RecFest Recap - Part 2

Diversity and Recruiting for Difference; State of the Nation; Recruiting Myths; and Candidate Experience

Last week I wrote part 1 of the RecFestAU 2019 recap; sharing my notes and thoughts about the ‘Performance’ topic of the day. If you haven’t read it already, you can find it here.

This week, I’ll cover off the rest of the event. Apologies in advance if the sequel doesn’t stack up to the original (I’m just following the Hollywood model); the beers started flowing around midday (until they didn’t flow – we’ll get to that) and my notes got a little murky toward the end of the conference.

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Diversity and recruiting for difference was probably the part of the day that affected me most deeply.

Nicola Harrison, Director of Talent at RMIT began her presentation by inviting Alex Splitt, a proud Gubbi Gubbi man from the southeast coast of QLD, to welcome us to country. He began with “wominjeka”, which roughly translates to “welcome, state your name and purpose”.

Alex shared the story of an organisation who had adopted this greeting, and how one team member had not been pleased with the change; to them, it felt confrontational.

The explanation for the change – if we continue to do what hasn’t worked, what change is going to happen? We need to adopt ways to allow people to be true to themselves.

“Letting people be true to themselves is not only good for them, but for everyone around them.” – Alex Splitt

Alex then continued his welcome to country with the Yidaki, asking us to close our eyes; not take photos. He explained that it is not meant to be a performance, but a spiritual activity (apologies Alex if this doesn’t capture your words exactly, I ceased taking notes here so I could ‘be in’ the experience).

As Alex played - a deep, thrumming sound - the crowded room around me was blocked out, and I was acutely aware of the sun’s warmth on me from the skylight above. The sound of the Yidaki seemed to penetrate right into my bones, and when a ‘yip’ sound punctured the thrumming, my heart raced in my chest; getting faster as the ‘yips’ drew closer together.

The Yidaki felt powerful, all encompassing, until it abruptly stopped, and I was left with my thoughts, reflecting on the emotion that had just flooded through me.

When Nicola took the stage again, she brought to life the organisational response of RMIT to reconciliation; directly addressing that comment of Alex's - ‘if we continue to do what hasn’t worked, what change is going to happen?’.

She showed us the way that RMIT has embraced their responsibility as a champion of social good under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Martin Bean.

Nicola demonstrated how RMIT are ‘backing up what they say’ via a pill (technology to aid in better diagnosis of illness), a 3D printer (spinal implants 3D printed to bring mobility to those who have lost it) and a blanket (a symbol of the university’s ongoing journey, and an acknowledgement of Australia’s aboriginal heritage).

She then translated what this means for recruitment at RMIT, and how they share their story to candidates - and; importantly for the audience of the day; how this fits into the changing nature of recruitment.

Nicola highlighted that as automation continues to progress in recruitment, ‘human skills’ are all the more important in the recruitment process, particularly for collaborating with and/or challenging the perceptions of hiring managers, as well as being a champion of diversity.

She detailed the changing structure and roles of her own recruitment team to enable them to use these human skills, and left us with the parting call to action:

Be a superhero, take on the challenge of hiring for diversity. - Nicola Harrison

Next, Joanne Lockwood and Bill Boorman had me; a straight, white guy; questioning my interactions with others, and my biases.

Joanne and Bill spoke of transition, and how everyone goes through transition in their lives (Bill from a “straight white guy in a suit” to the stand-up comic/thought leader/advisor/CandE judge/ hat wearer he is today) and how for some people, the way they are treated changes dramatically after the transition.

“My background didn’t end once I stopped wearing a suit” - Bill Boorman

They spoke of the damage this different treatment can do; how a huge number of trans people are self employed because they couldn’t get a job.

Joanne shared her own lived experience with this.

While searching for a job in IT after her transition she encountered many instances of people not believing it was her on the phone because of her voice, or shocked looks when meeting someone at the elevator - “I’m 52 and trans, it’s not a great icebreaker!”.

She needed a break (said with the acknowledgement that there are allies out there, and the subtext that there aren’t enough), but it got to the point where she couldn’t wait for that break, and she had to go out on her own.

She spoke of being very attune to body language and subconscious reaction; and while listening, I was incredibly aware of my own shortfalls here.

I have always considered myself at the very least an ally; but one comment Joanne made gave me pause:

“If you allow things to go on around you, you’re an enabler” – Joanne Lockwood

I’m now more conscious than ever of my actions, but still a little lost as to what I should be doing.

This was thrown into focus when I ran into Joanne after her presentation. I wanted to ask some questions about how I could be a better ally, but she’d said during her speech that she just wants people to treat her normally, make small-talk; so instead I just spoke about her travels and different conferences she’d been to.

Did I respond to her presentation the right way?

Bill spoke about ‘normalcy’, and how toxic the notion can be – for everyone. We raise people to think “this” is normal, he explained.

“We spend all this time working on being normal, we have no time left to work on our work” – Bill Boorman

For the recruiters in the room, Bill highlighted the way they could be heroes – use the power they have as the entry point to their organisations to open up to people of diverse backgrounds, overcome biases, and look through their initial reaction to the underlying skills and competencies.

Joanne put it simply – don’t worry about making it more of a women’s world, or a trans world, or a disability friendly world,

“make it a people world, where everyone has the same opportunities” – Joanne Lockwood

I would have liked to finish on that powerful quote and have this a stand-alone Diversity and Inclusion post.

There were 4 topics on the day, Performance, Diversity and Recruiting for Difference, State of the Nation and Candidate Experience.

Unfortunately I can’t justify stand-alone articles for the last 2 topics because by this point of the day my notes had turned into gibberish – I’m blaming a few bad influencers (you know who you are) that enticed me to the pub up the road when the bar at the conference stopped serving for a couple of hours (mind you, some of the best networking of the day took place up there!).

Additionally, I was spoilt for choice of speaker in the afternoon, and was ducking my head in and out of different presentations.

I was deep in conversation in another part of the venue during Stan Rolfe’s panel, so missed hearing our own Alastar Schirmer, Edan Haddock of flybuys and James Witcombe from Smaart Recruitment speaking about their work toward a positive candidate experience.

I did find out after the fact from Edan that the reason flybuys asks a candidate for their favourite song when they come to the office for an interview (see my previous article for context) is so they can play it and put the candidate at ease while getting them to take the flybuys values survey. How good is that!?

I jotted down one data point (of what I know was many) from the presentation on Talent Acquisition myths (45% of organisations have centralised recruitment), and was lucky enough to capture another great data point in my photo - 'only 20% of Resourcing and HR leaders surveyed... felt they had the right TA model in place to meet their business needs today and into the future'.

I did stay for the entirety of our own Dr Mike Haywood’s presentation with the boring title (by his own admission) in which he promised to give the attendees superpowers. The secret sauce was data to help recruiters prove relevancy and advocate for bigger budgets. Check out the slide in the photo below and get in touch if you'd like to know more.

In the afternoon, I caught a little of Spendless Shoes’ Alana Sfitkis speaking about the Spotless onboarding journey with the guys from HROnboard – “team member experience is the customer experience”, and learned about progresses in digital identity from Colin Boyan, CIO at CVCheck.

Then I got a lesson on the social side of the recruitment industry, and caught up with old and new friends.

Thank you Andrea Kirby and the team at the Recruitment Events Co. for bringing together a stellar group of speakers, and creating an atmosphere primed for great networking opportunities.