Career Growth Advice from Nikki Salenger, Human Resources Leader | Career Tips for Women in Human Resources

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 57
Featuring Nikki Salenger

Episode Title: #57 Career Podcast Featuring Nikki Salenger, a Successful Global Talent Acquisition Leader of a Fortune 100 Company – Women in Tech

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Nikki Salenger



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. I love today's show. Here with us is Nikki Salenger, Global Talent Acquisition Director for Engineering, Manufacturing, Sales, and Marketing for Intel. Nikki has a wide range of experience supporting numerous Intel groups for over 14 years. She has both global leadership in HR and finance functions. Early in her career, she leveraged the company's finance rotation program to build acumen across the company, supporting various organizations, including HR, engineering, corporate, data center, and sales and marketing. She has a strong management background, proven leadership skills, and a personal passion for learning and building relationships. Nikki also sits on the Oregon STEM Investment Council, whose mission is to reimagine and transform how we educate learners in order to enhance their life prospects, empower their communities, and build an inclusive, sustainable, innovation-based economy. When not working, Nikki enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons. She loves cooking, shopping, and the Oregon Ducks. It's great to have you here.

Nikki Salenger (Guest): Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Mary Killelea: Okay, so I love the fact that you did a finance rotation. Tell me about that. What was that like and what does that provide you?

Nikki Salenger: Yeah, so it was my first role really coming out of college was through the Intel Finance Rotation Program. I was excited because coming out of school, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do and being part of a rotation program allowed me to learn different parts of the company. The way the rotation program set up is you spend about 18 months in each role and then when you're ready, you kind of go on and move and learn about a different part of the company or a different part of the P&L. The best thing about the rotation program is certainly that it teaches you to be a better learner. You have to have high learning agility to be successful in a rotation program. So it taught me to be a better learner and really helped me enjoy learning. I think the other thing with a rotation program is the network. So you get to meet people across the company as you need to go learn things that you don't know. You've built confidants across the company that you can reach out to and are willing to help you. And so the network was something that was invaluable from the rotation program.

Mary Killelea: How long are those typically?

Nikki Salenger: So it's typically about 18 months, but it can really be anywhere at least a year to three years. After about three years, they are kind of pushing you to say, hey, go learn a different part of the company, go learn a different part of our financial statements and kind of see how finance is done throughout the company. So it can vary, but 18 months was the standard when I was part of it.

Mary Killelea: Great. How did you transition from finance to global talent acquisition? What drove that?

Nikki Salenger: My first rotation program in finance was for HR. So I spent, and I actually did multiple rotations in HR, first starting doing financial planning and analysis, and then moving into more strategic finance for HR. And I spent the first three years of my career building my network in HR, sitting on staffs where I learned about the work that they did. And I had two choices after that second rotation. One was to go into the engineering finance position, which continuing the rotation program. Another option was to stay in HR. And at that time, I really wanted to learn the company. And so, I stuck with the rotation program, but I kept that network, those advocates. And every once in a while, job opportunities came my way. When this one came my way, it had the balance of what I was looking for. It was a leadership position. It had global scope, and it had a really positive charter. So it had a lot of what I was looking for and just made sense to try something new.

Mary Killelea: Tell me about your role and responsibilities today.

Nikki Salenger: So, we support for the US and Canada, all the hiring for Intel's engineering, manufacturing, client, graphics, and sales and marketing teams. I also have the Latin America region for all businesses across Intel. So my team does a lot of hiring. We're looking at a diversified skill profile, depending on the business that we support. And we partner with our recruitment marketing teams, our sourcing teams to ultimately get the best talent to the business.

Mary Killelea: Does that ever keep you up at night?

Nikki Salenger: Yes.

Mary Killelea: I imagine it would. I mean, that's a ton to be responsible for. And with today's economy and job market, it's crazy.

Nikki Salenger: Well, if you think about Intel, our single largest investment is people. And I am the source of bringing people into Intel. So does it keep me up at night? Absolutely, because a lot of the shareholder value that we create is almost all of it is created through our people. So yes, it's definitely demanding. It's dynamic. Our demand profiles change by the day. But part of that is what excites me about being in the role, is that every single day, you can't envision what you're going to be working on. Things are going to change, and you have to shift and align towards how are you going to serve the business today?

Mary Killelea: How important is having that data-driven mind or analytics mindset that I believe you must have had from a finance background serve you well in this role?

Nikki Salenger: So you mentioned the labor market, right? The labor market is all about supply and demand right now. And so with my finance and economics background, it really helps me understand the labor market. And supply is pretty inelastic. So different than if you just, all of a sudden people wanted more cookies, you could make more cookies. All of a sudden companies across the globe wanted 60% more talent post pandemic than they wanted before. You can't just, the talent doesn't exist at that growth rate. So, when we have an elastic supply and you have that sharp change in demand, what you start to see is the price of talent go up and the candidate choice be amplified, right? The opportunities. So everything I do comes back to analytics, understanding the market, even understanding the more survey information that we can analyze and understand the sentiment of the candidate, their experience with us, what could have changed their decision. All of that is again, data analytics that we learn from and improve to better serve the company.

Mary Killelea: What is it about leading a global talent acquisition team that you love? And is there anything that you don't like about, and that might be an awkward question to ask, but what do you love about running a global organization?

Nikki Salenger: I think they all, there's so much research that shows if you have diversity in your team, you have better business results. Diversity comes in lots of different forms. It comes in gender, it comes in ethnicity. It also comes in where you're located. And every company has different employment labor laws. They have different practices. And what I see is that my team's able to learn from each other and innovate faster because they have that diversification of a global team. So, I love that because we're constantly learning from one another and learning those best practices and kind of sharing what's working. I can say what I don't like is the 6 a.m. meetings or the 9 p.m. meetings or the days when you have both, but I think that it's worth the value creation that you see when you have a global team come together.

Mary Killelea: I know you personally from working with you in the past and you have an incredible ability to provide a positive team culture and your team, no matter what is going, like they're loyal as long as the day is. I mean, it's crazy. How do you cultivate that atmosphere as a leader and why is it so important to you?

Nikki Salenger: I think a lot of it comes down to just understanding each other. I think we spend a lot of time every other week. We do connection time in my staff and the connection time is not about work. It's about getting to know each other and we play silly games and we do silly quizzes. And you always learn about each other. And I think that that's the baseline for trust is kind of understanding people beyond work. So I would say that's a foundational element for me. I think the other is I believe you should treat people the way you want to be treated. So, we have demanding jobs. We have very demanding results of our team. I believe that you can do that in a way that also respects the individual while still having to put a lot of pressure on them.

Mary Killelea: Do you think that there's been more team building conscious efforts with everyone being on Zoom and working remote or was this typical of pre pandemic behavior?

Nikki Salenger: No, I think it's a little bit of both. With pre pandemic, we had the opportunity to be face to face together and we only did that a couple of times a year. But when you got it, it's that immersive time together. So, you learn a lot about each other. During the pandemic, you didn't have that same immersion opportunity to be together. And we created different ways of getting to know each other. So, we have for my whole organization, we have a monthly coffee chat. It's 20 minutes. It's not even very long and we have a silly topic, and we have a host from staff and we take a picture after and we do a raffle. Like it's just it's meant to break up your day, have something to look forward to. And it's completely optional. Every quarter we have a get together and we either do art or cooking and you kind of get to know people. We have had a couple where we've had families kind of join and kids join in and that's a fun way to kind of do something or create something together. And then we have the connection times with my direct staff. So, I definitely think it's become a little bit more systematic in making sure that you're reserving that time and definitely shorter and more frequent than the immersive time that we had with the opportunities to be face to face.

Mary Killelea: I love it. When you were younger before you started at Intel, did you see yourself going in this trajectory of being at a corporation and this length of time and doing the type of rotations? Take us back there for a sec.

Nikki Salenger: Definitely not. I really wanted to be a stay at home mom. I still do some days. And I've just learned to kind of blend that desire. So, I have an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old as you mentioned. They are my everything. And I've learned like my first sabbatical with Intel. I traveled nowhere. I took the stay at home mom responsibilities. Actually, my husband was a stay at home dad at the time and I sent him to golf every day just so that I could be alone doing that myself, figuring it out. We still have a lot of special trips. Like I'll take them one by one. I'm going to take my sabbatical again this summer.

Mary Killelea: I love it.

Nikki Salenger: And we're already planning it like where we get unique trips and family trips. So this was not on the path, but I've kind of found with everything in life, I steer quickly and have a mentor that helped me in my finance career. And he gave me like the best advice I ever got. And he told me for a whole week to write down on the left-hand side of the notebook, my energizers, the right-hand side of my notebook, the de-energizers. And then when we looked at it at the end of the week, he actually took it out of my hands, which was quite embarrassing because those de-energizers had real people's names on them. It was not a good list. And he's like, your goal is to focus on spending more time doing the things that energize you and less time on the things that de-energize you. It's going to make you happier. So, every single day you need to think about, are you spending your day doing things that energize you? And for me, what I found is being part of the corporate world, being at Intel is something that energized me. So, I lean into it. And it doesn't prevent me from leaning into having those special moments and that special time with my kids. I've found a great way to kind of balance it and be where I need to be in that day.

Mary Killelea: What advice do you have for women who feel that they aren't being recognized for their talents and contributions?

Nikki Salenger: That's a good question. I think that there's probably would need to unpack that a little bit. If part of being recognized for your talents and contributions is making sure that you have the right set of expectations, that you can measure and share how you're performing against those expectations and that you have advocacy. And so depending on what was missing, did you not have the right set of expectations? Did you not have a quantifiable way of circling back to those expectations and sharing how you've met them, how you've exceeded them? Or maybe if you don't have enough advocates in the room, your path to solving that problem is going to be different. I do believe mentorship, advocacy, coaching, all really important. In fact, just this week, I signed up to have a new career coach. And I'm excited about it. I think everyone will value from having coaching and having that mentorship. It just gives you a different way or a different outlook on the things that you're facing.

Mary Killelea: So what would you say from the recruiters that work for you are some of the biggest things that candidates could do to improve their opportunity to be recognized by companies?

Nikki Salenger: A lot of companies these days get way more applications than they could possibly ever consume through humans. So there is an AI aspect to it and an automation aspect to it. So, it's really, really important. And what I tell everyone who's applying to Intel is make sure you read the job description, make sure you understand what is the company looking for in this application, in this talent pool. Make sure that when you're sharing your resume, which is the first thing a company is going to see from you, that it matches those requirements. We also do a lot of passive outreach. So maybe we don't see your resume, but we see your LinkedIn. Does your LinkedIn represent the skill sets of the future job that you're looking for? So, I think that maintaining those sources of information for companies and making sure it's aligned to what you want in your future and representing those skill sets that are going to help you get there is the advice I would give.

Mary Killelea: That's great advice. How have you honed your tech acumen over the years with technology like at warp speed?

Nikki Salenger: I try to find technical mentors like that you can really, I know they say there's no stupid question, but sometimes you feel like, yeah, I Googled it and I watched that YouTube video and I still don't quite understand what it does. I've found that having people that I feel really comfortable asking the question, they never blink an eye when I ask the question, they're willing to explain it to me. There is a lot of people in the tech world that are excited to tell someone who doesn't understand at all, it's no fun to talk to somebody who knows it all. They love to tell you about their trade, right? About their technology and about the work that they're doing to impact the company. So finding those people who are willing to be your technical mentor is actually all my recruiters, I talked to them about having a technical mentor, especially in the talent space that they're in, is make sure that you understand what those skill sets are. Make sure you understand how those skill sets are applied to your business. And I encourage a lot of them to find their most friendly hiring manager that's going to spend time with them.

Mary Killelea: Is there anything that you would do differently in beginning your career than what you did?

Nikki Salenger: I feel like I've had just like, a really good career, right? And part of it's because I haven't stayed in one place for a long time and opportunities through my network have always come. And when I'm stuck or unhappy, I feel like I have the network to pull me into a new opportunity.

Mary Killelea: That's what I really love about big corporations. And I don't know if they're all like Intel, but the fact that you can move around within the company to reinvent yourself, to broaden your skills without having to exit in order to grow. I think that's amazing. And I didn't see that before joining.

Nikki Salenger: I agree. I think that as part of the rotation program, it was a huge selling point was we're going to build your capability. We're taking that investment as part of the rotation program to build your capability. So, it could be different if you're entering a company and not entering through a rotation program is really understanding, are they invested in your future? How are they going to build you as talent? How are they going to invest in you getting the right advocacy for your work, as well as the skill sets in the market are changing every single day, the skill sets that we look for today. Many of them were not big skill sets we looked for 10 years ago. So if you're not going to school for those skill sets, your company has to invest in building them for you.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. What do you think is your biggest strength and how has that served you well?

Nikki Salenger: There's probably two. So I have a great work ethic. I'm a first generation college student. My parents had high expectations of me through school. I worked in addition to taking a full load in college. So, I have a very high work ethic and I take pride in the fact that people can count on me. I also feel like I have a lot of empathy, right? I can relate to a lot of people. And I truly do care about understanding where they're at and how I can help. And so I think having that desire to learn about people and help them beyond the professional career has helped me build the loyalty that we talked about earlier.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. No, I love that. Let's talk about your involvement with the Oregon STEM Investment Council. What is it and what is your role and tell us how you got motivated?

Nikki Salenger: Yeah. So the Oregon STEM Investment Council is made up of voting members and non-voting members and the voting members are all part of corporate corporations. So, it's that blend of bringing in the corporate voice into education and kind of what are the workforce needs of the future. So our primary responsibility is to help set the strategy for STEM education and then also to essentially vote on the grants that we'll invest in for the biennium. So for the next two years. So we just went through that process of picking the grants aligned to our strategy and to the impacts that we want to make in the Oregon education system. And now we spend time learning from the different districts about how they're applying that money and what results that they're seeing. So, it's a great for me and kind of earlier we talked about the talent shortage of supply, right? If we don't get more people invested in STEM at an early, early age, we won't fix the supply challenges that we have today and they're only going to get worse. And so in connection to my job, making sure that I'm investing in growing that talent supply of the future is super important.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. And I think we touched on this earlier about diversity. And, you know, obviously my audience, I'm devoted to women, supporting women in tech and women in business and talking to younger women who are trying to build their career. If they don't have the tech acumen and maybe been in one job for various amounts of time, and then they want to pivot. What type of guidance or advice do you have for someone who's looking to shift from maybe where they didn't feel passionate about it towards a new career from a technology company? Because security, growth possibilities, et cetera. What advice do you have for someone like that?

Nikki Salenger: I think first, I encourage everyone to understand their transferable skills. I think often we discount all the things that we're missing, but there's so much that we bring to the table. So really understanding what is the transferable skills that you bring to any job that you go to is important because part of your sales pitch of making a big change and saying, Hey, Mary, I want you to take a risk on me. I don't know talent acquisition at all. I've been in finance for over a decade. You know, part of your pitch is, Hey, I have all these transferable skills that are going to be important in the role. These are strengths that I have in leading an organization or whatever your strengths are that applicable to the job. And here's how I'm going to learn the rest, right? Here's my plan. And I think sometimes we go into a conversation and we say, Oh, I don't have that. But the reality is the person on the other side that's listening to you is just wondering what do you bring and how would you go about getting the rest of it? And I think that goes a long way when you're talking to somebody about pivoting. It also sets you up for success. If you have a plan, if you're going to make a big pivot and you don't have a plan, probably not going to be successful. So you need to have the plan for yourself anyways, because it's the only way you set yourself up for success.

Mary Killelea: What are some good resources that you turn to, to develop your career or to get smarter?

Nikki Salenger: I am a big fan of observing great leaders. And when I find one, I try to figure out a way that there's mutual benefits for them to spend more time with me. It depends on how you're a learner. I'm an experiential learner. So I learn better from going through the experience by myself with someone than I am from a textbook. And that's just the type of learner I am. So, for me, it's all about being part of that experience. And for me, trying things out, having really good change management plans when I try things out, making sure that people know I'm willing to learn from whatever we try. Those are just ways I do it. But I think I learn mostly from other people. That's my biggest source of wealth of information.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Nikki Salenger: You know, it's funny. To me, I don't know if people would describe me as bold. That probably wouldn't be like the first word that comes across. But to me, I try to do things that put myself in the comfort zone a little bit each day. Right? Sometimes you just have to say yes and try it out. And it doesn't have to be something big. To me, there's a level of discomfort that's good. And there's a level of discomfort that's not good. And for me to be bolder, it's about taking those small steps forward, saying yes to things that don't make you cringe, but might make you just be a little bit nervous about. And that helps build your capability for the next time to do something even bolder than that. So I feel like it's progression for me.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. What can we do as women to help other women?

Nikki Salenger: I think it's important. I've had such great mentors invest in me. And so I'm a very active mentor myself. I think one, you have to invest the time. You also have to know what you bring to the table. Where are you going to make the biggest impact on others who need your help? And how do you make sure that they know that that's the service that you can offer? Even as I've come into this role within talent acquisition, people used to ask me a lot of finance questions. And now they ask me how to help write their resume. How do they help prepare for that job? That's something that I know well now so I can help them with. I think it's about knowing what you can offer, but then also just making the time for it. You have to, again, you have to say yes.

Mary Killelea: And I know I would be crazy if I didn't ask you this because someone would be listening to me saying, why didn't you ask her? So what tips do you have for resume writing?

Nikki Salenger: I think again, tailor it to the job you want. It is one of the first things that a company sees. And you want to make sure that it represents the authentic you, your skills and capabilities, and the business need of what they're looking for. So those would be my tips. And I think that there's actually a lot of good LinkedIn resources. There's also a Wall Street Journal course coming up where they're going to look at a resume and they're going to edit it with the audience. So, I look forward to that. I think that those different training courses are great to learn from. I don't think that there's any one way to write a resume.

Mary Killelea: Nikki, it's been a joy having you on the show. Thank you for joining us and telling your story and helping others out there learn from your experiences. So, thank you so much.

Nikki Salenger: Well, thank you for having me. And I'm really excited to be part of this. And I can help in any way you have a way to contact me through LinkedIn.

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Thanks, Nikki.

Nikki Salenger: Thanks.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b, bolder.com.