Amber Weaver Of ADT On How To Hire The Right Person

An Interview With Ken Babcock

I like to think that hiring the right person, or the right people, is a lot like building an investment portfolio. Leaders should build a portfolio of high-growth employees for the company — those who have the potential to grow and ‘appreciate’ doing bigger things than what you hired them for.

When a company is looking to grow, the choice of who to hire can sometimes be an almost existential question. The right hire can dramatically grow a company, while the wrong hire can be very harmful to morale and growth. How can you know you are hiring the right person? What are the red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and stories from their experience about “How To Hire The Right Person”.

As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Amber Weaver.

Amber Weaver, vice president of talent acquisition at ADT.

As the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at ADT, Amber Weaver designs and leads the recruiting strategy for the company. Amber has been with the company since 2020 and leads a high-performing recruiting team who hires approximately 10,000 new employees annually. From implementing new technology to leading an employer brand refresh, Amber has modernized the way the company acquires talent. Under her leadership, recruiters have decreased the time it takes to hire, and she was integral in the development of the company’s diversity hiring requirements.

Amber is a member of CHIEF, a private network for senior women leaders. In 2022, she was named to the inaugural Women in Security Power 100 Forum by the Security Industry Association. She is also a member of ADT’s Women’s BERG (Business Employee Resource Group) focusing on how to help women connect and overcome stigmas in the professional environment.

Outside of the office, Amber is the Past President of a non-profit called All Things Made New, which focuses on mentoring middle and high school youth with at-risk backgrounds.

Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

I grew up in the Midwest — a small town in Kansas, and attended a state school, Kansas State University. Strong family values and participation in civic organizations, like being president of my local 4-H club, as well as volunteering, and traveling the world, have all given me perspective and a solid foundation for success. I strongly believe that every successful person has aspects of both grit and resilience to them, and I credit my upbringing to building lifelong characteristics for success.

You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?

I’ll highlight a decision that wasn’t mine — I worked in fundraising early in my career. In 2008/2009, the recession hit, and people were no longer giving philanthropically. My boss and HR walked in my office one random day and told me I was being laid off. I was devastated. My world turned upside down. A few months later, I was diagnosed with major depression. Thankfully, I had a great network and a strong support system of family and friends, and I was able to pull through. I was offered a temp job as a recruiter, and I knew I had only 90 days to prove myself. I worked so damn hard, and it paid off. I was offered a full-time position and never looked back. To this day, I credit being laid off as the best thing that could have ever happened to me and my career.

What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?

I take pride in being an early adopter in new technology. This example is not from my current company — years ago, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) in HR was still somewhat uncommon, I was an early adopter in using AI and predictive analytics in the recruiting process. We were able to bring speed to our hiring process and eliminate the ‘black hole’ in the candidate experience –we hired 100s of people in a matter of days. We also learned a lot related to ethical AI, and had to back off of some of our practices to avoid adverse impact.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s change paths a little bit. In my work, I focus on helping companies to simplify the process of creating documentation of their workflow, so I am particularly passionate about this question. Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?

Scaling up or down based on business need is something that is necessary every day in my role. As a leader, I’ve leaned on two main tactics — automation and building a labor model that can scale up or down quickly.

The pandemic forced many companies to adapt. Implementing remote onboarding and professional development — in addition to maintaining culture — challenged organizations. Can you share with us the challenges you have faced, with remote onboarding and hiring? How have your internal processes evolved as a result?

Candidates know they are in demand, and majority of them are passive. Candidates are expecting an increase in salary expectations and comprehensive benefits — not just the standard health insurance and 401k, but benefits now expand to workplace flexibility, wellness programs and career growth opportunities. But it’s more than that, too…

On our recruiting team, we focus on a few extra things to provide a great experience:

1. Focus on speed to hire — is our time to decision fast enough? And are we getting them through the onboarding and pre-hire checks in a timely fashion? We continue to look for ways to speed up the hiring process — pipelining, ‘always on’ recruitment marketing, automation, quick & easy talent assessments, and continuously looking for ways to eliminate cumbersome steps in our recruitment process.
2. Focus on sharing information on company culture and future company vision — candidates are interviewing us too. Informing them about the company culture and future vision is just as important as learning about their fit for the role. Each step the candidate goes through must reflect the culture. If we do it right, even candidates who aren’t selected for the role will become brand ambassadors. Our hiring managers must remember that our candidates are customers, too. Every candidate that walks through the door, or interacts with us across our video interview platform, should be treated just as a new, potential customer would be treated.
3. Focus on providing value up front — candidates need jobs to pay their bills, but many of them want careers to learn and grow professionally, too. Internal mobility is key putting your money where your mouth is, and you can do that upfront by sharing career pathing examples, upskilling opportunities, and genuine interest in helping candidates understand they can have a career at your company — not just a job. At ADT, we have many long-tenured employees who have held numerous roles and achieved promotions. My favorite story is an employee who was a fisherman, and he decided to apply at his local ADT branch because he ‘wanted to wear a tie to work.’ (Note, this was years ago — neckties are no longer commonly worn at our company). Fast forward to today — he’s a Senior Vice President leading field operations. What a cool story, and just one example as way to share with candidates that your company is committed to career growth for all.

Super, thank you for sharing all of that. Next, let’s turn to the main focus of our discussion about hiring the right person. As you know, hiring can be very time-consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Please share an example for each idea.

I like to think that hiring the right person, or the right people, is a lot like building an investment portfolio. Leaders should build a portfolio of high-growth employees for the company — those who have the potential to grow and ‘appreciate’ into doing bigger things than what you hired them for.

1. Hire people who have a long runway — they’re at the tipping point of their learning, or production, curve. This equates to ‘buying low’. It’s kind of like the S Curve we look for when buying and holding high-quality stocks over a long period of time — a new hire’s growth may be slow at first, but then they accelerate and become increasingly valuable. High potential employees are driven to move up the curve, accelerating well past what you hired them for — and becoming increasingly valuable.
2. Know your investment strategy — what value does this person add to the overall team, especially in terms of diversifying. Each person may be at a different place in their S curve — and that’s okay. You may have someone who fills a critical role — they could be high potential and ready to grow, perhaps at the bottom of their curve. You can then fill in the team with someone who could be considered at the top of their curve — an already well performing stock, if you will — that provides stability to the overall portfolio of team members. I always ask myself — does this person fill the need in my overall team, and do they diversify us enough to propel the team, and company, for greater things?
3. Know when to sell — this isn’t necessarily what it sounds like. Encourage your team to take on stretch assignments, or move to different roles once they reach the top of their curve. Selling high in this instance is allowing your team to begin their S curve all over again in a new role. High growth organizations need growth-minded team members — once they’ve become complacent or comfortable and are no longer innovating; set them up in a new role to continue to add value to the organization.

In contrast, what are a few red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone?

My answer here is less about red flags with the candidate, and more about really knowing yourself as a hiring manager. Every person who hires for their team needs to ‘know your blindspot’, when you’re making decisions for future talent. The best recruiting strategy can unfortunately be outweighed by leaders who may not realize their blindspot.

Blindspots are common — Stretching too far on the reasoning “that’s coachable” in a candidate. Sure, many candidates are coachable in certain ways, but hiring managers should not be completely overconfident in their ability to ‘fix’ a candidate’s approach or way of doing things.

Hiring people ‘just like me’ — similar to the need to diversify your talent portfolio — passing on contrarian candidates — those that may not be overly optimistic or agreeable — is a huge blindspot. You can be missing out on employees who will challenge the status quo and drive incremental change for your business.

Watch your need to micromanage — this can go both ways.

• If you feel the need to have heavy involvement with new hires, ask yourself why? You may be unconsciously turning away candidates who will have the autonomy and risk taking mentality you need to make instrumental change in your organization.
• On the contrary, I often hear leaders say, I hire smart people and get out of their way. That’s great! We should all be doing that. However, a blindspot in hiring and onboarding is being too hands off. A candidate who seeks control may join your team and immediately make a poor impression as a bully or a maverick in the organization because their leader hired them and ‘got out of their way’ too early. It’s important to show a balance of committed leadership in the interview, and when setting the stage with them and the team as a new hire.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.

It’s nothing new — but something that needs to change in today’s society, and especially in today’s workplace: Listening to understand. Our society is driven on the need to show up a certain way to others, mostly driven by social media culture. In times of conflict in the workplace, I too often, am involved in conversations where other parties don’t listen to each other — they state their case and immediately go on the defense and only listen to respond. We can’t make progress with this behavior. In times of conflict, slow down, take a deep breath, and listen without the need to react or respond….really listen.

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.