Talking Shop with Jillian Klein

Guest: Jillian Klein
Topics: Recruiting, company culture

Transcript:

Chris Ressa 0:00
This is retail retold the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris ReSSA. And I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast is brought to you by DLC management.

Welcome to retail retold everyone. Today I am excited and honored to be joined by Jillian Klein. Jillian is the SVP of people and hashtag success at DLC management. Welcome to the show, Jillian.

Jillian Klein 0:32
Thanks, Chris. Thank you for having me. pleasures mine.

Ressa 0:37
So Julian, tell the audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Klein 0:41
Sure, so I am the SVP and people and hashtag success here at DLC. Hashtag success is what defines our culture here. So really, it’s the head of people and culture. So I work on all things people related. I do. My colleague and I work on recruiting and hiring for the whole entire organization, which keeps us very busy. We work on all cultural and people initiatives. I’ve been with a company for the end of this month, that will be five years. And previously, before my time at DLC I was with I was in the retail shopping center space. I was with equity one for five years, until they were acquired. And before that I had experience in HR and recruiting in other industries like media and advertising outside of work. I am a wife and mom of two kids, I have a seven year old boy Dylan, and a three and a half year old girl CNS. So they keep me very busy. I am one of three girls, I’m the oldest, I have two younger sisters, very, very close family who all live in the tri state area. So we’re all physically close, which is nice. And that’s a little bit more about who I am.

Ressa 2:00
Got it. So when you’re not running the culture part and the people part of an organization are being a mom and wife, which I know is a lot of the time. What does Jillian do for fun.

Klein 2:16
When I’m not running after my kids, you could probably find me exercising mostly running on my treadmill. It was a new purchase during COVID. I like to run its rate mentally and physically and it’s kept me sane throughout all of this. And then the nicer weather once it gets a little warmer, I will be running outside. But I’ve found I’ve learned that that running can be very therapeutic for me. I know you recently found David Goggins, he would be telling you to run outside in this weather behind you. It’s like a snow globe outside. You would not be happy with my answer when I woke up this morning inside because I plan to run outside.

Ressa 3:03
So you mentioned the pandemic.

What was it like being in charge of culture, during a time where everyone was working remote.

Klein 3:16
It was a challenge. It was something that not just I was responsible for I was lucky enough to work with the six other members of our executive management team. And it was our primary focus through all of this we had, when the pandemic first hit, we were meeting daily for an hour or longer to talk about how we maintain our really strong culture that we’ve built over the past five plus years. But it was a challenge that was something that none of us had ever gone through. But I think we were really diligent in keeping that our main focus more than what was going on in the business, just making sure that our people were okay. And and, you know, still thriving and staying engaged and collaborative and, you know, productive from home and giving them all the resources that they needed to do that. So I think our team was really I obviously can’t take credit for it myself. But I think our team was really great at working together to making sure to making sure our culture did remain as strong as it had ever been.

Ressa 4:26
Very cool. We’ll talk more about that later. I want to bring this to the part of the show we call clear the air. Are you ready? I have three fun questions for you. Go ahead. Have you prepped for him? I know you know the questions in advance

Klein 4:39
you know the questions and it took me a long time they’re hard questions. But hopefully I’ll give you a good laugh at seminar.

Ressa 4:47
What is one skill you don’t possess but wish you did?

Klein 4:50
So I’m going to go public speaking on that one. I since when I was in middle school, we had a public speaking class. And it was a class that I dreaded go into. And it was when it was my turn to speak in front of the class, I was super anxious. And even the more and more I do it, it’s still just not something I’m comfortable with. But I try and break out of my comfort zone to do it. But I am in awe of people who get up in front of a crowd and have all the eyes on them. And they speak eloquently and confidently and without any I don’t know how they’re feeling inside. But on the outside, you can’t tell that they have any jitters. So that’s something I wish that I had and could do better.

Ressa 5:39
Got it. Yes, I think it’s a unique skill. And I think a lot of people would love to have that ability for sure. Okay. Question two. When is the last time you tried something for the first time?

Klein 5:53
Okay, so this might be a little embarrassing, but I think you’ll appreciate the answer because you’re big into social media these days. So a few weeks ago, I made my first tip top video.

Ressa 6:03
And that’s what was it.

Klein 6:05
So here’s the embarrassing part. I did the walker Hayes fancy, like, ticks up. It’s one of my favorite songs is can’t put on the radio without hearing it multiple times. And then I heard that there’s a tick tock dance that his daughter started that went viral. And so my sister, one of my sisters and I were hanging out the other night, and we were both. We’re both into that song. And we spent an hour studying every move. And then we did the dance ourselves. And I have to say it wasn’t bad. We kind of nailed

Ressa 6:45
it. I can’t wait to see you go in the Bourbon Street steak with orange. Do you know Applebee’s brought back the oreo shake for after this. Yeah. Have you gone on an Applebee’s date night?

Klein 6:59
I have not gone on Applebee’s date night. But I’m going to ask Matt later. Well, below your weekend.

Ressa 7:05
I want to see you guys. Sipping one oreo shake two straws. Deal. Perfect. Okay. Last question. What is one thing most people agree with? But you do not.

Klein 7:21
So this is the hardest one? I am going to say that the customer’s always right. I believe that. While I’m very big into customer service, I believe that the customer should always be heard, but is not necessarily always right. And there can be you know, we should work towards a solution. But I’ve been in some stores and I’ve seen some irrational, irate customers over nonsense. And I think that they’re not just automatically, right, because they’re the customer and carry on that way. So that was my answer for that.

Ressa 8:05
That’s a great one. Very, very strong answer. Okay. That’s clearly there. All right. So let’s talk a little bit more about what you do. And some of the things you’re seeing. We got later on in this episode. We’ve got a cool little countdown list that I think will be great. So but before we get there, let’s talk about a few other things. So one, you have a blog coming out. Tell everyone about this blog.

Klein 8:48
So I am creating a blog. It’s called culture matters. And it has two meanings, culture matters, anything related to culture. And the other meaning to the to the name is culture matters like it’s important culture is most important. So little entendre and I am going to post I think, bi weekly, and it will cover all topics related to culture, hiring and interviewing for for culture. So from the for the candidate, and for the employer, and other pieces of the puzzle that all factor into culture. So recognition, engagement, anything that will that deals with culture and making the workplace productive and enjoyable place to be

Ressa 9:51
very cool. What when’s the first one going to drop?

Klein 9:54
So the first one will draw i By the end of this month I was thinking it would be nice to have my first post be on my five year anniversary with DLC, which is March 27. And but it will be sometime by the end of this month for sure.

Ressa 10:14
Excellent. I’m excited to read it, I will subscribe.

Klein 10:18
And you can find it, we’ll have it posted on our website, and then it will also be posted on my LinkedIn profile.

Ressa 10:26
Excellent. Okay. Let’s get into some culture thing. So corporate culture has been the topic of headline news. For a long time, but since March 2020, until now, it’s been really front and center, you know, hybrid work, work from home all these different things. I’m very curious, in your view, what do you think of all these things that have happened? What is changed forever? And what are some aspects that are just in this moment in time.

Klein 11:05
So there’s definitely been a renewed focus on culture since COVID. I think the biggest change and this is a forever change is the shift to the hybrid work model where, you know, people are in the office, in the office or anywhere, some days, in the office some days and working from anywhere other days, the way that DLC created our hybrid model. We, we want people in the office, three days and home or anywhere two days. And we actually also allow teammates to flex their hours to give them optimal flexibility to handle whatever they need to handle outside of work. And while also obviously getting their work done. So I think the shift to the hybrid model and embracing flexibility is forever, it needs to be in order to retain the team that you have in place, because now they’ve been used to this and and companies have seen that teammates are productive, efficient, collaborative, engaged from afar. And so having people are used to they know they can get their job done. And they’re used to having the best of both worlds. So I think in order to retain your team, you need to keep that as is, and also from a recruiting perspective to recruit new teammates, you have to offer that because if you don’t, someone else will. And it’s something that that candidates out there are looking for and and they’re likely not going to take a job that doesn’t offer it. So I think that that the shift to hybrid and embracing flexibility is the biggest shift. And that’s forever.

Ressa 12:54
Before you go on to the next I want to build on that. I’m curious, because it might sound seem like a silly question. But I think if you think about it, I don’t think it is the question. Why is this so important to Americans today?

Klein 13:13
Having the flexibility? Yeah. So I think for ever, I mean, I think there were a handful of companies that offered flexibility. But I know DLC for one was a company that believed that, you know, we build this culture and collaboration was a big piece of it and being together, and we thought that it’d be in the same conference room to have the best and brightest ideas brought to the table. And there certainly is, I’ll quote you, Chris, there is power in the human connection and something magical does happen when you are together. But seeing how people can still get their work done. And you can still keep your culture strong from afar. It’s you have to maintain it. And it’s important because now people have seen that they have, there’s renewed flexibility for them. You know, for me personally, when I am home, I can leave in the middle of the day, I can build my schedule around what I have outside of DLC and my personal commitments. So I if I have to pick up my daughter, I can. One day I can work from home and leave in the middle of the day, grab her bring her home and then get back to work free hybrid that was much more challenging. And for myself and others who had, you know, dependent care childcare responsibilities, you you had to figure out an alternative way to do it. And this is just making everybody’s lives easier and making them happier that they can be more involved in family commitments and other commitments outside of work. are so I think that it’s so important to keep it that way.

Ressa 15:03
Yep. For sure, I think flexibility is key, right? I take advantage of the flexibility at DLC for sure. Being able to get a couple of more personal things done during hours that you might not have been able to do that before is clearly impactful. But doesn’t inherently mean that people are craving this in a sense that they don’t want to go back to the office like it makes the office feel like a place that people don’t want to go to. They’d rather be away from the office, or is that not true?

Klein 15:43
I don’t think so. I mean, I see it here I DLC the day. I mean, now we’ve we’ve, we took COVID very seriously. So we were home for what was it? 19 months 100% remote, when we came back for the first time in July, to see the smiling faces and the hugs and the the excitement of everybody reuniting and getting back together was really, really special. And you could tell that people were craving that together time. And, you know, we got zoom and teams fatigue, because you’re constantly in front of that screen. And while it’s nice to be home, occasionally, and have the flexibility to do that. There is something great about being in the office. And just the camaraderie that that there is in the office and the energy, it’s, I think, like I said, I think it’s the best of both worlds to have I don’t think anybody wants to be back in the office five days a week. But I don’t think there probably are a few. But I don’t think there are many that want to be home five days a week. So I think that the way that we’ve crafted our policy and others are similar, it gives you the best of both worlds. And if you’re someone that wants to be in the office more than three days a week, we’re happy to have you. And we do have people like that they might feel that they’re more productive here than at home. But I think that there is something palpable that happens when everybody is in just the the and I again, I saw that first day, we were all back together. It was it was really, really special to watch the excitement that everybody had just seeing each other after so long.

Ressa 17:30
Yeah. And that’s where I was going, which is despite empirical data, I don’t know what it is. But anecdotally, it does feel that people still want to be together in an office. And if, you know, it’s, I think it’s a call to, you know, people out there, if you don’t want to be in the office with your teammates at all, and working with them, then either the culture in that organization is challenged. Or maybe it’s time for a new job, because why wouldn’t you want to go work with your teammates, and create the time in your life to be able to do that, which is interesting to me. And it feels like most of the people at DLC certainly want to have some moments in time where they’re collaborating. I also think from a company perspective. I think it’s clear, you can do work, right? Like, like do work, be in your email on your computer from anywhere. I think the pandemic prove that you can be productive from anywhere. But you mentioned collaboration, the collaboration, onboarding, training, some key meetings are clearly better done in person and having a place to do that I think is important. Yeah, I agree. So tell me, what is one thing that you just is going to be fleeting, that’s here in the moment, but it’s not here to stay.

Klein 19:18
So one thing I noticed and read about in 2020 2021, it was this big focus on mental health and making sure that people had their you know, mental wellness was was a big term that was thrown out there. And, you know, some people, their salaries were cut, there were layoffs, you know, a spouse was let go, and there were certain financial stressors and they were facing or you know, in 2020 when school was remote and parents are working from home and trying to juggle it all. It was the There was a lot of people were stressed and not knowing how to handle it all and get their work done while also homeschooling their children and just figure distressing and panicking over how are they going to pay the bills if if someone in the family’s pay was cut or lost their jobs. And so there was this big focus on on mental wellness and mental health companies gave forced PTO days and you know what to do to get away from your work to clear your head. To be honest, I see that now I know at DLC, we are very much still focused on that and making sure we’re very plugged into our people and making sure that they’re happy and okay. And we have constant check ins to make sure that we’re still on top of that, because there certainly are still stressors out there. But I think now that life’s going back to normal and people are back to work and kids are back at school. I think the the focus on the mental health piece of it is waning a bit.

Ressa 21:18
That’s an interesting take. We will see I am curious to see because it’s clearly something that’s made a lot of headline news. I definitely think it’s harder for companies to do then Headline News gives it credit for so we will see that’s an interesting, interesting answer.

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Ressa 22:31
Let’s talk a little bit more about you. So what are some of the strategic things like being in charge of culture? Like I think for some, like what does that mean? So what are some of the strategic initiatives that you’re working on?

Klein 22:44
So we’ve got a lot going on a DLC specifically within the people team. And the people team is me and my colleague, Nicole, we just formalized a strategic recruiting a formal recruiting strategy. Previously, for the past five years, we’ve had random a random tactical approach to recruiting. But given the challenging market, we formalized a recruiting strategy so we can proactively recruit at scale, we are outside of recruiting we are we created a leadership development series that we’re rolling out later this month. That is a nine session series that will take place once every five or six weeks. And that is for our leadership team of about 25. And it will be led by many different members of the leadership team and our executive team. And we’ll cover topics that are specifically related to leadership in general. They’re related to leadership in general, but specifically leadership at at DLC. And within our leadership team, we have some newer teammates to DLC who are have led teams successfully before at other organizations. And we also have veterans at DLC who are newer to managing and leading people. So it’s an interesting group of people. But I we really wanted to make sure we have the strongest leadership team in place. And we want to make everybody the best leaders they can be so that they can then train and mentor the leaders underneath them. So we have a strong future leadership team here at TLC. So that’s one initiative that we’re working on that I’m really excited to roll out later this month.

Ressa 24:36
Yeah, that is an exciting one. I’m excited for that one. What does that look like? So a leadership series? What is that implementation and what are what’s actually going to happen?

Klein 24:53
So we put a lot of work into this. We actually last year had a look Leadership Development Summit, which was a two day event where we had our leadership team in and we covered different topics that we identified were necessary for our leadership to our leadership team to improve upon. And based on that, and it was a lot of information in a short period of time. So it wasn’t going to fix everything. And we took feedback from that summit. And we, we heard from them what topics they would want to learn more about. And we wanted to create because it was too jam packed to two days, we wanted to have a consistent series so that it’s not just, you know, one episode here and there. It’s ongoing, and we’ll keep the momentum alive throughout the year. And so we, we created these topics based on feedback from this group, based on anonymous feedback that we gathered from every year we do for the past five years, we do the Great Place to Work survey, which is a confidential survey that asks you answer 65 questions, and based on and then there are three open ended questions totally anonymous, we don’t know who says what. And based on that feedback, every year, we we make changes to make sure that we are an even better place to work the next year. But for this particular reason, we went to look at that anecdotal feedback to figure out what what do people want, what do people need. And so we added that into the curriculum for this and we picked leaders for each session to there, there was rationale for why a certain leader is teaching a certain session. So you know, if someone one of the topics is delegating, and we picked a teammate who is great at successfully delegating to their teammates, so we picked the most skilled person to speak to each topic and teach the rest of the group.

Ressa 27:15
So it’s a classroom setting.

Klein 27:18
classroom setting, we’re hoping unfortunately, the summit had to be virtual, because it was in the middle of COVID. And we wanted to keep everybody safe. So and some of the feedback was that praying that we all be able to be in person, which thankfully we are. So almost everybody will be in person, we do have some remote teammates or people outside of our headquarter office. For those that can travel, that it makes sense for them to travel, they can be here, but it’ll be in our headquartered office classroom style. And the great thing about having different teammates facilitate each session is there will be a different feel for each session, some, you know, we’re hoping that it will be more interactive than just lecture style. But every every facilitator leader will have their own way of structuring their session as long as they get the information out. But what we’ve heard from our team is that more interaction and less just spewing out information would be would be a bigger hit.

Ressa 28:28
How is this a one? Talk Day Program? What is this?

Klein 28:36
So this is going to be it’s a series over nine or 10 months, it’s nine separate series. Each one is 90 minutes. And it’s it’ll be every five or six weeks, depending we had a look at everybody’s schedule for the year. But it’ll start this year and it’ll go through December. And then hopefully this will be ongoing, and we will make tweaks as needed and continuing on and then hopefully offer it to the next level of leaders. So they’ll go through the same program, but it’s not going to be a one and done thing.

Ressa 29:14
Very cool. Okay. That’s that’s a great one. That’s a great initiative. What other strategic initiatives you working on?

Klein 29:22
So we have last year we rolled out a mentor program, which was great, and that came out of? During COVID. We created a business innovation committee where we asked all of our teammates, we asked for volunteers, anyone could be a part of it. And we had three there were three things we were looking to accomplish with this committee. We wanted the committee to come up with ways to increase revenue, decrease costs and increase efficiencies and productivity. One of

Ressa 29:59
the things that you The matter that we get, we got rid of fax fax numbers, we’re spending a fortune not everyone had an own fax number we didn’t realize. So we got rid of fax numbers now have one fax number.

Klein 30:09
Yeah. But so we ended up having 36 volunteers and 36 teammates participated. And it was too many to have one group. So we ended up splitting up into four groups. But one of the one of the ideas that came out from all four groups was creating was the need for a mentor program, she’ll seven, we’ve had a handful of other applicants, mentee applicants, and hopefully we have some more mentors, but we wanted to, we were okay, starting off small to make sure we did it right. And then growing from there, but it has been a really big hit, you know, we have a lot, there’s a lot of buzz around the office about it. But it’s been great. And one thing that we were able to successfully do and it wasn’t, we wanted to place the best people make sure the partnerships were the best fit, we didn’t want to just put there was one more mentor and one mentee we didn’t want to just put them together, we wanted to make sure that they would be compatible. And that it was we were placing a mentor with a mentee, they based on what that person was looking for. So all of our partnerships ended up being cross departmental, which was very interesting. So you’re not just learning from someone who’s within your own discipline, you get to build a relationship with a teammate across another discipline, and learn from learn about their role and their interactions with other teams here. So I think that was, that’s been a great, unexpected, that wasn’t intentional. But that’s been really great. The cross departmental partnerships.

Ressa 31:53
So I think it’s an interesting one, because if the audience is listening, in the mentor program, you just say, Okay, if you want to be a mentor, and you want to be a mentee, you know, submit to us and we’ll pair you up. But a lot more went into the planning of that. I was, I saw some of the presentations and whatnot and was fascinated, can you go in a little behind the scenes and tell people what it really took to build a quality mentorship program? And what, what your team did to get that off the ground?

Klein 32:28
Sure. Well, so interestingly, the business innovation committee of 36, included teammates across the board, we had people from every single discipline, every level people who were here for anywhere from six months to 10 years. So we have a lot of different perspective coming into it. And we created this program, we determined what how, you know, should we have any qualifiers for the program? How long should someone be DLC before they’re eligible to participate both from a mentor and a mentee perspective? How often should people meet? What should or should we just like leave them to their own devices to talk about whatever Should we have a more structured plan for people? So what we did was, we determined the qualifiers. And we said you had to be here at least a year in order to participate. And that was because we wanted you to be familiar enough with DLC and the culture and the way we do things here to be able to get the most out of the program. And we had we thought and appropriate amount of time for the program would be a full 18 months. So it’s an ongoing partnership. And we created a mentor, guide. So it’s certainly not the Bible. You don’t have to follow it to a tee. But there are suggested topics and talking points to go over some or have it have to do with leadership in general. Some are specific to DLC and the way we do things here and making sure that mentees are familiar with that and knowledgeable. And so that’s been great. We did leave it up to mentors and mentees to to structure their partnership, however, works best for them. Some are definitely more formal, some are more casual, and you know, though, meet over coffee and chat. But it’s something that we stress to our team to make sure we were getting the people in the program that really, really wanted to be a part of it. And we’re going to commit. We stress that it is a huge, huge time commitment. We recommended that mentors and mentees for the first three months meet twice a month and then And after that once a month, if they want to meet more frequently, they certainly can. But it was a big time commitment and there’s work going into it. It’s not just the time you spend together the hour, two hours that you spend together each session. It’s the pre work and the post work. So it is a big time commitment. But I am thrilled to say that everybody took it seriously. Everybody honored their time with their mentees. It wasn’t something that just got bumped and bumped and bumped up and wasn’t a priority. Everybody really took it seriously. And and so I think that’s why it’s been a really big success

Ressa 35:38
is the first 118 month is that period over?

Klein 35:42
No. So we rolled it out, we introduced it to the company in I think, December of 2020. And then we welcomed applications up until I think February and we need parents, I think the first set of meetings happened in March of 2021. So we are coming up on a year. So there’s six months left of the initial seven who started

Ressa 36:11
one of the things that I found interesting that was in the presentations when you were presenting the program, was this confidentiality? Like I had not even thought about it. Can you talk us through that?

Klein 36:25
Sure. So we wanted this to be we wanted the partnership to not just be about learning how to understand the business we wanted this to be. We wanted people to have a resource outside of myself outside of there manager, we wanted teammates to build a relationship with and have somebody to go to to talk about career development and any, anything that any challenges that they’re facing, if they’re, you know, really wanting a promotion and don’t feel comfortable going to their boss saying like I’m ready for promotion, having another resource to go do to say, how do you think I go about this. And so we wanted this to be a really close partnership and friendship. And so we stress to everybody that what’s discussed between a mentor and mentee is totally confidential, because we want that to be a safe space. We want men to us to feel comfortable going to their mentor about anything without having them think that they’re going to go back and tell the boss something that they discussed. So we did stress the confidentiality piece. Of course, if there was something that needed to be raised to the level of legal or HR, there were certain things that we had an orientation of what needed to be elevated. But for the most part, like even so much as if if someone said to their mentor, I’m really not happy, I’m going to look for a new job, that did not qualify as something that needed to be elevated. That’s something that the mentor had to be had to keep confidential and not run and go tell their boss that we have a flight risk, this person is going to leave. You know, part of the mentors, job is to understand the challenges that they were facing and and advise them and help how can they retain that and make it work and make it so they’re happy. And so, so the confidentiality piece was big. And everybody honored that there have not there’s not been any issues there. So

Ressa 38:44
all right. So I want to pivot to some a countdown, calling this the five things they don’t tell you about your interview. So you know, when you’re interviewing for a job five things you probably need to know that you probably don’t read all the time and people don’t tell you some tips and tidbits. So I love countdowns and lists. What is number five? What don’t they tell you about an interview. So five

Klein 39:17
would be the job that you interview for might not be the job that you get. So oftentimes, here at DLC, we we do a lot of we have a unique hiring philosophy here where we hire entry level Junior talent that might not have any experience or knowledge of the commercial real estate business and we will teach you, whatever you need to know and train you and move you up throughout the organization. So oftentimes we’ll meet you know, candidates fresh out of school or, you know, maybe they have one or two years of work experience in a totally different industry. When they come in, they think they’re interested, maybe they apply for a leasing associate position. And we have a behavioral assessment that we give all candidates as part of our hiring process. And we’ll see their profile and say, you know, that doesn’t match the leasing associate position, we’ll bring them in for a conversation, and then we’ll realize they’re great. They’re, you know, we’re talking to them for this leasing role, but they’re really much better suited for property management, or construction, or whatever it is.

Ressa 40:31
It’s number five, okay? What’s number four

Klein 40:35
interviews go both ways. The interviewer is not, you’re not just being interviewed, you should be interviewing the interviewer, you want to make sure that you’re asking all the right questions to make sure that this is the place for you. This is the job for you. Don’t just assume that, that you’re the one on the spot getting asked a ton of questions, make sure you ask the right ones, because person interviewing and the company is expecting that you are interviewing them as well.

Ressa 41:07
Yeah, if you’re not, inside an organization, people think they get everything they need to know from a website or news articles or social media. And it’s really the most important discovery piece is when you’re actually being interviewed and not enough people use that as an opportunity to learn to see if this would be a good place for me. So I think that’s a great one. Okay. Number three,

Klein 41:33
you’re not just going to be meeting with one person, you’re going to be meeting with a whole slew of people.

Ressa 41:38
Yeah, it we call the job interview, it’s really job interviews,

Klein 41:41
right? You’re going to come in, you’re going to meet with, I mean, a DLC you could meet with. For this seven people, and we do a lot of the purpose of our interview, our thorough interview process, we want to make sure that we have enough people weighing in on who’s going to be the right fit for us. And so we don’t just have you meeting with people within the person that you’re going to report into, or even just people within the discipline that you’re going to be working. We have unique with, we do cross departmental interviews. So for leasing, we often pull someone from legal because it’s important, they work so closely together, we want to get their thoughts on whether or not someone’s going to be right for the role and for the organization. So you’re definitely going to come in and meet with not just the person that scheduling your interview, you’re going to meet with it a lot of different people.

Ressa 42:32
Perfect. Number two,

Klein 42:34
your work isn’t done after the interview ends. You shouldn’t be expressing your continued interest in the position. I know for us, you know, people have mixed views on thank you notes. Can they hurt you? Do they just help you? I’m big into thank you notes. I want to know that you’re still interested, and they want to be here. You know, DLC, we have debriefs after every interview. Once the team’s met with a candidate. We all sit and talk about feedback. Everybody shares what they learned about the candidate, and we talk about whether or not we think they’d be a good fit. And definitely a plus a pro for someone would be that their follow up was really strong. They really, really want this job because we want to know that you want to be here so even after the interview, we want to hear from you that you still you. You liked what you heard, and you want to be part of this team.

Ressa 43:39
I’m a bigger fan. I’ve grown a bigger fan. And people know this. On not so much of thank you notes, but of video thank yous. So if I interviewed for a job, anyone who has met with me at the ICSC in Las Vegas knows my follow ups typically, I don’t send an email saying it was great meeting with you. Here’s we talked about I send a video of myself talking to the video. If I applied for a job at DLC, and I didn’t send you a thank you note. And I sent you a video. What would you think that’d be good? No good. Would you find that weird?

Klein 44:11
For sure. I personally like this is so old fashioned. But I personally like a handwritten thank you note. It’s tough though because those don’t come right away. So you could meet with a candidate and like the next day, but I didn’t hear from them. Handwritten notes take longer to to arrive. But I just think that’s a really nice touch. But that’s very old fashion and it’s just something that personally I like

Ressa 44:37
to pick the new way to do that as a video.

Klein 44:41
You’re very comfortable in front of the camera, though. Most people aren’t Fair enough.

Ressa 44:46
Fair enough. And the last one, number one, okay.

Klein 44:51
It’s not just about your resume. That’s what got you the interview. But your story, your personality, your character is what Gonna get you the job.

Ressa 45:01
I love that. So true. So true people so underrate that piece. So, do you have the ability to connect with others? So, Julian, this was terrific. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your insights. I want to take us to the end of the show ask three questions to every guest. You know, are you ready?

Klein 45:26
Yes. All right. Question

Ressa 45:27
one. What extinct retailer? Do you wish you’d come back from the dead?

Klein 45:32
I’m gonna go with moments. Yeah, lumens was my go to there’s one. So I live in Westchester and work in Westchester, there was one right in White Plains that I would frequent. And it was I always found something. And I always felt like I was getting a deal because even if something wasn’t on sale, it was reduced from the original price. And I felt like that was a win. And they had something for everyone. And they had an for every occasion, you could go and get something super casual something for work, you could get a dress for a wedding or any, you know, formal event. So I love moments. I was totally bummed when when they left.

Ressa 46:17
Question two. What is the last item over $20 You bought in the store?

Klein 46:22
So I’ll give two answers. One I got a pair of like $50 jeans at the loft for myself. But bigger purchase way over 20 was we got my son a the Oculus

which was Casca and that’s been a hit in their house. Not for me, but for him.

Ressa 46:47
Very cool. Is he using it a lot?

Klein 46:50
Well, I have to monitor it because I get nervous when I put I tried it and I like does. It wasn’t for me. So I monitor his time on it. But he’s loving it. He’s newly obsessed with football and there’s some football game that he plays in there. So but it’s a big hit with his friends. We have a lot of kids running through my house to waive that thing.

Ressa 47:12
Interesting. Ask him if he knows Russell Wilson just got traded. So find out. Okay, last question. Gillian. If you and I were shopping at Target and I lost you would I would I find you and

Klein 47:28
so if we’re with my kids, we’d be somewhere in the toy section. Just man you will you’ll find me in the athleisure wear for for two years. That’s all I got. And I can’t seem to break away from it.

Ressa 47:44
Got it. Well, Jillian, thank you so much for doing this.

Klein 47:48
Thank you for having me. This is fun.

Ressa 47:54
Thank you for listening to retail retold. If you want to share a story about a retail real estate deal that you are a part of on our show. Please reach out to us at retail retold at DLC mgmt.com This show highlights the stories behind the deals from all perspectives. So it doesn’t matter if you are a retailer, broker, entrepreneur, architect or an attorney. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to retail retold so you don’t miss out on next Thursday’s episode.