As LinkedIn’s Chief People Officer, Teuila Hanson is reshaping how organizations think about talent acquisition and workplace transformation. Her approach emphasizes looking beyond traditional credentials to focus on skills, adaptability, and human potential—particularly relevant principles in today’s rapidly evolving call center industry.
Drawing from her experience leading LinkedIn’s talent strategy, Hanson offers valuable insights for call center hiring managers facing their own transformation challenges. Her focus on finding resourceful talent who can thrive during change, combined with her emphasis on skills-based hiring, provides a practical framework for building stronger, more adaptable teams.
For contact centers tasked with building and maintaining high-performing teams, Hanson’s innovative hiring philosophy offers fresh perspectives worth considering.
Read More: Women’s History Month 2024: 6 Influential Women in Contact Center and Customer Service
Teuila Hanson: Pioneering a New Approach to Talent
Before joining LinkedIn as Chief People Officer in 2020, Hanson had long admired the company’s innovative approach to talent strategy. Her journey was shaped by early influences, including her mother—a Samoan immigrant who became a banking executive in San Francisco.
This background instilled in Hanson a deep belief in potential and the importance of looking beyond traditional credentials when evaluating talent. At LinkedIn, Hanson has become known for championing what she calls the “hustle mentality” in hiring.
Rather than focusing solely on experience or qualifications, she looks for candidates who demonstrate resourcefulness and the ability to drive change, even with limited resources. “I’m much more interested in how, even when they had zero budget, they were able to make magic happen in the organization,” she explains.
Her hiring philosophy centers on three key principles:
Finding Hidden Potential
Rather than viewing jobs as fixed titles, Hanson advocates seeing them as collections of tasks and skills. This approach opens doors for candidates who might have unconventional backgrounds but possess the right capabilities.
Valuing Resourcefulness
When evaluating potential leaders, Hanson prioritizes candidates who can influence others and drive change regardless of circumstances. She believes these individuals become the organization’s go-to employees who “through hustle and grind, find a way to make things happen.”
Embracing Adaptation
In an era of rapid workplace transformation, Hanson emphasizes the importance of hiring people who can learn, unlearn, and relearn continuously. She sees adaptability not just as a skill but as a fundamental requirement for long-term success.
Key Hiring Lessons from Hanson’s Playbook
Hanson’s approach to talent acquisition offers several practical strategies for building stronger teams:
1. Look Beyond Traditional Metrics
When evaluating candidates, Hanson advocates looking beyond traditional job titles to understand the actual work someone has accomplished. Say you need to fill a team lead position. Instead of requiring specific supervisory titles, examine candidates who have effectively coordinated projects, mentored colleagues, or solved complex customer issues—even if they held different roles.
This shift in perspective opens up possibilities for finding hidden talent. A candidate might have the perfect skills for a quality assurance position based on their experience handling complex customer escalations, despite never holding a formal QA title. The key is to break down the role into its core tasks and match them against a candidate’s actual capabilities rather than their previous job titles.
2. Find Self-Starters
Hanson places high value on what she calls the “hustle mentality” – finding people who can drive results regardless of resources or circumstances. When hiring, look for candidates who demonstrate initiative in their previous roles. For instance, someone who created an informal knowledge-sharing system among peers, or developed new ways to handle customer concerns without being asked.
This quality often reveals itself in how candidates discuss their past experiences during interviews. Rather than focusing solely on what they were assigned to do, these individuals often speak about problems they noticed and solved, improvements they initiated, or how they helped others succeed.
As Hanson notes, these are the people who become invaluable team members because they “find a way to make things happen.”
3. Prioritize Adaptability
Hanson emphasizes that in today’s rapidly changing workplace, the ability to learn and adapt matters more than existing expertise. Consider a scenario where you’re filling a position that requires using new customer service software.
Instead of limiting your search to candidates who know that exact system, look for those who demonstrate quick learning and enthusiasm for mastering new tools. Their track record of adapting to different systems or processes is more valuable than specific platform knowledge.
During interviews, focus on how candidates have handled unfamiliar situations or learned new skills in previous roles. Those who share specific examples of picking up new abilities quickly, teaching themselves additional skills, or helping others learn often prove more valuable than those with static expertise. As Hanson puts it, success comes from the ability to “learn, unlearn, and relearn continuously.”
4. Find Change Leaders
In evaluating candidates, Hanson looks for people who can influence positive change regardless of their formal authority. When interviewing, pay attention to how candidates handled transitions or improvements in their previous roles.
Rather than asking general questions about change management, probe for specific instances where they identified a need for change and took action—whether it was streamlining a process that improved customer response times or developing a more efficient way to handle common issues.
What sets these candidates apart is their ability to bring others along during times of change. Look for examples of how they’ve helped teammates adapt to new procedures, supported colleagues during challenging transitions, or found ways to improve team performance during high-pressure situations.
These individuals, as Hanson points out, become the “go-to employees” who help organizations evolve and succeed.
5. Human Skills in a Tech World
While technology continues to transform the workplace, Hanson emphasizes that human capabilities become even more valuable. During hiring, focus on evaluating candidates’ emotional intelligence and critical thinking abilities.
For instance, when discussing past customer interactions, notice how candidates talk about reading customer emotions, de-escalating tense situations, or finding creative solutions to unique problems that wouldn’t fit standard protocols.
These human skills—empathy, judgment, and creative problem-solving—are what Hanson calls “uniquely human” capabilities. Look for candidates who can share specific examples of connecting with difficult customers, adapting their communication style to different situations, or finding ways to turn challenging interactions into positive outcomes.
As Hanson notes, even as AI and technology handle more routine tasks, these distinctly human abilities become increasingly crucial for success.
The Future of Hiring
With employee turnover rates ranging between 30 to 45 percent annually according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of traditional hiring approaches becomes clear. The future of talent acquisition lies in moving beyond conventional metrics and requirements.
Hanson’s approach; focusing on adaptability, human skills, and growth potential—offers a path to building more stable, engaged teams that can better handle the high-pressure nature of customer service work.
Organizations that embrace this evolution in hiring practices gain access to a wider, more diverse talent pool while building more resilient teams. As Hanson demonstrates through her work at LinkedIn, success comes from recognizing that the best candidates might not have the perfect resume, but rather the perfect combination of potential, drive, and human capabilities that create lasting value.
Ready to build a culture of belonging in your contact center?
Let our experts at Salem Solutions empower your team with skilled, diverse talent and tailored hiring strategies to create inclusive, thriving teams. Together, we’ll transform your workplace culture and drive lasting success with practical DEI initiatives that build stronger teams and empower women in the workplace. Get started with us today!
Reference
- Job Openings and Labor Turnover – November 2024. (2025, January 7). Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf
