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SeekOut Events

29
Nov
Diversity Recruiting  ·  SeekOut  ·  SeekOut Events
SeekOut Spotlight Series Recap: Want to Improve Diversity ROI? Start Pre-Funnel

The SeekOut Spotlight Series features conversations with thought leaders in talent acquisition, DEI, and remote work. In episode one, SeekOut CEO and Co-Founder Anoop Gupta was joined by Recruiting Toolbox CEO and Founder John Vlastelica who shared why conversations about diversity should start pre-funnel.  

John consults with recruiting teams at leading global companies like Google, Slack, LinkedIn, Lego, Deloitte, Atlassian, Adidas, Uber, Disney, and Amazon. In his experience, many hiring managers believe diversity hiring can be achieved simply by sourcing more candidates from underrepresented groups. In reality, the diversity focus needs to start much earlier.  

John presented three concepts, each supported by a wealth of helpful tips, that help companies create a diversity strategy that leads to great talent entering the organization and a positive return on investment. 

1. Know the market and set expectations with the hiring manager 

Today’s talent acquisition professionals are responsible for being talent advisors to hiring managers. John’s first concept focused on how recruiting teams can set expectations with hiring managers that result in diverse candidate slates.  

Combine data and real-world examples 

SeekOut’s Talent Analytics provides aggregate data on the diversity, skills, experience, locations, and more of your talent market. Combine those insights with real-world examples you’re hearing in candidate conversations to set expectations with hiring managers. You might learn through Talent Analytics that the local talent market is limited so you need to be open to remote work or relocation. And perhaps candidates are letting you know they want slightly higher compensation than you had in mind or the opportunity to lead certain projects. 

Create inclusive job descriptions 

Use the information you collect to collaborate with the hiring manager on an inclusive job description. Determine what qualifications need to be required and what can be nice-to-haves so you expand the initial talent pool. Relaxing a few role requirements can significantly reduce time-to-hire.  

Determine what role requirements are trainable 

When considering the role requirements to relax, determine what can be learned on the job through experience. Most hiring managers can teach a new hire about the industry, how to use a specific tool, and how to work in a larger organization (if they’re coming from a smaller company). It’s the rigid personality qualities like adaptability, curiosity, passion for learning, and empathy that are harder to teach. Go as far as to think about what is trainable on a company-wide level and apply that philosophy to every role you hire for.  

“Widen the aperture” when considering candidates 

Move away from the mindset that there is only one ideal candidate profile and not multiple types of candidates who could excel in a role. That doesn’t mean reducing role requirements but rather “widening the aperture,” as John says. Look to the left and right of the ideal profile for candidates who have slightly different qualifications (e.g., lesser-known universities, smaller company experience, different job titles, different industries). 

2. Talk about diversity before the kickoff meeting 

Successful diversity hiring requires a lot of asks from the hiring manager. When you meet them for a kickoff meeting, their focus is going to be on getting the role filled, not overhauling the job description and candidate assessment process. Conversations about diversity should happen earlier so both parties are on the same page when it comes time to source. John offered the following tips for having a diversity strategy defined going into the hiring process for every new role: 

Always be recruiting candidates  

Encourage hiring managers to connect with professionals and build relationships so there is always talent in the pipeline when new roles open. An always-be-recruiting approach goes a long way in achieving speed, quality, and diversity when hiring. 

Create an interview strategy early on  

Kickoff meetings often focus on the role requirements and sourcing strategy, leaving little time to cover how interviews should be conducted. However, make sure to discuss how the team can be inclusive and provide a positive experience. Interviews are your best opportunity to showcase that your organization is a great place to work.  

Deprioritize speed and focus on diversity  

Try to convince your leadership team to slow down on hiring in the short term and refocus on what it takes to successfully attract diverse candidates in the long term. While time-to-hire will initially increase, it will shorten over time once the diversity hiring muscle is built in your organization. 

3. Pre-train interviewers and focus on learning agility  

As diversity hiring has grown in importance so too has the need to train interview teams on how to be inclusive and properly evaluate candidates. John has seen many instances of 50/50 gender balance at the top of the funnel become 80/20 male-to-female after the interview stage. He offered the following tips for training and aligning interviewers on what matters most when evaluating candidates: 

Avoid using terms like “culture fit” and “soft skills“ 

Instead, identify specific behaviors that will lead to job success and use them to define interview questions to ask. The answers candidates provide will help the team objectively evaluate what they’ll bring to the job beyond their skills and experience.  

Make inclusion a focus when hiring leaders 

Make a point to hire inclusive leaders so that quality permeates throughout your organization. Managers who prioritize inclusion attract people from underrepresented groups and organically lead to the company becoming more diverse. 

Eliminate biases in candidate assessments 

In order to eliminate biases, interviewers must first know what is influencing their decision-making. Coach the hiring team to be aware of common biases like the Confirmation Bias (sticking to first impressions made about a candidate), Likeability Bias (preferring a candidate who has likable traits), and Similarity Bias (preferring a candidate who has a similar background). 

Decide what you’ll take bets on early on 

Come to an agreement before the interview stage on the trade-offs your team is willing to make when selecting an ideal candidate. For example, are you open to hiring an incredibly talented candidate who is a bit of a jerk? Be prepared to make that decision before you face it.  

Have a “see something, say something” culture  

Empower your team to speak up if they see biases toward candidates so everyone is held accountable for being inclusive. Challenge them to provide evidence to back up their claims so you don’t let unfair assumptions undo the diversity progress that has been made throughout the hiring process.  

As you define the specific behaviors to focus on, make sure learning agility and curiosity are included. Focusing on these areas helps identify candidates who can excel, even if they don’t check every box on the role requirements. This can be achieved by asking candidates about their experiences learning a new skill and why they took that challenge on. Remember, the goal is to widen the aperture so encourage interviewers to dig deep and go beyond skills and experience.  

Prepare your company for diversity hiring success 

Real progress happens when we change the whole system. Don’t wait until it’s time to hire for a new role to start talking about diversity. Have those conversations early on, learn what works, and apply your strategy to every role you hire for. 

Visit recruitingtoolbox.com/SeekOut to download John’s presentation and learn more about improving diversity ROI and register for episode two of the SeekOut Spotlight Series on Tuesday, December 14th at 10 am PST.  


23
Dec
Diversity Recruiting  ·  SeekOut Events
3 Takeaways on Diversity: What I Learned at the From Day One Conference

With 2020 right around the corner, we must have 20/20 vision with our future diversity initiatives. The From Day One conference, held December 11th in Los Angeles, focused on diversity strategies. Here are 3 key lessons I learned from top-in-class diversity leaders.

1. Trust the Benefits, Trust the Research, and Take Action

I attended the Panel Discussion Getting Bias Out of Our Systems with panelists from CAA, Novartis, Southern California Edison, Joonko, and Control Risks. I learned that getting bias out of an individual or an entity takes a long time. It requires systemic change and “Educating a System,” not just changing individual attitudes. As diversity & inclusion leaders, it’s imperative to educate the system well enough to penetrate an inclusive framework. 

As you can imagine, this will take time.

According to Marion Brooks, VP of Diversity & Inclusion at Novartis, a well-rounded diversity initiative for your company is just an inch away with the right tactics. By fully grasping the benefits of diversity and trusting the research that has been done, you can solidify your strategy for leading this process.

Benefits:What are the known benefits of diverse teams?

  1. Higher Revenue
  2. Greater Innovation
  3. More Customer Needs Met

What the Research Says:

You can’t increase your diversity hiring with token efforts to diversify your talent pool. You need to make sure you have significant representation at the top of your talent funnel. According to the Harvard Business Review, if you only have one woman or one person of color in a slate of candidates, there is no chance statistically that they will be hired. Unconscious Bias is just too strong. But if at least two women or people of color are in the slate of candidates, the odds of hiring a diverse candidate goes up to 50% or more. By simply diversifying the final candidate pool, you can diversify your workforce.

The Strategy: 

Novartis’s Diversity Guideline: Novartis created a new Hiring Guideline in which they will make it a requirement to have at least one woman, and at least one person of color in the final candidate pool. This will launch on January 1st, 2020. 

Lesson Learned: We have statistics available, scholars have done research, and it is our responsibility to make something out of their efforts by implementing diversity initiatives. 

Speaking of using statistics… this leads me to the second lesson learned.

2. Use the Data, and Analyze the Insights

I sat in the Creating a Data-Driven D&I Strategysession presented by Anoop from SeekOut. I learned from my very own CEO that “big data is eating the world today”. Data and the insights they provide drive how CEOs and leaders run their businesses; data determines whether our businesses die, survive, or thrive.

The D&I sphere is a hugely rich and complex space that requires actionable insights backed by data to make informative decisions for your business. Data and AI can be used in the D&I space by leadership AND individuals to use as guidelines on how they can be better at our jobs every day and excel at the work that we do. 

Examples of Useful Data in the D&I space:

    % of diverse employees at your company
  1. Diversity stats of your competitors
  2. % of diverse employees by function% of diverse “data scientists” talent in a specific city/region% of diverse employees by title 

In the recruiting and talent acquisition space, data can be used to form concrete goals and solidify strategy. Tools like SeekOut can help you find all the data points above. Bringing us back to my first lesson from 1. Trust the benefits, Trust the research, and Take action, having solid researched data to present to your manager/executive will bring you closer to implementing diversity initiatives. 

Lesson Learned: Having data as your ally is an enormous advantage in knowing where you stand in your diversity efforts.

You can watch Anoop’s Breakout Session below!

3. Finesse the Tools, Make them your Ally 

My final point that I learned was that there are a multitude of tools that are our allies in D&I. Specifically, Textio was mentioned in several speaking sessions as being able to help fix gender-biased language.

  • Textio: Textio is an augmented writing platform that connects to your Applicant Tracking System, and rids any language that keep certain groups away from applying. Textio will not rewrite your job description, but it will highlight and suggest new words. This can help reduce bias out of the hiring process and keep your strategy more thoughtful. 

https://textanalysis.beapplied.com/

  • Ongig: https://www.ongig.com/features/job-description-text-analyzer-gender#/
  • Kat Manfield: http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/
  • Lesson Learned: My biggest takeaway from the From Day One conference is that a diverse yet inclusive vision is not a “nice to have” but a “must have”, and that doing it right takes time and deliberate effort. Implementing diversity initiatives is complex, layered, and time-consuming. However, doing it right is worth it, and you can utilize the data and finesse the tools to set you up for success.  


    19
    Jul
    SeekOut Events
    Join Us @ HRTX: August 1st

    HRTX is a single-day event bringing together top TA and Recruiting Leaders for a full day of workshops taught by some of the industry’s brightest.

    Our CEO, Anoop Gupta will be presenting- you don’t want to miss out!

    Presentation Title: Go Beyond LinkedIn
    Presentation Overview: Experience how SeekOut empowers you to recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent (especially for developers/engineers/scientists) for your company.  Backed by intuitive AI search and personalized messaging, SeekOut provides you timely whole-person profiles of in-demand professionals.

    Date: Thursday, August 1st
    Time: 8:00AM-5:45pm PDT
    Location: 155 5th St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103


    10
    Jun
    SeekOut Events
    Join Us @ Talent42: June 11-12th

    We’re sponsoring Talent42 taking place in Seattle, WA June 11-12th, 2019 and hope to see you there!

    Talent42 is 100% focused on helping technical recruiters hire top technology talent. Throughout this conference you’ll learn from engineering and tech recruiting leaders from leading Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Facebook, & Google.

    Our involvement at Talent42:
    Booth: #6
    Tech & Leadership Think Tank: Our CEO, Anoop Gupta is moderating table talk discussions on Tues, June 11th at 3:00pm & Wed, June 12th at 2:00pm. Both sessions are set to occur in the Inlet & Harbor room. See agenda.
    Afterparty: We’re kicking off the first night of Talent42 by hosting a party just 3 blocks away from the conference location.
    Date: Tuesday, June 11th
    Time: 6:00-9:30pm PDT
    Location: Cursed Oak, 2137 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121
    Included: free food upscale cuisine, free drinks (10+ taps), poppin playlist            & priceless memories!


    31
    May
    SeekOut Events
    Join Us @ HRTX DC June 6

    We’ll be at HRTX in Washington, DC on June 6th, 2019 and would love to meet you there!  Come and hear from our very own John Tippett, Head of Product.

    Presentation Time: 2:00pm EST
    Presentation Title: Go Beyond LinkedIn
    Presentation Details: Experience how SeekOut empowers you to recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent (especially for developers/engineers/scientists) for your company. Backed by intuitive AI search and personalized messaging, SeekOut provides you timely whole-person profiles of in-demand professionals. SeekOut is founded by top executives and engineers from Microsoft and is used today at major enterprises across multiple industries.




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