next. But there was something there about that experience that I wanted to do in my career.
JAG: This is mid two thousands now?
Jeanne: This is early two thousands. So it was about understanding how I could thrive under one manager, but fail under another manager.
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: So it got me interested in this whole field of coaching and career coaching, and having an outside person that I could talk to who could help me figure out how to navigate this very complex world of work. And it was actually a therapist of mine that I was seeing at the time that I was using to try to make sense of everything that had happened that suggested coaching. And I loved it. So I took a job as a bridge job, knowing that I really wanted to go for this coaching thing.
Jeanne: And the bridge job ended up being something I really enjoyed. It was with Katz Media Group, and it was very much that creator mode. It was new business development for a group within Katz Media that basically sold the assets of the radio station that were not the on-air time. So, promotions, sampling opportunities, various things like that. And it was really interesting. It was really creative. It was making money where nothing existed before.
Jeanne: It was paving the way for people. I was on the phone with national sales managers all the time, talking to them about how we were going to hire somebody to come in and do a petting zoo and a red-carpet event before the premiere of Charlotte's Web DVD release.
JAG: Love it.
Jeanne: Yeah.
JAG: Is this before or after the term NTR, nontraditional revenue? Was it born out of this or did that term exist at that point?
Jeanne: I think it was NTR was on its way out and we were in a space in between NTR and as digital was just starting to sprout. So I had a great manager. I really did. And I loved working for her. That job transferred me to LA. And I started about that time doing my training in executive coaching. And I thought, LA is going to be a better market than Dallas for doing coaching. So I'll give it a shot. That was 18 years ago.
Jeanne: So I stayed with the job for a total of four years, with my boss knowing that for about the last two years that I was working on this side hustle to eventually start a business doing executive coaching for other businesses. And I launched that get this timing jag. I launched that business on January 3, 2008.
JAG: I had a feeling you were going to say 2008, right before the economy went in the crapper.
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. So it was another beautiful failure. But here's what I did out of those two years is I made no money, but I completely reconfigured my network and my career.
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: So by the end of those two years, I had taken those sales skills, those marketing skills, the advertising skills, all of those, and applied it to the world of coaching and HR. So by 2010, I was able to get a job working at a major global consulting firm, selling their executive coaching services and leading an executive coaching practice. And talk about impostor syndrome. Every now and then I would tell my husband, like, do these people know I was selling radio two years ago?
JAG: But in some ways, Jeanne, I feel it's like the opposite of what you experienced in Jacksonville. Because Jacksonville, you walk in, nobody knows you from Adam, and you don't have those relationships. But in selling coaching, after getting certified in coaching, you're walking the walk and you're talking the talk and you speak the language and you know what these potential clients need and you know exactly what you're selling.
Jeanne: Yeah, exactly. It was transferable skills. And that's an important thing that I talk about with people who are thinking of a career change. And I think I may have even used that term when you and I talked a few years ago.
JAG: Absolutely, did. I still have the notes.
Jeanne: Transferable skills, right? So getting to the heart of those things that drive you, those things that make you light up when you do them and when you think about them and just finding another way to apply them. Yes, that's what I did. I worked for that company for eight years. I left there, went to a startup in the HR tech space, so working in a similar space, but zeroing in on career development in terms of building technology for career coaching.
Jeanne: And then again, out of another spectacular layoff. In this case, the company just went in a different strategic direction. And January of 2022, I was laid off again and had already been talking with LinkedIn about the role that I'm in now. So I had a three-month, beautiful, wonderful sabbatical between when I got laid off and when I started at LinkedIn.
JAG: See, those of you in the tech space say sabbatical. And that sounds so much better than “on the beach” in radio. Also, it's usually paid. Unlike radio.
Jeanne: It's all in how you position it. I mean, I could call it unemployment. That's what it was. I mean, I was collecting unemployment, but I was, of course, still interviewing with other companies, but getting deeper in the process with LinkedIn and also just taking advantage of opportunities that were given my way. So I had a friend who was in India who said, why don't you come over here for a week?
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: So on eight days notice, I flew into Delhi. And my friend met me and gave me a tour of her home country.
JAG: No kidding.
Jeanne: That's something I would never have been able to take the time to do.
JAG: Yeah. That's amazing.
Jeanne: It was incredible. I had a ticket to South by Southwest that my previous company had paid for in 2020. I'd always wanted to go to South by Southwest. I used to go when I lived in Dallas, when it was just a music festival and we bought our wristbands off the street from people who were leaving the bars. But, yeah, it had clearly grown into this large tech film interactive education festival. And I went and just learned south by Southwest is like Disneyland for the curious mind.
JAG: I love that. That belongs on a billboard somewhere.
Jeanne: I think so. I think so. I did that and the week after I got back from South by Southwest, the LinkedIn recruiter called me and said, we're ready to make you an offer. And I started three weeks later.
JAG: And that's where you are now. And since we all saw you in Syracuse, there's been a slight change to your official employer. You can explain it better than me.
Jeanne: Yeah, sure. So, LinkedIn, many people don't know. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft bought LinkedIn 2016, 2017. Somewhere in there. I work in a division that focuses on employee engagement surveys and employee listening strategies. So transferable skills from the coaching world, the career world, just zeroing in on helping companies better understand the employment experience of their employees so they can keep them retained, keep them productive.
Jeanne: And it's a very, very big business. So when I started at LinkedIn, I became an expert in employee engagement surveys and I made the choice to move with this product. It's called Glint. Made the choice to move with this product to Microsoft. So Microsoft announced before I'd started at LinkedIn that Glint would be moving in July of 2023 to be part of Microsoft and part of the Microsoft Viva suite of employee experience tools.
Jeanne: So that is where I sit now, is under Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Viva team.
JAG: Jeannie, in your experience with employee engagement and employee retention, if there was one thing that you could shout from the mountaintops to employers that they just don't seem to get about their employees, what would that be?
Jeanne: Flexible works is really important.
JAG: And by that you mean hybrid working from home, hours? What do you mean?
Jeanne: All of the above.
JAG: Okay.
Jeanne: Where people work, when they work, how they work. And the research absolutely shows that. The research that we do, what I see now, and I talk to a lot of organizations both at their head of HR level, but I also am part of a team at Microsoft that does executive briefings at the C suite level. So CEOs, COOs of ten $20 billion companies. And what's fascinating is the disconnect.
JAG: Yes.
Jeanne: And this is what Microsoft research will show you as well. People at the top of the organization, they're just secretly waiting for this whole great reshuffle and great resignation to be over. It's not going to be over anytime soon. I mean, there is a wide gap between the number of people with the right skills and the skills that are needed now and in the future. And that gap is only growing wider.
Jeanne: So it's even more important to make sure people are holding on to their employees and retaining them, helping them learn, helping them develop and grow and making sure that they are interested in staying with the company. So there's this chasm that's developing between companies who get it and companies that don't get it. I will sit with C-level people with my jaw to the floor listening to them talk about when is all of this going to be over?
Jeanne: Can you tell us when we're going to be back to being able to just have everybody in the office? And when you start digging under the surface and asking a few questions, well, why do you want everybody in the office? In some ways comes down to trust that I don't trust that they're working if I don't see them. And there's also a little bit of pride in being able to look out at your kingdom when you're a leader in the organization.
JAG: Okay, I can see that.
Jeanne: And look out at all of the people sitting at their cubes doing work on your behalf. But the research shows that people are a lot more productive when they can work at the time that works best for them. Think about people with young kids. There's a lot of research showing about now, the triple peak day, where people will get up and work, get the kids off to school, work some more, pick the kids up from school, take a couple hours, shuffle them to their events, and then pick up another shift in the evening.
JAG: Interesting.
Jeanne: And that works well for a lot of people.
JAG: Wow.
Jeanne: So having the ability and the flexibility in a job to do that, to work when you work best, I'm one of those people that works really well in the morning. And being a West Coaster, it helps me to work in a global organization because if I wait until 08:00 West Coast time, everything's already been decided. All the decisions have been made, all the discussions have been had. So I'll get up and I'll work early and then I'll knock off by three or four in the afternoon.
JAG: That makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking about my wife who's been working from home since the beginning of COVID and she works in automotive, a big, giant company, and she's been on an international team where she has European colleagues. So these meetings are 6:30 AM east coast time. And it's funny because she started getting up, setting the alarm for 5:30. And then when I was particularly busy in the last few months, I started getting up with her. Her office is in our kitchen. So I have to make breakfast before her first meeting. And I'm sitting at my computer, always a night owl in college, but now I'm like, if I'm plowing through at five or six before my email starts blowing up, I get so much done.
Jeanne: Exactly.
JAG: Having that flexibility is amazing. And I can't tell you, Jeanne, how many people I've talked to on different podcasts in the business world who say that old school mentality of, oh, I can't wait people to get back in the office and they're not working or whatever. Well, if somebody's happy to have their own schedule and their own flexibility, they're going to be a lot more productive for the times they are working. I wish more people got that. I'm so glad to hear you explain it. And then you also talk about retention.
JAG: You would know the numbers better than I, but I know it's way more expensive to have to lose somebody and hire somebody new, replace them and train them than it is just to keep somebody happy.
Jeanne: Yeah. The Society of Human Resource Management, SHRM, says that it's about 52% to 200% of a person's annual salary to replace them. So that's in terms of lost productivity, all of the expense to hire, to train, to onboard, all of that. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves, they really do. Not only that, but the vast chasm now between what employees say makes them more productive, makes them happier at work, and what managers want, not just managers, but senior level leaders in the organization.
JAG: Is there a difference? Obviously, there is in terms of old school mentality with the boss and the man and the woman and the CEO and the C suite and all that. Is there a difference on the employee side between Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z and wanting that flexibility? Or is this across the board? People just want that flexibility?
Jeanne: Everybody wants the flexibility. That doesn't change by generation. Interestingly, Gen Z wants more time back.
JAG: In the office just to make those connections with people.
Jeanne: Because making those connections, learning through osmosis is something that they have not gotten to experience in many ways. In many cases, Gen Z employees have always been remote workers, so they haven't had that foundation yet. So there is a little bit of a preference there for Gen Z, but flexibility doesn't change. There's a bit more of a preference among Gen Z to be back in the office. But the idea of being in the office only at certain hours, it's a foreign idea and it just doesn't apply to most organizations. Now, the vast majority of companies over, I think, 1000 employees, something like 70, some percent of them are multinational.
Jeanne: So when you have people sitting all over the world, it really doesn't matter, right? When everybody is working.
JAG: That's fascinating. I do want to ask you before we wrap up, so many alumni we've talked to on this podcast are going through a career change or have gone through a career change. I know many students are thinking about what they want to do when they get out, when it comes to changing paths and really kind of making that shift and doing something different. And again, I appreciate the advice you've given me personally on this. When I did it, what would you say to an alum listening who is just thinking about, you know what, whether it's radio or TV or anything for that matter?
JAG: I've kind of reached my limit with this. I want to do something else and I have no earthly idea where to start.
Jeanne: My advice is always you do have an idea as to where to start. Everybody has an idea that is in their brain, that is down at the end of a long hallway in their brain, behind a locked door that they won't go and open because they think it's unreasonable. They think it is too far-fetched, they think it is ridiculous. And it might not be your next step.
If you want to go from being an on-air personality to a ballerina, you might not be able to do it overnight. However, could you potentially take your media skills and apply it in media relations for a ballet company, for instance?
Is there a way to bridge what you wanna do, to what you know how to do? That's always my advice, and everybody has that inkling of an idea as to what they wanna do. Too many people think of it very much in black and white terms, and I look for jobs, for ballerina jobs, but they require things that I don't have.
Okay. What is it about being a ballerina that you really wanna do? And many times you can satisfy that even outside of your job doing volunteer efforts, doing a side hustle, doing something else. But if you really wanna marry that with your career, there are ways to take your transferable skills and apply them in new ways.
I'm a big believer in coaching. I wouldn't wanna leave today's conversation without saying that anybody who wants to do that kind of transition, get yourself a coach. Okay? It's not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. And a coach can help you to see from an outside perspective where those transferable skills might be. They can also really, in many ways just crack you open. And get to a lot of what really drives you and what motivates you.
JAG: Where do I start if I wanna find a coach?
Jeanne: Good question. Most people talk to me and then I connect to 'em with somebody. But that's not a monetized model for me.
JAG: I've got a couple alumni I'm thinking of that I might wanna send in your direction.
Jeanne: Yeah. So there's a group of coaches, a certifying body for coaches called the International Coach Federation. So coachfederation.org is the website for the International Coach Federation, the ICF. That's one place to start.
I would also just start to talk to people. Because a referral recommendation is always a great way to go as well. Yes, I'm in Southern California and I could walk out this door and holler my name and be heard by 20 coaches probably within a two block radius. There are a lot of coaches in the world.
There are more coaches than there is business for coaches, but because of that, you will find people that will work with you just to get their coaching hours just to get certified by the ICF And there are a lot of people that are leaving the industry even and going into coaching. People I worked with at Katz Media are coaches now.
JAG: Yeah. Any other piece of advice you have for folks listening?
Jeanne: When it comes to career transitions, one of the pieces of advice that I give to people, and we have a 21 year old. And we're constantly telling her that it is more important to be thinking about what you wanna do next than it is to be going deep into what you're doing now because the skills are changing so quickly and the needs of skills in the future are changing so quickly, that the ability to adapt is going to be and already is in many ways the most important skill to have.
So if you are loving what you're doing now, Even if you're hating what you're doing now, either way you should be thinking about not only what's next, but what's "next next." and play your career like a chess game and be thinking at least a couple moves ahead because chances are like we tell our 21 year old, chances are the job you'll be doing in 10 years, it probably has not been invented yet.
JAG: Yeah. Oh, I could sit here and pick your brain about coaching and business and so many things all day. I do wanna thank you for your time today, and thank you, of course, for your work on the diversity equity inclusion piece of the JPZ Alumni Association. Your contributions as a student, as an alum. I could go on and on. Anything you wanna talk about I haven't asked you about before I let you go, Jeanne?
Jeanne: I could go on and on as well, but thank you for the opportunity to talk about this. I think. Thank you for the as I've heard the podcasts, I've heard people just being real with their experience. So I have Dion to thank for sharing his experience and really modeling for those of us that may have had some ups and downs in our JPZ time.
JAG: Absolutely.
Jeanne: Both as alumni as well as students. Being able to be real with that, I think is an important part of the station history.
JAG: The station history is not all, rose colored glasses. We're trying to tell as accurate a history as we can. Again, we can't credit ieon enough for that.
And I gotta say, it was really cool after having such a deep conversation with him to be able to give him a big hug in person in Syracuse.
Jeanne: For sure. Absolutely. And all of it is learning experience, right? When it comes down to the heart of what JPZ is about, it's about learning. And those of us who are alumni, we're still learning.
JAG: World's greatest media classroom for students and alumni alike. Perfect place to leave it. Jeanne Schad. Thanks so much.
Jeanne: Thank you, JAG.