Inclusion Geeks Podcast Season 2 Episode 5: Building Teams

podep5-buildingteams

We often say that hiring and recruiting is the gateway to doing further deeper DEI work. There are so many tangible, actionable lists and checklists and steps that people can take, and it can be a great place for organizations that are new to this work to get started. This week we’re talking to recruiters and organizational leaders about how they work to reduce bias in hiring, the challenges they face in recruiting and the importance of onboarding.

Contributors to this episode are:

Welcome to Inclusion Geeks, the podcast bringing you the voices of women+ from all walks of life to share with you what they geek out about– their passions, talents, struggles, and successes. In each episode, hosts Rachel Murray and Felicia Jadczak will feature different guests and discussions about topics including health, psychology, art, music, learning, and more. Episodes are fun, engaging, and provide some nuggets of information that you can take away. Oh, and yeah, they might be awkward sometimes. That’s just how we roll.

This season of Inclusion Geeks is unlike any other so far. Together, we will be unpacking what the future of work looks like for different groups of people in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion. In addition to our special guests, listeners will also get to hear snippets from our facilitation team on what DEI really looks like in the workplace from a practical, actionable standpoint. 

We often say that hiring and recruiting is the gateway to doing further deeply rooted DEI work. There are so many tangible, actionable checklists and steps people can take as a great place for organizations new to this work to get going. This week, we hear from organizational leaders and recruiters about how they work to reduce biases in hiring, the challenges they face in recruiting and the importance of onboarding. 

The episode begins with an explanation of inclusive hiring. Looking at our overall hiring process, organizations should ask themselves whether each step along the way is inclusive. Being inclusive means sourcing from a wide range of different spaces in order to get in different demographics and access different types of communities. Organizations tend to look at just a handful of places, forgetting about the rest of them. Another way to exercise inclusivity is in your job descriptions. Are you using inclusive language, including any statement around your DEI work, including salary ranges and effective wording? When conducting interviews, the candidate is also interviewing the organization to make sure they are a representative they want to work with. Thus, interviews should be made accessible for everybody. 

Ginny Cheng, Career Clarity Coach and Global Head of Talent at Oura Ring, shares that committing to inclusivity means to enlist these values in how they interview, find passive talent, move beyond just referral programs and being a supporter and partner with organizations that are already doing great work. As a coach and head of recruiting, Ginny reveals that onboarding takes a village. As far as older folks or people returning to work, the responsibility of the company is to normalize gaps in resumes for whatever reason. We also hear from Reem Reem Papageorgiou, Co-Founder and Chief Talent Officer at MomUp, about the unconscious bias towards mothers in the workforce. Then, SG facilitator Rachel Sadler identifies some green flags for applicants to look out for. These include flexibility, benefit packages inclusive of all types, low employee turnover rates, generous PTO and mission aligned with action. SCO Facilitator Kia Rivera discusses how bases can show up in the workplace. 

We also hear from Elba Lizardi , Site Director at BASF, about the policies and processes they put in place to mitigate biases in their hiring practices. Firstly, they require a diverse panel and a diverse slate. Diverse hiring practices have been embedded within the company culture . Next, Elisa Campos-Prato shares her experiences as a recruiter. When she first started to create a more inclusive process, she experienced the roadblocks and push backs with other organizations in high growth mode. It will take longer to find candidates that fit the DEI bill, and Scott’s Cheap Flights was totally on board with this.  If a candidate is not offered a job on their first interview, it is their hope that they would feel comfortable to try again in the future. It is important to look at a candidate as a person, rather than a number. 

Amai Arruabarrena, Director of DEI at ezCater, joins to discuss allowing current employees to stretch and grow into new roles and opportunities. In her own experience, the more she was given the space to grow and take more things on, the more the company benefited from that. A responsibility of a good manager is doing what they can to support their employees on what they actually want to do in order to avoid stagnation and turnover. CA Webb, Former President of Kendall Square Association,  and Jason Fooks, Senior Director of Learning and Development at Essex Property & Trust, talk about growing their teams. Earning on the job, they find, has been the best retention strategy across the board. 

Finally,  Karina Becerra, Director of Customer Advocacy at Podium, joins to share about their onboarding process after recruitment. The lens of DEI is one she considers every single day, and she finds it important to meet her remote employees where they are while onboarding. They aim to make the content fun and interactive to capture the new employees attention on the things they hope they can accomplish at work.