Kathy Cacciola | Global Sustainability Lead, Food Program at Google

I have hired Shannon on multiple occasions over the last decade while I was leading sustainability at Aramark including to:

- Recruit for VP of Sustainability  

- Recruit two Sustainability Manager roles - one for Climate and one for ESG Reporting

- Lead a 6-month organizational design and strategy consulting project for the COO

- Design my resume, LinkedIn, and networking strategy that helped me land my new role at Google

The challenge:

Shannon and I have been working together for around 10 years now.  At Aramark I needed someone who knew the recruitment market to find us the top talent for two Manager roles on my team. And then when I was leaving the company, having been there for 14 years, I was seriously invested in making sure that the programmes and practices that we had started and implemented really continued on. So I encouraged the CSO to hire Shannon to help with back filling my VP of Sustainability role.

Our COO was also looking for expert guidance on how to best structure and embed sustainability roles across our global regions so I referred Shannon to lead this strategy project.

The solution:

Having somebody like Shannon to source and screen candidates at Aramark, someone who knows the rules and knows the marketplace, was super helpful in ensuring the top candidates for us.  She was able to quickly sift through 200+ applications for each role and to discern the skill sets and cultural fit that we needed, narrowing it down to the top three candidates. 

Shannon’s scope then expanded when the COO hired her to lead an organizational design and talent strategy project over six months. 

 The result:

Having Shannon onboard saved us a huge amount of time and ensured we found people who were a lasting cultural fit for the team and company.  We hired two of them and later my replacement, VP of Sustainability all thanks to Shannon. All three of the candidates she recruited for us are still on the team today. 

For the COO project, Shannon presented an organizational design and people strategy for our global operations.  She did an inventory of roles and interviewed 30 leaders, benchmarked externally and developed recommendations on how best to build our growing team across five regions. She then presented her findings and recommendations to the C-Suite to steer our people strategy.

Shannon's insights informed the shape and future of our team globally with her market insights and deep sustainability talent experience.  A fresh set of eyes, with a clear point of view proved invaluable!