‘Seen and unseen’ diversity hiring

This week, we’re all about podcasts and pipelines as we scratch beneath the surface on how to build a diverse workforce.

Podcast: Hiring lessons from Unite Us

In our latest Scaling Stories podcast, we were delighted to chat with Jessica Paddock, Senior Director of Recruiting at Unite Us, an outcome-focused technology company that builds coordinated care networks to health and social service providers.

It was a wide-ranging discussion, and one recurring theme was the human-centered approach to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) at Unite Us, and their approach to hiring in general. In fact, the walls of their New York office are emblazoned with the words: “Be a good human.”

We explored the topic of ‘seen and unseen diversity’, and the steps employers can take to introduce bias mitigation in hiring.

“I think it’s really easy to look in a room and identify people by perhaps their skin color or their hair color or their gender, [but it’s] so much deeper than that,” Jessica said. “There’s things that we of course cannot see or identify and that could be socioeconomic, that could be religion, that could be culture related to region…”

While there are no quick fixes, the Unite Us team have put some solid foundations in place to embed fairness in the way they hire. Jessica explains: “You’re never going to remove all bias, but we see time and time again that structure and documentation can really help mitigate bias. So we’ve implemented really consistent standards around aligning the recruiting team and also the interview panel on how to make decisions, what drives decisions, and ensuring we’re having really open dialogue around bias.”

We covered so much ground that we can barely do it justice in one nifty newsletter, but here’s a snapshot of the other tips and insights Jessica shared:

• “We really emphasise question-asking, and understanding what’s important to the candidate so that when we speak about Unite Us… they are hearing the things that are most important to them.”
• “We do quite a few internal workshops. I think my favorite one was just a team building exercise…we essentially each put on a mini presentation, if you will, of just who we are, and where we came from.”
• “We use things like Slack and Zoom and G Suite [and Calendly] and I can’t imagine not utilising technology. But it has to work for you. It has to make it smoother to do the human parts of your job.”

Finally, Jessica gave a shout-out to the How I Built This podcast by Guy Raz on NPR, as well as Katrina Kibben, whose company Three Ears Media focuses on the art of writing job postings.

The pipeline debate

There’s a thoughtful piece by Jesse Singal on the extent to which “pipeline problems” are a challenge to recruiters looking to hire more diverse teams, and more pertinently, what should be done about it.

In a counter-argument to the school of thought that ‘the talent pipeline is not the problem’, Jesse’s article, in its own words, “nudges people away from the idea that pipeline problems are always cop-outs and/or inherently reflect conservative ideas about the nature of merit, fairness, and structural inequality”.

In case you’re unclear on what is meant by the talent pipeline, Jesse explains: “A pipeline problem is a situation where disparities in workplace or academic settings might partially reflect disparities in the pool of qualified applicants for these positions rather than discrimination in hiring.”

In a nutshell, Jesse’s argument is as follows:

“If You Actually Believe In Structural Racism, You Have To Believe In Pipeline Problems”

“We should be looking askance at people who believe in structural racism but don’t think it leads to proportional black-white discrepancies in how many well-qualified job applicants are produced,” Jesse adds.

“If you are economically marginalised, there are a million reasons you are unlikely to apply for a job at The New York Times, just like how if you are economically advantaged, there are a million reasons you are not likely to apply for a job at Foot Locker.”

It’s a fascinating debate, and whatever one concludes, there is plenty of food for thought for those of us genuinely committed to building more diverse teams. For more insights on this topic, check out our ideas for hiring a diverse workforce.

Look at these credentials

In all too many workforces, the path to landing a top job runs through an expensive Ivy League education, ivory towers and a narrow network akin to that singing quartet from Trading Places. For some light relief, some folks have poked fun at the ‘credentialisation’ many LinkedIn users will be familiar with – screenshots below, or visit here and here.

Things you might have missed

• @GergelyOrosz has shared some tips on how to write effective outreach emails. TL;DR = keep them short, and if you’re hiring for a well-respected brand, mention it!
• Job switching remains the best way to get a pay rise, according to the latest ADP Pay Insights report. It found that annual pay gains for job stayers was 7.6%, while for job leavers it was 16.1%.
• Earlier we mentioned Three Ears Media, the job ad writing specialists led by Katrina Kibben. If you’re interested to learn more, Katrina has written a brilliant blog, titled ‘Hiring managers shouldn’t write job posts’, which is a great place to start. Sample: “Hiring managers shouldn’t write job posts – they don’t know what they’re doing and are flying toward bias without any brakes.”
• Snap Inc. laid off roughly 20% of its 6,400+ employees – here is a list of those affected. A piece in The Information outlines “how Snap’s pandemic hiring frenzy set it up for mass layoffs”.

Recruiting fail

Having versatile, adaptable employees is all well and good, but you don’t really want your Head of Talent to also be your Recruitment Manager, HR Manager, Head of Finance, Head of Social and Window Cleaner. Tell that to these guys.

Thanks for reading

We hope you enjoyed some of the insights pulled from our recruiting reservoir. If you know someone who’d like to subscribe, link them up!