Webinar

Meet your diversity goals with talent acquisition

Learn how to utilize AI to hire and nurture a diverse pool of talent and create a high-performance organization.

Meet your diversity goals with talent acquisition

Summary
View transcript

Diversity can unlock innovation by creating an environment where out-of-the-box ideas are both developed and heard. Top companies are seeing results from a diverse workplace; in a recent study, McKinsey found that the most diverse companies were 35 percent more likely to outperform. HR is turning to technology to overcome institutional bias and fill diversity gaps within their organizations.

See what LinkedIn and Entelo can’t do—learn how to utilize the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform to hire and nurture a diverse pool of talent and create a high-performance organization. Presented by Daniel Doody, Global Head of Talent, AdRoll Mihir Gandhi, VP of Marketplace at Eightfold.

Mihir: Hello, and welcome to today’s webinar, “Meet your Diversity goals with talent acquisition.” My name is Mihir Gandhi, and I’m the Head of Marketplace Operations at Eightfold.ai. As a hiring manager for nearly two decades; sourcing, hiring and retaining talent has been a central theme in my career. Managing hyper-growth companies like Lyft, where I was the first general manager for their flagship region in northern California, I’ve acutely felt the pain of hiring rapidly and hiring right.

I’m thrilled at how Eightfold is addressing these challenges and so much more. Specifically today we’re diving deep into meeting diversity goals with talent acquisition. We’re joined by our esteemed guest, Daniel Doody. Daniel is the Head of Global Talent at the AdRoll Group, and we have some interesting and robust content to cover. By way of introduction, Daniel spent over 15
years in the recruitment world.

He started an agency that supported global growth, he opened Facebook’s global office, the first engineering office outside of California; later did the same at Twitter, managing global acquisitions on the talent side; and five years ago joined the AdRoll Group, leading international recruiting and global talent acquisition. With that, I’ll kick it over to Daniel – happy to have you, and thanks for spending the time with us.

Daniel: Delighted to be here – I’m very much looking forward to the conversation.

Mihir: Great. Well, let’s go ahead and dive right in. I would love to maybe start a quick conversation around diversity. Can you help us understand a little bit more about diversity and why it’s an important goal for talent acquisition?

Daniel: Sure. So certainly from our point of view at AdRoll Group, when we think about diversity, I think it’s important to, first and foremost, understand, we’re a global organization. So diversity means different things in, obviously, different geographies. So we think about diversity in San Francisco and the Bay Area: We may have to focus on underrepresented minorities or women in engineering or women in tech; whereas in our European offices or international offices, that means something slightly different, in Tokyo, say, and in Dublin.

Why it is important: Obviously aside from research, there are well-documented benefits of having a diverse organization, I think it’s because talent acquisition has fundamentally changed over the last number of years. It has now become a strategic imperative and a core pillar of a high performing talent acquisition team. So it has to be woven into the fabric of us, literally everything that we do.

Mihir: So if you think about – you said something interesting there as you talked about talent acquisition becoming a strategic pillar of an organization. This is a hot, trendy topic today. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago it was more of a service-oriented transaction. Can you talk about that evolution a little bit? It seems like it’s been through the duration of your career. How have you seen that evolve, and what have companies that have really been pushing the envelope been doing to ensure that talent acquisition is a source of strategic advantage?

Daniel: Yes. So I’m not sure if we want to call out specific companies that have actually nailed this, although there are some that come to mind. I may have worked in one or two of those. Sometimes I think when we are talking about diversity, there’s one or two that stand out. We were lucky enough to have Candace Grey here in the office, who did a Fireside chat with our CEO, Toby Gabriner. There are some really, really interesting strategies that they’ve deployed. I think they as an organization must be called out.

In terms of the transition, in terms of how it has evolved, to your point, I think talent acquisition was a strategy and they were fillers and they had most of the successful organizations that are doing this right – there’s a seat at the table. Talent acquisition is participating in that conversation. So the guardians of human capital, that team that is responsible for going out and raising awareness, identifying talent, and engaging with that talent, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we are thinking about this strategically and tactically.

So we think about innovation views. We think about it in terms of essentially the full funnel of the recruiting process. So if you think about writing a job description, or an intake meeting, at that very early stage, you are starting to formulate that strategy with the hiring teams in terms of how we’re going to note and identify the talent. It’s in the innovative methods within the training and education that you work with internally, and then ultimately in the strategy that you deploy in order to fulfill that.

Mihir: So you bring up something that I think a lot of folks on the line today have had experience with in terms of job descriptions. Historically – and I’ll call myself out on this – it’s been a copy and paste job, changing a few minor keywords.

Daniel: Shame on you. Yes.

Mihir: So guilty as charged, but I think as you look at job descriptions and how they evolve over time, I would love to hear a little bit about how you can use job descriptions to ensure that you’re not only attracting a diverse set of candidates, but maybe more importantly not turning off applicants of diversity through some keywords or the way the job description is structured.

Daniel: Well, this is probably a webinar in itself in terms of that content, because I think – honestly speaking I think it’s about having that conversation and bringing it all back that we’re trying to solve for here; removing the ease of falling into that trap of just copy and paste, or perhaps it’s high volume requisition where you just wash, rinse, repeat; and you do the same thing over and over; actually bringing it back down to, what is it that we’re trying to solve for here.

I think if you take it from that perspective you avoid, maybe, falling into those areas where bias can start creeping in.

Mihir: So this helps, I think, bridge us into the next question or the next pillar of questions, around misconceptions for recruiting and diversity. So I’ll leave it open ended, because I know you have some distinct thoughts about it.

Daniel: Yes. It’s not a misconception, but it is extremely hard. I think that’s the first thing to clarify. Going back to your previous question on transformation being like moving from transaction into strategic partnerships. I think a grand misconception is that talent acquisition owns this, that you can create a job description and let them go and executive on that strategy that is being fleshed out and created in order to solve for it; but there is no one silver bullet.

Talent acquisition has to partner in all levels at all stages of that process. In terms of – if you think about the various different tactics and tools that typically result in the hires, it’s referrals. It’s sourcing. It’s branding. So it is that sales and marketing funnel that we look to in terms of raising awareness, engaging the talent, and then bringing them into that process.

Talent acquisition has to be thinking about how to leverage internal employee resources. We have to be thinking about, what are the tools that we’re using, and what is the message that we are putting out there into the marketplace. It’s really, I think, a misconception that it is just going out and when actually, in reality, it is a multitude of things that you have to really tie together in order to solve for this.

Mihir: As you say that, what strikes me is the sentence is, talent acquisition doesn’t own it. The way you described it, hiring managers have a deep impact on top of funnel recruiting. The marketing team has a big impact on attracting talent and engaging talent. ERGs do. All of a sudden recruiting goes from being a function and a service to the organization to, really, a central strategic pillar. How can heads of TA and recruiting organizations begin to exert that influence on marketing, on hiring managers, on ERGs, and really pull them together to deliver a cohesive message around what it’s actually like to work at the company?

Daniel: So at AdRoll Group we’re lucky enough to have an executive team to champion this. I think that that is becoming more prevalent. I wouldn’t say that it’s commonplace, but I think it certainly helps solve the problem. It allows you then, as a TA leader, to go out and engage from top down, from the executives all the way through the organization. So I think it’s about creating a culture, and obviously, culture by definition is essentially those behaviors that are rewarded and identified as being rewarded.

So making sure that the hiring managers understand that it is actually part of their job to own this and not just talent acquisition. Obviously, we have a huge part to play in helping those that are involved in education, learning, and development. So we talked about removing bias from the process; and going back to your question, once we have that support, and once that’s part of the culture, it’s really about making sure that you’re reinforcing that through the various different parts of the process.

One of the things that we’ve done at AdRoll Group is making sure that that content and that education is becoming part of hiring manager training, interviewer training, so that each and every single touchpoint of that process targets the candidate; whether you’re reading marketing or branding material, or whether you’re coming in for your first interview; that there is a consistent experience in terms of unconscious bias or treatment of the candidate or an individual going through that process.

So I think a really core piece of it is education, making sure that people are aligned to understand the importance of it.

Mihir: As you say that, creating culture, there is a multimodal engagement with potential candidates via Twitter, Instagram, social media, professional media like LinkedIn and so on and so forth. It’s not only the company owned handles but also the executive. I think what we see is that talent picks up very quickly on discrepancies between what the company is saying, individuals, are saying, across these multiple channels.

As someone who’s deeply engaged in that, how do you think about ensuring that there’s a consistent message that’s being sent across these channels?

Daniel: It’s really, really challenging; because as an organization, AdRoll Group was founded in 2007. We’re over 10 years old. Obviously, through that,, you go through various different iterations and evolutions as a company. Unless you are super in control of such employer branding – which is separate piece altogether and quite often doesn’t sit within talent acquisition, so it really requires you to have a strong partnership there – it is constantly evolving in the same way as your organization is evolving.

So it has to be real. It has to be authentic. If you are trying to present yourself as something for a career site or an event, and then that experience that individuals have either during the process or after they’re onboard is disconnected or completely different, then you’ve got serious problems. So I guess the point that I’m making is that it’s really got to be authentic and part of your actual values.

Mihir: Yes, and I love that you bring that up; because the next question, topic, will cover best practices to recruit a diverse talent pool. You talked a little bit about what you do today at the AdRoll Group, what you’ve seen be successful in your time at Facebook and Twitter, and how that’s changing.

Daniel: Wow. Okay, there’s a lot in that. I think when we think about how to solve for this, there’s no one silver bullet. So once you have that in mind, once you understand that it is an organization-wide problem to solve, then you can start leveraging all the resources that you have at your disposal. So the things that we think about, and how we solve for it – for example, at AdRoll Group we know that 25 percent of our hires come through referrals, then we want to make sure that we are leveraging the underrepresented minorities that we have in the organization. That’s globally.

So it’s helping them understand that they have a part to play in that, organizing things like sourcing jobs; and working with various different partners. It’s being proactive about attending those events. We also organize a lot of hosted events.

So if you think about that awareness and engagement piece, we find that one of the most influential things that we have done over the last number of months is making sure that we are participating in local communities. So if we’re solving – for example here, our staff in our headquarters, we’re reaching out to various different organizations that our own employees are participating in; and making sure that we are tapping into that.

The danger with referrals is that you generate the same type of profiles. So if you’re a predominantly sales-oriented organization, you’re trying to tap into leads, you’re probably going to be creating that same cycle. So using things like Eightfold, whether it’s machine learning or whether it’s expanding social and professional networks, it’s trying to maximize all of those channels; and then making sure that that experience, as we talked about, is a really authentic, genuine one.

Mihir: Yes. So as you – we talked about these channel strategies, multichannel strategy between referrals, sourcing, local organizations; and that they relate to your overall talent acquisition mix and talent retention mix. Do you see diversity naturally channeling towards one of those channels, or do you see it more broadly across all those?

Daniel: I’m not sure – can you help me understand specifically what you mean by that?

Mihir: Yes. So referrals, as you pointed out, can be heavily biased against existing networks; whereas sourcing is getting out in the community, can maybe have a broader exposure. That helps you at top of funnel. However, after that top of funnel, when you’ve gone through the phone screen; you’re starting to get the hiring manager process, actual interview loops – I’m going to move the question in a little bit different direction – how do you help control for biases, or at least shine light on some of the unconscious bias that may preclude diverse talent making it deeper into the interview cycle?

Daniel: Yes. It’s one of the problems that we’re trying to solve for at the moment: understanding diversity in this light. So we try to surface those insights within the ATS that we use, and I think once we are able to do that, then we’ll understand where at each stage of the funnel we are seeing those signals that will flag whether or not we have a problem, or whether we’re overcompensating, for example. I think the tools that we use right now in order to solve for this are part of that education.

Really what it boils down to is ensuring that we call each other out. So things like the debriefs, having a conversation with the hiring panel after every single interview, and making sure that that is data based and fact-based rather than opinion – ironically that’s actually a good benefit that you get from diverse teams. You have that cognitive friction, which indicates our ability as a group of individuals to avoid that kind of groupthink and make sure that we’re incorporating different perspectives.

Does that –

Mihir: It does. Let’s talk about interview loops. It’s so important; not only to ensure that you have diversity in terms of the cross-functional partners that an employee or candidate would be interfacing with but then also cultural diversity across those interview loops. Can you talk about how those interview loops are set and what some best practices are?

Daniel: Yes, we think about it the beginning of the process. So going back to that intake meeting, part of our intake in terms of looking at what we are trying to identify, what business problem we’re trying to solve for, identifying the talent. We are very deliberate and intentional in making sure that those panels are diverse; not just from a functional perspective, but also from the nature of the individuals that are participating in that.

So we try to solve for it at the very beginning, and then through the analysis of looking at scorecards and various things; and we monitor that part of the interview training as well, to make sure that we are continuing to diversify the pools of interviewers that are actually participating in our process; because as we all know, if you’re scaling fast and growing organizations – which I’m sure a lot of people on the call can – one of the big risks is actually interviewer fatigue.

Once you start fatiguing, then those unconscious bias things start to creep in, where you have confirmation bias or otherwise. But it’s really about making sure that those panels are fresh, that they’re calibrated, that they are trained; and then that we are calling each other out in terms of what the feedback looks like.

Mihir: Got it. So then as you do those interview loops, if you think about the micro versus the macro when I say micro what I mean is any given manager manages between one and 10 people on average; but in aggregate, organizations are hundreds if not thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. In the aggregate, diversity matters increasingly in terms of when you report externally, et cetera. There’s a public accountability associated with it at the AdRoll Group level.

However, at the micro level of a department or a division, let alone a singular manager, that same diversity doesn’t necessarily translate. You don’t have the breadth. So how do you integrate into the training around diversity the need for micro building to macro?

Daniel: Difficult problem to solve, because you’re working within the confines of the smaller teams.

Mihir: And the managers are optimizing for their team and the performance of their team or their goals, which ladder up to the organizational goals; but diversity may or may not be one of them.

Daniel: So I think what you solve for then is standardization. At AdRoll Group we look to structured interviews. So each person, regardless of what their role is within that team, is going into that process, into that interview, with a specific focus area. That takes away a lot of the variables that can sometimes occur, whether it’s opinion or personality; and it becomes much more data-based. So you’re going in there as a fact-finding mission, and I think once you adhere to the rigor around that process, then I think you’re on the right track in terms of making the right hiring decisions.

Mihir: Got it. When you use analytics to help understand how funnels are performing, meaning how diversity is progressing through the interview cycles, what is the feedback loop with the recruiting team on where they should be fishing for more talent, which pools they should be going to; meaning, how do you use those analytics to help drive your talent strategy at top of funnel?

Daniel: Yes. So this is where it gets tricky, I guess; because ultimately there’s got to be a change in mindset we were talking about earlier; which is, you’re not here to fill a requisition. It’s about hiring the best talent. So we think about that in terms of, where are we going in hunting for that talent. We market to different areas. So we try to solve for that at the very beginning of the process in terms of, okay, well we know that these exist in various different competitors; but are we thinking about schools, colleges, or other organizations that would present a different pool of talent, which we know to be more diverse.

So it’s making sure that it’s in there at the beginning. In terms of the analytics, we really just have to make sure that we’re looking at and understanding where those trends are when we see flags, trying to course correct. Then it becomes quite tactical in terms of making sure that, again, we’re having that conversation with the hiring manager to help them understand, what can the market provide us. There is that expanding, and where we’re going after that talent; and that changes depending on the role or depending on the job description.

Mihir: Sure. So with this increased focus and scrutiny on diversity and frankly the talent space broadly, there’s been an explosion of tools and capabilities for the talent teams and for organizations to help understand and dissect the work that they do. No longer is it simply scrolling through résumés and then profiles and then sending random emails.

So can you talk a little bit about some of the toolkits that you’ve used, but then also talk about them within the context of how goal setting has been changed, or what goals look like to our talent teams today; and how you see that evolving over time with tools helping achieve those goals?

Daniel: Yes. So I think there’s a lot of exciting developments happening and innovative products that are coming onto the market, Eightfold being one of those in terms of allowing us to leverage one of the largest assets that we have. As a 10-year-old organization we’ve grown fast globally, and we have a lot of data at our fingertips; but even two, three years ago we didn’t really tap into that; and even with a lot of ATSs that are probably industry standards that don’t allow talent acquisition teams to really interrogate in an intelligent way.

So we see things like machine learning and algorithms that are able to surface those profiles based off of successful applicants in the past of people that have recently been hired, but also those that have traveled through and that have had indicators of success. So if you think about the partnership, we can understand based off of scorecards how successful data can be.

So as we grow as an organization, the nature of the skill sets and positions that we’re looking to fill have evolved; but we can’t rely on recruiters to have intuition so we rely on tools like Eightfold to be able to surface those things, and we’ve had had some unbelievable returns with regard to its ability to – in a non-biased way, because it is an algorithm that is doing it – surface those and, to use a marketing term, as a lead or a high-intent individual that has a very high likelihood of matching some of those skills that we’re looking to bring into the organization.

There are other tools that allow us to surface some of that data as well. Textio allows us to provide and shape job description in a way that’s going to attract people as well.

Mihir: So goals have probably changed. When you started at Facebook, it likely was along the lines of so many hires or a certain fill rate. That was your top line KPI or OKR. Can you talk about how diversity is starting to creep into some of your actual goals that you report up on?

Daniel: Yes. So at AdRoll Group two or three years ago we had a natural groundswell in terms of the transformation of the company globally but also just the executives and also shaped by the marketplace. But diversity is becoming more and more important, so during those last couple of years, we’ve really fought very hard, and we’ve got some pretty aggressive goals around women in leadership being one of those.

It’s important to call out, just by solving women in leadership, you don’t solve diversity. In fact, it’s a very dangerous area to get into, but women in leadership was one of those diversity goals. Women in technology, as in engineering, is also another; and then making sure that we also have a strategy around underrepresented minorities. Thankfully we’re in a position now where we are at 53 percent women in leadership. We’re at 12 percent underrepresented minorities, and with women in tech we are probably going to increase but I think as a recruitment function, yes it, of course, has to play in, and becomes one of those things where previously it was not.

We don’t set a hiring goal around assigning that to a recruiter. What we do is, we give them accountability and ownership as part of that partnership with our hiring group to make sure that it’s built into their strategy, whether that is where they’re sourcing in terms of diverse talent pools, but also in terms of all of those things that we can leverage internally around ERGs and sourcing and so forth.

Mihir: So this is interesting. It’s actually a question that we received from an audience member. A quick note to the audience members: Feel free, please, to engage. You probably have five or 10 minutes left of Daniel’s time. I would love to ask him any questions you have. You can click the Q&A button at the bottom of the webinar.

One of the questions that’s been asked here is around global diversity. So oftentimes – what the question says is: Oftentimes articles that I’ve read deal with diversity from a very US-centric point of view. How do you think about global diversity so as not so US-centric?

Daniel: Yes, great question, diversity is definitely part of – we are starting to change how we think about it. I think by our own admission, we probably were US-centric. Thankfully in my role as global head, I operate out of Dublin; so my perspective is entirely different to the Bay Area’s where, for example, we look at it much more on a gender basis. So a lot of organizations, particularly in Europe, would be a sales and marketing culture where you have sales and account management, predominantly male-dominated.

So for our Dublin office, for example, we think about it from a gender perspective; because actually by nature, there are a lot of Europeans or multilingual people being hired into one site, and therefore you have a lot of different cultures already there. So you have that diversity built into it automatically. So it’s about making sure there’s a gender balance there.

I think the other part of that question is really about the “I” of D and I. It’s about inclusivity as well. Obviously, that can take many different forms. It could be with regard to communications. So again from a global perspective, one of the things that a lot of global organizations suffer from, or you hear that are challenging, is around global communication: How people, do people, feel like they are included in decision making; or are they influences in terms of the direction of product, various different things.

So when thinking about this, one of the pieces that AdRoll Group really does very well is making sure that we are being inclusive in those, and that requires a lot of making sure that we are including our global offices.

Mihir: Got it. Another question from the audience. This dovetails quite nicely, actually, with the – what can TA teams and all people in a company do to encourage better hiring?

Daniel: Talk about it more; get out in front.

Mihir: Let’s talk about that for a second. When you say talk about it more, I think we still don’t have the tools and the verbiage to know what to talk about or how to talk about it. Can you help us understand how the rank and file of an organization can talk about it more?

Daniel: So it goes back to the culture. If you are intentional, if you have executive sponsorship if it is truly something that your organization is trying to solve for, through whatever means those are – we’ve touched on a few of them – then I don’t see where the challenge is. I think too many times – I’ve seen it in too many organizations, where you’ve got a tech team or sales team, or perhaps it’s just by geography or logistic.

Part of solving for this is the internal brand and the internal messaging, so it’s making sure that you are front and center, that not just your executives are talking about it, or you’re talking about it in hiring teams; but actually you’re out there making sure that for people it’s part of their responsibility. Does that make sense?

Mihir: Absolutely. Part of their responsibility, I think, as increasingly people bring their personalities to work and bring their work to their personality –

Daniel: Hopefully –

Mihir: … hopefully, increasingly – one of the open questions from the audience was, any advice on how to find good local organizations to work with or how to bring local organizations into the fold –

Daniel: Yes. Ask the people that sit right beside you. This is what we were talking about a little earlier on leveraging in the ERGs or leveraging the individuals. To reinforce, this is an organizational problem that we’re trying to solve. So if you have people that you are hiring from those areas – and if you’re not, well then going back out into those communities. So at AdRoll Group, we have a program called AdRoll Gives Back, whereby people are encouraged – and I think that’s very much commonplace – to go out and dedicate some of their own time to giving back to their communities.

More specifically, I think there are colleges. There are schools well recognized, for example in the Bay Area, that would be predominantly more diverse than perhaps elsewhere where the larger population of the organization has come from. So I think it’s about really getting in and leveraging the employees that you have, because to your point here, it is about bringing you authentic self to work. In order to do that, obviously, people are passionate about things that they’re interested in.

So, in the end, you could maybe start to surface some of those things at the beginning of the process, right? It’s not just about what’s on a résumé. I think certainly when I’m interviewing individuals, one of the things I always try to do is tap into who they are. What is most important to them? What motivates them? Quite often a lot of that will come from the things that they do in their spare time.

So making sure that you’re leveraging that when you actually bring people in, you have the employees that are there day in, day out; making sure that they can actually participate.

Mihir: Yes. So as you bring those employees in, this next question – perhaps the last question we’ll have time for – wraps back around to the interview and to the specific tactics associated with interview loops. It has to do with the roles and responsibilities of different people on an interview loop. You will have technical or subject matter specific experts who are focused on X, Y, and Z. Then you’ll have, typically, one person who the culture fits interview, or the – the question here is, how do you have the interview loop all test for culture in their own unique ways?

Daniel: So at AdRoll we do break it up into focus areas. We have stopped calling it culture fit, because I think there’s an inherent bias there; and one of the things that we definitely got right early on a few years ago as we were scaling – which, by the way, is probably one of the biggest things as a growing company, that you lose touch on culture– but that identity is really important.

Also, understanding that it’s nuanced: So as a global organization with offices everywhere, you’re going to have, what it means to be at AdRoll or Eightfold, right, obviously, we have some spirit animals that we try to identify with in terms of working hard, doing right by the customers, and so forth. So what we try to do is make sure that first of all, we understand it, what those culture or values interviews mean and what are we looking for; what is a values fit.

So we think about – well, for example, thinking about diversity, we want people who are passionate about giving back to their communities or passionate – things outside of work. So it’s a difficult one to solve, because if you try to identify that values or culture fit in each of the stages, very quickly you’re going to run out of time, or you’ll be getting the same signal; and interviewing is tough enough. I’d say if you’re running a structured process it’s important to obviously have a mandate and an objective for each of the individuals then yes, I think ultimately try to identify – I’m not sure whether I’m answering the question, but here certainly what we try to do is make sure that at least one of the panelists is focused on values.

Are they hardworking? What is it that they stand for? Then probably the hiring manager, as well, should participate in that particular conversation; but doing it across the board for all panelists is challenging. Quite frequently during the debriefs, those that do try to head that direction are typically not getting the full the interview.

Mihir: Yes. I’ll add one of my questions on here from the debrief. I’ve been in debriefs personally where the recruiter has taken a backseat and let the interview loop fill the room. I’ve been in rooms where the recruiter has been in front, central, quarterbacking the dialog and bringing people back on track when people started to meander, maybe against or away from the structured approach.

Daniel: There’s a big difference.

Mihir: There’s a big difference there. So can you talk about recruiting recruiters who can quarterback the process? Because that seems like a central strategic advantage, to have a recruiter that can help do that. What do you look for in recruiters that can help bring diversity forward like that?

Daniel: So honestly that is not something that I think recruiters – I think that’s part of that accountability piece that we talked about. So when we are rolling out interviewer training, we’re very, very careful to make sure, just as you referred to earlier, that people are bringing their authentic selves. It’s really important for interviewers to feel empowered to provide that. You’re giving them the tools, but they’re investing the time. They are forming their opinion based off of questions; hopefully behavioral, statistically based questions, that allow them to get a strong signal.

So quite often I’ve encouraged recruiters, actually, to get out of the way. Obviously, hold people accountable. For example, one of the things that we look at out for is people coming to the debrief with their feedback submitted or with that scorecard. Luckily we have almost 100 percent scorecard completion before debrief starts it avoids that groupthink. If you have an overbearing recruiter or, to a point, a wallflower.

People will defer to, quite often, the most senior person in that room. But if you have a calibrated, well trained, and accountable interview panel that are going to call out biases, that are going to call out people who aren’t holding up their part of the process, then I think you get a wonderful synergy where actually you’ve got almost a self-policing system. I’ve been in debriefs where a recruiter just lets that flow, but I think it’s important. The rigor and process is really important; and one of the reasons why, I think, we’ve been very successful in this area is because there is that calibration, and people understand that they can’t show up without their due diligence and without populating those scorecards.

Mihir: Got it, Daniel. Well, I think we’ve probably got a couple of additional follow-up webinars out of this dialog.

Daniel: Probably.

Mihir: I know we’re running short on time here. I want to thank you for your time and your insight. The AdRoll Group – for those on the webinar, to learn more about the AdRoll Group, please check them out at adrollgroup.com; and about Eightfold’s Talent Acquisition and Management Services, eightfold.ai – Daniel, you’ve been fantastic. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with you in the coming months and years.

Daniel: Can we do more of these webinars? This is great.

Mihir: I would love to do more of these webinars. Maybe next time we’ll grab a drink too.

Daniel: Happy to – thank you very much, Mihir.

You might also like...