Caroline Helwig Dudley joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. The interview was edited for clarity.
Charlottean Caroline Helwig Dudley is a 25-year veteran of Accenture, including the past three years as global lead for talent and human potential/talent acquisition. That title hints at her influence at the publicly traded consulting company that employs more than 790,000 globally and has a $150 billion market value. The Duke University graduate spent much of her career working with financial services clients. In 2023, she donated a kidney to a 5-year-old student attending the Charlotte private school attended by Dudley’s four children. She has been involved in the Women’s Impact Fund, Urban League and Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.
Are you a CPA?
No, I’m in our strategy consulting practice. I was lucky
enough to get a job here when I was coming out of college with my psychology and management major. I grew up in Chapel Hill, but we moved in my high school years to San Francisco for my mother’s career. When it came time for college, I was for anything getting me back to North Carolina.
You lead talent acquisition, but you’re not finding talent for Accenture, you’re finding the talent for your clients?
That’s right, I lead our function within Accenture. They asked me to do a leadership rotation and said we needed to rethink how we look at talent.
We don’t do the search for clients, but we educate them on how they should be doing it. We have a [business unit] that can do the search. But there are some clients who say, “Help us make our systems more fair. Help prepare us for technology we don’t even know that may be coming in a few years.” We partner with them in lots of different ways to think about what their needs are.
What questions do you ask your clients to really dig in and understand their needs?
The first thing we do is we ask, what do you want to be as a company? How do you see yourselves? What is your purpose as
a company?
What talent do you need and how do you get there? What skills do you need and how do you fill that gap? Do you start to work with universities to create programs to educate [employees] or do you recruit or do you recruit people who have already done that?
When looking for people that will fit an organization, what are the two or three minimum requirements you look for?
That’s an easy answer. Every discussion we have, whether it’s hiring C-suite people or hiring somebody who’s going to help make sure our people have clean facilities, is seeing what is the capacity to learn? Tell me about something that you’ve learned in the last six months. You can see it when you talk to people, you can see their eyes light up when they truly have that skill.
What is it that you’re trying to excavate when you ask that question?
The biggest reality we are seeing right now is that the volatility and rapid pace of technology is continuing to increase. We don’t know what we’re all going to face in a week or six months or three years. When we look for people to bring into an organization, those who are avid learners are ones not just filling a job, but also want to continue to make a career with those companies.
Are you looking for growth patterns, flexibility, resilience?
Absolutely. We look at what makes those true and also a positive mindset. That sounds so basic, but that’s a huge piece.
Coachability is also another big piece. This is a team sport that all of us are doing. There are still some individual contributor roles, and we desperately need those to go well. But how can someone take the learnings from a coach, whether it’s people working for them or people they’re working for, and apply it?
Critical thinking skills are also absolutely important. What does this mean and not just taking things at face value, but trying to understand deeper.
If we were hiring a university president, perhaps we put them through an experience that gave them 10 different scenarios that they would likely encounter through the day. Maybe leading an alumni meeting, or perhaps a tough conference call where you’re being fed information that is not easy to handle.
Whenever you can embed the real experience, that helps you and the organization decide whether somebody is right for the job. More importantly, they should be interviewing you. Do they feel like this is a good spot? If humans feel empowered to reach their potential, that’s going to absolutely help the transition be smoother and add value a little bit more quickly.
What are the things that you look for to determine if a person has the right match culturally?
We know culture is what makes or breaks an organization. There’s a really concerted effort by many organizations to be able to examine that culture, to make sure it’s a culture where people can succeed. The companies that are not evolving as quickly are those that are encountering challenges. We see it every day in the news.
How can we really help companies get their message out around their purpose? If you can clearly articulate your purpose, then you’re going to naturally attract people who are drawn to that purpose. That’s very high level, but you have to start with that.
We are looking at organizations who have really made leaps in terms of skill-based hiring. That includes the cultural components that are going to make somebody love a job or not, including coachability.
We should like an environment where every day is going to be different, and we don’t know what’s going to be thrown at us. We are going to take something really complex and figure out how it works together, and get to the solution.
We put a group through the interview experience that was intentionally complicated and hard to understand. Half of the group said, “I love that. It was so much fun, and I figured it out.”
The other half said, “I really like having a to-do list of things and being able to knock it out and having certainty that that is going to be my day. I realistically don’t think that this is going to be the right culture for me because I’m going to be expected to do things that I don’t like doing.”
It’s also important to make sure that with AI and automation, we’re making sure that the human connection is there. Not only am I selecting the right culture, but are there human connection points to help you succeed. Once you come in our doors, I got you. I have your back. I’m going to help you get to that next point. That’s just as important as the selection.
My hope for technology is that it helps humans reach their potential. The transactional things can be taken away, which allows for more human connection. That is going to be magic. That is the fun when we all have just a fantastic time. What we remember as we go through careers and lives is the people whose lives I’m connected with.
Where does diversity and inclusion come into all of this?
It comes down to how we can make sure that all those who have potential can get that sense of belonging. That’s going to look very different group by group and area by area. I am a big believer that though talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. Companies can actually uncover so much hidden talent that they are going to need as they go forward.
We’ve seen the numbers like all the labor data that’s coming out in the birth rates. We are going to need to use all the talent that’s out there. My challenge to the communities that I’m in and the companies that I work with is, how do we make sure that we can connect with talent that might be hidden?
We have an apprenticeship program where we’ve hired up to 20% of our entry-level workforce from those [who have not been in traditional higher education]. It’s not just about hiring, but it’s also about a full experience to give them on-the-job experience. We have people from different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, genders and socio-economic status.
What do you think is the greatest motivator?
To me, it can be summed up in feeling valued. We know that old statistic, which has remained consistent over the decades: People leave their managers. The people that they’re around and what comes through loud and clear is about feeling valued.
How do you ensure that a person feels valued?
It’s getting to know the human being. There’s not one answer.
I don’t think what motivates one person to feel valued might be the same as others.
Some need their name on a trophy, and they need it very frequently. Some might feel valued if their kids see them and say,
“I know you’re working really hard for me to have a good life and
I respect you for that.”
We all come with our own lenses. What we have in common is that we want to build great leaders, everybody that we’re around, whether it’s people I have on my teams, clients, my children or
their friends.
Caroline, your greatest accomplishment is that you’ve been recognized by a global company as a leader of purpose. You’ve been given the opportunity to do important things. You earned it clearly. What is your definition of success?
That question has come up a lot in the past couple of months,
as I’m in an era in my life where I have friends and friends of friends who have retired early. So I think about what is most important in what makes me a success? It really comes back to whose lives I’ve been able to impact. How have I helped people reach their full potential, not just their jobs or careers or school or athletics, but the quality of their lives?
It’s not time management. It’s where I want to put my energy,
and so I have been doing that wholeheartedly in places where I can help humans to have the quality of life that they want and to reach their potential.
I will spend an infinite amount of time, whether it’s one-on-one or something that I can do in the background, to help to do that. What is the most heartfelt thing is that I then see the amazing amount that other people did for me.
What would you say to a group of young women who aspire to get the best for themselves through design and merit?
I would say a lot of things to them. I love that you have shared that not everything is going to be a win, but you’re either going to win and have success, or you’re going to learn. We are all going to fail. And if you aren’t failing, you are not putting yourself in the room to be able to push yourself enough to fail.
How are we enabling the people within our teams to push themselves to the point where failure is OK? The point of fear is a tough one because of the real concern that we have not been given enough chances to fail. You get your one shot, and you’re written off.
I’d also share how I get from here to here in two years, building something to be proud of, and understanding authentically who you are and what your style is.
I would encourage women not to just model, because what you may see may not be what you want your life to be like. How do you get really true with yourself, and not feel like you have to mask all the time and be somebody completely different from who you are? When you can be valued for who you are, you can make so much more of an impact. ■
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