How blind recruitment helped me find the right team
We know that companies struggle with building inclusive networks, partly because the current way of hiring is rather path dependent. We tend to elevate the skills and characteristics of those who are already there, we connect to the networks of those who are already there, and we do not consistently extend beyond our core networks.
I have previously written about how diversity of perspectives is critical to being a successful strategist and researcher; we cannot develop solutions to complicated and novel problems using the same techniques and tools that we have used for years. What got us here will not necessarily get us to where we are going.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to interview and hire in many (if not all) the positions I have held. As a result, I have experienced recruitment and hiring across sectors, skills and tenure. Yet, I was hesitant to expand my business during its first full year to ensure ample time and space to build the business model for this particular type of integrated, holistic, values-based consulting. It was important to properly combine science, analytics and values, like empathy, with a flexible business model tailored to serve organizations that often cannot access necessary resources.
However, as I wrote in my article about what we can each do to support students, I knew that I was in a position to create roles for students to learn. Running the statistics interns program at Syngenta was a rewarding experience. Students and recent graduates can bring innovation, tenacity, and dynamism that re-energizes the workplace.
After deciding to hire research assistants, the posting unexpectedly received 230+ applications in two weeks. I now had to manage a fully virtual hiring process and needed a way to assess all of these candidates since there was no way to speak with all of them (special thanks to FFAR for the idea of a virtual hiring assessment!).
Presented with this challenge, I chose to use complete blind hiring and ignored the resume and transcripts. Given the nature of the research work and volume of applicants, I did ultimately screen for graduate students which I have adjusted for the fall positions. Quite frankly, how a student does in school, where they went to school, what their name is, or any other characteristics does not necessarily translate to the ability to have impact. The telltale signs are more complex. The evaluation of applicants was based wholly on how they answered a question about the position and I was able to get a diverse, fairly far-reaching group of candidates.
While evaluating the responses, there were three main points of consideration.
Were they energized and willing to invest in building a start-up? I needed people who were open to trying new things and learning on the fly, and appreciated (and sought) the flexibility to experiment. Given the unique nature of my business, I needed students who recognize that things may fail but we learn and adjust.
How could they contribute to the team? This was important because I was hiring a team, instead of individuals. I could hire from a complementary skills perspective, analogous to sports teams when they are going through not just their draft picks, but thinking of the holistic team dynamics. I am not just looking for individual players, I am looking for those synergies.
Finally (and perhaps most importantly), it was critical that they believe in the values of Open Rivers and were drawn to it as a place they wanted to add to the vision.
Right now, companies are releasing statements around how they will address systemic racism and institutionalized oppression. I can say with certainty that one area that needs a complete overhaul is the hiring process and human resources function. Those with opaque hiring processes, especially private companies and academia (and the tenure process) will only change their culture by changing how they hire. As it stands, the current conventional hiring process overemphasizes existing skills, leverages the networks of existing people which tends to bring similar people, and return to the same source for their recruits. In recent discussions with some organizations, I was surprised to learn how many of them have continued to go to the same schools and even the same departments for the past many years, with little change. If you do not change your target, how do you expect to diversify your applicant pool?
I will not speak for large corporations because as a one-person operation, I know what I am looking for and decision-making is a lot faster. However, the same concept and guidelines can work in any situation. I set up my application, assessment and interviews around the questions that really mattered. I used the hiring process to understand how folks would respond to actual questions they would have to address in the course of this research position.
As a result, I ended up with a team of women from different backgrounds in all senses of that. My process and my goals for the process led me to a team of all women, all with STEM backgrounds of different disciplines, and all with different interests. I did not have to recruit for gender or race. I created space for everyone to show up and be themselves in the moment, not connected to any other characteristics.
It is worth noting that there are numerous examples of organizations that have expanded and shifted recruitment from traditional measures of diversity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) to diversity of experiences. Quantis is over 60% women with many disciplines represented despite being a STEM organization. The Soil Health Partnership, a farmer-led non-profit focused on agricultural production, employs over 50% women with a range of disciplines and expertise represented. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a unique Farm Bill-created organization (and current client), has diversified to include individuals from diverse backgrounds and expertise. OCP Group, headquartered in Morocco, shifted the average age of their workforce considerably over a two-year period. All of these organizations are making novel moves in some of the toughest spaces, and they are doing so by continually refreshing and re-energizing the culture with new inputs, ideas and perspectives.
I hope that as organizations commit to making a difference, and to changing the processes that abetted and support systematic racism and bias, they look critically at the hiring process. I hope they consider throwing out the conventional elements that don’t serve anyone because marginal changes won’t get us anywhere - be bold.