Seven Questions With...

Location: Derby, Kansas

Role at SentiLink: Fraud Intelligence Analyst

Previous role: Fraud Manager, Meritrust Credit Union

Shannon Slaughter joined SentiLink over two years ago, bringing her 20 years of banking and fraud-fighting experience to supercharge our investigations team. In addition, she is the People Lead for the Fraud Intelligence Team where she leads Learning & Development efforts. This includes coordinating SentiLink's weekly case review, where the entire company spends an hour analyzing and labeling actual cases she selects to make sure every employee is proficient at a core part of the business.

The only things that shine brighter than her professional acumen are her vivacious personality and kind heart.

What's your typical day like at SentiLink?

I usually spend the first hour of my day on special project work or putting together a lesson plan for our weekly company-wide case review. Most of the rest of my day is spent working fraud queues, such as daily partner queues, partner escalations, pilot queues for prospective partners (my personal favorite) or R&D queues created by our Data Science team for continued model development. I participate in the hiring process here, so my day may include a technical interview where I introduce a candidate to our dashboard and show them how it works. I make myself available to answer questions from new recruits attending our Fraud Intelligence Training Program, a sort of fraud boot camp all new employees are required to complete where they learn how our dashboard works as well as fraud labeling taxonomy that includes over 30 unique labels for specific fraud behaviors. I also support the sales and onboarding processes by demoing cases and showing new partners how to use our dashboard, and occasionally join Partner Success check-ins with our existing partners.

I can’t forget to mention my daily lunch run with my pup, Louie, whom I recently promoted to Chief Work/Life Balance Officer!

How did you get started in your field of expertise?

Like most people I know in this line of work, I fell into it! I’d worked a few operational roles related to check processing at the bank I was working for at the time and was in-between roles due to Check 21 going into effect. A woman who worked in the fraud department decided she wanted more time with her kiddos and my senior manager at the time approached me about filling the role. I thought it sounded like interesting work, so I went for it! I quickly discovered it was something I enjoyed and could see myself doing for a long time. I inherited a pothos plant from that former fraud analyst back in 2008 that I’ve kept on my desk everywhere else I’ve worked since then, and it’s actually sitting in my home office today!

What's the most interesting thing (project, case, etc.) you've worked on at SentiLink?

The project I’m most proud of is the Fraud Intelligence Training course that I created. Deep understanding is one of our core values, and all employees are required to learn about the types of fraud our products are designed to combat as well as how to use the SentiLink dashboard. It’s an intensive course that involves live sessions with multiple Fraud Intelligence Team (FIT) members, self guided sessions and a 150-case workbook with a broad sampling of our fraud taxonomy labels. Additional support is available via a message channel monitored by FIT where new recruits can ask questions about workbook cases or anything else FIT related. I also host a weekly office hours session where they can pop in and get help with workbook cases or ask any FIT related questions. Not everyone who joins SentiLink has a fraud prevention background, and I really tried to keep that in mind while I was putting the course together. Fraud education is a passion of mine, and it’s really rewarding to share my knowledge with others and see them get excited about it too!

Of SentiLink's Corporate Values (Follow Through, Deep Understanding, Whatever it Takes, Do Something Smart), which would you say is the one that guides you most in the day-to-day of your job, and why?

Deep understanding is definitely the core value that guides me the most because it is literally what we do every day on the Fraud Intelligence Team. Take pilot queues, for example, which offer the opportunity to learn about a financial institution’s onboarding process and what kind of fraud vectors are impacting them the most. Are we seeing hallmarks of fraud rings that previously impacted some of our other partners? If not, can we offer any advice on preventative measures they can take to avoid losses suffered by other similar partners targeted by those fraud rings? I also like to think about ways we can improve our dashboard to make it more useful for our partners. How can we make their jobs easier/more efficient? And looking ahead, how can I leverage my cumulative experience in banking to help develop new solutions to some of the challenges I faced in my previous fraud prevention roles? I thoroughly enjoy being in a role that has the potential to help other fraud analysts/managers working in the fraud trenches, and it’s always something that is top of mind for me.

What advice would you give to someone applying for a role at SentiLink?

If you are just looking for a J-O-B, this is not the place for you. The interview process here is rigorous, but it is because we are looking for superstars who can bring something to the table and are ready to learn about fraud and how we help our partners combat it. My panel involved conversations with 8 different people including two technical screenings, and that was in addition to preliminary conversations I had with my hiring manager and our co-founders. Do your homework, ask great questions, and show up to your interviews with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm.

What's your hidden talent, something that can't be found on your LinkedIn profile?

I like to joke that I am a human lie detector, but there is actually truth to that. I’ve always had pretty good instincts, and working in fraud for 15 years I’ve talked to my fair share of fraudsters who’ve definitely helped me refine that skill.

Shout out to your mentor, a person who has had an outsized role in helping you professionally. Who are they, and what about them made such an impact on your career?

I would have to say Grace Bazil, one of my first managers at Intrust. She was the first boss I’d ever had who took an interest in my professional development. I stopped looking at my role as just a J-O-B and started thinking about banking as a potential career, which ultimately set me on the path to where I am now. She retired from Intrust several years ago and we remained close until she recently passed.