Chad Verity from Holmetrics and David Moise Discuss: “Create an Intern Program to Grow Your Technical Talent Bench“
We also talk about the need for Data Science Professionals, why that is a great field to study and how to start your own intern program.
— Contents of this Video—
00:00 – Intro
1:04 – Internships program to attract technical talent
1:30 – Ventures for Canada
2:18 – 100% Hires to Date
2:56 – Access to the Youngest and Brightest
3:25 – Advice to other companies to Develop an Internship Program
4:08 – Managing Intern Tips
4:30 – Interns to Get the Word Out
4:50 – Intern Success Story
6:20 – Technology that will Affect SaaS Companies
6:50 – Rethinking from Pre-Pandemic Work
7:35 – How We do Our Work
8:45 – No More “Just men going to the office”
9:40 – 15 Years of Change in 3 months
10:40 – Premium on Data Science Schools
11:30 – Colleges Need to have a Focus on Tech Training
11:55 – “Fairly Limitless Compensation Packages”
12:05 – Holmetrics.com
— End of Contents—
Chad Verity – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadverity/
Holmetrics – https://www.holmetrics.com/
David Moise – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmoise/
Technical Talent Strategies – https://decideconsulting.com/tech-talent-strategy/
Today we are talking with Chad Varity.
He’s the CEO of Holmetrics.
They’re Canadian based software company
that specializes in workforce analytics.
Chad, could you just give us a little bit
more of an intro to yourself and the company? Yeah.
Thanks so much, David.
So Home Metrics.
We’re based out of Calgary, Alberta.
We have team members spread out all across the country.
We started Home Metrics in 2019, precovette
as a way of empowering leaders to
create healthy, life giving places to work
by connecting the dots between employee experience
and organizational performance using data analytics.
And so that’s what we get to do every day.
It’s been quite a journey over the past couple of years,
but it’s very exciting and we love what we do. Okay.
We’re going to talk a little bit more about the
product and how it can help companies find people.
But before we get there, I’m talking
to a lot of companies right now.
Just what they’re doing to attract
technical talent, how they’re finding people.
It’s becoming ever more difficult just to
get the right people inside your company.
And you have done something very interesting.
You have this internship program that you have created.
It’s code done with Ventures for
Canada and the University of Calgary.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the
program kind of people, what you have them doing?
Yeah, absolutely.
It kind of happened by accident.
We got connected into a
group called Ventures for Canada.
And at the same time I had an old friend of
mine who had just finished his third year of his Psych
degree and was looking for a place to work.
And we connected the two and it was a huge success.
And ever since then, our internship program has really been
a huge part of our hiring or recruiting strategy.
A lot of our interns come back.
Our internship program is broken into undergrad
positions, which is a lot of web
development and engineering and our grad internship
programs, which is industrial organizational psychology and
data Privacy and security, data science.
And so actually, I don’t know if we’ve
ever had a grad intern not move into
full time employment once they’ve finished the internship
program and completed their degree.
So it’s been a huge part
of our recruitment and retention program.
And it’s a ton of fun.
We have our summer internship program, which
usually retreats that we have every year.
And so we have tons of memories.
A lot of our undergrad insurance go on to work
at the tier one tech firms that everyone’s heard of.
But it has become a piece of necessity too, where
we get access to some of the youngest and brightest
combined in Western Canada and across the country.
And we desperately need that right now.
So it’s kind of a symbiotic relationship.
How long has the program been going on and
how many people have come through it so far?
Yeah, from the beginning.
And I think at least seven or eight
between both the grad and undergrad programs. Okay.
And what advice would you have for another
company that says we’d like to get our
own internship program partner with the University?
What would you have them look at or have them consider?
Yeah, I think so.
Getting connected with Ventures for Canada, which is
a nonprofit that utilizes federal funding in Canada.
So obviously you have to be a Canadian company,
but utilizes federal funding to place University students in
companies for typically a four month term.
Yeah, I think I was an intern going back to
the internship that I did when I was in College.
You definitely supervision is key.
And just making sure interns are managed well and led
well through that process is going to make the difference
between an intern that can make a substantive contribution to
organization and an intern that doesn’t and an intern that
walks away thinking that your company is the greatest place
to work on the planet or someone who goes back
to University with mixed reviews.
And they do go back and
they connect with their friends.
And so it’s not long before the entire
compside degree program at the University either has
a positive or negative perspective on your company.
Is there an intern success story, like one person
that really stands out, that’s now a huge contributor
to the company or anything like that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So our lead industrial organizational
psychologist, his name is Lex.
It was really funny.
Early in the early days of Hole metrics,
I didn’t know the difference between clinical psychology
and industrial organizational psychology, and we were always
finding our head up against the wall when
it came to our research and development.
And that understanding that there was
a difference was a big step.
And then we just started looking for Iowa psychology
grad students across North America, and we found Lex.
I found Lex on LinkedIn, and he lived in my
hometown, which is just north of Calgary, and he was
studying in an American University, but he lived ten minutes
from me and we met at a coffee shop.
We connected, and he was employee
number four is still with us.
He’s moved to Vancouver, but is one of those
his contribution to hometrics is very tangible and will
endure for the longevity of the company. Sure.
All right, so you’re a hands on technology
kind of person as well as being CEO.
Always good to have two jobs.
I guess you can rely on one.
But where do you see technology carrying
us in the next couple of years?
How’s it going to relate to your software
company and what do you see that other
companies need to pay attention to?
I think it really has transformed how we
understand work so we can work from anywhere.
And it’s weird for me.
I think your viewers are incredibly bright, so this might
not be that big of a light bulb moment.
Yeah, we’ll find out.
But thinking back, prepandemic, there’s things that
we did that don’t make sense anymore.
And I don’t know why we didn’t clue into it.
I was in San Francisco right before.
I remember watching CNN on the hotel
talking about the case numbers in California.
So it was right at the beginning of the Pandemic,
we were headed to Toronto to have some business meetings.
Those got canceled.
And it’s just like, why are we going to
go to Toronto to meet with these people?
Why would we do that?
And so it has changed the way that
we think about business and the connectivity.
The technology existed before it’s gotten better.
Absolutely.
But it existed before.
And it’s really our mindset around how
we do our work that’s changed.
And I think understanding that the seismic shift in how
we work, how we go to work, who can work,
where will forever change the planet, in my opinion.
So I think when it comes to technology, it’s really
how far and wide can communication technology take us?
And I do think that data analytics, because we’re simply
just creating far more data than we did before.
We’re having a comprehensive conversation, cross borders around
data Privacy and what that rule is.
Personally, I think that the everyday employee
needs to educate themselves more on what
that looks like in the workplace.
And I think that analytics will take because with
what we do, we can really provide some really
interesting insights that are valuable to employers.
And I think that because of that, data
analytics will play a much larger role.
And it’s just changed.
You think about going to work at the
beginning of the Millennium in 2000, right.
It was mostly men going to buildings at the
same time for the same amount of time.
My dad went to have the same job for
30 years, and he retired with a pension.
That doesn’t happen anywhere.
And so that is gone. Right.
And so the workforce today is so dynamic,
so diverse, so geographically spread out, and yet
the management tools that we have were created
in a previous generation, in a previous time.
And so data analytics and the tools that we
extrapolate from the digital footprint that we are creating
are going to play a role in what management
looks like in this new workplace.
And we all have a role to play
in educating ourselves for our own benefit, because
I think that is where we’re going.
And I think the more that we are
empowered ourselves to understand that, the better.
Yeah.
Summing up one of the things you said,
one of the comments I’ve heard a lot
is 15 years of change inside of three
months accurately described the beginning of the Pandemic.
And now you hit the nail on the head.
What people are wanting, what people are
looking for in companies is vastly different.
And what’s important, why are
we going to these meetings?
Why are we going to these places. Absolutely.
You mentioned data analytics.
And yes, you’re right.
We absolutely have more data analytics, but that puts
a premium on people who understand data science.
Would you agree?
Absolutely.
And that’s something that we work with.
Trying to do our best here locally in our
ecosystem is just realizing helping the broader academic world.
If a high school student graduates and takes
a data science program, a computer science program,
they will never need a job ever again. Right.
Certainly in our environment that’s very
still saturated in oil and gas.
Ten years ago, you have a high school student drop out to
go work in the oil patch and make $120,000 a year.
Now, the same is true, but I have students
that go and pursue technology and pursue data science.
We have a really robust College here in
my town that doesn’t provide any sort of
computer engineering data science training whatsoever.
And it’s like if we’re really focused on providing career
pathways for the future, that has to be number one.
And so for any student who finds a way
to viewing this podcast, It really has to be
top of mind to pursue a career that you
will be pursued by the biggest companies in the
world and offered a fairly limitless compensation package.
Yeah, I agree. All right.
The whole metrics, who should call you?
Who do you want to reach out to you?
What do you want companies to know about you?
Yeah, really.
Any, we just had a great conversation with a large nonprofit in
the US and they came to us and they said, I don’t
know if you can help with this, but we seem to have
a problem with burnout in our organization and every time we try
to fix it, we make it worse and we don’t know exactly
where it’s happening or how it’s happening.
Do you do anything with that?
And it’s like that’s why we created all metrics.
We do far more than that today,
but that’s right in our wheelhouse.
And so any HR professional who has identified
an issue in the organization, they just want
more information around where and when and how
and why that’s happening so that they can
make really Proactive, productive interventions inside the organization.
We’d love to partner with you.
We partner a lot with HR consulting firms and
so we provide a really cool solution for them
to run their consultant firms out of.
So that’s kind of who we work with every day.
All right, great.
Well, it sounds like you definitely
got some unique things going on.
Some interesting stories to tell.
You’re doing some great stuff to attract some people to
come to you, so good luck with all that.
Thanks for your time and we’ll be in touch. Thank you.
All right. Bye.