Being More Human in the Hiring Process, with Kristina Wright

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Kristina Wright about being more human in the hiring process. Kristina Wright is a senior leader in higher education and career development, dedicated to ensuring every student has an accessible path to a fulfilling career. As the Director of Career & Professional Development at the Gies College of Business, she leads an integrated team focused on implementing the Career Ecosystem Framework—a structured model that moves beyond "career everywhere" as a concept by embedding career readiness across curriculum, student experiences, and employer partnerships. Under her leadership, classroom integration has expanded by 60%, curriculum has been aligned with labor market insights, and equitable access to career education has been scaled to serve all 3,900 students. With a data-informed, innovative approach that leverages AI resources, competency-based learning, and deep corporate engagement, Kristina is reshaping how institutions prepare students for the evolving world of work.

• 0:03Speaker 00

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• 0:36Speaker 00

  Christina Wright, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  It is a real pleasure to be with you. Where are you joining us from today?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I am in Champaign-Urbana in Illinois.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  Wonderful. I love that area of the country. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about hiring in the age of AI and really how we can go about making it more human again. I think we've all been, you know, kind of navigating this this new wild, wild west of of hiring when you have people using AI to to create their resumes and their cover letters, or at least, you know, augmenting and refining them. You have hiring managers using AI to screen resumes. So you have AI resumes, you have AI screening,

• 1:29Speaker 00

  you have biases that are embedded into both sides of of that because of the AI. And all of this is, I think, really frustrating to to both sides. You have the applicant tracking systems, you know, that are also leveraging AI. That gets really frustrating to applicants who are who are, you know, feeling like they're blasting, you know, sending their resumes out to so many different opportunities and never hearing back. They feel like they're just getting filtered out and never getting an opportunity. On and on and on, you know, people are just like, what is going on? We're not actually getting connected to opportunities. Hiring managers feel like they're not getting good applicants. There's just a disconnect,

• 2:13Speaker 00

  right? And I think behind this disconnect is really just the fact that we've lost a little bit of humanity in the hiring process. So we have this great tool. We have, you know, AI that that, you know, is is wonderful and amazing in so many ways. And yet, we've, you know, jumped the shark a little bit, perhaps, in in terms of how it's being utilized in in this very human endeavor of hiring. So this is what we're going to be unpacking and exploring together today. As we get started, I wanted to share Christine's bio with everybody. Christina Wright is a senior leader in higher education and career development dedicated

• 2:54Speaker 00

  to ensuring every student has an acceptable path to a fulfilling career. As the Director of Career and Professional Development at the Geis College of Business, she leads an integrated team focused on implementing the career ecosystem framework, a structured model that moves beyond career everywhere as a concept by embedding career readiness across curriculum, student experiences, and employer partnerships. Under her leadership, classroom integration has expanded by 60%. Curriculum has been aligned with labor market insights, and equitable access to career education has been scaled to serve all 3,900 students. With a data-informed, innovative approach that leverages AI resources, competency-based

• 3:37Speaker 00

  learning, and deep corporate engagement, Christina is reshaping how institutions prepare students for the evolving world of work. I love everything about your background and what you're doing. I think it's so needed today, and particularly in the higher ed landscape. I think there's a lot of critiques. A lot of people are wondering what's the value of higher ed. There's a lot of public discourse, a lot of it negative, around higher ed these days. And I think what you're doing is exactly the right thing to reconnect, you know, not only the the liberal arts, you know, roots of higher ed, which has tremendous

• 4:18Speaker 00

  value, but also, you know, how do we reconnect skills? How do we reconnect career development, career readiness, to the higher ed conversation, which I think is is what a lot of people are concerned about. So with all that as kind of a little bit of a precursor or a background, Christina, anything you would like to add about your own personal background before we dive on into the conversation?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Thanks, John. It's just a really interesting time, I think, to be in career development and be in higher ed. We get to kind of see both sides of that transition. You know, we're hearing from students what's exciting or what's frustrating about exploring their careers and moving from education to work. And on the other side, employers are telling us what they need and where they're struggling and, you know, how do they find the right talent for their organizations? And so both sides are really adjusting to the new technology and the new changes of work. But I think what I personally find most meaningful is helping students figure out, you know, how to take

• 5:24Speaker 01

  that next step, even if they don't have their full career figured out quite yet.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think that's really important because most young students don't have their career figured out quite yet. To be completely honest, a lot of us adults don't have our careers figured out quite yet, right? We all tend to have meandering paths. Nonlinear paths are kind of the name of the game, right? And and I think especially in the current world of work, where where we see, you know, all sorts of zigzagging career trajectories, I think young students in particular need to understand that that's okay and that they

• 6:10Speaker 00

  still need to, even if that's the case, like they don't know exactly what they want to do. They don't know exactly what, you know, maybe they're going to switch their majors. Maybe they're going to switch their their, you know, their desired industry, their desired career path. That's okay. And and there are still transferable skills. There are still transferable interests, and they can still plan for that, right?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I don't think any of us know what the world of work or what our jobs will look like in 10 years from now.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  But I do think for our students, and we are hearing from them, they are coming in and they have some anxiety about planning for their careers and they're maybe even feeling behind, you know, coming into college as incoming freshmen. And what they're really looking for, I think, is some guidance and some information about what could they do? What's within their control? And for our students, a lot of that comes back to the skills that they're going to gain during their time at the Geis College of Business, because we focus a lot on experiential learning. And so we encourage students to test out

• 7:32Speaker 01

  what it is that they're interested in. Work on a project. Work with an employer. Learn about an industry that wasn't on their radar. And I think that openness and that exploration is really where we want students to focus their time and energy and not so much worried about, well, what's, you know, what's that right path? How will I land that perfect job for me? But thinking more about what are the skills that I'm learning? How will they set me up for a variety of career paths?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that experimentation is so important. And we talk about it all the time in business, don't we? You know, like, experiment, fall forward, fail fast, iterate rapidly, right? These are all the types of things we talk about in business all the time. Be agile. The same thing for career prep. Like, I think students need to learn those same things. And it's okay to experiment. It's like, I know, teacher education programs do this exact thing. Like, you don't want the first time for you to ever, like, go in front of students to be like in your student teaching, like, the very end of your program. So you've gone through your whole major, and now the last thing before you get a job is you're

• 8:50Speaker 00

  going to go do student teaching. And then you get in front of students and you realize, I don't like being in front of students. I don't like teaching kids. I mean, that's terrible, right? Like, why would you do that? So of course, they don't do that. Programs for teacher education, like, one of the first things they do in, like, one of your first introductory courses, is they're going to get you in a classroom with a teacher helping out, just so you can experience what it's like to be in a classroom. And guess what happens? In that first introductory class, some students kind of self-select out. They they realize, oh, I thought I wanted to do this. Maybe I don't actually want to do this. Maybe that it's not actually for me. I remember my my oldest sister, she was like pre-med. Her freshman year, she had to take like a human anatomy class, and they had

• 9:35Speaker 00

  to like go, like, go see cadavers. And they had to, like, go do something with cadavers. And that was it. She was out. She's like, nope, I'm not doing this, right? And good thing she learned that, like, freshman year, first semester, right? Rather than go through, like, years of schooling and then realize, oh, I can't handle this. And then she ended up doing something else completely. She's a therapist. Like, she, you know, she's doing a completely different career that suits her really well, et cetera, et cetera. And the same thing in business. Like, you can learn about careers. You can learn about industries. You can learn about different types of roles and different levels of roles. And you can experience all of that. Sometimes it happens through projects. Sometimes it

• 10:19Speaker 00

  happens through simulations. Sometimes it happens through job shadowing. It can happen a lot of different ways through experiential education. And 100%, you should try things out. You should experiment. And it's completely normal to then realize, oh, I thought I liked this. Maybe I don't actually like it that much. Personally, I'm one that I changed my major four times as an undergrad. And that's fine. Lots of students change their major. It probably would have been more efficient for me, rather than changing my major four times, to just actually do a little bit more career experimentation, you know, and and

• 11:01Speaker 00

  not have to actually change my major. I ended up graduating with like 167 credits as an undergrad. So, you know, that that just ended up extending my time, right, as an undergrad? And and there's more efficient ways to go about doing it, right?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I was the same. I changed my major a few times and realized that there was probably a better way to approach this. And that's really what led me into this field is thinking about the students who start college. I was first gen and don't have those resources, or maybe don't have that guidance from a parent or a relative who's a professional. And so they are starting their college career without a leg up, maybe don't have those connections. And so for me, one of the things that we ask our students to do to come in as freshmen is

• 11:59Speaker 01

  to go to our career fair. Three weeks into their first semester of college, and we ask them to go to this massive career fair. There's hundreds of students there. But what we don't ask them to do is get a job. What we do is encourage them to have a conversation and to pay attention, to walk around and see, well, what type of work, what type of companies and industries are here that seem interesting? Which ones would I want to learn more about? And then make that introduction. I do think right now, communication skills and our networks

• 12:35Speaker 01

  are really the cornerstone of the, I think, valuable assets that will land you an opportunity. And so those are our two asks. Pay attention and start a conversation with somebody who can tell you a little bit about their organization, the culture, and what they might be looking for in a candidate. And have the students reflect on that. What did I take away from the experience? What was exciting? What was nerve wracking? What barrier did I overcome by going to this event?

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So you know, you mentioned communication skills. I think there's a lot of different soft skills, durable skills, transferable skills, whatever label you want to put on it. You know, people throw different labels around, communication being one of them, decision making, critical thinking, you know, like there's different transferable skills that I think are really essential. What other ones would you throw out there that like are really critical right now?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think skills and competencies are really where it's at for the development of our young professionals and to navigate their career. At GESE, we have a set of nine competencies that we embed both throughout the curriculum and the experiences our students are having. One, of course, is, you know, technology and digital fluency. There's a lot of conversation around that. But I think as important, if not more important, are things like the communication, as you've mentioned, teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking. And I think openness, curiosity, and adaptability are really nicely coupled with those because

• 14:20Speaker 01

  we can't predict where the future of work is headed. Students who are curious and are willing to approach things with a learner's mindset, I think, have a real advantage and then are adaptable. If things change, they're willing to take on that new technology and think about, how does this improve my work? How does this open new opportunities for me? What skill set do I need to be able to have, to be able to use a new technology in the workplace even better than my peers? And so I think those human skills are really where we're starting to see our employers put emphasis. Yeah, they want some exposure to technology

• 15:03Speaker 01

  and that adaptability. But I think if you can't work with others, if you're not a problem solver and a critical thinking, you're really going to struggle.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  So how do you see employers, like currently in this AI age? So, you know, we've already talked about, you know, making hiring more human. How are employers like actually testing for critical thinking or trying to gauge some of those competencies during the hiring process?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. Because of course, and as you mentioned earlier, it's so easy to mass apply, especially with AI tools. And we often hear from our students that, you know, that spray and pray, right? Apply broadly, apply often, gives them a sense of control in the process. They feel like they're taking some steps forward. But what we hear on the recruiter side is that they're overwhelmed by applications. And they really struggle to identify the candidates that are a great fit for their organizations. And so what it comes back to that we're hearing from employers is they want to have conversations.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  We're seeing an increase in employers who want to come into career fairs or come to events on campus. They want to talk with students. And they share with us even that those conversations and the repetition of having repeat conversations with our students actually moves our candidates forward much more quickly. But what they're looking for, I think, in those conversations isn't a typical, you know, tell me about yourself, or tell me about a time that you solved a problem. But they're really looking for students to dive into, what challenges did I face in that project? What did I overcome? What were

• 16:58Speaker 01

  the barriers that existed there? How did I handle that? How did I deal with a difficult colleague or teammate? And they're really looking for that evidence that the students have had some sort of experiential learning in, whether that was a class project or it was an internship. So students who are really able to communicate how they've been in those challenging and difficult situations and how they've demonstrated those skills in those scenarios.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Are there other creative ways that you have advised students to like get those types of experiences? Obviously, class projects are awesome. That's something I do with my students a lot. We'll work on like real world consulting projects for outside organizations, those sorts of things. I think employers eat those things up, right? But not every student gets those. Sometimes not every professor does those types of projects. You know, not every student gets to do an internship or is able to do an internship. What are some of the other types of career-ready types of experiences would you suggest to a student

• 18:11Speaker 00

  who perhaps, you know, is struggling to fill out a resume or develop the skills?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, sometimes when we're working with students, they come into our office and they they'll say, I don't have any experience. I don't have anything to put on my resume. Or I'm struggling with what stories to tell an employer. And oftentimes, it's just helping them see that the ordinary situations that they put themselves in provide some of that evidence. So many of our students have a campus job. Maybe they're a work-study student, or maybe they're a tutor on campus, or they work at the front desk. We have a whole team of students who work at our front desk. And they might see that as just a student job.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I just answer the phone. I just answer questions. I just provide tutoring to my peers. And those are in fact fantastic learning opportunities. Oftentimes, they're dealing with situations where they don't have all the answers. It's a rapid work pace, or they're given more load than what they can really reasonably accomplish during the time of their shift. And so sometimes it's just talking with the student about how they're spending their time and what other experiences they have. A lot of our students have student organization experience. Maybe they run for an officer position, or maybe they head up

• 19:37Speaker 01

  a committee. And those are fantastic opportunities to work with peers that are unlike yourselves, to deal with challenges, to deal with ambiguity. Sometimes you don't know from day to day within a student organization, what the expectation might be, or which peers might show up for an event that you're hosting. And so students don't have to have a formal internship to have experience that they can share with an employer. And I think sometimes it just takes somebody asking a few questions. You know, tell me a little bit about what you do at that student job. What skills are you gaining? What challenges have you faced while you've been there working? What are you proud of in that experience? For them to realize

• 20:19Speaker 01

  that, wow, I do have those skills. I am building those stories. I just didn't connect it.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  I like that. It's it's kind of like, um, you know, when you have someone who's perhaps been out of the traditional workforce for a while. So now we're not necessarily talking about a traditional college age student, but maybe, maybe someone who has left the traditional workforce to be a caregiver, or maybe an at home mom, or someone who's caring for elderly parents, or, or something like that. Right. And so they've been out of the traditional workforce for a while, and they're trying to get back in. Um, and, and they're trying to explain a gap, a work gap, or something like that. And they're like, I don't know, what, what do I say? And I'm like, well, you, you've been caring for people, you know, for, you

• 21:06Speaker 00

  know, however, many years, you've been doing so many different things, you've been demonstrating perseverance, you've been demonstrating, um, you know, problem solving, you know, in so many compelling ways, like, it, like you said, it's, it's a lot of it's just about being able to reframe what you're doing day to day in a way that can resonate with an employer, right? Um, and, and I think that is something for, coming back to young people, that perhaps young people aren't practiced in. Um, and, and, you know, maybe they're, they're not used to communicating, generally speaking, I know my kids don't

• 21:47Speaker 00

  even like talking to people on the phone. So, you know, like, they need practice, they need practice having those types of conversations, they need practice, um, you know, kind of upselling themselves, you know, like actually explaining their experience. Uh, my kids, you know, I, I've encouraged my kids to go out and start working when they're young. Um, you know, so in Utah, you can get a worker's permit when you're 14. Like, you're not getting a great job when you're 14, right? You're like working fast food, or, or something like that. But not a lot of, not a lot of people, when they're like 18, can say, I have four years of work experience with customer service experience, you know, just being able

• 22:27Speaker 00

  to demonstrate that I have, I, I've had a shift, that I've shown up on time, that I've been able to like be consistent, uh, I can follow directions, I can interact with customers, I can take feedback, like, just being able to do those basic things, you know, I tell my kids consistently, like, if you can do that, you, you know, are like, a bar ahead, you know, of, of a lot of people. And, and, you know, the same thing goes for, you know, now you're in college, and now you're, you're interviewing, you know, for like an office job, or something like that. Like, it's just about being able to, uh, communicate what

• 23:08Speaker 00

  you've done, in a way that, you know, speaks the language of, of that office, or that business, or that, that company. Uh, it just takes a little bit of thought, it takes a little bit of, of practice. Feel free to rehearse with a career center, you know, with someone like you, feel free to, to, to, to practice with a partner, with a friend, with a parent, with whomever, um, and, and get some tips, because, because chances are you probably have a lot more relevant experience than you might think you have. Uh, and it's just about selling yourself, right?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. We, uh, even work our, with our students on what we call storytelling yourself. Um, and it's exactly as you've described, students have all of these vast experiences, or they've been in a challenging team project, or they've had a difficult scenario at, at their part time job, and they don't make those connections necessarily. Um, and so we spend some time with our students, both in the classroom, and when they come in for a coaching appointment, on how do you tell a good story, how do you tell a compelling story? But I think even more importantly, how do you identify what an employer is looking

• 24:27Speaker 01

  for in terms of those skills? Um, that helps students, I think, to narrow down, uh, what stories would be appropriate, where do I draw them from? Um, and of course, all of us career professionals love the STAR format. Uh, and so, you know, making sure the student has a beginning, and an action, and a result to that story, I think is really important. But it's probably the number one interviewing mistake that we see. Um, I've interviewed with hundreds of professionals and students, and so often I get a story with a middle, um, but I'm left hanging, there's no end, I don't know how it turned out, and or what the, the candidate took away from that experience, or, or why it's even relevant to me if I'm

• 25:09Speaker 01

  the employer. Um, and so being comfortable telling stories, I think, is, is a superpower right now.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, this, this has just been a great conversation. I think a lot of really proactive ideas and tips, uh, for, for anyone out there who is currently thinking about, um, work, thinking about looking for the next job, but also for hiring managers, who are also thinking about, you know, opening that next position, and the types of things they should be looking for, and, you know, proactively trying to help, you know, the people they're interviewing, to bring their best selves out in an interview. You know, I think that's also part of our job, um, going through that process as well. Christina, as we start to wrap things up, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, and then

• 26:02Speaker 00

  give us the final word for today.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am happy to connect with folks. You can find me at the Geese College of Business, in the Office of Career and Professional Development, or of course, I'm on LinkedIn as well. Um, and I would say, just to kind of wrap up today, the world of work is changing quickly, none of us knows what's coming next. Um, but if you're in that position of thinking about your next opportunity, or how you might design your career, um, I would encourage folks to have conversations, speak with folks who are doing the things you're interested in, make those connections, um, and then think about how adaptable you can be for that next opportunity.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love it. Christina, it's been a pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Christina can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe, that you can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day, and I hope you all have a great week.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.