Transcript for "AI-Powered Talent Acquisition & Mobility: Pfizer's Transformative Success": Alright. Well, hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're very excited to, welcome you to this fantastic session today with Pfizer. We are going to be discussing specifically how Pfizer is transforming its talent acquisition and mobility process through the partnership with Workday recruiting, HiredScore, and Paradox. And in just a moment, I'm gonna introduce you to our amazing guests from Pfizer's global HR leadership team, and they'll be sharing their journey specifically, how they used AI to boost can't things like candidate engagement, improving recruiter productivity, and streamlining the hiring manager collaboration with the power of AI. Before we get started, I just wanted to dive into a few housekeeping items, for today. So, of course, customary safe harbor statement. We will be talking about both existing technology as well as some of, the, the great, innovations that Pfizer has done. Please make sure that as it relates to the content shared today, you make all purchasing decisions based on products that are currently available from Workday and Paradox. Now with that said, I am very excited to introduce our guests. But before I do, I did wanna let you know, although this session is being recorded, so we'll give you access to that following the webinar. I also wanna encourage everybody to be able to ask questions. So as we go throughout today, if you do have questions, there is a chat function. You can go ahead and log those questions there, and we'll either adjust them live or during the dedicated q and a session toward the end. So with that said, let's go ahead and dive in, and I'd like to introduce you to our guests. So, Anne and Jillian, thank you so much for joining us today. As always, love spending some time with you. So for our audience, to kick things off, could you briefly introduce yourselves, your roles at Pfizer, and, your work on driving, HR transformation? Hello, Anne Devos, and thank you for having us, in this webinar. I sit in HR, better known adviser as our people experience organization, and I lead our technology and operation strategy, for the recruiting and talent space as well as global onboarding. Hi. I'm Jillian Herschneider, and I sit in Pfizer's global business services organization, overseeing everything recruitment technology, working very closely with Anne and our people experience organization. Great. And for those of you who don't know me, I'm Jason Schechner. I am currently the head of strategic customer engagement for all things AI at Workday, and served as the former chief business officer at HiredScore. Have worked closely with, Anne and Jillian on that journey over the years. So excited to share with you more about that. So with that said, wanna walk the team a little bit through this journey and sort of the technology landscape. So if we could provide the, audience with a brief overview of Pfizer stack. So if I understand you guys have been live on Workday since 2017. Of course, I know you've been a HiredScore customer now for, five years and a Paradox client for the last four years. Julian, can you speak to what your rationale at the time was for bringing AI for an HR solutions, particularly HiredScore and Paradox on to on top of your Workday stack? So I guess I'll take that. You know, way back probably six years ago when I first met you, Jason, The conversation and buzz around AI was was occurring, but not anywhere near the level it is today. And, honestly, we weren't on a mission to go out and implement Pfizer's first AI solution for HR. It really was just one of the paths that we pursued to solve an emerging problem. Our recruitment KPIs and the business experience were slipping, and that linked directly back to recruiter capacity. So at the most basic level, recruiters were just managing way too many requisitions. So, of course, we looked at a lot of levers including resourcing levels, organizational structure, but we really wanted to identify the most significant process hurdles to unleash recruiter time so they could refocus on high value tasks like engaging the right candidates. So our initial data driven targets were really to shorten the time, amount of time that a recruiter spends reviewing resumes, and secondly, to find a solution to simplify, and speed up interview scheduling, which at Pfizer is, like everywhere, a very administrative process, but one that impacted not only our recruitment team, but hiring managers equally. So we did a pretty quick analysis of what was available on the market at the time and hired scores spotlight prioritization, hit the mark in terms of functionality and quickly rose to the top. A critical differentiator was that HiredScore could very clearly articulate how the AI worked and how it was compliant. And for interview scheduling, Paradox was also clear path forward. And the very best part is they already knew how to work together, so that made it much simpler for us. So we made we moved along. And as we made progress to reestablish our recruiters more as talent advisors versus order takers, we were able then to also begin tackling a more connected hiring manager and candidate experience. Yeah. I love that. And, you know, it's it's, it's interesting even after so many years. And, again, we started those conversations, I think, in in 2018. But even after so many years in 2025, there there are folks that are still looking to solve some of the fundamental problems around resume piles or CV piles or, or things like scheduling, as they look to to optimize. And so I think the the good news to the to the audience listening is not only are these age old problems, but there's still current problems for everybody out there. And, this is a great example of how, Pfizer look to to tackle those things. So now with that said though, a lot has changed, Anne and Jillian, since you first implemented HiredScore and Paradox. And I think one of the things we've seen everybody's seen that that's changed the landscape is this sort of, inflection point of AI, particularly generative AI, has reshaped and in some cases, you know, distracted us from the way we think about various business functions. And I think there's this sort of if I if I can say this right way, it's it's this challenge of how do we separate the signal from the noise to understand what's good, what what can work, what can actually drive the outcomes. And yet despite all that, Pfizer has been able to continually innovate, evolve, and go through these various phases. So what do you think differentiates differentiates Pfizer's strategy from others, and how is your culture, if anything, played a role in shaping your journey with AI? Sure. So since integrating with both HiredScore and Paradox, our, approach to talent acquisition has also continually evolved, and we've needed the technology to evolve along with us. So we've had a phased integration for both HiredScore and Paradox, And that really allowed us to streamline operations along the way and really be focused on improving the overall experience. The initial integrations were really just a first step, in shifting our own end to end process ownership model, if you will. So a key part of our success has been really embracing our culture of agile experimentation. So we are really focused on testing, learning, and then evolving in a way without disrupting everyone's daily work. Courage is definitely a core value of our company, and we've needed to very much embrace that in order to embrace change that comes along with AI constantly evolving. One change that we did make along the way, was along our journey aligning our AI strategy with clear performance metrics. So we've been able to ensure that leaders really focused on outcomes while users really experienced meaningful change in their daily work. And this really just, again, allowed us to focus on continuous improvement. It's allowed us to innovate while maintaining a focus, on outcomes that truly matter. As a as AI continues to evolve, we are committed to staying ahead, by integrating emerging technologies, in ways that really drive that business value. So we are not just focused on automation, but, again, we're very focused on the experience, enhancing it for all of our users. And so in doing that, it's really important along your journey to stay grounded. Do not get caught up, in the assumption that everyone else out there is doing more than you or different than you. Our focus has remained the same, driving continuous improvement, and just staying aligned to our goals. I love that. And, you know, I I I talk about your your journey in many ways as a good case study for what good can look like because I think what what Jillian you talked about that I love is this idea, not only continuous improvement, but of building upon use cases. You know, one of the one of the things I talk about with customers is if you buy buy AI and it's not successful, which or you build AI and it's not successful, there's a dissonance between the intent and the market, sort of success rate of these projects. And I think what you've done a great job is making a bet, solving a problem, proving it out, earning the right to solve the next problem, proving it out, and building on that. And and now if I look at you all, you're on your, you know, sixth, seventh AI use case, if you will, just in HR and talent acquisition alone across HiredScore Paradox. So I think that's a great testament to to your methodology. Now I think we talked a lot about the journey, the the the the technology, some of the cultural things. I'm sure it'd be helpful for everybody to understand. And you you addressed addressed this a bit, but what specific business problems were you trying to solve, across Pfizer? You know, what were the priorities that were most urgent to solve? And particularly, I think one of the things we'll wanna understand is how did you how did you navigate getting buy in, particularly from from various stakeholders to initiate these different AI initiatives? Yep. I mean, this is a tricky one because I think in this space, the opportunity really is limitless. And it doesn't matter how much we've successfully accomplished. There's there's an endless stream of new ideas, opportunities, issues to resolve. And if you think about what's most urgent to solve, it, you know, all often depends on who you ask. So it can be the prioritization is certainly key. And what we really lean on is, well, at Pfizer, we have this set of actionable attitudes, and one of them is called rise above. And this is what we lean into to figure out what gets to jump to the front of the line. Rise above essentially just means deferring to what is the big picture enterprise mindset. What will have the biggest impact for Pfizer overall. If we can identify that and pick the meaningful, criteria, then buy in from our stakeholders comes so much easier, if we can clearly articulate that anticipated impact and how it will resonate across organizational lines. So in terms of, you know, what have we been our biggest priorities, I think, you know, we do have a continuous focus on simplification and process efficiency. I don't think that ever goes away, and building that kind of wow manager and candidate experience. But today, I would say our our primary focus in this category is really tapping into the amazing internal talent adviser. We started on this journey, but there is so much opportunity. And actively sourcing talent saves money. It saves time, and it really helps unlock colleague growth, building engagement, and reducing turnover. So it's just a very exciting space. Yeah. I I think what's what's great about this, but also I think should give our, you know, our audience, I think, a lot of confidence is that these are, I think, problems, you know, that have showed up on every HR, team's list. Right? It's recruiter efficiency and experience. It's candidate experience. It's higher manager experience. It's it's employee experience. Right? Like, we're touching all the personas and and certainly the interaction between those. And what I've seen over the years, Anne, is, like, you can build all the process and policies around that. You can, you know, build out your systems. But I think this is the area where AI can and we're especially with the advent of some of these agents and copilots and things coming out. We're at a point where we can start to, realize some of these objectives, at scale. And so I think, I think you articulated that really nicely. So rather than expanding in all directions, you know, I've seen some customers that, you know, they've gone to a lot of different point solutions and they've to your point, Anna, there's there's so many things you can tackle. But but I I know Pfizer in many ways is focused on going deeper with their AI, tools. How are you shifting a mindset from, you know, pre AI to post AI ensuring your organization adapts to maximize the the the the value realization of these, these changes in new tools? I mean, a lot of it is just applying the same principles of focusing on on delivering what's most important, along with tangible, meaningful, measurable outcomes. Because if you have those outcomes, it it just makes it so much easier for people to appreciate the impact of the changes, because the results are just clear and undeniable. So on all of our projects, we we have semester goals at Pfizer, and we always have very specific, tangible, measurable, targets, that we're trying to achieve, and, you know, with leadership visibility to them at the at the very outset. So there's there's an eye on the ball, and everyone agrees to where we're headed. Yeah. I think I think what's important about that, and I I referenced this a little bit with so many different opportunities out there and so many different places you can go, It's when you make those first bets. And if you're new to the AI journey and you're listening to this, getting that first bet is right, not only from a success, and adoption standpoint, but I think they earn the right to come back and ask for budget for the next project and the next project, and I think that's something, again, because of that that stair stepping and that continuous improvement, you you've all been able to do really well and and, continue to grow. And now seeing the, I think, the combined value of those things interacting with each other, which brings me to my favorite part of the webinar probably, which is where we get to talk about, so what? We've got all these strategies. We've got all these tools. What is happening at Pfizer? So we'd love to hear from you. We we always talk in terms of iconic outcomes. So we'd love to hear what what business outcomes you're seeing with the combination of HiredScore, Workday, and Paradox. Yeah. So quite a bit as you can see here on the slide. So, at Pfizer, we face the challenge of managing over a million applicants a year with, a team of fewer than 200 recruiters. This definitely leads to that black hole for the candidates that we all hear about. And so we have implemented many components of HiredScore, Workday, and Paradox to help streamline the process, both the recruiting process, the internal mobility process, and really just create that, seamless experience. So some key outcomes do include, a decreased meeting interview scheduling time from seven days to four and a half minutes through Paradox, which is amazing. We have, candidates scheduling interviews with our recruiters, with our hiring teams. They can do it through multiple channels, but we have set in, especially through SMS and WhatsApp, very, very quick turnarounds, which ultimately helps the process quite a bit. We've had a 31% reduction in time to fill. We've just seen continued improvement as we implemented various functionality across our journey. We continue to keep down this number today. And, again, it just really reflects our system and our processes being coming more efficient over time, with really all of our technology working together. And so 40% increase in internal hires. I know we kinda mentioned this before, really driving greater internal mobility. So this really aligns with our drive to offer growth opportunities to our internal talent and to keep that talent internal. Of course, we've mentioned enhanced candidate experience, really just leading to more engaged talent, which we can do through various communication methods, which we use with Paradox as well. And in addition to those, a major focus for us, as we mentioned, was the hiring manager experience. We have over 20 or 5% of our business participating in hiring, but most managers, will fill fewer than two roles a year. And so there was a lot of inconsistency in the manager experience, their expectations, their capacity to handle those hiring tasks. And so a major outcome that we've seen is really just manager satisfaction. They understand their role a lot better, and that ultimately heavily influences the hiring process. So we've, simplified, AI empowered hiring processes with streamlined candidate matching, which really reduces manual effort. It improves efficiency. We have, seamless collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers, which is facilitated through Microsoft Teams. This is where our business is working already, and so this really just helps enhance the communication and the role clarity that we mentioned. And then ultimately faster decision making and candidate progression. We do have AI driven notifications that again provide that visibility into the status of a rec and a candidate, and it really drives what those next steps are, reducing delays and confusion in the process. So, all of this definitely has made our process faster, but it's ultimately made it much more satisfying, for managers and it's just resulted in a much better overall experience. When you say it, it just sounds so elegant, great. You know, you see, we'll talk in a little bit about lessons learned from this journey, but, I I imagine everybody listening, would be excited to hear about these kinds of impacts and imagine these kinds of impacts across. And what I what I what I love about working with with you all was when we talked about this and and we even sat down and imagined some of these potentials is do really designing that optimal experience and putting those personas at the at the center of what that experience look like. So you you were also careful about the hiring managers. And I think one of the things we've seen that even, like, unintended consequence of of helping hiring managers is if you do a good job, I think, Jillian, you said the average job or average manager has two jobs. And that burden you actually don't realize is falling a lot of times on the recruiters to coach the managers, orient them to the process, the policies. And if you can have an agent guiding them to that process, have the paradox scheduling integrated into that, have the candidates getting updates. You're taking so much sort of fatigue out of that system, to deliver those experiences. So, really hats off to you all on not only bringing that to life, but I think, imagining some of that, from the start. So great job. I I think we talked a little bit about, you know, this elevation of experience. Can you speak in your words, like, how do you think how would you characterize this partnership has elevated specific teams to their highest performance? Could you talk to our audience a little bit about that? Yeah. I think Yeah. Go ahead, Jillian. Sorry. So I was just gonna start by saying that, you know, our partners worked well very well together. Right? So to start off, Workday, offers a lot of flexibility. There's there's potential customization to a business needs, but not overly complicated so that it would complicate integrating AI and and kind of impact everything else downstream. Again, the vendors themselves work well together, and and a lot of that also comes from a data perspective. So Workday provides a full HCM suite offering, seamless talent connection, and it's just continuous access to data, which can again drive those better outcomes, which, as I believe Anne was mentioning before, this really, was seen in our latest expansion into internal mobility and internal fetch, ensuring that we know what talent is there and that we keep it within our organization and we don't lose it. And that just is a huge benefit by having most of your data in one place. I think that, our great partnership between us and our vendors and the vendors with each other is also with measuring and delivering clear outcomes. So I feel like we've, we've been able to very easily highlight the differences and demonstrate the value, of our approach. Both, Workday, HiredScore, and and Paradox are great thought partners, and also truly understand that data offers so much insight and into what we need, but then also what's successful. So that's really helped us throughout the way. But again, I think we've also found, you know, with Hardscore and Workday and then Paradox, our vendors our partners speak well to each other as well. So, you know, we might work on something or have an issue that actually, could impact multiple vendors. And, I feel like we've always been able to move quickly, with great communication and, know that our vendors are are, valued partners of one another as well. Anne, anything to add to that? Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say essentially the same thing. I mean, we we are trying to, you know, minimize the number of vendor partners that we have, and, certainly, HiredScore Workday, Paradox are some of the few key ones that we're concentrated on, not trying not to get distracted by every shiny object that comes our way, and see what we can do within, within our core tech stack, is always a priority. So it is just so important that if you've if you're lean and, honestly, if you're not if you are looking and working with a bunch of other vendors that, you have that trust and relationship because, it makes your life so much easier, when you have, those partnerships. And then I think the other thing that I wanted to say was just, one thing I appreciate is that we've been able to influence some change in direction, with HiredScore Workday, and that is, you know, so important to Pfizer. And often we find that, you know, what we wanna do is probably what every other, company situated along our same lines wants to do as well. So having that ability to influence those changes and to actually make those changes without, having to come up with a couple million dollars to make the change, which with, you know, one of our other large vendors in the onboarding space, has been more of a challenge. So being able to, you know, see a business need and do something about it, in a quick and meaningful way really goes a long way to, why we're choosing the path that we do. Yeah. I I think you you both mentioned a couple things that I think are really important for the the audience to consider, and that is you talked about how the partners work together. I I hope, by the way, that Hired Square and Workday work together well since we've been acquired, because we are Workday essentially now. But, but certainly, but even prior to the acquisition, I know, being a certified partner was important to Pfizer. Paradox is also certified. So I think that's important. But I also think, you know, one of the things I see in the marketplace is there's so many vendors who can overlap in functionality. And I think particularly when the vendors can come together and and understand what the goals are, what roles they're playing, and I think partner without trying to overlap in in objectives, to deliver the the client outcomes, which is something I think this this particular, combination of tools was able to do really well. And I the other thing I love that you talked about, Anne, is this partnership and innovation. It's something we've always taken a lot of pride in. I know Paradox does as well. We wanna be seen as a place that people can come for, innovation. And and, again, credit to you if any of you on the call do end up or have have moved forward with HiredScore Paradox Workday or or leverage the, the hiring manager solution. You have Pfizer to thank for a lot of that, in that, innovation and ideation stage. To that point, actually, maybe can we just for the audience go a bit deeper, Jillian or Anne into how how does that the the Hire Score Paradox solution? Like, how does that work in the hiring manager process? Can you articulate that a little bit? Because a high level sounds great, but how's that working for the audience? Sure. I can and so you wanna just hear more about how we use it? How we In other words, how do they interact? You you've got a hire you talked about the hiring manager sort of getting, a better experience. What does that realistically look like, and and how do those things interact from from the audience perspective? Sure. Yeah. So I would say it definitely starts with a hiring manager dashboard that's very dedicated to kinda streamlining streamlining the manager view into a dedicated space with their, high value tasks. Right? So for for us, that means, not presenting candidates to them that aren't recommended by their recruiter. Right? Kinda getting rid of the noise, that they might have experienced beforehand. But as we mentioned, we did integrate an experience into Teams. So our hiring manager TA collaboration in Teams really, it creates a channel for them when a requisition is opened, and it allows for them to communicate, be prompted to take action on tasks, as well as, you know, get insight into the current status of the requisition all in one place. And it was important for us to really meet the managers where they were, and that was Teams. And so it really fits seamlessly into their day because they are, working in the same space, but they're, they're also being prompted along the way so that we're, reducing that confusion. Again, we we mentioned lack of role clarity and maybe not always understanding if they haven't hired in a while, what was required of them. A recruiter does not need to hold their hand anymore on those very repetitive, communications and tasks that are consistent. Our bot will do that for them. Right? It will have those recurring messages based on a candidate status and really take them through that hiring journey. Love that. And then, Anne, do you mind maybe on the internal you you describe some of the internal mobility outcomes. Can you can you talk to a little bit more about, like, what the bet that Pfizer was making there in terms of how to leverage, creating, you know, better growth opportunities for, their great Pfizer employees? Yeah. I'm sure we have, many of the same challenges as lots of other companies. But, as times change, making sure that we obviously, from a recruiting perspective, we want to fill positions quickly with the best talent at the right expense level. But at the same time, we have, a lot of colleagues who, you know, want to be growing, and, expanding their experiences and finding opportunities to, move up the ladder. Or as we say at Pfizer, there's there's lots of different directions you can move, from a diagonal to a lateral to vertical. So we, really just tying the two pieces together and, you know, helping colleagues become aware of without having to go look at, what's posted on a job board, opportunities that are available that fit their experience right away, and engaging them either from recruiter outreach or we're getting ready to move into some automated outreach to colleagues, is it's very exciting. And we've already, you know, placed a number of people, from this process who otherwise wouldn't have even known the job was there. But now they've, you know, found a new position internally, and it's, you know, good for colleague engagement. It's good for Pfizer, and it actually fills positions faster. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was talking with another client yesterday, and they, to borrow their their words, they talked about this shift in people are used to coming to HR for things and how do we bring HR to people, without without waiting for them to ask. And I think this, whether it's recruiters reaching out to employees or eventually any agent reaching out to employees on behalf, at key moments that matter, I think that's the kind of thing that really elevates that employee experience, lets them know you care, and obviously, helps retain amazing employees that you all have invested in and hired over the years. So, well, as we as we wrap up, I think the last phase probably is maybe some some lessons learned from this journey. We've talked about the cultural changes. We talked about the continuous innovation. But, I know these journeys and the although the outcomes are amazing, they they're not always easy. And so, I have a few maybe a few questions to ask, but any general lessons learned that you'd wanna share with the audience? And then maybe I can I can, ping ping you with a few additional examples of, of some of the things I know we've talked through? But any general lessons that you can share with everyone? Well, I think the biggest shift and change for us, and Jillian can disagree and tell me something else, that is probably the shift to more of an agile approach to continuous optimization. You know, we used to to buy this software and implement it, and you were done one and done. You could wrap things up in a pretty bow, And it was perfect, and everybody was happy. And now things are changing every two minutes, and you're delivering things that aren't wrapped in a pretty little bow. You you know they have less than perfection, and they're, you know, continuously improving. But you have to make those judgment calls and get comfortable with that. And that's it's a change journey for our teams who are implementing it. It's a change journey for the people who are, receiving it as well. So whether it be just our general colleague population, to, you know, the folks like the recruiters who are, dealing with all of this content every day. So it does it requires a mind shift and requires a lot more work, in terms of change management. So I think, you know, getting those resources in line and, figuring that out has been part of the journey for us and one that we still haven't perfected. I think we're making a lot of headway, but it's not always easy. If everything from how budgets are allocated to, you know, how it's rolled out is is different. Yep. Yeah. We always talk it about, like, the pre AI, how you buy things, how you implement them to the the post AI, it's different. You know, again, even getting people to adopt it, we've we've been through a lot of work on that, how these agents you know, again, we talked about Paradox and HiredScore work amazing together, but, you know, just making sure that the agents can collaborate with each other, and the AI solutions can can drive the the combined outcomes in combination that that, you know, the data structures in place. Right? You have to have your a work day or or equivalent in order to be able to to even build on top of, in the right way. So all those things I think are are really important. Jillian, anything you would add to those lessons learned? Sure. Yeah. Something that I think, we learned to focus more on kind of halfway through our journey was from the change management aspect, kind of recognizing who is the advocate and the enabler for what you're implementing. So for me, it would be, kind of recognizing the importance that our recruiters play in the role. It's not just their job, but they were kind of the change agents for the whole experience because they have that relationship with the manager, the hiring team. So really making recruiters feel comfortable and confident, was very, very important because of the role that they played. So, you know, it again, it's just pivotal to have the business aligned with the process change or the technology change, whatever it may be. You need they need their voice to feel heard. Right? So we've just talked about this journey that we are on and, you know, the iterative way of working, and and that comes from listening again to what they're saying. So our recruiters, I think, hope, feel way more heard now than maybe they did the very first time we went live because we were able to really listen and respond and, you know, have them really see through the process for us. Yeah. I think that's critical. Well, I want to, I wanna move in a second to our, our q and a session. But, before I wrap, any any closing thoughts on your journey, to share with our group before we dive into some questions? I don't think so. I think we covered it all. Well, you both are amazing. You've been an amazing partner. I know, Workday, Paradox, obviously, Higher Score is part of Workday, are are thankful to have you, as partners. And, I know we, we're still getting started in terms of some of the innovation we're we're hoping to achieve with you all and, looking to build on these, these great outcomes. So with that said, let's dive into some audience questions. So, we'll we'll, we'll go to the audience.