Hire for Culture, Train for Skill!

Training and development has been a hot topic over the last year as our economy struggles to have enough people to fill the open positions in highly skilled rolls. This weeks guest Pat Riley knows all to well what targeted training can do for organizations or the lack of. Pat is the owner and CEO of New Horizons of Wisconsin a Training and Development company that helps people level up there skills. Join us for a great conversation!

 

Leighann Lovely  00:20

HR professionals, business owners and operations at all levels are struggling to figure out what needs to change. Our system has been shocked practices have been questioned, and conversations are finally happening. We all know there has been a huge shift in what people want. inclusion and diversity are common phrases. But often misunderstood generations are coming together more than ever on what's important. Mental health has been brought to the forefront of everyone's mind. Let's humanize these conversations. Let's talk about what's important for employees to be successful in life and at their job and how companies can create an environment to allow them to do both because successful people will make up a successful workforce. I'm Leighann Lovely. Let's get this conversation started.  We've got a real treat today. Patrick Riley is the president and CEO of New Horizons of Wisconsin. New Horizons delivers high quality live training to professionals in dozens of technology families. Pat's firm has grown to be the largest in the state annually providing over 10,000 live training classes in over 900 different course titles delivered by certified experts, providing their clients unparalleled, depth and quality of live learning. New Horizons is known for their speed, and quality training and certifications in high demand careers such as cybersecurity, big data, cloud computing, AI and more. In addition to helping his fellow Wisconsinites grow in their understanding, and love of tack, Pat has been fortunate to enjoy over 27 years of marriage to the love of his life. And together they raised four children, and are enjoying their two grandchildren along with their three golden retrievers in Appleton, Wisconsin. Pat is a graduate of the University of Iowa. I've had the pleasure and honor to get to know Pat over the last months, and he is not only an amazing business owner, he's an amazing human. Welcome, Pat, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Patrick Riley  02:40

I'm happy to be here. Thank you, Leighann.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:43

So why don't you start off by telling me a little bit about yourself?

 

Patrick Riley  02:47

Sure. My name is Pat Riley. And I am the CEO of New Horizons of Wisconsin. And we are the state's largest IT and business skills training company. And so what we focus on is helping people upskill themselves to their next level. And so we work both with businesses and helping their people grow, thrive and get certified in technology skills, as well as leadership and development skills. And then a part that of our company that is very near and dear to my heart. We help individuals get into it careers, or business careers. And then our newest division is in the medical career division. And we've been very successful in all of those areas. Because what we're finding in industry today and what they're calling industry 4.0 Is that skills are really the new degrees. And companies are very interested in seeing people with specific skill sets much more than they are a diploma or a degree in a more general area.

 

Leighann Lovely  04:27

And that's that's awesome. First of all, that's That's amazing. Training Development Company is something that I think is a huge emphasis in today's world. I've seen articles coming out with companies that are shifting their funds to putting a huge emphasis on helping their employees, you know, UPS upskill their different individual departments or even offering it to you know, across the entire company. which is, which is amazing. But you had mentioned a couple of different areas. Medical, which is awesome. But I what I really wanted to know is or what I would like love to talk about is what what are you seeing in today's world as far as the the impact? With justice, what has happened over the last couple of, of years on? Because of the COVID? And because of what is transpired? How was that shift impacted your business?

 

Patrick Riley  05:37

Yeah, it's been, it's been an interesting ride, right? There's, there's the old Chinese proverb, may you live in interesting times. And we are certainly living in interesting times. And and, you know, there's some statistics that I have for you today that are that are very challenging. You know, in 2021, more than 38 million Americans quit their jobs. I mean, that statistic is staggering. And, I mean, we can have three podcasts just talking about that. Right. But, you know, you know, you can get into the why, and the wherefores, and all the rest of it. But, you know, in, you know, we've got a lot of demographic, things that are happening, we've got the grain of the baby boomers, we've got declining birth rates. We've got a labor shortage in almost every single industry, it is absolutely going through a massive labor shortage right now. And then we've got this increase of millennials and Gen z's in the workplace. And that dynamic is changing what we're seeing in a recent study, over 83% of HR professionals are reporting recruiting problems, right. There's just not enough people 75% of HR professionals reported a shortage of skills in candidates. Right. And you know, it's just amazing.

 

Leighann Lovely  07:34

And it's wild, too, because obviously, you know, my background coming from the recruiting world, you hear from those hiring managers. Despite those staggering numbers, you hear from them? Yeah, I'd love to interview these individuals, they interview them, they have six out of our seven out of the 10 things that they're looking for. And then they'll come back to me and say, Yeah, they're really great. I love their personality, but I just I don't have time to train them in the other areas. And you go,

 

Patrick Riley  08:07

Yeah you hear that? A lot. Right. Right. And, and the problem with that thinking is, is it takes away from the realities of what we do on a daily basis. Because so much of what we do. And there's, there's, you know, a few years ago, there was they, they started to have this big argument in HR circles and in leadership circles of IQ versus EQ, right, which was really hard, hard technical skills and knowledge, versus what we call soft skills. I really don't like we do internally, at New Horizons, we don't call them soft skills, we call them power skills. Because that's really what they are. They empower people to be able to work with others in more of a leadership capacity than in a tactical capacity. And I think that becomes very, very important. I got a couple more stats for you. 76% of companies say that business leaders would raise four or five out of five point scale of importance to an organization. However, in that same study, only 45% of those companies would rate themselves as a four or five on a five point scale of how well they're doing, of building business leaders within their organization. So that gap, that 30 point gap is exactly what you're talking about. In terms of companies not investing in their own people, right? To get them upskilled. Right, those are,

 

Leighann Lovely  10:08

Right. It's the number of individuals. And now I'm speaking of managers, not necessarily leaders. Because there is a huge difference between a manager and a leader. But the number of managers in management roles that have never had management, training, and lack people skills, and leadership skills is staggering. It's in the end, if you really dive into the statistics on this, even managers will say, without, without shame, without question, they will, will say, I have never had management training. I often don't know what I'm doing. And my company has not offered any type of management training to me. And it's as a, as an HR professional, I'm sure as a, as a business owner, you you sit back and go, What the hell are these companies doing?

 

Patrick Riley  11:20

Yeah, it's very frustrating. I mean, because what we see in our world a lot of times, because what's happened in the last few years is that it is no longer a silo, right? Anywhere. Everything that happens in a business is controlled, or touched, or invested in technology. You know, I like to say to people, you can't buy a hamburger. Today, without technology being directly involved. I mean, when you go to McDonald's, it's technology that is driving the creation of your hamburger. I mean, it's tech that's everywhere in that McDonald's. Not to say that I go to McDonald's too often, but I do like myself a big man. And, and, you know, because all those people are just looking at screens tell him to put the pickles on and all that kind of coffee. All right. So people who started out to be in tech are now finding themselves in leadership positions, or in positions in places like marketing or operations, or leadership positions, positions, they didn't expect to find themselves. And that gap in knowledge is killing organizations, they have to invest in ongoing skill training. We know from from studies that happen in the training and learning and development organ marketplaces. We know that skills have a half life of five years now, technical skills have a half life of only two and a half years, right.

 

Leighann Lovely  13:16

And that's getting to be constant.

 

Patrick Riley  13:18

It's got to be a constant part of a company's culture.

 

Leighann Lovely  13:24

And I feel like, you know, obviously, my listeners know how old I am, I did refer to it all the time. So I don't, you know, I have no shame in that.

 

Patrick Riley  13:34

I am not gonna ask, well, you know,

 

Leighann Lovely  13:37

I feel like as the older I've gotten the, the shorter that, you know, that's the shorter it gets every single year with how long those those skills last in the tech world, you know, at one time, it was like you could go to you could go in and get your Microsoft training. And you could, you know, that would that would hold out for, you know, five or six years. Right now. Now, right now, it's like, oh, now they come up, and they're coming up with another update in, you know, a matter of two years time. And it's like, if you don't have the newest, you know, knowledge on it, you all of a sudden they have a new button and you're like, what, what is this what, what just happened? Or you're updating? This just happened to me, and this and I know it's happened to a shit ton of other people out there. Updating zoom, I updated zoom, and all of a sudden, everything went completely wonky. And it took somebody else telling me you have to completely remove it from your system, reload it, or you're just you're going to not you're going to have problems and and I couldn't figure that out on my own. I'm an intelligent person. It finally took somebody saying, here's how you fix this problem. I don't know why. But and it happens to us on a regular daily basis. On just simple Things like you using zoom, which is something that I realized how we're talking today. Right?

 

Patrick Riley  15:06

Right. So now in abroad and abroad is not to not to interrupt but in a broader sense, chat, GBT has changed the landscape of technology significantly and eight months ago didn't exist, except for a toy with a very small group of users. Today, it's ubiquitous. And you know, I've even used it playing around with job postings to try to make them more effective for us as we recruit. And it's amazing, quite frankly, when you, when you when you'd kind of dip your toe into this, this AI interface, and its ability to create content. And that didn't exist, you know, on my birthday last year, for goodness sakes, right. So it's incredible the speed at which a technology can disrupt everything that we're doing. And so people who sit back and are not either engaged, or lifelong learners are going to be left behind. And the shift that we are seeing, and it's for, it's for a few reasons, first of all, a bachelor degree used to be your ticket in when I was growing up, you had you and again, I'm dating myself as well, you really had kind of three options. As you were graduating high school, you either went to a four year college, and that was your ticket into the middle class and above. You went to a two year college and you are going to get kind of a kind of a job that maybe you can, maybe you could, you know, parlay that into a four year degree somewhere down the line. He went into the workforce and got a menial labor job, or he went into the military. That was it. Right? Those are your paths. That was it, there was no other, there's no other choice. Now you have a plethora of choices. And what we're finding is the cost of a university degree is is becoming prohibitive for people to be able to go into fields that they want to go into. With skills being so important. Forbes just published an article about six weeks ago. And the title of it was skills are the new degrees. And I encourage your listeners to go find that article on forbes.com. And it talked about how companies like Apple, and Google and Dell, and others, we're now no longer requiring college degrees in their hiring process. If you had skills and certifications, which is what we provide to the state to people in the state of Wisconsin. And it's a seismic shift.

 

Leighann Lovely  18:32

And and this goes along what I think it's about two years ago, maybe about a year and a half ago, I was at a I was at a conference and I listened to the was the CEO of a college speak. And he and he talked about how the enrollment of students was going to be drastically taking a downturn that colleges were going to have to find new creative ways to get students to come to four year colleges. And that the shift was going to be two year colleges because the cost to that was so prohibitive, but this is also a symptom of the fact that we have a huge generation of individuals that went to college graduated around the 2000, the 2005 2006 and they are still in mass debt. And some of them like me, and I've talked about this before have I have a higher payoff amount than what I graduated with, because I graduated in 2008 with my bachelor's degree and subsequently the economy's you know the bottom dropped out. And I took a $20,000 pay cut after 2008 and so many of the parents that now have children are saying wait a Second, we're living in a different world, you don't have to go to a four year college, if your path is XYZ. Now, if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be, you know, a lawyer, if you want to

 

Patrick Riley  20:11

Be an engineer or something like that, I completely agree with you in my world. And this is a bit embarrassing, I feel, but I have four children. And I went to the University of Iowa, and I love I love the University of Iowa, very, I'm wearing an Iowa shirt right now, in fact, and I live in Wisconsin, of course, and my daughter got into the University of Iowa, and she was excited to potentially go there. And I was thrilled as you can imagine. And she's, she wants to be a teacher, she's going to be a teacher, in fact, and I'm very proud of her for choosing that as a as a service profession. And it would be $204,000. For her to attend the University of Iowa, coming out of the state of Wisconsin, for four years, all in room and board. And in all of that $200,000 And with a with my wife and I having four kids, we simply could not afford that. And I I'm ashamed that I can't send my child to the school of her choosing. And it's just a big 10 school, we're not talking about Harvard, or Yale or some, some preppy you know, private college, this is just a public, big 10 school.

 

Leighann Lovely  21:54

There's no shame.

 

Patrick Riley  21:56

I can't I can't afford it. And I'm a CEO. So I look at I look at the average American. And I say to myself, you know, the, the doors to entry now are just ridiculous. Go to another another study, I'll give you another number. Dell Technologies predicted in ninth and 2018, that 85% of jobs in 2030 don't yet exist. And if you think about it, think about all the jobs today that exist, that didn't exist, say seven years ago.

 

Leighann Lovely  22:48

Right? It's

 

Patrick Riley  22:50

A ton of them.

 

Leighann Lovely  22:53

It's because the world is constantly evolving, changing the new fast, so fast, I remember it. And again, I've talked about this before, you remember the time when every when we were talking about automating processes, let's Automate, you know, on the on the manufacturing floor, we're going to have robots. And everybody was like, Oh, my God, we're going to be taking away American jobs. No, we didn't take away any American jobs, what we did was created higher paying jobs for the people who were creating the robots and then maintaining those robots.

 

Patrick Riley  23:28

We created new jobs that paid more required people to upskill or rescale. And if people weren't willing to do that, then they would be left behind. And that is the reality of it. And I, I feel I feel sorry to be the bearer of those news of that, that news. But that's the reality of it. Right. The other side of it is, is that we require a certain percentage of our population to get into the trades, which is also an area that we have a great deficit of people in. And I would love to see more people getting into the trades, rather than going to you know, nothing against Whitewater. I'm just picking that out of a hat, going to Whitewater and getting a degree in, you know, English, we, you know, they'd be much better off going to a Tech College and becoming an electrician, we make way more money.

 

Leighann Lovely  24:33

Right. And we have some amazing tech colleges around here. And I think the reason, and I think the reason that people don't get into the trades as as much as they, they should, is because there's this misconception that they will always be making no more than $25 an hour. Well, now that you know, the new 25 You know, it's it's now you know, 30 or 35 Even more, but there was always this misconception that they were always going to be making the bare minimum just to survive. And that's it's not true. There are people out there who are in the trades who are making 100 120 $550,000 a year because they really there are they've mastered their art, they've become the experts in their particular field. And there's, there's been this misconception around that when we had the shift from, you know, the individuals coming back, you know, from war going into the manufacturing, and then all of a sudden, they were like, nope, in order for you to be a great worker, you need to go to college. And for the longest time, it was, the only thing that my my kids going to do is go to a four year college, and four year college, and that was what was pushed for the longest time. And now for the first time, parents are going no, you don't need to go to a four year college. In fact, do not go there. If you're going to go and spend your four years drinking away my money. And then deciding that you don't want to go into whatever field of study it is. And now you're talking about even a further shift of companies saying you don't have to have that degree. In fact, there are there are people who argue that going and getting that degree, sometimes is worthless to them, because it's some of these some and I'm not going to pick on any particular colleges or whatever. And I'm not picking on the Big Ten's, I'm not picking. But there are some colleges out there, that really all it is is memorization, go read this book, come and take this test, and you get an A, that is not teaching skills, that is teaching memorization. And I don't I if I'm gonna hire somebody, I want to know that they are capable of troubleshooting and thinking quick, I want to know that they are are capable of, of, you know, actual, individualized thinking, and the ability to, you know, actually make independent decisions, not critical

 

Patrick Riley  27:07

Thinking skills, things like that. Those are the types of skills that we we focus on in every one of our programs, we include things like problem solving, critical thinking, people management, emotional intelligent, intelligence, excuse me, service orientation, negotiation techniques, decision making, working in a team, we include all of those skills with every one of our programs, because we feel that that makes every person that goes through a New Horizons program, more well rounded and ready to take on whatever role they have chosen to follow. And we, we feel like if we just teach them the technical skills, we're doing them a disservice. And we give them badges, and for going through that they can take with them. And we give them everything that they need, you know, test prep, practice exams, mentoring, all this all this support for them to be able to go and get industry recognized certifications, which are in my book, that new currency. Because if you can go in to, to an employer and say, Look, I am CompTIA certified in security plus, and CCNA. And, you know, XYZ logistics, we'll just add a fake one. And I can do these types of things. And I have skill sets that align with you culturally, That person is going to get that job, right. And garlis of where they went to school, quite frankly.

 

Leighann Lovely  29:18

I agree. I absolutely agree. And here's the other thing is that companies that are willing to to look around at their employees and say, this is an awesome individual. I love the sky gal. him he she it. You know, if a company is willing to look around at their employees and say I really want to make sure that I'm building a solid team that doesn't leave by offering them the ability to take courses by offering them the ability to grow and to grow properly. Not just saying, oh here I'll offer Do this promotion and then let them fail is not the way. Because I've seen this again and again, at organizations where they're like, Oh, I feel like she might or he might leave. And then they offer him a promotion. And then they fail, because they didn't give him the tools that they needed in order to, to level up, right. So organizations by offering them those, that ability to take the next class that they need, or the next training or whatever it might be in order to develop those skills is the best way to retain your employees. And I, I, I could see it until I'm blue in the face to some of these organizations. And I feel like it's it falls on deaf ears. Well, it's not in the budget, okay. It's not in the budget. So what happens when that employee leaves and you spend the next $20,000 on trying to bring in the right person is it isn't in the budget.

 

Patrick Riley  30:59

It's very interesting the dynamics in it. In my experience, it appears that companies either get it or they don't. And it's an IT is cultural, I'll give you a couple of examples that are real, real world. Examples. Just this Wednesday, I drove down to Madison, and I met with a gentleman, I'm not going to name him because I don't I didn't ask his permission. But he owns six different businesses. He's a serial entrepreneur. And we talked about all of his different businesses, and they're there in a variety things. He's got one in the financial sector, he had a couple in the pharmaceutical and medical industries. Very, very interesting. Very creative, very smart, very smart. And when when we got all done kind of laying out, you know, his his strategy is businesses and the strategy, and all of this, and then we started getting down to the brass tacks, which was what he needed me for. And he's And essentially, what he said is we're growing. But I don't want the wrong people. I want people that fit with me. And then I want to train them on what I want them to know. And essentially, what he was saying, which is what I have learned over 25 plus years in business leadership, is that you can you hire for culture, and you train for skills. That's what successful companies do. And unsuccessful companies will hire for a resume, and then try to make that person fit into their culture. And so, you know, he and I talked a lot about how, and he's working on some pilot programs internally to teach them about their culture. And then we're going to work with them on some of the technical skills that they need to learn. And, and that's, that's how we're going to partner together. But you can't try in my estimation, to make somebody fit into your culture, if their heart is not in the right place. And but you can teach them skill sets that they need to be able to be successful in whatever role you need them to play. I will give another example of a client of ours and I hope that they're not going to get mad at me for this. But we do a lot of work with Northwestern Mutual Life, who I happen to be a customer of as well. Partially because I know how they run their business, they invest in their people. They also invest very smart, by the way. They are not there. They're not throwing money around. They hold us very tight to their budgets. But they do invest in their people in a smart way. And they do it on newer technologies that are specific to their industries. And they do it in groups so that they can they have the group buy in, and they continue to move their teams forward. And they do it in a very smart way. Northwestern Mutual is a very smart company. And we're very proud to work with them. But they're a progressive thing. gave the organization and that's part of the reason I'm a customer of theirs is because I know the insides. I know they do their jobs well.

 

Leighann Lovely  35:10

So I want to go back to the first example that you gave as as hiring for culture and training for skill. And that is extremely, extremely brilliant. And any company that can finally get that, and I wish as, as an HR professional as a as a, somebody with a recruiting background, I wish that more companies would get on board with that. And the number one mistake that especially as companies grow and get larger, is that they for some reason, forget that. Yeah, they say it, oh, here's our culture, and they sell their culture. They sell their culture to the candidate. Oh, this is great. What you know, it's such a positive environment, blah, blah, blah. But they don't ask the individual, what are you looking for? They just assume that this individual wants to come in and will assimilate to their amazing culture, right? The culture that they're selling, which is what whomever is telling them about their culture believes their culture to be?

 

Patrick Riley  36:25

Yeah, when I'm when I'm hiring somebody, I don't, I will look at their resume. So I can get a feel as to what their background is. And then when I'm interviewing them, I put their resume away. And I don't look at it again.

 

Leighann Lovely  36:42

And I've gotten to the point in my career, where I hate resumes, I hate them, they yes, they're a great tool to see if this person is in line with the job that I'm that I'm looking at, or, but it's gotten to the point where people look at a resume, and they think they know the individual.

 

Patrick Riley  36:59

Right I'm trying to look at it as little as possible. And I want to get to know them. I want to know what makes them happy. What makes them unhappy? What what do they want out of life? Where do they want to go? What do they want to do? What are their dreams? What are their aspirations, what drives them crazy? You're all of those kinds of things. That's what I want, I want to get to know them. And what kind of questions they ask, you know, those types of things.

 

Leighann Lovely  37:35

And if more employees were to focus on that, look at the resume and say, yep, this person has, you know, XYZ background. And here's the thing that I that that's really gotten to me in the, in the last couple of years. Somebody's got 15 years of longevity at one company, 10 years at another company. And then all of the sudden, there's this, this, this during the pandemic they've had, you know, a couple of jobs. And then a company says, oh, yeah, I can see the job jumper and I go, What, wait a second. Yes, during the pandemic, we had a large group of people who all of a sudden had maybe one or two jobs or three jobs in there. The world was tipped upside down, and companies were not quite sure what they were doing. And a lot of personal stuff started happening with, with individuals, mental health issues. We had, you know, family issues, daycare issues, your issues. Yeah, I mean, daycare issues were horrific. Anyways, I digress. I'm going on to a tangent here. The point being is that I love what you what you talked about about hiring for culture, training for skill. And if more companies were to can like think that way, we would, they would find a lot less trouble in hiring. Because right now, we are seeing, obviously, like you mentioned, the largest, the largest struggle that I have ever in my career seen with not enough people, way too many jobs. And yes, are we seeing a lot of layoffs happening? They always happen. We're just living in a world where every single thing that happens in the world is then blasted out onto every social media platform, and everybody knows everybody's business. So it seems like it's extremely horrible. These things happen all the time. And yes, we are in a recession right now. So everybody's feeling the pains a little bit more.

 

Patrick Riley  39:42

But well, and inflation is killing people. I mean, we're in a we're in a weird cycle right now adjustment, correct? Where I think the Fed took too long to adjust interest rates and then adjusted them too. too fast and too hard. But that's just my macro economic opinion. But, you know, in the layout, the reason I think the layoffs get so much attention is because they're from such an odd place, places that we're not used to ever laid off Apple, you know, doesn't lay off people, right? Google doesn't lay off people, Amazon, Amazon doesn't lay off people. And when they do it, it's a huge deal. And plus, it's a lot of people, you know, they lay off 10,000 people, that's a, it's a big deal, right? What they don't report on is the fact that our unemployment in Wisconsin is it like 3.1%, last week,

 

Leighann Lovely  40:42

Correct. And that there are massive amount of companies that are still hiring, and

 

Patrick Riley  40:48

Hiring like crazy, right, trying to find people. And when you start to get into the threes, and twos are unemployment, you're now you're now at cyclical unemployment, which means you're getting down to people who just don't, either don't want to work or are able to work. And, you know, because there's a certain percentage of the population that just isn't, isn't interested in working for whatever reason, you know, could be, it could be mental health, it could be, you know, an addiction could be age could be all sorts of things, medical, but at any rate is becoming very, very difficult for people to find people, people that that have what they need. And so, you know, now we have to improvise a little bit. And companies that are smart, will, will pivot. And we had to pivot during the pandemic. And now we're having to pivot as it relates to skill sets. And, you know, we are here to serve the Wisconsin community, both on an individual basis. And by the way we work with all of the state agencies, we work with all of the federal agencies we work with, with the VA, we're VA approved. You know, we work with WIOA, we work with F set we work with Maximus, we work with all of these government agencies to get funding for individuals who want to get into it as a career so that they can get their training from us funded, potentially, if they qualify. And I can't speak to that because I run the qualification process but but there are there are lots of workforce development places and and lots of government agencies that can help them and get get their educations and skill sets paid for and get into these IT jobs that are paying very, very well. You know, my son is is 24 years old, he's making six figures as a software developer. Up in Appleton, Wisconsin, now six figures in Appleton, Wisconsin goes a long way. Now, he's he's married with two kids, but you know, he's so he's feeling the pain of that. So, you know, he's, he's understanding the cost of being a dad, which is, which is hilarious to me. But you know, he's, he's doing just fine, you know, because he focused his intellect and education on it, skill sets. And he's, he's reaping the rewards of that. So the, the, I think the moral of the story, if I could share with people is, you know, work on developing a wide you know, power skill set of being able to work with people, for people, have a servant's heart, at your core, and then go grab good, solid, technical and whatever that means to you. Whether it's engineering, whether it's science, whether it's it, whether it's teaching, or whatever it may be, but go grab those, those technical skills that you need, and you will make yourself so so valuable to an employer, that they will pay you very, very well and they will give you a job that will be rewarding, because that's what we're looking for in life. We're looking for jobs that reward us. Sure financially is a part of it, but But every study, every study, that's that's been done of employees in the last five years, puts puts the financial reward very low on what employees are looking for. They're really looking for a sense of purpose, a sense of community. Training and upskilling opportunities are critical to them. The opportunity to make a difference, all of those things are what people are really looking for. And if you spend time investing in yourself and your skills and your abilities, both out of power, skill level and technical skill level, you will have those opportunities available to you.

 

Leighann Lovely  45:47

That is really well sad. That's, I mean, very well, sad. Now we are coming to time, I feel like I could talk to you forever about this, because I'm very passionate about the idea of of well about continuing education for myself, I believe that if you're not learning something new every day, you're you're missing out on the opportunity to be great. And but like I said, we're coming to time. So the question of the season what would you change about your job or the practice that people have in your role, if you could?

 

Patrick Riley  46:25

Well, as a CEO, I think I could probably speak for every CEO, I'd love to have a crystal ball, and know what the economy is going to do next. Because we're in such such interesting, I've come back to my first day. But we're in such interesting times with inflation and spending. And, you know, a lot of times with organizations training gets cut. That's just the reality of it. And so it's up to us to prove the value of it. And that becomes a little bit more difficult in times of recession, as you said, that we're in. So, you know, the uneasiness of how we're moving forward is something that I would love to change. But to be honest with you, I, I love what I do. I change people's lives through my organization. And the one thing I'll share with you is that in our company, we don't have a mission statement. In our company, we have a passion statement. And our passion statement is that we believe that learning new skills is the fastest way to change a life. And that's what my organization does every day. Traders that do that we have account executives that helped people do that we have people in our career development division that do that. We have people in operations that help people do that. But that's what everybody in my organization is, is focused on. And I am very, very proud to be able to lead an organization that does and that's something that's very near and dear to me. So there's certainly there are days that I would love to be doing something else. You know, there's days like these that you you wish that you were, you know, just digging ditches for a living or something like that, where you can see the fruits of your labor, but boy, I pretty, pretty proud of my team and proud to be able to lead them.

 

Leighann Lovely  48:41

Awesome. If somebody wanted to get a hold of you. How would they go about doing that?

 

Patrick Riley  48:47

Well, I am happy to have people email me. They can email me at Pat dot Riley R I L E Y and yes, it is just like the basketball coach at New Horizons wi.com Or they can they can chat with us on our web page. Or, you know what the heck give me a call my number is 920-205-3589 and I'd be happy to chat with you personally, one on one about what we do and how we do it. And you know, thank you Leanne for having me today and be happy to come back anytime and chat with you about this or or anything else that applies pleasure talking with you today.

 

Leighann Lovely  49:51

Pat, thank you so much for joining me this has been an amazing conversation and you know what your organization does and and how you offer, you know, the ability for individuals to to upskill and and really be able to step into new careers with some of the programs that you offer is amazing. So, if you are looking to get in touch with Pat Riley and his team, you can also check him out on his website, which will be on the show notes. So check that out. Again, Pat, thank you.

 

Patrick Riley  50:21

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, have a wonderful day.

 

Leighann Lovely  50:25

Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support. Without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode, to follow us, like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

Contact –

E-mail – pat.riley@newhorizonswi.com

Website – https://www.newhorizons.com/wisconsin/home

LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-horizons-it-training-of-wisconsin/mycompany/

Phone number – 920-205-3589

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/cruen/family-time License code: 2330NZD3BLNDKPYI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, companies, skills, jobs, college, individuals, training, wisconsin, years, talked, organization, skill sets, world, business, employees, degree, hiring, pat, technical skills, upskill

 

• Likes
• Download42
• Share