Bro, Do You Even Transform?
What do you get when you mash-up 4 podcasts into one? Lots of voices and even more opinion.
> Debbie Tuel from The Joy Podcast
> Julie Sowash and Torin Ellis from Crazy and The King podcast
> and Tim Sackett from the HR Famous podcast join the boys to talk about:
- Why are recruiters so damn hard to find?
- Does recruiter experience matter?
- Why is Europe a decade behind on the US in DEI?
- When will women come back to the workforce, specifically recruiting?
- Are companies doing enough in DEI?
- It's People, Process, Technology dummy!
- Working harder is not a sustainable business strategy
This show coming to you pre-recorded from Transform Detroit LIVE brought to you by Symphony Talent.
Enjoy!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Disability Solutions is your RPO partner for the disability community, from source to hire.
Joel (0s):
Oh, yeah, what's up everybody. This is
Chad (5s):
OMGod it's Cheesman.
Joel (7s):
I thought you were stopping me. Shit. I was on a roll. I was on a roll. You felt like it was like the 1970s rock station vibe.
Chad (20s):
Okay. So who is at the table today? We have a crossover podcast. Good.
Joel (27s):
This is exciting. This is a bomb. This is going to be a bomb on the podcast universe.
Chad (33s):
A good bomb.
Joel (34s):
Like a cherry bomb.
Chad (36s):
Like that. That's better. That's it? That's better. Okay. Okay.
Joel (38s):
Should we go around the table and everyone introduce ourselves because we're going to show up on a lot of different podcasts? People don't know you, me, our audience doesn't know some of these folks, so I'll go first. My name is Joel Cheesman of the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Chad (51s):
Chad of the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Debbie (54s):
You've got Debbie Tuel here of the Joy Pipeline Podcast.
Tim (58s):
Tim Sackett of the HR Famous Podcast
Julie (1m 1s):
Julie Sowash of the Crazy and the King podcast,
Torin (1m 4s):
Bringing up the rear, breaking records, Torin Ellis, Crazy and the King. I am the king.
Chad (1m 11s):
We're all here in Detroit for a reason. There's this whole Joy road trip thing that's going on. They got like this ice cream truck thing.
Debbie (1m 19s):
We call it a road show, we are on a road show. The road show is road tripping. I mean, we are a taken the truck on the road. We started in Dallas. We are here in Detroit. We are going to New York City. I have just learned that we may even get to meet the mayor of Baltimore on this trip.
Chad (1m 37s):
What?
Torin (1m 37s):
Come on now.
Debbie (1m 38s):
All right. I mean, this is, this is going to be big. And then we're going to take it overseas to London. How we get the truck there? Good question. I'm thinking not the same truck, right?
Tim (1m 47s):
I think it floats,
Debbie (1m 49s):
That's a great idea.
Chad (1m 50s):
You need the mic Tim. Tim's a rookie.
Joel (1m 52s):
The reason we're in Detroit is Tim Sackett with the proximity to him.
Tim (1m 56s):
I was saying like, instead of like the Joy truck, ice cream truck, you know, you could just have like one of those London taxis, like the cool ones.
Joel (2m 2s):
Sure Double Decker bus.
Tim (2m 3s):
By the way, the first time I ever went to London, we got talking to taking that taxi from Heathrow into London. That's $180 proposition, like, okay, great.
Debbie (2m 11s):
And there is a train that takes you the exact same distance, very fast and much cheaper, lesson learned.
Joel (2m 17s):
But when you're stars like Chad and Cheese you get the limo service from the airport, just saying.
Tim (2m 22s):
Didn't they get filmed the last time that they were over in London, like somebody was with a camera with them in the vehicle and all of that.
Joel (2m 29s):
You remember?
Debbie (2m 30s):
The guys over at Talent Nexus.
Chad (2m 32s):
Talent Nexus. Well let's okay. So let's break it down first. We're going to talk about Europe. We're going to get there, maybe a little Asia pack and whatnot, because I mean, you guys are going all across, you're road trippin'.
Debbie (2m 43s):
We are road trippin' on the road show
Chad (2m 45s):
Road trippin' on the road show. Okay. Here in the US, we actually, we had a great discussion yesterday with Tim and Tim was talking about how hard it is to find recruiters. Why do you think that is?
Tim (2m 59s):
No in fact. We know like Danielle Monahan, she was at Amazon and she's at Uber now, or NTA. She had made a comment to you that it never heard like 25 years of leading TA teams as she had had it harder finding recruiters. And then there was another stat out on Twitter this week. There's actually more recruiter openings right now than software engineering openings. I, you know, I think the pandemic, obviously teams got lean. And then all of a sudden, now I have to hire, again, real quick. Software engineers, they didn't really get let go. Like they kept working and they just worked at home, you know? So we have this bubble of hiring, but you know, a lot of people are like, Hey, I don't want to go back in the office. You can recruit from anywhere. Yeah. But the recruiter experience for most of these people are terrible.
Chad (3m 39s):
Debbie, let's talk about recruiter experience because at Symphony, you guys have to focus.
Debbie (3m 45s):
Yeah. They are our end users, right? The recruiters are the end users of our software. And I think oftentimes we do forget the end users. We have a focus as the industry on the candidate. And we forget that the person that's delivering that candidate experience is the recruiter oftentimes in conjunction with the hiring managers and others. But we need to build software that is easy for them to use. And then we need to connect the software together with the other tools that they're using so that it's a, streamless, you know, it's an easy work stream for them. And you guys have seen it and talent acquisition technology we haven't done a great job of that. We build tools in silos. We don't make it easy. Everybody thinks their tool is the best.
Debbie (4m 26s):
And so they're like the recruiters should be using my tool. And so they're going to log, yeah, they're going to log in to my dashboard. And I was like, ah, no, what is their system of record that they should be in every day that they're measured inside of, for their performance. And then how do we get the rest of the technology that's gonna make their lives easier, all embedded into that one piece of tech?
Joel (4m 49s):
Why is there a shortage of recruiters? Are they having a heart to heart with themselves and saying, I don't want to be a recruiter anymore. What's going on?
Tim (4m 58s):
I think there's a number of factors. One we just missed, she just created a brand new marketing term that we'll be using for like the next two years. She was going to say seamless. She said streamless. And I'm like, not for now. And every like HR tech company will be like, we're streamless. Oh my gosh. It's amazing. What does that mean? No one knows no one cares.
Chad (5m 15s):
It's streamless!
Tim (5m 16s):
Exactly. Someone's going to use that. I'll tell you our HR tech will be there in a few months and it's only to be like, we're, streamless. Like, I can't believe you stole Debbie's tech term, 2 million women, not in the workplace right now, still from the pandemic. Think of the recruiter, like demographic it's much heavily more women. So there's a part there, right? Where a lot of them have to go home, they gotta do childcare, they gotta do all these other things and they can't just recruit.
Chad (5m 38s):
Is the experience, I mean, does that prospectively push them out too? Because it sucks. Let's say for instance, from a process standpoint, having 27 tabs open, do you think that has any impact on whether your job sucks or it's joyful?
Tim (5m 52s):
Yeah. No. I think, I mean, I think that whatever tech you have, and I think what a lot of people found was like, Hey, you're a recruiter, you got shoved home and now you have to continue to recruit and they didn't give you anything that worked really well. And it became a major pain for you to actually produce and do as well as you were in the office for whatever environment they had. So I think that's one Joel, back to your question, you know, as women, you know, obviously not in the workforce as much, and we're hoping that returns. You know, the other piece of it is I think there's some leveling up going on, right? I think recruiters go, do I really want to put up with this crappy job? Hiring managers that don't respect me or Hey, by the way, I can go make the same money doing something else.
Torin (6m 32s):
You know, with you starting with technology as the primary consideration. And then the leveling up is the secondary. You know, it just reminds me of how many people think that there's some sort of fairy dust to do diversity and inclusion. And the technology is going to make them necessarily a better recruiter. And this is not to suggest that technology is not important because it's very important, but it's not a fairy dust solution that we're looking for.
Debbie (6m 54s):
No, you always go back to like people, process, technology, which comes third? Technology, right? Let's focus on the people, let's get the process in place. And then let's find the technology that matches that process. And oftentimes we find people trying to take the shortcut and go straight to technology. They miss the other two and they fail big time. And I think it goes back to what your question was, is we to have a problem of women leaving the workforce. We also have a problem of burnout and their burnout because of exactly what Tim mentioned. We've got less recruiters, they've got higher rec loads that they're working on. And then it goes to the usability, right? They they're burnt out of all of this tech. They're supposed to be using the, what they're measured on changes monthly based on what they just bought.
Joel (7m 36s):
Well, it sounds to me like they don't need new tech. They need more support as a mother, raising kids and getting to school and worrying about those issues as Julie rolls her eyes.
Debbie (7m 47s):
Rolls her eyes.
Joel (7m 47s):
Or shakes her head. Maybe she should chime in on this issue. Should companies be giving more support to women in order to fill those recruiting spots?
Julie (7m 54s):
Yes, we should be re-looking at our benefits, our flexibility, our with them, why should a woman come and work for me? And I can tell you, we're hiring at Disability Solutions right now. And I'm working with our recruiters and they are uploading. They're using 10 different tools. It's completely inefficient and it's causing delays for me, but it's causing my really talented recruiters to be exhausted. And they can't possibly help me find great diverse candidates if they're exhausted and they don't have that time because they just don't. And then on top of it, we can't get the data out that we need.
Torin (8m 29s):
Did she just say diverse candidates again?
Debbie (8m 30s):
I did, I did. Underrepresented candidates.
Torin (8m 34s):
Hey, I will tell you that there's, there's a piece of this that I think I work with TA leaders constantly. And I'll come in, I'll say, Hey, give me, I want to see three, four or five pieces of data. And they look at me with like deer in headlights. Like, I don't know if we have that. Let me see. I think our, I think we can pull that ever ATS or whatever. And, but here's what happens with not having that data as your TA leader, because all of a sudden hiring turned on for every industry, every market within the US, we have obviously it's different around the world. And the CEO comes in and says, Hey, by the way, we were going to hire a hundred in an August. Now we have to hire 500 and they go, okay, we'll just work harder. Work harder is not a sustainable strategy.
Chad (9m 11s):
No.
Tim (9m 11s):
You have to have the process, the technology to people, all of those things in place. But if you don't have data, you can't go and say, Hey, by the way, Mrs. CEO, we're never going to make that happen. You can't create a here's here's our capacity right now. And you're asking for this capacity is not going to happen. And so they don't do that. So you just go and you beat on your recruiters. You like, you whip them a little bit harder, right? And by the way, short term, it works, you can whip a recruiter and they'll produce more short term, and then they totally burn out, fall off the cliff, and quit.
Debbie (9m 40s):
They have more opportunities because everybody's short staffed. So guess what they are being recruited to.
Chad (9m 45s):
Do you think the recruiter experience Debbie with some of your clients, do you think how much different is it for them working in the US versus Europe, knowing that you have to interconnect all of these countries, a much different than obviously interconnecting states. You have language issues. I mean, there's just, what's the recruiter experience for somebody, one of your clients in Europe versus the US?
Debbie (10m 10s):
Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. I actually think we do a better job of the experience in AMEA than we do here in the states.
Chad (10m 18s):
How so?
Debbie (10m 21s):
There's a couple of things that play into that one. Their compliance issues are a little bit different than ours.
Chad (10m 28s):
Okay.
Debbie (10m 29s):
And so there's less hurdles to jump through for the recruiter and getting a candidate in their pipeline and into their process. The other thing that's different is they can be a little bit more forward-thinking with the brand and the way they represent themselves and the process, which would they go to market from a brand perspective, and they tend to be ahead of us in that aspect. And then third, they are still really heavy on third party contingency firms.
Chad (10m 55s):
Very much. Needs a flip really.
Debbie (10m 57s):
They are. So it is, it's an interesting kind of switch over there. You see more of the employment brand, recruitment marketing being in-house and the actual recruiting being done outside of the house. And so it's, you look at the recruiter experience differently over in AMEA, at least for our customers than we do here in the states, but they tend to be a little bit easier to service.
Chad (11m 21s):
Are you working with staffing firms?
Debbie (11m 24s):
We absolutely do work with staffing firms. We work with a lot of, we tend to do more business with the RPOs because they tend to be, you know, focusing on how do they support a specific client. And a lot of our technology is geared towards specific clients, but we work with it all. But I'd be curious to hear from the rest of the group, if you guys are seeing that too, if you think that's the case in a mirror or other, other things that are different?
Chad (11m 49s):
All of the languages and whatnot, but here in the US we're putting so much money into DEI over the last few years, right? We talked about this last night dinner Torin. Do you see a difference in Europe and their DEI outreach? Does that mimic what we're doing here in the US do they care as much? Are they paying attention to what happened with George Floyd and really the momentum?
Torin (12m 13s):
So, first and foremost, I always want to kind of shy away from the George Floyd reference only because when we think global, I don't want people to build their strategy and considerations around North American centric issues. And so I try to force clients that are global to think global, if you will. So I don't minimize George Floyd. I just try to make sure we don't center George Floyd, number one. Number two, when we think about DNI, yes they're concern, but Joel, they are like five, seven, maybe even 10 steps behind where we are, as it relates to DNI. Like, I can give them some strategy from 2012, 2014. And they're like, yo, this is like a steak dinner.
Torin (12m 54s):
And I'm like, literally, this is I something I said a decade ago, and I'm not minimizing where they are, I'm not being judgmental about where they are, but they really are 10 steps behind us. But I think the one thing that I found interesting, and what Debbie just said is that it's easier to get the candidate in the system, even with GDPR, it's still easier for them to get the candidate in the system.
Debbie (13m 17s):
You got to remember that GDPR is all about keeping them in the system, not getting them into the system. It's giving the control to the candidate of, Hey, I have opted in and I want to stay opted in, but they don't have to go through any EEOC questionnaires. They don't need to worry about any of the compliance aspects of it. I mean, it, it kinda goes to the fact that they are 10 steps behind us. I don't know whether it's good or it's bad, but they don't have to ask for as much information from a candidate to get in. Do they need a little check box of I consent? Absolutely. But even that can be done later on in the process.
Joel (13m 52s):
Question about budgets. And I think from our perspective, we hear a lot about companies creating budgets for diversity and inclusion. You guys live this every day, what are companies really doing in terms of dollars and cents to make a change?
Chad (14m 5s):
And are they making a change?
Debbie (14m 7s):
In short they're not making enough change.
Joel (14m 9s):
Does that mean enough money?
Debbie (14m 11s):
Let me speak specific to disability. So we're seeing finally an investment in our community. We doubled our number of clients in 2020 during the pandemic. We're able to have a really strong conversation about the importance of intersectionality and understanding that we are a part of every community.
Chad (14m 29s):
Make sure we understand what intersectionality means for the listener.
Julie (14m 33s):
Yes, so I am a white woman who has a disability. Torin is a black man who is a veteran. Black women with disabilities, have the highest unemployment rate and also the highest pay gap in the country. And it's at the intersections where companies really need to find those opportunities to make a difference. So yes, investment is happening, but it's still too much at the, let's just do a training. Let's just, you know, kind of check that box. It's still not a strategic part of the recruitment and talent acquisition process in the way that it should be. And until that happens, we're not going to be to the place where we're good to go.
Tim (15m 10s):
Let's get back to your like recruiter experience on that issue alone. Do want to talk about why recruiters are burning out is because they're saying, Hey, by the way, go find us some people with disabilities that we want to hire.
Chad (15m 19s):
And they're not experts.
Tim (15m 20s):
They're not experts, and they're not giving you any resources to do that. Yeah. I mean, and you guys Debbie will see this, obviously on the Symphony Talent side, when I go in and meet with a company and we talk about budget numbers, and let's say just random, where they're spending a thousand dollars a month on recruitment marketing, which is super light. I would do, I would come in and for the most part, I see that your provide 10 times lower than where you should be. If you're at a thousand, you should be at 10,000. If you are at 10,000, you should be at a hundred thousand and they look at you like, I'm never going to get that. And I'm like, well, then you're not even playing in the same ballpark as the team that you're trying to compete against.
Julie (15m 51s):
Absolutely. You know, I find it so fascinating that a lot of companies have invested in chief diversity officers. And usually they have zero budget and it is striking that they have zero budget and zero headcount. Oftentimes.
Joel (16m 5s):
Is that just to, again, I hear a lot about checking the box. Is that just a checkbox strategy to say, see, we have a head of diversity, leave us alone.
Julie (16m 14s):
Yes!
Joel (16m 14s):
Is that sort of the strategy?
Julie (16m 15s):
From what I have seen. In my experience.
Torin (16m 17s):
In some ways, Russell Reynolds put out a report in March of 2019, and the report is titled finding your next chief diversity officer 12, 18 pages in length. But the salient points in that report, number one are that most chief diversity officers are under-resourced and they are under supported, underfunded, like Seminole findings in the report. And you can find that from Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Deloitte, Catalysts, Boston Consulting Group, it doesn't matter. So part of the checking of the box really is what can we do? Public facing that simply says, we've put a bandaid on it. We're doing it. And for most people, Joel, it hinges on unconscious bias training.
Chad (17m 1s):
So you said it earlier today, I heard you say that the focus should really be outcomes oriented, right? Hiring retention, promotion? That's what we should be focusing on. As opposed to all this money that's spent, and companies are pretty much just pointing at the bottom line saying, well, we spent X for training, or we're using X tool for DEI, right? But there's no outcomes associated to it. Why aren't we focusing on outcomes? Shouldn't we be?
Torin (17m 30s):
Well, we absolutely should be. But again, it's the prescription at so many people are looking for. They think that if we just bring Julie in, because she focuses on people with disabilities, that magically, we're going to begin to do this thing the right way. Intersectionality, as Julie said, it is so many different layers of whatever it is, so Julie gave you two, she said a white woman and has a disability. She said an African-American male, who's a veteran, but father and this and the intersectionality is incredible. And so when you really think about doing DNI the right way, you got to break the thing down and say, there's no best practice that's necessarily going to work for me or for our organization that we have to find something that is really germane in how we do it here.
Torin (18m 16s):
It's going to work for how we do it right?
Tim (18m 18s):
There are two fundamental things there that are foundational. Is, think about, who's actually creating those metrics to be measured against. It's the people doing the job they want to be successful because that's how they bonus. So they're never going to create a measure that is going to push them to the point where they don't get paid. So they're going to create something where they're going to be successful. And also you're the CEOs and the C-suites are going to look at those and say, well, wait a minute. We don't want to actually measure something that we have to report on that makes us look bad. So yeah, those two foundational things that they're working against all of them.
Debbie (18m 46s):
Well, and I keep laughing as you say outcomes, because in order to measure your outcomes, you have to have a baseline. And the majority of them don't have the baseline.
Chad (18m 55s):
They do but they don't want to share it. No, it is there, they do not want to share it.
Torin (18m 59s):
Plausible deniability.
Chad (19m 1s):
Exactly, exactly. So, okay. Debbie, how many companies are coming to you today? Because today DEI is the new AI. Everybody has it. Everybody wants it, right? How many companies are coming to you looking for that DEI silver bullet?
Debbie (19m 16s):
Every single one of them. They are and they are looking for a silver bullet. I will say it is typically a bullet of their requirements list. It is not what is leading their evaluation, but they are looking for a silver bullet. And I am also seeing in the market in general, a lot of vendors that are saying they are the silver bullet, that they are going to assume diversity of candidates.
Chad (19m 43s):
Vapor Ware.
Debbie (19m 44s):
And I feel like we are going down a very, very slippery slope in that regards. Yeah. So yeah,
Tim (19m 53s):
No, it's one of the big ethical AI issues that we're facing in recruiting technology right now, is that the AI where we can ask somebody, Hey, Torin, are you black? Are you disabled? Are you whatever? But the AI has enough data. They can, they can pretty close figure that out with a high degree of variability where they're going to go, Hey, we know he's a black veteran and that's where they're coming up with this stuff. But the problem is, is you're going, wait, whoa, wait a minute. We can't ask that stuff, but the AI already knows it and then they're going to assume.
Debbie (20m 23s):
Yeah. And now you're assuming based on name. I mean, now we're oh, there's, everybody's shaking their heads right now.
Joel (20m 30s):
Yeah. It wasn't that long ago that Facebook got in trouble for allowing companies to target certain demographics that got them in big trouble. And now they have to ask questions about job postings. So I think part of the AI question is like how soon before we get in trouble, how soon before we're Facebook or we're HireVue analyzing facial? Yeah. I mean, like, I think there's a fear to build the technology around this because we're going to be in trouble at some point.
Debbie (20m 54s):
The list goes on and on. So yeah, on the flip side, there are things we can do, right? We can start by taking baby steps of looking at the language that we're using and is there inherent bias in it. And let's fix that. We can start by doing things of like, if we are marketing to groups, are we using imagery or employee stories of likeness to that group that we're trying to attract? We can look at, are we doing employee resource groups that are supporting the audiences that we want to attract to make sure that once we do get them in the door, they're going to feel like they're at home at this place of employment. But very few of what I just mentioned are silver bullets, right? It's a collective group. It's making sure that you're focusing on both.
Debbie (21m 35s):
What is the attraction strategy and what is the retention strategy?
Julie (21m 39s):
So it's a strategy that gets implemented. It's not a one-off, it's not a piece of tech, it's not AI. Right?
Chad (21m 46s):
Layers.
Julie (21m 46s):
And that's the thing about Facebook. I had a call with the EOC commissioner last week. And I said, look, the thing about Facebook is that the answer was to cut off the opportunity to target. That was the wrong answer. And so, as we think about as tech experts, as diversity experts.
Chad (22m 3s):
Why is it the wrong answer?
Julie (22m 5s):
Because we used it to target job seekers with disabilities and get them fucking jobs.
Chad (22m 10s):
Use it for good not evil.