Subterms
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN What you can do as an employer to appeal to 90% of Hired candidates The various types and definitions of remote and hybrid work What the data tells us about remote work How best to support remote teams About this eBook This ebook for employers covers the current landscape, where remote hiring […] More
There’s no denying that 2021 was a wild ride for HR and talent acquisition teams, making it tough to predict recruiting trends for 2022. Around the world, millions of employees took part in the Great Resignation—quitting their jobs at record-setting rates and leaving companies rushing to fill open roles. In the months that followed, HR […] More
There’s no denying that 2021 was a wild ride for HR teams, making it tough to predict HR trends for 2022. Around the world, millions of employees took part in the Great Resignation—quitting their jobs at record-setting rates and leaving companies rushing to fill open roles. In the months that followed, HR professionals faced a […] More
What You’ll Learn U.K. tech salary trends based on role, industry, and years of experience How technical employees ranked non-salary compensation, such as benefits The impact of the Great Resignation on the demand for tech talent 4 Steps to accelerate your hiring process short term and develop a long term recruitment strategy to handle attrition. […] More
Whether you’re navigating the “Great Resignation” or scaling your teams, you know it’s tougher than ever to attract, hire, and onboard new tech employees. To help you be more competitive when sourcing top talent, Hired’s 2021 State of Tech Salaries report reveals the three benefits ranked highest by engineers. Analyzing data from more than 17,000 […] More
About this Checklist Before COVID-19, employees spent most of their time in the office—but when the world changed, so did workplace norms. Today, many companies have adopted a hybrid work model, offering staff the freedom to divide their time between home and the office. As a result, HR teams are now tasked with refreshing their […] More
As more candidates are open to remote roles, our 2020 State of Remote Work Report uncovered that employers believed the top benefit of hiring remote employees was having more diverse candidates. With a heightened focus on how companies are building diverse teams and inclusive workplaces, companies may be evaluating the work that still needs to be done in order for workplaces to be truly equitable, inclusive and diverse.
During an episode of our Talent Talent to Me podcast, Jennifer Tardy, career coach, diversity recruiting trainer, and CEO of Jennifer Tardy Consulting, joined us to discuss the gaps she found in training programs as a Head of Talent wanting to best prepare her team for their diversity recruiting initiative and how that experience led her to create her own program for recruiting teams wanting to close the existing gaps.
Identifying the gap
When companies begin the work of creating an inclusive workplace, unconscious bias training may be thought of as a smart place to start. While unconscious bias training is valuable and well-intentioned, it is a start not a well-rounded solution. As a Head of Talent in her former life, Tardy explained how she was disappointed to find that the trainers and program material for diversity recruiting training couldn’t speak to the depths of diversity and inclusion in hiring as she would have liked. Not only were the resources for recruiting teams insufficient, Tardy also identified a larger systemic issue within hiring that needed to be fixed for diversity recruiting to work effectively.
Recommendations in the market primarily focused on boolean strings but didn’t discuss how companies might get in front of and attract diverse talent, how to interview for authenticity, and how to create an inclusive workplace for people of underrepresented groups, especially if the company didn’t have good representation to begin with. The hiring system today calls on recruiters to weed people out of the pipeline. In doing this, pipelines begin to look homogenous or are influenced by bias. Then interview questions end up not assessing a candidate’s skills fit or who they truly are but rather for who was able to produce a better answer. In the end recruiters may miss out on the aspects about the candidate that make them diverse in background, opinion, and experience and disproportionately weed them out. This may ultimately impact a recruiter’s ability to attract, interview, and hire diverse talent if they aren’t changing the system that weeds them out in the first place.
Learning on common ground
Tardy’s belief that diversity recruiting training must start on common ground and should go to the depths of why DE&I initiatives exists in the first place. Tardy’s clients pledge in her training sessions that they are not a place of guilt but an avenue for finding solutions to move forward. Typically when people don’t feel like they know enough or know what language to use when it comes to diversity, Tardy shares, they opt out of participating in discussions–recruiters don’t have the luxury of not participating so she wants to equip them to go into them confidently. By laying the foundation for DE&I and common language to use, she notes how teams are more encouraged to engage in meaningful dialogue to create an action plan for lasting change within their organizations. Beyond undergoing diversity recruiting training, she advises recruiting teams to do two things in their process:
Interview for authenticity
Tardy shares how current hiring is set up candidates know recruiters are looking for the best answer to interview questions. For people of underrepresented groups, learning how to best answer interview questions is even more critical to prevent getting weeded out and landing a paying job. Tardy challenges recruiters to reframe interview questions with the intention to get to know the candidate and how they can contribute to the team instead of seeing reasons to pass on their candidacy. Figure out how you can really get to know this person, through behavioral interview questions for instance, and determine if they’d be a good fit for the job based on how they think through problems.
Audit for impact
Companies have great intent when it comes to DE&I but can sometimes be fearful to look at what quantitative and qualitative data suggests is true. For example, Tardy mentions that by leveraging data through a self-identification campaign, data from exit interviews, or migration data (promotion, demotion, lateral moves, etc), recruiting and HR teams can see where people of color are falling out of their process and organization as a whole. Companies should dive into why people are leaving and identify who in the organization has promotional opportunities over others to see if there are disparities between groups. If companies have great intent, they should also audit for impact and outcomes to see what employees and candidates are trying to tell them about the equity and inclusion of their workplace.
Once employers move past the guilt and understand how they can contribute to the larger conversation of diversity recruiting, they can know the weight of how to source for diverse talent, how to attract them to their companies, identify where bias is baked into their process, and how to make an effective and ethical selection decision. Recruiting practices can be more inclusive and, therefore, workforces can be more diverse and equitable.
Listen to the full episode here: More
With the transition to remote work, one intangible yet critical element of an organization that may unintentionally get lost in the shuffle and need to be reconfigured is company culture, especially if the team worked together in-person previously. From an HR perspective, fostering the core of what makes a company’s culture is that it enables teams to adapt and feel supported during a major shift in the way they work. From a talent acquisition perspective, our 2020 State of Remote Work Report found that candidates’ main concern while interviewing remotely is not gaining a true understanding of a company’s culture. For both remote work and hiring, allowing people to have an authentic and genuine experience of a company’s culture is critical to both employee and candidate engagement.
During an episode of our Talent Talent to Me podcast, Jolie Loeble, VP of People Ops at Daily Harvest, joined us to discuss how the company has been able to successfully foster an in-person company culture and recreate an in-person candidate experience while being completely remote.
Lost in translation
There are various considerations companies take into account when transitioning from working in-person to remote, especially so nothing is overlooked in the process. For companies who have already adapted to having a more distributed team with remote employees in addition to maintaining their in-person HQ, translating the work dynamics for the whole company may not feel as daunting. With that being said, it will still require People managers to be intentional about how teams collaborate, are supported and, most importantly, feel connected while being distributed.
Loeble comments on how when you walk into an office space — whether you are a customer, candidate, or employee — you can and should be able to feel a company’s culture. An office space is a living, breathing organism that is about more than just a space for collaboration–it is a space that embodies the company’s brand and that usually holds the people who drive the vibrant culture. To work and hire remotely, Loeble mentions how Daily Harvest is committed to recreating that feel of the culture.
Standard practice
Being intentional with how to create a work culture and foster it as a company scales matters–this is crucial to employer branding, attracting candidates to work for the company, and employer retention and productivity. Loeble says that Daily Harvest aims to create a candidate experience that matches the employee experience, both of which should mirror the customer experience. This is and should not be unique to these COVID-19 times, she states, but rather standard practice especially given these times for all People teams to be mindful of.
Scaling culture
Being culture conscious throughout growth periods can also help companies stay true to their roots as they scale. Loeble shares that keeping traditions from the early stages of Daily Harvest alive makes sure that the team remembers its humble beginnings. In a way, doing so pays tribute to the grit and hard work that it took to get to where they are today. Continuing traditions that are unique to a company from its inception is how culture is carried through and stands the test of time and organizational change.
Building community
It is important for people who interact with the company to get a feel for the rich and vibrant culture, especially for this remote world. With respect to remote hiring, Daily Harvest offers candidates they’re interviewing the opportunity to interact with its products in their homes so they can engage with the brand directly. What candidates may not be able to physically interact with right now, virtual tours of the workspace and photos or videos of experiences the team has with each other can showcase a hospitable, welcoming team waiting with open arms to celebrate with prospective employees.
Finally, staying connected to their mission, brand, and each other, beyond just work-related reasons is how Daily Harvest has successfully grown their business during a time of economic uncertainty. With two launches during lockdown, their team is not only productive but they are enjoying how they get to work and who they work with. They operate as a team that exudes a work culture that you want to be a part of, and in turn its translated to business success. More
