Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites Podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, that's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is Episode 89 with the title Unearthing Potential beyond the Resume.

And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Sara Dalsfeld. Sara is the Chief Marketing Officer at Adway. Adway are a talent attraction suite, a consciously inclusive platform that is built to find hard to reach talent on social media. And when I asked Sara to describe her superpower, she said she unapologetically dares to be herself and walks the talk. Hello, Sara, welcome to the show.

Hello, Jo. Thank you for having me on the show.

We met several years ago. I think I did an adway podcast or live stream with you and we just went in the green room, weren't we? That was four or five years ago, early COVID.

Yeah, I just looked back. You were on my LinkedIn live show, 2019, I believe, and we did a fabulous episode. You can still rewatch it, everyone, for listening. In English it was called is hiring for diversity hiring for second best? And we unpacked what conscious inclusion means in Practise for hiring teams. It's still a really good topic, a really good show. And that's how we met, I believe, through the TA community.

It was last year. Yeah, we did on the adway stand, yeah.

Brilliant. Yeah. I've been a fan of yours ever since, Joanne. Like what you do for the space, who you are, the knowledge you bring, the perspectives. I recommend you to everyone I stumble across for Conscious Inclusive hiring tactics.

For those of you can't see, because this is a podcast, I've gone bright red, I'm blushing, I'm all over the place. This fangirl stuff is hard to take. Fangirls.

You have to take it in. You're an important voice.

Thank you. So, Unearthing Potential and so what is beyond the resume? Can we bin the resume?

Yeah. For me, I believe we're heading into a time where candidates almost will start questioning employers in why they're assessing their potential based on a piece of paper. I believe we're almost there. Where? Well, the CV is, for most employers now, even ancient, but it's still used, right. It's a traditional hiring tactic, but in a very near future, candidates will start questioning, how is this even relevant to assessing my readiness, my potential and my transferable skills? So everything is beyond the resume? Everything is beyond the CV. The person, the potential the people is beyond the CV. So it's just an easy way for employers to weed out what's not relevant to them and it holds a lot of bias into the process.

Don't you find that many traditional hiring managers, employers, they've got this kind of scared they're scared, aren't they? They start twitching if you say we can't have a CV. And they go how can I find out about people if I don't have their CV?

Minds are blown. Minds are blown. I'm here to tell you there's never been a time where there's more tools, more tech, more solutions, more everything to assess potential as early as possible in the hiring funnel. And for me, Joanne, it all comes down to if you're not consciously including, you are most likely unconsciously excluding.

That's definitely one of my sayings. I've used that. So yeah, it's so true.

There's so very few people building that in to their talent attraction or talent acquisition strategy or hiring strategy. It's still just a saying, it's a good quote on the fridge. But we're here to say you have to consciously build it in to your tech stack or your strategy or anything in order when you go to find talents, it has to be built in, otherwise you are most likely excluding are organisations.

This is a sporting analogy. Are they match fit for hiring? Because I see people talking about diverse hiring, inclusive hiring, whatever buzzword they want to use to make them sound kind of contemporary and on the mark. But I always wonder if the candidate experience and the employee experience they're selling is reality or a dream or vapour.

Right? Absolutely. It's most likely buzzwords. Right. We have to start somewhere. I believe everything starts with buzwords but I mean, we have the knowledge anything at our fingertips, we can't just rely on buzwords or quotes anymore. We have to start acting. And as beautiful as our ta community is, we're good at talking. That's where I sort know introduced myself with I walk the talk.

So why we built that way five years ago was to make sure that there are tools harnessing all the potential in diversity on social media. Because there's over 5 billion people, every person under the sun is on social media potentially. And there's ways where you have to work in order to keep up with the policies on some, to actively include and not target anyone on gender or age or ethnicity or all these factors that might come from an idea, from an hiring manager. Right? So we built that way to have an automated suite powered by AI to really go out and find potential on social media and make sure the candid experience is walking the talk. In terms of the best shopping experience you've ever had online, designing your dream car or just ordering your foods for the grocery store or whatever piece of clothing you might order that, but better, more sophisticated and more personalised should be your hiring experience as well. So that's the reason why we did it. And so far the most innovative and most thought provoking and forward TA teams are using these kind of tools because they know if they're not consciously include, they are excluding in somewhere in the journey. And I believe well, some say, I say 90% of your hiring success is determined at the first 10% of the journey.

So what you do in the first process, when you go broad, when you go to find your audience and you start nudging and attracting and building this storytelling experience for them, that's where you can improve for potential and diversity in the very first steps. And then, yes, there should be automated assessments, right? There should be automated testing, there should be all these features that helps both the hiring teams and the candidate experience, right? So why I'm on the podcast, Joe, it's everything that we do, it's everything that I believe in and for myself. I know we touched upon where I shared. I have a one year long gap in my CV or resume from a trauma, a really troubling trauma where I had to be off work, right? And these traditional hiring methods would never hire me. And here I am, the CMO of my dream company that we started five years ago. I would never been hired if I were to be judged by a recruiter from my cover letter because it's not saying anything about my readiness or my potential or what I bring to the table in terms of transferable skills, et cetera. So to answer your question, what's behind the resume? Everything potential.

So we know that the talent attraction part of the story starts way before we go to market with a campaign. If you're not in Ta, you're not in recruitment, talent acquisition, EVP, employer branding, all this value proposition stuff all around the recruitment marketing element. It's got to start way before and be that authentic thread through the organisation. So I often find that organisations are trying to jump to the hiring phase without doing the heavy lift on the.

But on the contrary, a lot of teams, they stay stuck and paralysed in the work of the EVP or the career page or the value proposition or the communication versus not a lot of people have the distribution, the actual strategy. How do you take your fabulous EVP to the phones, the hands of the most desired candidates that you want to approach? Not a lot of teams put the investment or the energy into the distribution of that. They just hope that people will find their EVP or find their employer branding. So even if you have the most inclusive promise as an employer, how do you have the most inclusive and thought through strategy to go and approach them? And approaching means approaching mostly like passive candidates, hard to reach talents. Talents that most likely are already fully employed, working doing what they love. So you now have to have a strategy that's really built into providing your lovely EVP into the hands of their phones, where they spend over three 4 hours a day scrolling through social media. And it has to be an experience that's built for that specific social media channels that they're in, all while being as inclusive as they want it with their EVP. So you see, there's a lot of like as to your point, a lot of teams spend their time figuring out the EVP, but the other part they just jump straight into the hiring and not a lot of companies spend the time on the distribution.

How do we go to market? How do we make sure that we've opened the funnel for as many talents as possible? Because here's the facts. You need to go broad in order to attract diverse talent and the best talent from there, volumes of candidates will still be relevant talents if you automate the assessment and the testing and everything screening based that you might have. But you can't say that you have an inclusive hiring if you just go to a selected network or a close group or your best friend, or your male friend. That usually happens. So that's why I really challenge ta teams to look into how do you go to market and stay consciously inclusive.

I'm just trying to piece together what you're saying here. So help me out. So are we talking about a broad spectrum of trying to build our candidate pool our talent pipeline from a broader spectrum as possible around a broad demographic and skill set and everything else, and then being able to bring those into your funnel, your pipeline and use automation to sift preselect on competency and capability and adaptability and change all these sort of things. Yes, the hiring team themselves are just getting a presifted diverse pool.

Exactly that. Exactly that. You won't get to a presifted diverse, relevant pool if you don't open the funnel from the beginning. And opening the funnel is utilising tech because there's the heavy lifting right there's where automation really comes in. So what I'm saying is there's no other platform in the world where over 5 billion people spend more time than they do on eating every day. The general user on social media spends social media almost like they spend almost 2.5 hours a day. And that is increasing. Like, you know, just cheque your settings, right? That is increasing.

So what I say is you have to go where the candidates spend their time, where they live their lives, right? You have to then make sure you are distributing a strategy that builds a storytelling experience based on your EVP, on your employer brand, on all these value propositions that are as inclusive as you say. Meaning you will then only attract and assess the most relevant talents because they've been appealed and targeted based on potential and readiness. And your arguments that are selling to them. Because there's always like, I love this discussion, but people always come back to it, say, I just want one great candidate. Right. How with one great candidate would you know, you've opened the pool for potential, for inclusion, for diversity. For diversity. You wouldn't.

What you're saying to me is I want an easy life. Sure. Easy life means doing the right thing, consciously working into working inclusive strategies into your method, but utilising the tech then to do the heavy lifting. So you sit then with that relevant social talent pools based on relevance, potential, readiness, and with the most diverse teams you could ever imagine. And from there you could start assessing. Right.

This is kind of like headhunting on a mega enormous scale. So you've got a pool of potentially thousands of people or more being spear fishing them. So you're targeting them directly on mass.

Yes.

You're not suggesting cast a broad net everywhere. What you're saying is you're casting your net specifically for competency and skills. So it is spear phishing, but on a mega scale.

Yeah. And we work with behavioural targeting, so it's still targeted. But then how algorithms work is that they have to learn from a lot of data initially. Right. And with that you can then teach algorithm to work towards then specific data points that are building for an inclusive hiring strategy or not segmenting anyone on gender or ethnicity or all these bias factors. So it's simply making sure you walk the talk in your ta setup as well. Like, everything into your tech stack should walk the talk and you have to make sure it does. Can't just be the quote you're throwing at your next RL 100 talk.

Right. You have to walk the talk and look into your own process.

How long does the candidate stay passive in the process? Until they're kind of triggered into a kind of yes, this person meets our primary criteria, then we'll do some outreach so they can be passive in this process for years. Drop into it.

This is such an interesting question. Right. So there's a consensus in the market, like in the hiring industry, that we've always talked about a passive and an active market. Right. People active looking for a job when they're in between jobs. Right. And people who happen to be employed. But I like to look at it as to your point, as how I incorporate your question.

There's a window of opportunity where someone is about to act if we go back to e commerce and shopping tactics online. Right. I'm a passive customer always. I have money, I'm on social media, I like clothes. Let's make it easy. Right? I'm not in the look for anything. Yeah, you too. Exactly.

Who isn't? Jack Joe? Who isn't? I'm not in the look for anything. Let's just make it super easy. It's been black month. Black Friday. I've done all my shopping. I'm satisfied. But I'm still a passive customer online, living my life on social media, right? If I stumble across really targeted ads with very personalised messages, discount codes, anything, and these ads, iterate they go after me on Instagram, then when I'm on TikTok, I get a new one. When I'm on LinkedIn, I get three other ones.

When know, jumping into could be Twitch or whatever platform that might be. I have a designed experience to sort of approach me with a product, right? In this case, might be a bag. I like bags, for instance. Let's make it super easy. So there's a window of opportunity where I've been nudged enough times. There's not a golden number, but a lot of people say there should be seven touch points in order to make an action, right? So in the window of time where I turn active, that's where I believe you have to make sure you have a process that's so sophisticated, that actually capitalises on my window of opportunity when I'm active. So it means I need to be buying this bag with one click. I have to feel super secure.

I have to trust the tech. I have to make sure it's not a scam site, it's not a scam company taking my card details. I have to feel super trusted. And it should be the smoothest, easiest confirming experience ever. Like, yes, sir, you're doing the right thing. The bag is coming in a day. One click, we have all the information that we need. And the same goes for applying for a job.

There's a window of opportunity. And this window of opportunity can increase by building these personalised storytelling experiences over social media platforms, making me turning me into an active candidate once I've been presented with these offers over time. So to your point, yes, it can take over six months. We have a process that makes sure our customers, they hire everything from CEOs down to customer service personnel or whatever, like all different types of roles. And it takes forever for some because they're so passive. Could be eye doctors or pharmacists, right? They're so passive in terms of looking for job, but they're very active in terms of working, so they're not a lot of time approaching them, right? They might be on social media just when they're taking a coffee. Then the timing needs to be there. The sophisticated strategy needs to be there.

So I like to look at it as a window of time when someone turn active. You have to make sure your software works for you to capitalise on this very rare moment.

I love that idea. I'm with you on bags, but I'm probably almost active on buying an air fryer everywhere I go.

I bet you every social media channel knows this. You're 80% there.

And I'm being honed into a certain brand, a certain price range, certain feature set, because I can feel that I've inquired and I've done some research and I'm looking at certain things. So this is what you're saying, really is it's building up a behavioural pattern of what has interested me, what hasn't interested me, where I go, it indicates my abilities and my people I hang out with. So you're building up a picture of me to know that this particular air fryer on Black Friday, and you probably know that 50 pounds off is my kind of deal threshold.

Yes.

And then I'm going to click on it and then, as you say, it has to happen immediately.

Immediately, yes. It has to be a trusted process. Super easy, one click and it should be. Imagine the business of an e commerce, not converting those Joes like yourself actually going to market for that air fryer. Imagine that business loss. And the same goes for ta teams. For instance, look at the spill happening on every career page today. Every ta team out there invests a lot of money in driving traffic to their career page.

Nothing new. Right. What do you think is the average conversion rate on a career page today?

I guess it was pretty low because people are just window shopping, passively checking the market out.

Yes. But some teams are like, I wouldn't, so I argue there's not a lot of passive candidates just surfing around, a lot of clicks, a lot of steps down to your specific career page. It's a big ask. It's a big ask for a pharmaceutical working full time, super stressed, having everything to do by themselves. Right. So not a lot of passive candidates stumble across a career page because that's not like your SEO isn't that good? I would just shout.

You got to kind of have a motivation. You're disgruntled, you're at risk, something's happened.

Exactly. There's people naturally looking for there's some percentage going into career pages, but that's not the majority. The majority would mainly spend their time on social media or anything else on their phones. Right. But so the ones that actually do come to the career page have often committed to something. There's often some interest there. Once you actually come into a career page, that means losing out. On an average, 98% of the traffic is like throwing fishnets in the water and not picking up the fish.

And this happens for almost all ta teams and hiring teams out there. And again, how is this building upon to your inclusive, diverse talent pools? How is this building for the canned experience? It's not. It's just repelling thousands and thousands and thousands of people every day. Hundreds, if you're an average company. But this loop is just where I get fascinated of how this can still be going on when there's so much knowledge and there's so much you don't even have to be using social media yourself to know that there's a certain expectation from a persona, a user today. And, Joe, you're the same persona buying the airfire as you would be applying for a job that Adway would promote. Right. You're still the same.

Your behaviour is still the same. You have the same expectations. You go into social media, you go online, you have an expectation of your user experience that has to be met. Otherwise you would never buy the air fryer. You expect Amazon checkout or you expect easy buy or you expect klarna easy checkout or whatever. And the same persona is expecting a super easy application journey.

So as a passive candidate, I'm browsing minded my own business and I would start seeing targeted content around a brand, around a story the brand's telling to lure me in, to create a brand association. This brand is good. I love this brand in my head. And then they're going to kind of hit me with a why don't you find out more about us? Is that the kind of approach to try and drive me into their inquiry funnel?

Yes. So what we do is we build social talent pools built of relevance as well. So, yes, we would definitely go to market with a lot of arguments built on our customers. ICP, EVP, employee branding, all the arguments that's relevant for all the categories that they are promoting. But then as to your point, there needs to be a sort of Hansel and Greta storytelling experience happening to even care. Because you're not in a war for talent, you're in a war for attention. And that comes back to the distribution and the strategy of getting the right message at the right time on the right platform with the right window of opportunity. So what we do is that we build these talent pools that we can then retarget with all these relevant messages.

One good example that we always do is, for instance, how the travel industry have really nailed online purchases of travels, right? The majority of travels being sold or bought today is happening online. And that's been an industry sort of pioneering how you would go about an online order, because like ten years back, we still shopped a lot of well, we did a lot of travel bookings online. It was one of the first industries starting it, and still today it's one of the most lucrative industries in terms of online shopping. Right? So what they do is, first of all, an online ecommerce company, like booking.com, let's make it easy. They are very much aware that it's not one ad that sells their travel destination. It's an experience. And it's an experience that has to have built in social proof and trust in order for anyone to even care and put that much money behind it. Because it's for instance, let's say we're going to the Maldives, quite an investment.

Often like honeymoon investment, even like you wouldn't just randomly on a spring holiday go to Maldives, right? This is big investment and these companies know this. So they have to build a storytelling experience where they blend messages and social proof and trust into all these different ads, approaching the customers with a sophisticated, timely, precisely timing of everything. So there's like a fine line being spammed, as you might have been experienced, Joe, like, spammed with the targeting ads. Like, I already bought those shoes. Why are they still following me? That is not a sophisticated journey, that's sort of spray and pray approach to targeted advertising. But the sophistication means messages right on time, where they still feel nudging and not like, big brother is watching me, right? And this is where e commerce for travel agencies have done amazingly well. So the first ad that my show is going to, it's going to be like a couple experience going to the Maldives, right? They show the turquoise water, they show the villa, they show the champagne on the beach, and it's just like setting the scene. The first ad is like, we have a package deal for you going to the Maldives.

They know this is not where you buy, but this is where someone in your reptile brain, something might be registered. Right? Three days later, they show, oh, so this is a kids free hotel. It's for couples looking to get away, having their old bungalow. It's really, like, targeted towards you and perhaps your wife, because they know, right? Fourth day, fifth day, it's a family testimonial, or in this case, a couple testimonial. Yes, it was kids free. I got all the free massages that I wanted. It was so much rest for me. I had the best time ever.

Five ratings, right? Day ten, there comes the booking.com review. Like, ten stars. Best reviews ever. A lot of couples love this destination. It was worth all the money ever. We would never regret this. Yada, yada, yada. And on day 14, you get the last ad in the sequence of storytelling with a 20% discount.

Last chance to buy. Would you believe they would sell the same amount of travel packages on the first ad versus the last ad?

I can believe that. Because the people have different buyer journeys, different buyer experiences, different impulses.

Exactly.

So every one is going to peel people off, depart, and then no doubt, the last one, that's not give up. That's just pause and come back later, isn't it? You don't give up completely.

Exactly. It can always be retargeted. And they know that. The couple testimonial ad you've sent to your wife, like, hey, aren't we worth this? We're worth this. And then the questioning start happening and you guys could start picturing yourself going there. So once you get the last message, the last ad, the last storytelling experience, it's a no go. And that's how we like to approach talent attraction as well. We need to build a storytelling experience to sell them their new lifestyle, their new life work, life balance.

All these arguments that are selling the position and selling their new potential job. And it should be as timed as the Monday, you go in and you actually have a bad meeting with your manager and like, damn it, I'd never get my will through. Whatever. And bam, there's the ad. Find a date to apply, let's go.

Yeah, it's being there, being ready. And you say spear fishing, right at the point on that cusp of being passive active, isn't it?

It's no point, right? And I like to see it as window of opportunity. So when someone actually is turning active, you better work. The solution better work for you. So, as you can tell, I love this topic and coming back to inclusive hiring strategies, there's so much we can do, there's so much tools in our hands, there's so much knowledge, and there's never been a better case for conscious inclusion and making sure you're hiring people who can bring their authentic selves to work. That is where we are. And adway, we've been inspired by so many of you guys, every advocate and profile, educating the market, and we just believe we have the tech and solution to actually activate it and making it real and not just keeping it as a good quote. We want to change how we work. We want to change and make sure we have the tools operating currently.

So you're in the majority working with forward thinking companies who kind of plugged into this, who get it. There's still the rest of the world that is operating on a different modus operandi. And you know as well as I do that the challenge is the cost per hire, the speed of hire, the experience, all those kind of things. And whenever I'm talking to organisations, the frustration is around getting people into the funnel of a broadest demographic. Possible.

Exactly.

In a cost effective way. So let's just talk about the people who haven't found the light just yet. And that's a challenge, because what we end up doing is we end up using traditional recruitment processes with a non diverse and non broad demographic talent pool, wondering why we're not getting the output from that pipeline. True. Or enough candidates to give you choice across a broad demographic. That's the challenge, isn't it? And it's around getting the people in the funnel. And you're saying this passive active window of opportunity is a way of getting people into the top of funnel and then doing something with it. So let's talk about I've clicked.

Yeah, I want the air fry, I want the holiday, I want the couple's retreat, I want that new handbag, that pair of shoes. I definitely got to have that pair. So I've clicked. What should my candidate experience be like from that point forward?

So I want to advocate that the expectation here, even if it's a handbag, even if it's the travel, even if it's the air fryer, is that you do not want to leave the form. And by form, I want to say, when you click on an ad, what. Should happen is you called straight in to the application form. In this case, it should be as easy as submitting a lead. For instance, Joe, you pressed a job ad from adway. What should happen and what does happen with our talent attraction suite is you get a question like, would you like to register interest or would you like to apply? You only need to submit your email to actually be in the loop. And this is where a lot of ta teams and hiring teams get stuff wrong, because the old way of looking in hiring is we don't want a lot of work to go through. Like that's the old way of looking.

I would even argue that most hiring processes is built to weed out, not include versus today you have to broaden your perspective. You have to have a process that includes. That means if Joe has a window of opportunity, you have to meet that and you have to make it super, like, stupidly super easy to capture this interest. Which means one click is what needs in the initial phase, then it should be a gamified experience. So, for instance, what we built is you stay in the ad, you submit your email, then you can leave. We don't need anything more from you. We can retarget you and we can say, hey, Joe, remember you applied for head of the universe at Tesla, head of universal Tesla, right? Great role for you, Joe. Then you get a ping notification or an email or an ad, whatever you like, an SMS, a text, could be anything saying, well, you've only submitted 20% of the information to become a great hire for Tesla.

Would you like to just include three screening questions and then you're 100% done. So it's a gamified experience. Either you stay in the ad and you just fill know if it's screening questions or know the employer of choice tesla have chosen to fill in to make your hiring process, or you leave the form and come back when you have the time. Because you might be on the subway, you might be in the supermarket, you might be in the bathroom. So there's always alternatives to when you submit and come back. But capturing the first interest is vital, the first window of opportunity you have to capture. Then you can always push the candidate to update their profile. In this case, it's not a profile, but it's still an application for head of universus Tesla.

You don't have to create an account, but you can still be submitting your profile to the talent pool of this role, right? Or you stay in the form, you add your email and you answer a few questions, making sure the most relevant information come through, right? We don't need poster code, we don't need that. We just need to make sure that you perhaps live in France if this is the case for know, these factors are really built into the specific employer and the specific role, but I'm trying to say it in an example. Right, so the experience should be one click. You should be in the ad, there should be no fluffy 1 billion clicks through a form which is not mobile assessed or it's not built for mobile friendly, should be no account created, should be ideally not a single cover letter or CV uploaded either. It should be a super smooth journey based on finding potential with assessments and tests and screening based on science in order to really make sure what's getting through is relevant for this role and that you are opening up for potential and transferable skills and everything that you need in order for have a thriving workforce. Right, so, same as with Airfire. One, two clicks, super secure, easy checkout, making sure my bank details is all secured. I don't feel stressed about this decision.

I have to have an immediate confirmation. You did a great job, Joe. The airfire is coming. Or thank you so much. We have everything we need in order to process you further for Head of Universal Tesla, and that should be the canned experience and you should then continue with your life, keep scrolling instagram and go have dinner with your family.

But we know that isn't the typical candidate experience in the world, is it? We know that's a very curated, very contemporary, forward thinking way of dealing with things. But candidates generally have a very poor experience. I'm sure many people listening here have been experienced. The Blunder Bus approach on LinkedIn, recruiters sending us, are you interested in this, are you interested in that? Or you look great for this role, picking something that you did 20 years ago as a keyword, that's still the candidate experience. We've gone out there and it builds a lack of trust into the recruiting process.

And I believe it's like it's no blame on the recruiters, no blame on people just trying because they're so pressured. Like, there's an insane amount of pressure on recruiters right now. They're supposed to be AI engineers, marketing experts, sales experts, like, all these. There's so much pressure on them. But what I do want to challenge and what I like to discuss is how come we're not valuing our candidates and building processes and experience just as we would with super valuable customers? Because it's the same. Imagine, again, an ecommerce, a travel agency, treating their desired customers like most companies does with their candidates in revenue loss. Just imagine the figures in revenue loss and it's not like in terms of buying stuff or being a customer, I could still go back some years later and like, I want air fryer. Like, I don't care, it's a good deal, I'm going to buy it.

I'm not that sceptical about the brand selling the air fryer, but when it comes to hiring, if I've had a bad experience with a brand, they're doomed. They're out the majority of candidates will never apply again. So it's not just that you're turning them off, you're ending forever a relationship. And it's not just a lot of people come to market saying there's no candidates. How come you're thinking you're sprinking each day you're working against yourself? So I think the bigger question should be, yes, of course, everyone should have the ideal can experience and everyone should work with the best tech out there. But still, you have to see and approach your candidates as valued customers and you have to make sure that is the experience, else why are you in recruitment?

Most? I think I think 65, 70% of the UK workforce work for businesses that are ten people or less, or certainly small businesses, micro businesses. What we're talking about here is an enterprise. It's a corporate, large organisation budget, I guess. How do smaller organisations get into something like this? Because first of all, it's a mindset change, isn't it? Recruitment, marketing and what you're talking about is a real mindset change versus the old. I'll put it on typical job site and get thousands of applications from around the world that very few are actually relevant. We latch on the biases, kick in that person's name, that person's education. We're suddenly biassing and going, oh, look, there's a couple of white people here with English handing names who live in the local town. They'll be perfect.

That's what goes on at the moment in the majority of the world, doesn't it?

I want to challenge when it comes to investing in inclusive strategies or tech or platforms, it's like, what would it cost you to not get this diverse workforce into the company? Right? So that's always the calculation. But, yes, we work with companies that are hiring for very complex roles and volumes of roles that's like mainly our target audience, but it still could be companies doing 30 hires a year if it's like pharmacists or It specialists or salespeople or service personnel or whatever. So either way, because what I'm coming from is I had this brilliant live stream yesterday on my LinkedIn Live channel together with Wolfgang Brickwetter. He's an HR specialist and recruitment experience person from the Doc region, and he's been doing recruitment trends reports for over 1015 years. And we went through a lot of benchmark data because there's nothing we love more than benchmark data. And when it comes to, like, what are the hiring budget or the marketing budget for this TA team, or how much are they spending on these channels, or what's their average? And we went through a lot of this data, and what was really interesting was even if you have a super tight budget for Bahuma marketing or employee branding, which you might have in the times we're in, what you don't get is the change here is in terms of what I said before. You're not in a war for talent. You're a war for attention.

If you don't join the party now, it'll be exponentially more expensive next year and the year after that and the year after that. Because again, everyone is going into social recruiting. Everyone is understanding the need for the most epic candidate experience. Everyone is investing in this and if you're not joining the party, you're out of the game. So even with the tiniest recruitment marketing budget, and we looked into this cool benchmark data, I can send you some then later joe, even with the tiniest budget, you have to make sure these budgets are working the most efficiently for you. Building the talent pools, optimising the career page, not losing out on this valuable, relevant, diverse traffic that you are driving in some way, even if it's through search or outreach or automated process. With recruitment marketing, you have to make sure these tiny budgets work for you and you have to go where the candidates are. So I would naturally argue never to put all your eggs in one basket.

My approach to hiring with tiny budgets either way, is multichannel. You have to understand that the persona the average social media user has, I think it's on average 7.5 somi apps that they use, so they live in a universe of social media, meaning LinkedIn is not your golden or silver bullet, meta is not your silver bullet. TikTok might not be a silver bullet, but there is several platforms where people are living. And if you build in a super smart tactic, you don't have to spend billions of dollars in building these candidate experiences. You just have to make sure that your EVP is not be left for everyone to experience. Because who will type in VVV? Mycareepage mycareepage, my career? No one. No one knows. And how would I even know that H M is one of the biggest It employers in the world? I think of H M as clothing, I don't think of H M as AI engineers.

Right? So I wouldn't type in a career page because I would think H M is for clothing. There's all these differences in terms of mindset and how you have to approach shopping experience and online behaviour into incorporating that, into talent attraction. So I would still make sure my tiny budgets work for me, making sure I can collect the audiences, I can retarget the audiences, and I go broad on social media to make sure I can attract diverse potential.

So it starts this conversation with unearthing potential beyond the resume. The CV.

Yes.

So I'm a candidate, I've got a CV, I'm an employer, I want a CV. So how do I, as a candidate settle myself? Because the CV is a sales prospectus document. I actually want you to be biassed for me, so I actually want the right bias.

Isn't this so interesting? It's all made up from the beginning. I can chat, GBT, everything, right? So it's not even that's a problem. I want you to be biassed, but then again, are you assessing me on my readiness and my skills and everything that is me? So the whole thing, like the whole show, the whole charade of a CV is made up on non beneficial information for anyone, not anyone. So good point, though, in terms of how can I word you in this case, joe, you're going to challenge Tesla for Head of Universe, right? You want Tesla to hire you without a CV. What I encourage candidates to do is to actually question one, are you giving everyone the same chance for this job? Two, include assessments and testing as early as possible in the process. That means you're not weeding out anything, you're building to include people and give everyone the chance. And as long as you explain, it's super easy to have a little box of information in your online application journey saying, hey, we're putting our tests super early in the funnel because we want everyone given the same chance. You as well, make sure this will take you five minutes, sit somewhere comfortable, take a coffee and let's get started with a test.

Make sure it's built to include, not to exclude. And from there, if you want to use your gut feeling or if you want to have a look at a CV, do that later. Again, I always advocate and everyone does this, I believe the community is great. We always talk about challenging hiring managers and I don't think no recruiter ever on this earth have missed the fact that you have to be a strategic business partner. I believe everyone knows this, and I believe everyone does what they can about this, but it's still if you've done everything right from the beginning opened up the funnel, making sure you have automated an assessment and testing tools, making sure it's not heavy lifting, but you're still processing relevant talent pools. So when you get involved, it's still relevant to the role. And for diversity? Meaning if you've done everything right, your funnel is built on the best possible, inclusive way, you will end up with five equal good candidates. So if a hiring manager must, in this world, use their gut feeling, they can I mean, I'm not recommending it, but as a last step on paper, they can, right? Because you've built the process, securing that potential and diverse applicants had the chance to come through all the way to the last submission.

Right? So that is my whole thinking. I believe you have to challenge the fact how employers are assessing you. And I know this is happening today just as review sites or glassdoor or whatever, transparency into the hiring process is happening and it's going to blow up more than ever. But candidates are challenging employers how they're assessed and how they're measured, on how they're a match for this opportunity. And I believe we should be prepared and we should definitely proactively approach the candidate market with this. And we want to make sure that we don't build or go back to this charade where someone has a charade application paper in their hands and I have a charade assessment strategy where I spend 6 seconds sifting through a CV and like, hey, it's a good match. Yeah, I can read his name. Perfect.

No picture, not going to use it. Right? So there needs to be challenge, the whole thing needs to be challenged from both ends. And I believe employers have to have the answer. Why are you assessing me on my cover letter? Have to have the answer.

Yes, the ability to write a word document shouldn't be the basis on your.

Ability to rule the universe with generative AI. We're like, there's no substance. Mean, imagine the risk Tesla would take with you, Joanne. Not with you, of course, but I meant with your cover letter built on chat GPT for Head of Universe. Imagine the risk if they were to assess you on this piece of paper that you've been creating. Five minutes with Generative AI. It's no substance, it's no relevance, it's nothing. So I think the whole thing should be challenged from both ends.

So this process is completely fair. It's bias, it's mitigated as much as we can based on behaviours, it's based on competency, it's based on potential, not based on yesterday, it's based on tomorrow. All the kind of great things we know. But if my organisation has a gender equity problem, a pay gap problem, disability gap problem, or an ethnicity problem, if I can't bias the process towards female hires, or towards people of colour, or towards people with disability, I'll keep hiring, probably in the same ratio, or I won't change the ratio enough to fix my gap. Fix my ratio.

The leaking bucket.

How do I influence the funnel?

Naturally? I mean, this is the big question, right? And I believe there's so many great people out there discussing this and having the best answers ever. But of course you can't fill a leaking bucket with relevant applications if there's no foundation or environmental support for them to stay and thrive, right? So you have to look internally. Everyone is like you have to start with this first. I want to challenge and say that you can have two thoughts in your brain at once. We can have parallel activities happening, right? So there should always be an ongoing strategy and work for making sure everyone feel that they can turn up to work as their authentic self, they're supported as their authentic self, or as I said, unapologetically myself, right?

We're talking about here is the employee experience, the retention element. Get my retention, get my employee experience, right? Primarily.

Then go to market that's with air fryer Joe. What if I send you the shittiest old McDonald's frying super stinky thing to you and like, eh, it's an air fryer, whatever. It doesn't matter if you had the best online experience, right, if the product, if the reality then is met with a fraud. Right. So obviously, obviously you have to clean your house first, obviously. And you have to where you I believe what you're doing, Joanne, is making sure this is incorporated into the business, OKRs? It's not just a value proposition, it's not just a ta KPI, it's incorporated into our business KPIs. And this is ever have in terms of seasons. You could have a season of great hiring and great thriving and people staying for long, but then all of a sudden a whole department would quit because of XYZ and you have no diverse representation at all because of XYZ.

So this is ever ongoing and no, naturally, you cannot build the best online experience for candidates if it's met with the worst offline experience. I mean, that's just a waste of everyone's time, money and happiness.

I think what I'm hearing saying is you got to get yourself right. You got to be a look in the mirror. You're selling who you are. You're not selling something fake and inauthentic. You got to be walking the talk anthropologically yourselves as an organisation, but that still says you've got a 70 30 gender ratio. In my mind, you got to hire two women for every men, every man, otherwise you're not either not fixing the problem or the problem is getting worse. That's a real challenge. When we're looking at unbiased or debiased or anonymized recruitment processes, the ratio is likely to not change much.

Exactly. And the question of representation, because the outcome is not status quo, right. Our starting point is not equal. Our starting point was never 50 50 male female gender equality. Right? So we have to work from a starting point where I don't know the figure, but if it's 70% men in organisation and 30% women, that's our starting point. So then we have to have representation, and I believe boxing women and men in or grouping or all this stuff could be hurtful in the long run. But as a starting point, we have to have an active strategy in terms of making the foundation where we are equal. So naturally we have to approach the fact that, yes, there's going to be a lack of diversity or gender diversity or all parts here, and that needs to be taken into acknowledgment when you build the process and how you assess and how you again, make sure you have the most diverse teams in your company.

But there's also a danger in labelling right. In hiring as well, in the long run. But it's a very interesting question and it's an important question. And I think as to point, the starting point was never equal to begin with and that needs to be taken into consideration when you build your strategy.

I think you said it earlier, you don't just do one thing, you got to fix your you got to sweep the floor, clean the room, get your company the toxicity, the culture right. First, then you can do what you're talking about here is the behavioural outreach via social media. Then if you got a specific need around changing the ratio of the demographic in your organisation, that's a different targeted approach.

Yes.

You can use different recruitment, marketing, different outreach solutions exactly. To try and resolve gender or an ethnicity problem.

Yeah. Messaging as well. Messaging as well. So, again, what I'm usually getting questions because we do volumes of job campaigns on millions of campaigns on social media platforms. And we're not saying you have to dance and be a TikTok company where you have to have a super polished EVP employer branding. We're saying what people want is your authentic own personnel, explaining to them why they get supported to be their authentic self at work. This is what the candidate market want. They on TikTok, do not want you can dance saying it if you want to, but it's not expected.

We want authentic human connections. And just as with the shopping experience, you want real reviews. Right, Joanne? You're looking at the reviews for the air fryer. You want to make sure it's a verified buyer. You want to make sure it's a verified person. It's not getting paid to do the review. Same goes for canned experience. You want to make sure yep.

Okay. Hassan has worked in this company for four years. He's the head of engineer. He's been thriving in the company. This is why he stays. That's what you want to know. So, again, it comes down to authentic messaging, but the strategy needs to open up to attract diverse potential. And that comes down to a lot of these factors.

It's in the messaging, it's in distribution, it's in the AI powered solution, it's in targeting, but it definitely must be supported by authentic content. No one cares about donuts or whatever people goes for benefits of work. I actually do well. I thrive with I'm having a puppy and I get a lot of budgets approved and we get a lot of new hires because puppy at the office is really popular. But that's just me. And I did not buy the puppy to get more hires. But it was a big plus.

We've got to use different sorts of marketing and puppies turn people on, cats turn people on, children turn people on. Skiing. There's different ways of just attracting people and say, oh, this company just get a belongingness. Creating the belongingness, isn't it?

Exactly.

Sara, we could talk all day. We will again notice in future, I'm sure we'll do another podcast. We'll do a live stream sometime soon. But in the meantime, how can people get hold of you? You said you had a white paper or some research you can put in the show notes.

I'll put this in the show notes, absolutely. First of all, I will definitely link to Wolfgang Brickwedde's latest recruiting trends report because I believe everyone needs benchmark data. We also have our latest social recruiting trends analysis, which is really jam packed with how social media can help with inclusive hiring. And if they want to know more about adway, how we work and myself, it's just type in Adway AI and cheque out our talent attraction suite. And I am well addicted to LinkedIn, so I have my community there, I have a lot of engaged followers and I do a lot of live streams and discussions on there. So just type in Sara Dalsfeld on LinkedIn if you want to connect. And I'm happy to keep these discussions going. And that's what we do all the time, Joanne.

That's where you thrive in the community and keep educating and challenging old ways of hiring, which I love. You're one of my favourites in the newsfeed.

Thank you. I've got all blushing again. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you to you, the listener, for getting to the end staying this far. So I really appreciate your engagement. And if you've not already subscribed, please do subscribe and cheque out the back issues and the back episodes as well. This is the inclusion bites podcast.

That's B-I-T-E-S. Share the love. Share it with your colleagues, your friends and other people on LinkedIn. Of course, I've got other guests lined up and I'm sure you'll be inspired by them over the next few weeks and months. And, of course, if you'd like to be a guest as well, drop me a line together with any feedback, suggestions on how we can improve. That'd be fantastic. So, my email address jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk

And finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood. It has been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Bye.