Coming in Cold
Getting started was difficult.
I remember graduating from university with limited experience. I didn't have any proper corporate experience or internships. I turned down an offer for a job in Buffalo because I wanted to move back home and commute into New York City where most of my friends were. The only work experience I had was my job at Panera Bread, an internship as a resident advisor for a study abroad program, and the work I did for various school organizations, such as serving as program director for the university's small radio station or leadership positions in clubs. I remember feeling incredibly disadvantaged from my peers who had an "in" at larger companies whether through the internship they secured that I could not, or through connections from their families or neighbors.
Majoring in a more niche space without a strong campus recruiting presence was demoralizing. While business majors at my university were plentiful, opportunities to engage with organizations were not. Access varied tremendously by which "concentration" or specialization you had on your degree, indicating course completion in a few specific areas. My school was known for churning out accounting students, so Big 4 firms always made a show of appearing on campus and nurturing relationships with future auditors as early as sophomore year. For me and my unorthodox HR and international business dual-concentration, companies were not lining up to offer me paid internships every summer. I always felt behind my peers as a result of this, with no guarantees after leaving the university.
It took me eight long months to find my first "professional job" after graduating in December of 2013. My friend was able to connect me for a temporary job editing digital textbooks and doing quality assurance for them, which was nice for making some money and savings, but it was not a long-term, career-building job.
I wanted to work in human resources. I was interested in how businesses ran and staffed their companies, and wanted to do this type of work professionally. I am privileged enough to have an aunt who is an HR executive who was able to connect me with a few people to talk to about what I wanted to do. They helped me talk to more people, who helped intro me to more people, eventually leading me to a recruiter who was hiring entry-level, temp HR roles. I was eager to build some experience, so I was not picky (or truthfully, even thoughtful) about industry and specific type of organization. My goal was to get started ASAP.
I had a few interviews for temp and temp-to-perm roles, including multiple banks and financial firms (it was New York, after all), creative studios, music labels, and eventually found my way to a small consulting firm on Park Avenue that focused on performance management work with Fortune 500 companies.
I remember meeting the woman who would be my boss. She was a tall, African-American woman who wore vibrant colors -- not the greys and navy blues I had seen in many other office environments I'd interviewed in -- and spoke casually. I was in what I called my "interview suit" and looked incredibly out of place in this small, casual office where everyone wore jeans and swore.
This was a small company where my boss was the only HR person. We shared a small room with the head of finance and an accountant. The four of us comprised the operational team supporting fewer than 30 employees across New York and Australia.
Beyond being surprised by the casual atmosphere, I knew little about what "performance management consulting" actually meant in practice. I had some theoretical background from coursework but no real understanding of how the business operated. I mostly understood that people with PhDs consulted with executives at large companies for payment, but had no insight into how the company delivered client value.
Even worse, I knew little about what it took to work in HR. My schooling had focused on bigger picture processes and systems within the HR space and the components of it: recruiting, learning & development, performance management among them, but also labor relations, benefits, and payroll. While I knew what these things were and why businesses needed them, I had no formal training in any of these areas. See, my schooling was great at teaching me about these things and looking at it top-down, but it did not prepare me to actually do the work, to be a cog in the machine of an HR strategy. Given I was now supporting an organization of thirty people, I had to quickly learn all of these things under the guidance of my boss.
As a temporary employee, there's little incentive to invest in training. Temps are brought in for short periods to handle special projects and overflows of work to get teams "over the hump" during a busy period, like seasonal employees hired to support the retail floor during the holiday period. In this company's case, they needed to make a few more hires to account for growth within a few key accounts, and instead of paying an agency to make these hires, they decided to have my boss lead recruitment efforts and offload some of their admin work to me in the meantime. Again, I didn't really understand this dynamic at the time, but only picked it up in hindsight with the benefit of time and experience.
So I was twenty-one, no proper experience, no clue how the business worked, no idea how my function worked or fit into the business, and no insight into the operating culture of the company and how to get things done. The last point doesn't really matter since I was totally clueless on everything else. Sometimes success is really just showing up and being in the right place at the right time. It probably didn't hurt that I was willing to work for $15/hour, either. But I was unprepared and in over my head.
I was told my temp contract would last "up to six months", but I was let go a little less than three months into it. You may be shocked to find out it was because I was not particularly good at my job.
In truth, I hadn't delivered much of anything valuable to the company and misunderstood how they operated. While a $15/hour entry-level temp is probably not going to be a paragon of productivity, meaning I shouldn't be too tough on myself, I also fell into the all-too-common behavioral pattern that recent grads fall into, which is treating work like school: waiting to be told what to do and operating task by task, like homework assignments in class, versus proactively raising opportunities and taking ownership of a problem.
While early on, things seemed to be going well: my first project was to review the company's benefits package and create a more streamlined pamphlet for the team to understand their benefits. My boss showed me what they had and what the benefits did and why this was a problem. This took about thirty minutes to explain to me. I then reworked the pamphlet over the next few days and uploaded it to the company's Dropbox folder. The next few days after I sat around for eight hours a day waiting for new work as my boss was traveling. I was light in guidance or direction, but I also was content to do nothing -- I had not been assigned any work, after all. In fairness, I never asked to help more, either.
My second project was to coordinate interviews. Again, this required my boss to show me how interviews worked and what I would need to do. I was to scan resumes and look for fits and then schedule phone screens with my boss. She gave me a list of requirements to look for from cold applicants, and I passed through a bunch of people for her. Very few of them then came on-site, and none were actually hired. I still remember one person not getting hired over something trivial: her last company was closing down and she was involved in winding down the finances for them. The "vibe" of her experience was off. In addition, she didn't drink for religious reasons, which also was a concern for one of the interviewers. Eventually, someone else was referred in that knew one of the directors, and they got the role without my involvement at all. I was in the thick of doing phone screens when I saw someone come in for an interview that I hadn't set up.
The true souring of the work relationship was when the company was doing an off-site meeting in Australia and everyone would be there. I was not to fly in, as I was a temp. I was told to "take it easy", as there was little to do while everyone was away. While I did no work, I still logged 40 hours of work during that period. The temp agency happily charged them my fee. I was then questioned why I logged so much. While I had still performatively worked by showing up to the office, in terms of output I had done little more than the pastime of underutilized office workers everywhere: Solitaire. I wasn't given the time off, so I assumed I'd get my normal pay.
The week after, my boss had me do a few more small things, and then called me into her office to say it would be my last day. I was shocked. She told me "that's temping" and that she would be happy to be a reference for me. She was a good reference for me for my next two roles, and I was happy to return the favor as a reference for her as someone she had managed.
Could I have done better? Absolutely. But, I would also say the organization was not set up to help someone new to the world of work grow. As a twenty-one year old with no experience, I was "hungry" to do well, but didn't have a good idea of what that looked like. I operated like I was in school, not like I was in the workplace. I lacked professional experience to take proper cues and deliver work, but also functional experience to actually do the job properly.
Realistically, I was the wrong person for the job given their limited training infrastructure, and likely wasn't worth investing in as a short-term stopgap. From the organization's perspective, hiring me was probably a poor decision, especially considering the recruitment fees added to my modest salary for minimal value delivery.
My story is not unique.
Later in my career, I witnessed others hired for roles they weren't qualified for, then failing. This stemmed partly from recruitment selection problems but also from inadequate onboarding support. People are often thrown in to "sink or swim" based on their intuition, without proper organizational guidance on how to succeed. Even smart people with impressive resumes and achievements who excel in interviews can flounder in new roles. This reflects a fundamental problem with corporate learning and development strategies.
Another example
Consider how you acclimate to a new house or hotel room. How often do you visit someone's home or check into a hotel and feel disoriented trying to navigate the layout or perform basic tasks like finding the bathroom or adjusting the heating?
I always feel stupid when I get naked and stand in the shower, but have no idea how to make the shower work or get the heat correctly. While "The Design of Everyday Things" would tell me it's not my fault that the design isn't immediately intuitive, it's also the sort of thing that I should expect to understand how to do. I shower every day, sometimes multiple times a day (especially when I am in Singapore). I am a pro at bathing.
Yet in a new environment, my previous experience doesn't guarantee success with this basic task. I often find myself in the most vulnerable position in a strange shower: naked and confused, forced to sheepishly ask my host for instructions while wrapped in a towel.
Isn't this exactly what happens to new hires? They're recruited based on previous experience but not properly oriented to their unique new context. Though not physically exposed, how often do new employees feel embarrassed about not knowing how to perform the job they were hired for? To existing employees, operations seem intuitive: "He's showered before, he should understand our shower." But lack of specific contextual experience creates confusion and attempts to save face by struggling when the solution would be simple if someone proactively provided guidance. Or even better, put a system in place to get people up to speed faster.
Fortunately, this bathroom scenario is easier to resolve than most workplace situations. My solution is to ask friends to demonstrate the shower before I undress. Good Airbnb hosts provide instructions for using their shower system: a small gesture that creates comfort and allows guests to focus on the task at hand.
Why are companies bad at this?
There are a few key problems that make L&D appear to be an unattractive or unviable investment for companies to make.
1) Scale of hiring
Companies that invest heavily in L&D typically need to train large workforces quickly. This includes businesses hiring high volumes of people into hourly roles (retail associates, fast food workers) or entry-level corporate positions (junior software engineers, sales development representatives). These high-turnover roles require constant hiring, creating a need for a steady pipeline of talent that can be trained consistently.
With frequent hiring, companies recognize the value of standardizing training. Wendy's requires minimal qualifications from new associates because they've invested in teaching everything needed to perform well. This investment pays off through time savings and consistent standards—similar to the system that produces identical quality burgers worldwide.
If companies do not have this rapid scale of hiring, whether due to the structure of their organization or the pace of their growth, they may not feel the need to invest in L&D.
2) Diversity of roles hired
Beyond volume, some companies may not want to invest in L&D because they hire across diverse functions. This is typically coupled with low volume, meaning that developing a scaled training plan is challenging.
Outside of compliance, there may be little that can be done that feels "bespoke" to each individual, leading to companies opting to have teams train their own to the best of their ability, without a central L&D function to support the teams.
3) Lack of clear ROI
While small businesses may have CEOs or owners who control the purse strings, in most corporate, that honor goes to Finance. They own the budget and managing the business' capital. When a finance person is looking at where the company can invest, it wants to see what a return looks like on that investment. It is easy for sales teams to make a pitch that growing HC can lead to more sales because of more territory covered or deal flow improving, especially if salespeople can see how many active deals are in the pipeline and the speed to close those deals.
Marketing can similarly make a revenue case by showing returns from campaigns and attribution associated with specific marketing touchpoints. Beyond revenue measures, engineering and product teams can highlight improvements in product development or strategic bets in new areas that require upfront investment. This can then lead to greater return in the long run, such as hiring a small team to develop a new product line. In short, finance can see clear ROI when making hires in these departments that directly translate to revenue.
L&D does not have this luxury.
Attributing success to L&D is fraught with noise in the data. Basic correlation between trained and untrained population, is directional at best. Survey measures and other indicators of teams enjoying training or building confidence in doing their jobs is soft and hard to translate into ROI. Factors like promotions, internal transfers, and turnover are also hard to attribute to good L&D, as managers also want to take credit for their team's upward career momentum and direct mentorship versus sharing that type of credit with teams that often manage this function.
Measurement in L&D will thus need to triangulate around a few areas that indicate some degree of lift. This may involve causal modeling to assess behavior change, as well as looking at trained versus untrained populations to gauge differences over a longer time horizon to get a better sample size.
Most L&D teams are not equipped to do this kind of analysis, and it requires there already be training in place that requires growth. In addition, most L&D professionals are hired for their experience in instructional design and facilitation, not for their data analysis skill. Rarely is their leadership also equipped with these skills. Business analysts and other data functions also are usually asked to work on other items seen as more consequential, making this type of investment into L&D a low priority even if there is a large enough volume of data to work with.
L&D functions in high growth environments may spring out of a need and be handled by employees with enough experience in their roles and products to train others informally. Some will say there is a "need" for it without being able to properly articulate why using data. While this is a good starting point, it also means these individuals have to take on a new job scope, taking away from their primary roles. This will not scale.
4) Preference to hire people who already have the skills to do the job
Lastly, companies may skimp on L&D if they prefer to hire experienced employees who have "done it before". This means that the cost of training the employee largely rests on prospective employees' prior employers to provide. The company can then pay a premium to woo them over to their side instead. This narrows the pool of talent and increases costs doing specialized searches and engaging a small pool of talent. While some candidates may want to make a "Coke to Pepsi" type of career switch, this pool is smaller and others in the space may also be after their talents, increasing competition and costs to hire.
Ideally, we are able to break down what we are looking for when a hiring manager says "I want a person from [Brand]" into tangible traits we can select for in the interview process, then train on the rest. However, this requires companies to have the capability to develop their own talent: many do not.
How do I make the case for L&D investment?
These factors can complicate organizational L&D investment. Without centralized L&D, companies may allocate department-level budgets for specific needs or provide stipends for self-directed development.
While these approaches show commitment to development, lack of oversight creates inconsistent learning cultures across the organization, complicating cross-functional collaboration. Investments become uneven, and employees may not select the most valuable development opportunities. Stipends and department-specific investments should supplement rather than replace a central L&D strategy.
Companies would benefit from centralizing L&D to provide guidance, expertise, and investment oversight while measuring ROI as effectively as possible. Department-by-department approaches may address immediate needs, but grassroots efforts need top-down support to scale effectively, enabling teams to focus on their primary responsibilities.
Here are recommendations for companies skeptical about broader L&D investment. Organizations are typically "ready" for formal L&D when departments are independently managing L&D components, hiring rapidly leaves leaders with insufficient time for each new hire, or they're paying external vendors for specific needs. These signals suggest it's time for centralized L&D.
1) Reduce costs
Counterintuitively, centralizing L&D under a single team with authority to build and administer L&D programs across departments may be cheaper than having each department manage their own L&D budgets. Centralizing invites scale, and there are likely overlapping initiatives across department that can be streamlined. In addition, external vendors may be able to be replaced with training built in-house. While potentially more expensive upfront, there is also a benefit in having a team build training specifically for the organization's unique context and customer, versus a vendor who will teach to a particular methodology that may not be practiced throughout the organization. A central L&D function will be able to better build and manage training, and are incentivized to continue learning and tweaking their approach based on what they learn. There are benefits of scale here enabling broader application to meet the majority of the needs at a lower cost.
Beyond monetary costs, there are also time costs that are saved by having a centralized L&D function versus relying on "good intentions" from individuals across the organization to moonlight as trainers for their teams or departments. These people make great champions and partners of L&D, but often aren't equipped with the time or resources to do this as effectively as a dedicated L&D team. Investing in dedicated resources will give time back to functional teams to do their jobs and also help scale them. Individuals that sign up to train others and have the capability to do so often are effective operators who know their function, customer, and business well -- L&D can help scale their knowledge while enabling them to also excel in the core competency the company hired for. L&D then enables the company to "scale the brains" of its strongest employees by leveraging their expertise with L&D programs.
2) Establishing a vision for future development
Selling anything, to customers or internal stakeholders, requires being able to identify pain, like we discussed above, as well as articulating a vision and the benefits that come from it.
For centralized L&D, there needs to be a vision for what it will accomplish and how it will make the company better. One cannot simply say "we need this function with hard to measure ROI" without painting a clear picture of what it will do and how it will help the company in ways that are challenging to measure. If quantitative measures are difficult, qualitative metrics must be used.
On the smallest scale, this type of investment can be positioned as a time savings for others. I remember working with a VP of Sales who was concerned about investing in scaled training. They oversaw a growing and successful sales organization. To help the team be successful, they'd dedicate time to onboard each person individually -- sitting in on their calls, providing one to one coaching, and educating them on the product. As the team grew, their calendar became jampacked. They were unable to provide this level of service to their team as it grew, leading to making tradeoffs between training and performing their leadership duties or other more high leverage activities, like visiting customers.
They were concerned that me coming in to build training would make their unique perspective less important. "Do you still need me if you're training everyone for me?" they asked. My view was different. I asked them "You can't keep this up as the team grows. There isn't enough time in the day. You're also needed to help close big accounts and meet with customers. My question to you: How do we scale your brain?"
This clicked and led to a fruitful partnership. We were able to effectively put him in the room of every new hire without having them actually spend that one to one time.
L&D doesn't have to be difficult, but we need to invest in making it clear what sort of gains we'll have and the costs we'll save to advocate effectively for it. We'll continue discussing how to build an L&D function that generates results and scales with the business.