AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

EVs & Talent: Navigating Mobility's Future w/ Ashley Taylor

• AVL, North America

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Join us in this enlightening episode of "Reimagine Mobility," where we dive deep with Ashley Taylor into the evolving landscape of the mobility sector, focusing on the pivotal roles of human capital, recruitment, and workforce development. Ashley, a seasoned professional in the mobility space, shares her journey from automotive recruiting to founding her own consulting firm, highlighting the significance of talent strategy in the electric vehicle (EV) industry and beyond. Discover the challenges and opportunities in the transition from internal combustion engines to EVs, the impact of hybrid roles, and the vital importance of upskilling in today's job market. Whether you're a job seeker in the mobility sector or a company navigating the shifting tides of talent acquisition, this episode offers invaluable insights.

 

Ashley Taylor, with a rich 15-year career in workforce development and engineering recruitment, is a luminary in guiding entities and individuals in energy, transportation, and mobility. Her insights, shaped by experiences engaging with industry giants and innovative startups like Honda and Rivian, led her to establish Green Tech Resources and ChargedUp Careers.

 

At Green Tech Resources, Ashley consults on workforce strategy and talent attraction, while ChargedUp Careers is her platform for empowering job seekers through tailored career coaching. This dual expertise allows her to offer a unique perspective, bridging organizational needs with individual career aspirations.

 

Away from work, Ashley recharges with her family, bringing a personal touch to her professional insights. Known for her optimism and adherence to the golden rule, Ashley is a revered voice in her field, blending industry knowledge with genuine care.

 

Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleytaylorchargedup/

 

ChargedUp Careers offers transformative career coaching for engineering & technology leaders seeking to elevate their careers or pivot domains towards more fulfilling roles. By fostering intentional action and emphasizing each individual's unique skill set as a solution to organizational challenges, ChargedUp Careers positions its clients as indispensable hires in their desired fields. Check out our website to see how we help individuals just like you!www.chargedupcareers.com

 

Green Tech Resources is a specialized consulting firm in the sustainable transportation field, dedicated to assisting organizations with talent attraction strategy, workforce development planning, and retained search services. By harnessing profound industry insights specifically in sustainable transportation, the firm adeptly addresses the unique challenges and opportunities in this sector, ensuring that companies attract and retain top-tier talent to propel their environmentally-focused missions forward.  Interested in learning more?  Reach out to Ashley direction at ashley@greentechtalent.com

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

Welcome to the Reimagine Mobility podcast series. I'm here with Ashley Taylor. Ashley, thank you for joining us. You are in a segment in the Mobility space that is changing, obviously, as well. And that's let's call it maybe headhunting and recruiting. Right? It's the human capital of the of the mobility side. And maybe introduce yourself first. Tell us a little bit what you're doing today. And let's jump in. And from your perspective, reimagined mobility to gather here a little bit. Awesome. Well thank you. First off, just thank you so much for having me on. So excited to get to talk with you today. So yeah. So, just a little context. about me, I, I started as a recruiter in, the, transportation, automotive mobility space. And I quickly evolved into doing more, sales and working with automotive, OEMs and suppliers and helping them from a workforce documentation standpoint. So, it was amazing opportunity. I got to work with companies, you know, big companies like Honda here in the Columbus, Ohio area. and then I got to jump into and work with a lot of the EV sector. And I just I fell in love. I got, you know, to work with Rivian and Lucid and Canoo and all the, you know, some, some other ones that are maybe not around anymore but just fell in love with that space. yeah. So I about a year ago, I opened up my own company. I saw a gap in the market for, really workforce development consulting and how it strategy for, a lot of these people, it's, it's a competitive market, especially with some of these engineering, you know, with specialized engineering roles. So I got to open up my own company and help consulting that, which has been wonderful. So we do talent strategy, but we also do, from, working search as well. So it's super fun. and then in that kind of grew a, a need from a jobseekers perspective on helping to coach and help job seekers find positions as well. So I find I my two companies, I have green tech resources. Yeah, they have charged up careers and people get confused by that sometimes, but they work very commonly harmoniously together because I know what companies are looking for, and I know what job seekers are looking for. So it's like a very good, symbiotic relationship. Very good, very good. I looked actually at your, LinkedIn profile and the different things you're sharing. They're very interesting. And, for somebody who hasn't done his resume in a quite a while, I definitely learned a few things that I may have to, change on my resume, but. But, Ashley, when we look at and you just talked about right to EV space and how fast we've grown, certainly in this country, how fast growing, but also in a very short period of time. So both fast in both respects. When you look back of what just happened and when you now look forward, now that suddenly over the last six months, maybe more of, of a more tampered growth or tampered forecast with EVs is coming in and sort of now the the discussion about, well, maybe hybrids and plug in hybrids aren't so bad. Some people put this in the IC space. Some people put this in, in the electrification space or EV space. What do you see changing with with people going forward? Are people going back to the ice again? We're so and what over the last several years they maybe want to do flee that area. or people saying is it's just temporary. But what do you see from from companies you work with? What do you see from people seeking, new employment, a change of employment? Share a little bit that as we again reimagine mobility and sort of looking into the future. Yeah, I think there are multiple, you know, ways to, kind of answer that question in regards to, you know, ice versus hybrid versus EV. You know, everybody's looking at Toyota just, you know, kind of announced their strategy. so I do think from a job seeker perspective, there is a little bit of hesitancy in going back to the ice. You know, there are people that are currently in that phase and are a little bit worried about, like, what does my future really look like? and so, you know, I talk with a lot of those, you know, job seekers or people in those roles, you know, about leveraging transferable skills and how we can start, you know, it's not about taking a a jump right away. It's about, you know, creating intentional action and intentional strategy as far as building those skills that you as the need of all, you know. So they're kind of going in that direction as well. So I think that in general, yes, I don't see a ton of, you know, ice in it, not going away anytime soon. It really said, but I do think that from a there's most job seekers are cognizant that they need to be evolving with the industry as well. Well, I am And then when we take that topic, which is more, I would say over the last few months or maybe years become a topic, this division between EV driven, IC driven, but the topic of onshore versus offshore, right. That's been, ongoing, I would say a roller coaster, some two years. It's a big thing, a couple of years it's a bad thing or it's something we're not pursuing. And then it comes again, comes and goes. Right? I call it a roller coaster. What do you think? Again, looking forwards, we're seeing when it comes to on and off shoring. Yeah for sure. So I find, you know, a few years back maybe 2019 or whatever, everybody was holding their the cards, all holding their cards real close to their chest, not wanting to offshore much, not wanting to, you know, they really wanted to keep all that proprietary information very internal. What I see now is a, you know, I don't know if it's a little bit of Covid, but it's also just, you know, the rebalancing of, you know, workforce internally and organization. But I think the next year or two of more tolerance for outsourcing. So, you know, I'm talking with these, you know, individuals who are looking to propel their careers forward. And we talk a lot about engineering services companies. Then, you know, the opportunity that is there nowadays that potentially, you know, maybe people never really considered working for an engineering services company because, you know, they they thought it was very important work for the OEM, but now they're seeing these layoffs. And, you know, these services companies are a lot more attractive because, you know, if a projects ends generally there's multiple projects going on and you can really allocate that workforce. So right now I'm seeing a really big, you know, tolerance for OEM, to either use engineering services companies or even nearshore or offshore. A lot of times a combination of both, and then also workday, you know, more giving the suppliers a lot more, responsibility as well. So figure out what if you if you, if we stay with that for a moment, what do you see OEMs doing in the next couple of years? I wrote right now over the last year, we've seen the the big three in the U.S. reduce their staff significantly right through voluntary layoffs, voluntary retirements, just through some layoffs, incentivized, packages for them to leave. Is this a temporary thing to reduce costs because of the sheer amount of money they have to spend on the on the EV side, on on bringing that up to speed. Is it market driven that suddenly price pressures and not necessarily increasing number of volumes of vehicles and sold is is is pinching them? This is a temporary thing. What what do you see the trend when you talk to me from your perspective and your position to the OEMs and to people that, may come from them to you to to find the talent that they need. Yeah, I think that a lot of it I mean, it is a lot of cost driven, right? At the end of the day, they are, you know, OEMs are they got, you know, got to make money. They are accountable to their stakeholders. So I think that there's going to be there's I think there was a lot of over hiring, you know, that there really was a lot of open hiring, because of the excitement of all the new technology. So there's a lot of, like I said, rebalancing. And so I think that it's starting to level off. I do see that. I mean, I'm not saying there's not going to be any more layoffs or things like that. I'm sure there's more to come. But I do think that things are going to kind of simmer down a little bet things are going to get rebalanced. You're going to find this flow. what we were just talking about leveraging, you know, the outsourced companies and also their internal resources and finding that kind of yeah, that flow together. Well, there were when we didn't take the, let's stay with the human capital right to work or for, I would say probably most of the companies and maybe all companies in the world, if you really get down to it. But what do you see going forward is the most important thing for, for the human capital development? Is it finding the right talent that I can then mix up with experienced people with maybe even AI that's just around the corner, to really be on a daily basis. Part of our toolset that we use, is it using internal resources. We talked the IC before that we take from the IC side and move it into the maybe autonomous side, move it into the EV side. So it's a sort of an upskilling, a retraining. What do you see going forward? Not necessarily what happened in the past, but what do you see going forward? Are larger companies doing with their human capital? I yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. I think that the power is in upskilling and leveraging transferable skills. So, you know, there is up in the market right now, there's no longer really those people that are, you know, going to be at a company for 30 years. You know, there's a lot of people looking for other opportunities. And there's a big emphasis right now on keeping that tally internal. So how do you do that? You do that through upskilling. You do that through taking. Maybe those ICE individuals looking at the skillsets that they had and seeing, okay, how can we upskill that to now help? You know, maybe it's in the battery manufacturing they have that you know, that somewhat of that knowledge. So I think that that's really, really key for organizations to be looking at their current employees and thinking, okay, these people might be a little bit nervous. How can we invest in them and train a to, you know, get them to their next level? So I think we're going to be seeing that more and more. There's already you know I know there's Bosch has a great upskilling you know program within it. Most of the companies do. But I think we're going to see that even accentuated even more so. So would it be fair then to say that in each organization with any within any firm is transitioning more to become also a training center instead of just taking care of the human resources in, in, in general to well-being and well, not and more also into sort of almost like an internal university sort of thing. I see it both ways, to be honest with you. I've seen it internal. I also see, though, organizations leveraging local universities, and local, partnerships around to upskill as well. I know that here in Ohio, there are quite a few community colleges that are, you know, specifically putting together battery upskilling programs where organizations can then send their current people through these trainings to upskill them. So if they were potentially at the end to deploy it, you know, sending them to this upskilling training for a couple of months, so then they can move into the battery manufacturing plant and I think, you know, we're going to see a little bit of both. It's very expensive for an organization to completely put together their own university, if you will. so I think leveraging these external partners and these external organizations are going to be key. how much of that and that's the last question on that topic. How much of that do you see the government playing a role? So this private public partnership I know there's public university and private universities. So let's leave that away for a moment. But how much is the government playing into this and how much are companies going forward? Again, as we look forward as we reimagine just this whole industry, this government going to play a bigger role, or is it sort of staying the way it is right now? I see actually the government giving a lot of grants to organizations still invest in their people. I think it's up to the organizations, though, to see what's out there. I think that sometimes, you know, I, I talk with different companies and they don't even they don't know what they don't know. They don't know that there's you know, grants out there that, you know, they can use to invest in their own associates. so I do see that there is that government help that's out there. You just need to know to look for and and how to use that. Actually, over the years, ever since I got into this industry, 25 plus years ago, we always talked about being collar workers and white collar workers. Right. Sort of this description, labeling whatever you want to call it, not even any role negative or whatever, but the distinction of two different types of jobs is is still accurate. Or is there a third or fourth that we should add as we go forward? I mean, back when I started again in the industry, AI, I don't remember that ever being a topic autonomous. I think we've talked about it sort of in a sci fi way. EVs, we sort of laughed at some of the early adopters of doing it and how it failed. And it will never happen. And here we are today. But it's just still the right way of looking at the workforce going forward. Or are there other descriptors or other type of areas that have evolved over the last years, or will evolve going forward? Yeah. Great question. Okay. So you know, when you look at the types, the jobs that are going to be needed to, you know, fuel, you know, the upcoming development of cell manufacturing, a battery manufacturing, battery recycling, there's this new a bigger skill set that's needed. And what I'm seeing in the industry, I didn't name this myself by calling green collar jobs. So we're talking like, not necessarily the assembly line workers, but maybe a little bit more that have a skill to trade. So, you know, maybe it's the electrician that's it's the maintenance workers, it's the PLC programmers. These are going to be of really, really essential jobs to be able to do the manufacturing that we need to get done to to move forward. And when we look at going forward in this whole industry, again, specifically the human capital, let's leave it. I think at that, at that time, I think when you look at companies and you compare them with whatever the past 5 or 10 years, what did you have insight into this space? What are the things that you will say? Companies you got to start thinking differently about about people you got to start thinking about, you know, blue collar workers, white collar workers, green collar workers in a different perspective with a different outlook going forward. What would that be, if anything? But I assume you would have some some things you would say, guys, you got to start looking at your human capital in a in a different way or, or start planning for different ways to, to develop them. Like we talked before, the upskilling, what would it be if you look back and also forward at the same time? Yeah. You know, it's been a weird four years, right, with, you know, everything that's gone on in the market in the world and, you know, for me, from a company perspective, their need there used to be there's the stigma around job hopping right. You know, people would I worked with, you know, engineering managers or whatever, and they're like, oh no, this person had, you know, three jobs that they've only been there for two years. you know, we you know, I don't want a job hopper. I don't want only somebody's going to be there for 2 or 3 years. Yeah. And, you know, I think that moving forward, we're going to see there needs to be a bigger, better tolerate for people that have really shorter durations on their resumes for multiple reasons. One, in general, we need to have more empathy. You know, there's it was a weird world that we were living. You know, there were decisions that people had to me that maybe they had to take a job that wasn't necessarily their ideal job. But, you know, you got to put food on the table. We got to be empathetic to that. And then they got one that was their ideal job. But then they got laid off. You know, we don't know the stories that are behind people's resumes. And from a organizational standpoint, we need to have a little bit more of a tolerance for that. I will also say just what we talked about earlier from an organizational perspective, we need to be doing a better job to retain our people. We need to develop our people. So having those, you know, career paths simply said, knowing what people need, people want to know what they need to do to get to the next level. So having that very clear and very articulate articulated where those people so they don't go on the market again and start looking again. from a job seeker perspective, there also needs to be a little bit more of a give and take to have your cake and eat it too. Maybe when there was the big tech boom with all the people, you know, all, and everybody's throwing around money and doing all the things you know, it's not like that anymore. So there needs to be a real internal look at prioritization. What's really important to you? Is it the money? Is it the, you know, remote work? The hybrid work? Is it the location? Is it the company culture? Is it, exactly what you're doing and the fulfillment that you get from your job? There needs to be a really big prioritization and a job seekers mind and what's what's going to give at the end of the day. So I think it's a mutual coming together from both both standpoints to meet together. Okay. Great segue into what I wanted to ask next is exactly that. You you work with individuals that look for a new job, and you work with companies that look for a certain individual, right? When we take it from the individual and not necessarily what they tell you initially, but what you sense after speaking with them, finding out more about what they're looking for. What is the majority of people really looking for of what you just mentioned? Right. Is it the culture at a company? Is it, the work life balance? Is it the type of work I'm going to do that's going to fulfill me? Is it the money? It's okay if that's what it is, but really interested to know what is it truly? What's the majority of people really main reason why they want to leave? Right. Oftentimes we think you know, the grass is greener on the other side, right? I'm not sure it's green or it's different, but I'm not sure it's greener in most cases. But interesting to hear from you what you when you talk to those people, what's the majority? What's the main reason people want to leave or look for a new job? What are they looking in this new job? What's the main main one there? Yeah, this is also been a shift. you know, before it was really money motivated for a long time. you know, people would move for a couple dollars an hour more. But what I see now is a dedication from people like, I want to be happy. I want to feel fulfilled. Yeah. And, you know, people see that, but I don't think they necessarily always know what that means, you know, they don't know what they don't know or they don't know what they really want. So that's when we really have to dig into, okay, what does happy mean? What does happy feel like? How do you what things have you done in your career that made you feel fulfilled, that made you feel the I call them your core desire feelings, you know, are you feeling impactful? Are you feeling connected or are you feeling valued and supported? So, you know, really digging into those feelings of what you want and then driving decisions from there. And people are it's great. People are being picky even in this economy. It's kind of crazy, but people are being very picky. Like, I didn't feel good about this company, so I'm not going to move forward. I think that's wonderful because at the end of the day, isn't that the goal for everybody just to feel good? So, I'm super happy that that kind of the trajectory things are going down. Two more questions. So one to this and then one totally different one. But so when you say too happy, right. I mean we hear this too when we talk to to people that we hire or that comes on my staff, it's just happy. But I actually frankly, what I oftentimes get the feeling after talking to these individuals, they can't really tell me what what makes them happy. It it's it seems it's it's it's become a little bit of a better word than, than saying money. It's I want to be happy because it sounds it sounds better. and I maybe I'm making this up, but that's the impression I sometimes get. They don't want to say no. Money is really what makes me happy. Which I don't think that's truly the case, but I can't judge this on somebody. But what do you really feel? It really is what makes this quote unquote happy again? Is it the culture? Is it a combination? It's probably a combination of a lot of things. But again, interesting to hear from you as we look forward, what are the trends? What are people really looking for? What are the 2 or 3 components that make up this term? Happy. Hey, you know, I don't know if I can clear 2 or 3. I think it's very individualized. You know, different things resonate with different people. But what's important is people knowing what that is first. So, you know, there are individuals that feel fulfilled and happy when you're doing more technical, problem solving, innovative work. There are other people that feel happy when they're impacting others and growing people and mentoring, you know? So it's really about getting into you want to yourself and okay, what what makes me happy. So generally I when I work with people, we're looking at, okay, what are the 3 to 5 things. And those like those feelings like little happy because you're totally right. Happy. It's such a general word. you need to be able to really hone in on that. Yeah. Okay. Very good. It's been very exciting, very interesting. Again, from the as we reimagine this mobility space from the human capital side, in your experience in this. So then last question, Ashley has nothing to do with human capital. What's going to be the next car you buy and why? Yes okay. I prepared for this. So happening. All right, all right. It's going to be the best answer ever done. Well kind of okay, so here's my Ashley Lala land. I would love. So the new Range Rover is what's amazing. The hybrid Range Rover. It's beautiful. The air suspension. Like the ride that it. I haven't personally written it, but I watched videos of it. Looks pretty sweet. a little bit on the pricey side. So right now I'm actually looking at the new, Yeah, yeah, the new fully electric Kia. I, I'm a mom, so I have little one. So the third row is super important to me. I also like that it's like super fast charging because I don't have a lot of time on my hands either, so that's what I'm going to be, scoping out. Coming up. all right, you definitely prepare for that question very well. So maybe I have to find a new end of, podcast. event, question here. Very good. Thank you so much, Ashley, for your time, for your insight. Very interesting on the again, ever so and ever more so important going forward. Human capital side of the mobility space. Thank you so much.