In Episode 10 of Best Hire Ever, Kris Dunn chats with Holland Dombeck McCue, who manages employer branding and recruitment marketing at Delta Airlines, about her career path as a millennial with maximum drive and ambition in the workplace.
The conversation includes talk about Holland being one of KD’s best hires ever at Kinetix, as well as the source of Holland’s drive and ambition in the way she was raised and how she evaluates drive and ambition in others when evaluating candidates.
Millennials are good! Worth the listen alone for the story of how Holland got her second job at Walgreens as a 16-year-old!
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Show Highlights:
1:20 – KD makes Holland blush from praise from the jump!
2:00 – Holland shares how she and KD got connected in 2010 for her first job in marketing. Holland was too “quirky” for a Kinetix client, but the Kinetix recruiter in question flipped her to KD and the rest is history.
4:30 – Kris shares that Holland was probably the most focused young professional he’s ever seen related to drive and execution. Holland talks about what other people have told her related to her ambition, as well as the challenges of being a woman with drive in the workplace.
6:40 – Holland talks about her career arc from Kinetix to Cox Communications to Delta Airlines. #ATL
9:13 – Holland talks about where her drive and ability to execute comes from — was it Nature vs Nurture? Holland talks about how she was raised and exposed to at a young age. We discuss.
12:00 – Holland describes her first real job – a front desk at a dance studio. Holland talks about how she got the job and how she “lost” the job.
13:35 – Holland talks about how she got her second job at 16 — walking into Walgreens and demanding a job, noting that she wasn’t impressed with the customer service at the location! #assertivenessInCandidates
15:30 – Coming out of recession as a college grand (something that many are going through now) — there wasn’t a job to found in what you wanted to do — so Holland went to work in retail in addition to doing the only internship she could find. Holland talks about that experience and what was on her mind as she was in that environment as a new grad.
22:00 – KD and Holland talk about societal views of being highly assertive — both as a young professional and as a woman.
25:10 – Holland talks about preferences for managers and the importance of being in the room as a young professional to learn to lead.
26:00 – KD and Holland talk about how she evaluates drive, initiative and execution in candidates for a job on her team. What are the markers she looks for and the responses to her questions that tells her someone is going to execute, own and perform at a high level?