Talent retention can be a difficult matter for many businesses. One company, however, seems to have found a formula for success. In this episode, Carrie Charles is joined by the Head of Wireless Talent Acquisition for DISH Network, Katie Flynn, and the Regional VP for the Central Region, Nichole Thomas in a discussion about finding and retaining the best talent. Nichole and Katie talk about how they got their start at DISH, their expansion and focus on a culture of excellence, and plans for talent moving forward. Learn more about how the industry is leveraging talent by tuning in.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Talent Retention in a Hot Market with DISH Wireless’ Nichole Thomas and Katie Flynn
We are going to have a phenomenal conversation that you do not want to miss. We are going to talk about how to retain talent in a hot market. I have with me two incredible ladies and my friends as well. Nichole Thomas, she is the Regional Vice President of the Central Region for DISH Network. We have Katie Flynn, who is the Head of Wireless Talent Acquisition for DISH Network. I want to welcome you to the show. I’ve been waiting to have you both on my show for so long. I’m excited about this conversation.
Thank you for having us, Carrie.
We are going to start with a place where I’d like to start, which is looking at your professional journeys. How you got from where you were to where you are. Nichole, do you want to start us off?
I started in this industry when I was nineteen. I’ve only ever done this in my career and I love it. I started by building two networks previously from the ground up on the operator side. I spent some time on the services side. My last position was over at Erikson, running service delivery for the East region. I came to DISH in 2020.
Katie, tell me about your journey.
I joined DISH years ago. It was the wireless build that got me excited. My first day on the job was the day we announced we were trying to buy Sprint back in 2013. I knew that this journey was going to be exciting and have the potential to disrupt an industry that had been stagnant for a long time. That’s what got me excited. I had been around the business for a long time.
My parents founded DISH in 1980 before I was born. I grew up around the business, worked in other industries and non-profits. After business school, I decided that I wanted to try and see if it was a good fit. I gave myself a year to say, “I might regret it if I never try DISH.” Years later, here I am. It’s been a great journey. I’m excited to be here and know that the next years are going to be even more exciting than the first years.
Katie, I’m dying to know a story from your childhood with your dad and family. Something that you remember.
Adventure is one of the parts of our stated culture that makes us unique in the Fortune 200 that every day is going to look different. One story comes to mind from when DISH was making the transition from the big 10-foot DISH down to the 18-inch digital smaller DISH that everybody has. This pivot was pretty game-changing for the company. To make it happen, we were launching our first satellite from China. The US launches advocate Canaveral, Florida, was a little too expensive for the company. Our first launch was out of rural China in 1995 in true adventure style.
My parents packed up all five of us kids to go out there. We took a couple of day trips. The baby being eight months old, I was eleven at the time. We knew the company was on the line. We didn’t exactly comprehend what that meant but our parents told us, “If the satellite’s successful, dad’s getting a convertible and a new car.” If it’s not successful, the company would be bankrupt essentially. We would be raising cattle for the rest of our lives is what we called this moving to rural Colorado, which he also thought would be a fun adventure.
That describes the journey from when I was a kid. The mentality of my dad and mom is founders saying, “It’s riskier not to take a risk.” They wanted to move and into a new industry, continue to grow and see the next generation of the company happen. That took us to China, which was successful and the rest is history. We’re on a similar path making big bets in a new industry that’s a little unproven.
Did he get the new car?
He did get a new car. He has the same convertible from ‘96.
I got chills when you said, “It’s riskier not taking a risk.” That hit home for me. It’s a message for everyone to know as we embark on the future, our goals and what’s possible in our amazing industry. That’s cool. Thanks for sharing that. I’m sure there are many more that we will talk about in the future. Let’s talk about your roles. Katie, tell us what you do as the Head of Wireless Talent Acquisition. I know I worked with you closely and spent a lot of time in your phenomenal organization. Tell us more about your role.
It’s more risky to not take a risk.
Our team didn’t start until the beginning of 2020 when it became clear that Sprint and T-Mobile would be allowed to merge and DISH was becoming the fourth entrant into wireless. With the acceleration of our 5G build, we needed the people. There wasn’t exactly a roadmap at the time. In the beginning, it was aligning ourselves closely with the business to understand their strategy and what they needed to accomplish. I was involved in helping us figure out from the people side what that meant because there wasn’t a recruiting team. It was three recruiters when I started.
We had to 10X our team to support the business. We’ve been in existence almost two years as a team. It’s about optimizing and managing for change. The two years of recruiting, one being the pandemic and then being one of the hottest talent markets. My role is figuring out how do we pivot and change. In 2020, we had more applications than we could get through in a week. We’re having to source and outreach to candidates. That’s a different skill then. Continuing to pivot and look at the market conditions, we’re closely with the business to help them accomplish their goals and align with the strategy has largely been my role.
That’s a big job.
It’s been fun and it’s kept us on our job. That’s how it is in the startup. If it wasn’t in the market, it’d be something else.
Nichole, talk about your role a bit.
Katie said she had to grow her team 10X. When I walked in 2020, I had 25 people and I had to 10X my team as well. It’s been a wild ride. We did a majority of the acquiring the team over six months. That was job number one when I walked in. When I walked in, we had to get the build going. We didn’t have a single supplier agreement signed. We needed to hire a big team. We needed to figure out how to get the work done.
We have a timeline that we need to get it done in. It’s been a wild adventure. My role is everything in the field in the Central Region. That means acquiring the team, doing all the site acquisition, construction, integration and eventually operating our network. Even over the year, we’ve pivoted from getting the leaders in place. Getting individual contributors and subject matter experts in place to get the work done. We’re focused with Katie’s team in bringing in operations folks as we transverse into operating a network as we launch it.
Nichole, in twelve months, you’ve done all that. It’s unbelievable to me. Let’s look at the vision a bit. What is your vision? Where are you going? Why?
Dave Mayo said it when he did the show with you, Carrie. He said that the people that do well at DISH are people that are comfortable with ambiguity. Everything is a bit ambiguous. The nice part is we have a very clear vision. We have a very clear launch that needs to happen. Within that, we all have to get that done. We’re moving everybody in that direction. That helps to have that vision and purpose.
There are so many unknowns that come along with this. Hiring people that we’re comfortable with in that environment and keeping people very motivated towards that ambiguity is important because the market is hot and getting poached every day. There is a lot of interesting things to go do but making sure that people understand the vision and are comfortable with what happens next is important. Something that we’re very focused on.
Katie, what are your thoughts on the vision for DISH Wireless?
For us, it’s building that standalone 5G network and going to market with a product that’s different than what’s out there. We have the opportunity to do that and take advantage of the 2021 technology versus the networks built in the past, maybe decades ago. There’s all the same traditional functionality that any other network would have but we also are excited about the new things that’ll come in the next years that our network will be able to support. It’s building that platform of connectivity. If you have lived through 2020, it’s proven that connectivity is more important than ever.
Taking the people going when they’ve been at home. We’ve been able to see the power that if you have connectivity, you can continue to move forward in the world. We’re excited about what Nichole said, there’s ambiguity on the path but we know the destination and have that North Star. The SEC has given us the milestones that we need to hit. Everyone’s marching in the same direction. We’re excited to see markets come online and begin to operate the network and disrupt.
That’s exciting because every time I speak to any leader or even any team member at DISH, the vision is aligned. I hear the same message. That’s how you produce miracles. That’s how great things happen. What were the challenges of building a team and not a team but 10X-ing a team in the middle of a pandemic in 2020? What were the obstacles? How did you overcome them to get to where you are?
It started with our leaders and them being behind the mission and understanding this is probably the last Greenfield build that’s going to happen in the US. We were able to recruit these industry experts and people like Dave Mayo, who have been in the industry for a long time and have the expertise. Their excitement was contagious to candidates. We spent a lot of time on hiring and finding that right-fit who was willing to make a move and change their career in a time of crazy uncertainty in a way that allowed us to bring in those adventurous people.
A lot of perseverance. Hiring is an art, not always a science. Learn from your mistakes. Be willing to pivot and get back up every day and dust yourself off, even if you’re not sure if you’re going to be successful. We’ve taken time to celebrate and that’s also huge because when the task is so large, what are those bite-sized things that are milestones along the way?
Every market that we’ve closed has been a milestone. When we hired Nichole, our last Regional Vice President, that was a big milestone, getting the leadership in place for the deployment. If you look at it day-by-day, maybe you get discouraged but when you look up after 3, 6 months, we’ve come a long way. We’re all proud of that hard work and perseverance. Just continuing as the market changed. Nichole, you lived it too. What are your thoughts?
It was interesting because we were in the middle of the pandemic when we were building our teams. The talent started coming over here and it made it real. In some aspects, it sold itself. People were in the process for a long time because they were like, “I want to come work at DISH because we know what you’re doing is different. It’s bringing new competition to be in the marketplace.” In a lot of ways, it sold itself. We didn’t have to do a lot of convincing.
I see those people that joined the company years ago are still here for that very reason, which is me. We’re in a bit of a different environment where everybody else is doing something. I don’t think many people are looking around. It’s more that they’re being reached out to because there is plenty of work in the industry. For us, I think we’ve done right with hiring. Our focus is on retention.
Let’s talk about the climate with hiring because there is insane demand for talent, not just in our industry but all over the country with every role everywhere. Businesses are closing because they can’t find enough people. It’s a very different climate than it was in 2020. How are you navigating this new world of recruitment where there is The Great Resignation and people are getting calls on a regular basis? There is so much competition. How are you being successful inside of this?
I can start from the hiring side. For me, it’s about being transparent with candidates at the very beginning so that they understand that it has to be a good fit on both sides. We are looking for that person who will fit the culture and stay with us long-term because of our crazy tight deadlines, we know turnover costs money but in our case, the bigger risk is the time of bringing on a bad hire and then having them leave maybe after six months and then taking time to replace them and get that person up and trained. If turnover costs you a year and our network needs to be done, 70% of the population covered in less than two years by June of 2023. We can’t afford that time.
We’re spending the time upfront in the hiring process. Hoping candidates are coming in eyes wide open, giving them as much of a realistic sense of what it’s going to be like so that they’re not having that bait and switch or being sold on something that maybe wouldn’t be a good long-term fit. A lot of people in the industry know our hiring process is rigorous and intentional so that we can hopefully reduce our risk of bringing on someone who isn’t going to work out long-term.
I get so many compliments from candidates and employees that have joined us of Katie’s team. Our recruiters are endlessly patient with answering questions and making sure that people fully understand the job. The way that we vet candidates is they have to talk to everybody including myself and senior leadership. That patience has paid off because we’re very transparent about what it’s like to work here. We make sure that that is a fit on our side and their side. That led to a lot of good success for us.
I read something from the Harvard Business Review that said 80% of turnover stems from bad hiring decisions. This goes right in mind with what both of you were saying that this could cost the company five times this person’s salary. Even more importantly, the time you lose is crucial. Looking at retention, let’s get into solutions here. What can we do? We don’t have all the answers. I know that part of this is doing the best you can.
Let’s talk about some potential solutions to see if we can help the audience, people reading and leaders struggling with this same issue. Let’s talk about the hiring piece and how hiring could be a solution to retention. You screen ahead of time. What do you screen for when you’re in that hiring process to help make sure that this person’s going to stay with you?
For us, it’s culture. That starts with knowing who you are as a company and what type of person is going to be successful. Not to say that someone can’t come in and adapt to the culture, they can but we’re looking for some basic foundational elements that we know will help you be successful here. That’s a lot of our hiring process, along with the expertise and fit for the role. We spend equal amounts on both because for us, we know we’re going to be smaller than the other three competitors we’re going up against. Culture will be a competitive advantage for us.
We’re looking for someone who is in it for the long-term and then has that grit, tenacity, perseverance to get through what we know will be challenging because no one has built a network that’s architected in this way before. There are unforeseen circumstances that’ll bring in new opportunities and new ways to pivot and new obstacles almost on a daily or weekly basis. That can help you with your retention if you have people who are committed to the mission and fit culturally where they’re aligned with how you want to work and why. Those are the two culture pieces that I think are a little less tangible sometimes but equally important.
I appreciate that when we over-index on culture. This is more so than any other company that I’ve been at. We do make sure that people fit the culture. We often hire not only experience because we have a lot of that but we also hire for potential, which is amazing. We’ve had new people come into the industry, nurses, people retiring from the military, police officers and somebody who is not your traditional industry candidate. Those people have come in. I’ve been astounded. We’ve already promoted some of them just in the year that I’ve been here. Culture is everything. I agree with Katie that at the end of the day, that’s going to be our competitive advantage.
Hire not only for experience, but also for potential.
You said some of these people have already been promoted. We find in staffing that one of the number one reasons why people leave companies is they don’t see the growth and development. Tell me a bit about the growth and development opportunities at DISH and how do you make this career path available for people and get them excited about that growth and development?
One thing we do well is to make sure that people know how to fish for themselves. There is an endless, boundless opportunity here. There’s so much to do. A lot of it is people raising their hand and saying, “I can do more.” Creating that pathway. We put a lot of emphasis on leadership and making sure that leaders and mentors are advocates for our team members. We think that that’s the best way for people to create opportunities for themselves. I’ve seen us create positions that didn’t exist before because it made sense. We focus on career paths. You own your destiny too and there are endless opportunities here.
Katie, what are your thoughts?
Those people that are getting promoted are the ones who have seen an opportunity or seen a gap. Instead of maybe complaining about it, they’ve raised their hand and said, “I’m going to fill it.” Once that becomes part of their job responsibility, it’s obvious they’re ready for the next move. In the hiring process, we’ve brought in people that we think can scale 1 or 2 levels. We know we’re growing fast. The team that we have is smaller than the team we need tomorrow. We at DISH have a culture of promoting from within. We didn’t have all the wireless expertise we needed, which is why we had to go out and hire from the external market a lot in 2020.
As we brought in more talent, I’m excited to see continued promotions within the people that are here. Even in my story at DISH, it’s not always the next move up. Sometimes you take a lateral position, learn a new skillset and then that helps you grow into that next role. It doesn’t always look the same for every person. Even in my story, I started my career at DISH in marketing and sales and then moved into the HR phase.
You take that knowledge and it helps break down silos also because you have relationships from the other parts of the organization. You’re able to look at things from a bit different perspective. We like that career movement. We’ve seen a ton in 2020, which to me is a success if we can promote the next general manager from within our ranks versus having to go out and hire someone, we’ve been able to fill a lot of those MGM positions internally.
The industry vets that have been doing this for many years, what I see is they love mentoring the new entrants. That is breathing some life into them too. It’s cool. People that you’ve worked with for a long time, there are different leaders here. There are different coworkers. That mix is making it special. Honestly, there’s not a day that goes by that somebody doesn’t tell me, “This is the best team I’ve ever worked on.” That’s neat. Everybody is feeling fulfilled from the mix of people we’re getting.
Let’s talk about the employee engagement of the team. This is crucial to keep people excited. How do you keep people engaged, excited, all passionate and revved up when it’s so challenging and hard? They’ve got a big job. There’s a lot to do. There are some obstacles in the way. How do you keep people focused on the mission, engaged and excited?
This is something I think about all the time. I have a lot of sensitivity because so many people here have great ideas and we’re so busy. I work hard to be accessible and we make sure that all the leaders are accessible, including our senior leadership. The challenge is that we could be doing too much when we need to be focused on our builds. I try to strike a balance on that. Honestly, as a leader, I enlist other leaders and other team members to help with grassroots movements. We’ll throw it out to a chat of a couple of hundred people and we’ll say, “What should we do here?”
We have DISH Cares, which is a charity function that we have inside DISH. We threw it out and said, “Can you guys help form yourselves and do something?” They had a representative from each of the markets and they created a movement. We’ve done a lot of community work in our communities for the markets that we’re building. Even coming up, we have a cross-regional competition around a toy drive that we’re going to do.
You see people flourishing and they’re individual contributors but they love taking on those stretch assignments outside of their core duties. They get to engage with other people. You see that engagement’s high. They’re excited because it’s not just about the work. It’s about the people you get to deal with and the exposure you get in here.
That’s my motto. It’s not just about the work. It’s about the people. Katie, what are your thoughts?
In addition to what Nichole said is we’ve kept the organization pretty flat. We try to lift our heads up and have a chance to learn something new or see a part of the organization maybe we don’t work with on a regular basis. Whether that’s our head of cloud coming in and talking once a month on what we’re doing that’s new in the space or someone from a product or a leader that’s been at DISH for a long time. We had someone who’s spent years here and he was able to explain when the phone rang and someone asked him to take a job somewhere else, like why he stayed.
Hearing those stories and understanding the big picture also helps when you get into that tough day and meet obstacles. That’s something we’ve done pretty well. Those chances to continue to learn and grow as an employee are also important for engagement because we hire for ambition. The people here are excited to continue to grow, contribute and make it to the next level, taking on more responsibility. As leaders, we have to help them, not just focus on the day-to-day but also get outside their responsibility and think about their career development and have access to different paths and ideas as well.
I want to talk about remote work because there’s this great shift that happened to remote work with COVID. Some companies are going back into the office, staying remote or going hybrid. There’s a lot of chatter around that. Why is it important for DISH Wireless team members to work together in person or in an office?
We are building a team. It’s different from when you’re an established team and have those relationships and ways of working. We’re all still getting to know each other. We are trying to grow and scale our employees to move up 1 or 2 levels in a short amount of time. That in-person collaboration and development have been the key to success. The milestones we’ve hit up until this point. We’ve intentionally chosen a strategy where the industry is zigging and we’re zagging. We’re different in that way.
You want visibility from your leaders, in-person collaboration. I know as a leader, even for me, I see my employee’s face someone comes into the office and I can tell if they had a rough day or night. I can support them in a different way than if they’re on camera or behind the phone. There is a lot of intangibles. We’re moving so fast, a lot of our work does get done outside of scheduled meetings.
It’s those informal, “Can I check on this? I stopped by. I had that idea.” That you don’t get if you have to schedule everything and you’re in a remote environment. We know it’s different and we know something that makes us unique. We’re trying to do with one person, maybe what the big carriers are doing with 10 or 100. Any efficiency that we can get, we’re taking advantage of.
It’s about that human connection. We underestimated how much that was needed. I love going to the office every day. I traveled to every single one of my markets every week. Being able to talk to somebody outside of a one-hour scheduled call has made me make different decisions for me. I know that that’s happening in the office every day. It’s not for everybody but the feedback we get consistently is like, “It’s good to be together.” We know and trust each other well. That trust is helping us to go fast.
You guys had a challenging situation on your team. You can touch on that and the importance of how you were able to help support.
We had an unfortunate and unexpected death of one of our beloved managers in one of our offices. I told my manager that had called me to give me the news that every time he calls me I have a little bit of PTSD because hearing that news was so crushing for them, the team and their family. We did all of the right things as a company. We provided them counseling and things like that but it was more about being together. I literally jumped in my car and drove a couple of hours to be with that team. We gave everybody the option to go home that day.
Honestly, about 95% of the employees stayed in the office. We talked, ate and tried to be there for one another. We were destined to keep his memory alive too because he made such an impact to us in such a short amount of time. We had another office, our Oklahoma City office, dedicated their conference room and renamed it to our manager. It’s forever going to be our J1 conference room. In addition, two other offices named a cell site after that manager.
We’re destined to keep the memory alive. He would be tickled to see how far we are and he’s going to be very much with us as we launch the network. It goes back to connection and being there for each other. I see that team doing so well. They’re making their numbers and goals because they even more so want to be there for one another. I can’t say how proud I am of them individually and of the leadership that has taken place over that.
I’ve noticed that one of the silver linings of this pandemic has been a strong push for psychological safety, wellness, mental health and connection. It’s so important and it’s time that we recognize that at work. This is a perfect example of that. Do you feel that having an in-person environment or at least the ability to see people in person that it strengthens that commitment for that wellness, mental health and psychological safety?
I’m a huge fan of that. It goes back to what Katie said, which is you can see where people are when you’re working together. I don’t think you’d necessarily see if you’re conducting all of your business online. That’s helped make sure that people understand where people are at and can support them as managers, coworkers and peers. Make sure that you can be there and provide that safety or support that they need.
The recognition that all of us are dealing with a lot outside the office. When you have that body language and see maybe someone comes into your office to talk about something work-related, you can tell they need to share a bit outside. That has been a big role for all leaders this 2020. Listening and helping support people through their unique challenges. It helped being in the office and being able to have that in-person connection that a lot of people haven’t had. We’ve been able to come together and are much closer as a team as a result of it.
They said that the workplace should be almost better than your home life, which is such an incredible responsibility to take on. Coming to work and being able to provide relief, making it a good environment for people is something that we think about all the time. We don’t always succeed. It’s something that we should aspire to for sure.
With our hybrid schedule, we have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the office and then Monday and Friday remote. We’re running out of space for people here. Everybody wants to be in the office. They’re all asking me for bigger office space, more desks. “We all want to be there.” It’s so interesting how we went from so many people wanting to be remote. Now nobody wants to be remote because they’ve loved being together so much. It may not work for everyone but this has been an interesting learning experience for us and it’s awesome. I’m in the office now with everyone. It does make a difference.
There is an endless, boundless opportunity here. There’s so much to do. A lot of it is people raising their hand and saying, “I can do more.”
It was my birthday. I came in and my entire office is decorated and there are balloons and stuff everywhere and everybody’s present. It’s different than having that birthday celebration online. Anyway, I appreciate those comments. I wanted to ask you that women have left the workforce by the millions over 2020. This is a crisis and we need to support women to get back into the workforce. Support women period that is already in the workforce. How do you support women as leaders, team members at DISH? Nichole, I heard you started an employee resource group specifically for this purpose. I wanted to address this a bit.
That is probably pretty personal to the three of us here being women. We started an employee resource group for our wireless division, which was already attached to an employer resource group that existed at DISH. We’re women in wireless. It was a group of core people that said, “We have a need to raise our visibility.” That’s our core mission to raise the visibility and the profiles of women in the organization so that we understand what they need to continue to progress through their careers.
I see it across the board, this is probably the most talented, passionate group of women that I’ve worked with. They’re hungry for that. Throughout the experience, we’re starting to understand what they need to be successful here in the workplace. That will be something that we’ll take on. It’s certainly in its infancy but all the women here understand the opportunity that’s available here at DISH and that’s exciting for them.
I’m a mom of three and then have one on the way. There are unique challenges that women are facing. Carrie, we’re seeing women leave the work environment because oftentimes there is that unbalanced burden of caretaking on women. It is tough, especially as the caretaking responsibilities have increased in every family, specifically for women. We’re trying to balance that with the crazy ambitious goals we have ahead of us. For me, it starts with supporting the women that we currently have and then making sure that we can retain them and work to find solutions that are going to help both them succeed and the company be successful.
We’re bringing visibility, sharing stories, hearing how others have done it. It’s a personal passion of mine as well. We’re one of a handful of Fortune 200 that have a female Cofounder. We have strong women in the organization and how do we rally around each other, be each other’s advocate support. I’m sure that there’ll be things that we need to change and do better. For me, it starts with taking care of the people that are here, giving it their all every day and making sure we can be successful together.
I’ve also heard that people don’t leave companies to leave bosses. Let’s talk about leadership. The leadership at DISH Wireless is a crucial piece of retention. Would you say that there are similarities among the leaders or is everyone a bit different? Is there a particular leadership style that you like to hire for or encourage?
One of the things that I love about being on Dave Mayo’s team here at DISH is he hired for unique skillsets. Even in his direct leadership team some people are very technical, deployment-focused, operations-focused or passionate about certain causes. I see that he leverages all of those skillsets and it’s fun to work across the table with people like that. I am very focused on recognition. I have another peer who is focused on making sure that we have given good feedback so that we can continue to grow people and then technical development, things like that.
All of those things are so helpful. Having diversity in thought in how we utilize our people in our leadership is helping to make a more well-rounded organization. It comes down to culture. That’s going to be the secret sauce going forward. Do we have a long ways to go? We always do. Leadership’s a journey. I know that everybody’s hearts are in the right place and working to develop that.
Katie, any thoughts there on leadership?
Everyone here is pretty results-oriented. That’s probably the glue that keeps people together is the satisfaction of accomplishing a tough goal. There’s also a lot of different perspectives. If you look at the broader team, people who come with wireless expertise or maybe spent their whole careers in wireless and then people from other industries that are bringing that diversity of thought and a lot of what we’re building is in software, not hardware.
We have to intermingle some people from the startup world or have that cloud expertise, not in wireless with the traditional expertise from wireless. The leadership looks a lot different across the board. It is those results that motivate everyone that keeps us together. We have a strong team in terms of leadership. I’m excited. I get to learn from them every single day because I know it makes all of us better.
You are making history. It’s exciting. This had to be some record set around the globe is how many people you’ve hired. You hired 100 people just in 2020. How many people is it?
We hit 1,000 hires in September 2021. There are bigger numbers out there compared to a lot of our competition. It’s that specific mix that we’re looking for. Bringing in people who want to stay long-term and help us through 2023 at least to see these goals through.
Any final thoughts? There’s vision, adventure and excitement. It’s happening. It’s in motion. We all know that you are going to get to the peak of the mountain and we see it. I’m so excited that I’m going to get off this show and go, “Go change the world.” It’s been inspiring. Any last thoughts before we close?
One of our executives, when he came on, said DISH is still the best-kept secret in wireless. I truly believe that. I think our story is starting to be told. I feel like we’re more excited about the future and that’s what’s getting us up in the morning. What we’re building is special and we haven’t gotten out there and told our story enough yet. Stay tuned. We’re starting to get out there more. In the next years, we’ll have a nationwide network up and running. There’ll be an exciting journey.
We’re a show-me-company. We’ve built a ton of momentum. I feel like we’re getting to the part where we are telling that story because we know we’re going to get it done. It’s super exciting. Everybody that’s here is here because they don’t want to do the same old thing in the industry. We get to reinvent this a bit and that’s amazing. If anything, come join us sooner rather than later so that you have the war stories to tell with us about building this fantastic network.
Where can we find out about jobs at DISH Wireless? Where do we go?
You can go to DISHWireless.com or Careers.DISH.com to see all the individual posting. We’re certainly still hiring. Lots of room for people on the team who want to come make a difference.
This has been fantastic. I truly appreciate you coming to the show. It’s been so inspiring. Thank you. I hope we can do it again someday.
Thanks, Carrie.
Take care.
Important Links:
About Katie Flynn
Katie Flynn is the Head of Wireless Talent Acquisition for DISH Network. Katie is an accomplished Talent Acquisition professional with a MSGM focused in International Business/Trade/Commerce from Thunderbird School of Global Management and an MBA from University of Colorado.
About Nichole Thomas
Nichole is currently the Regional Vice President at Dish Wireless, overseeing the end-to-end network build in the Central United States. Nichole has over 20 years of leadership experience in the telecommunications industry, including her tenure at Ericsson, SAC Wireless (a Nokia company) and Sprint. At Ericsson, Nichole led the largest region in delivery of 5G networks for all major customers in the Eastern United States. During her time at SAC Wireless, she headed up the program management office (PMO) servicing all major U.S. carriers nationwide. Nichole spearheaded national site development programs at Sprint and Clearwire and has extensive experience building networks from the ground up.