The Elephant in the Room

Shownotes: 

People recruit people from the industry, but also people who look like them, behave like them, are from a similar background, use a similar language... Would you agree? 

If this is the reality, the question is how important is inclusive recruitment for the PR industry or businesses in general? And what does 'inclusive' recruitment actually mean? What can organisations do to break the cycle of systemic exclusion and homophiliy? Move from being performative to truley transformative??

Rohan Shah, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Ruben Sinclair, and I had an interesting conversation about all things inclusive recruitment and more. We also spoke about 👇🏾

👉🏾 The role of technology/Data in creating fairer and more inclusive recruitment processes

👉🏾 Inclusive job adverts, structured job interviews, pre-determined questions and clear evaluation critera 

👉🏾 Ensuring candidates are evaluated on the basis of skill sets and competencies rather than personal information

👉🏾 Back to work, future of work

👉🏾 The Elephant in the room for the recruitment industry - that leaders don't really get involved with the recruitment process

👉🏾 His belief that to have a truly inclusive recruitment process, a company's employee value proposition (EVP) should allow for radical flexibility. What does radical flexibility mean? 

"I think it's easy enough to have people acknowledge the importance of, strategic and inclusive approach to recruitment, but it can seem very difficult to actually get people to actually, genuinely adopt it. I think that's more so because when they realise the work, the time, but also the cost associated with it. You can slowly see this barrier going up between sort of saying it's important and actually doing something about it. Do people understand the importance? Yes, Are they always adopting it on the whole, I don't think they are, and if they do adopt it, do they generally get a specialist in to help them? I don't think that's always the case."

Rohan Shah

Head to the podcast to listen 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Episode Transcript

Sudha: Good morning, Rohan. Wonderful to meet you again after a couple of weeks

Rohan: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Sudha. 

Sudha: So let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. 

Rohan: Sure. Okay. So I'm Rohan, I'm responsible along with my business partner for the overall growth and direction of Reuben Sinclair, which is your traditional recruitment consultancy. But also RS Engage, which is very much a HR and talent management consultancy on the recruitment agency side. We have a vision to introduce exceptional PR, marketing sales and digital professionals to businesses around the world, whilst also changing that sort of traditional recruitment practice.

And on the RS engage side we have specialist HR consultants go out and advise small to medium enterprises on their HR practices, but also put in place specific practical work for them, but also help a number of global clients transform their talent acquisition and sort of retention strategies with a particular focus on inclusive and accessible recruitment.

Sudha: That's interesting. So how did you get into recruitment? How does one get into recruitment? 

Rohan: It's the same as many in recruitment. I simply fell into it to be totally frank. Well at university I studied accounting and finance. That was more to please my parents than myself. And you know, I think, I was in year two of my degree and after quite an honest and probably upsetting discussion with my parents, I took the decision to drop out, I just simply wasn't enjoying accounting and finance.

Despite the fact, actually I do quite a bit of it now for my own business, I actually quite enjoy it. But, you know, my dream at the time was to pursue a passion in performing arts. I loved sort of the theatrical elements, I love sort of dancing, singing not so much, I wasn't very good at that.

But yeah, at the time, that's what I wanted to do, I looked at various drama schools and, you know, I needed some money to pay for that. And I was speaking to a friend down at my tennis club at the time, and he was in recruitment and he said to me, look, why don't you come and do recruitment for six months, earn a bit of money and then go to drama school.

So I thought, yeah, why not? But once I get into something, you know, I want to give everything that I've got, you know, there's no point in doing it half heartedly. So I went to recruitment, I gave it everything I had. Maybe I found that sometimes I was acting on the phone and I just thought, you know what, I'm actually quite enjoying this. I think the money was an attraction as well, at that point in time, I was quite young and I didn't have a lot of it at the time. And when I started earning, I just thought, well, this is great. And that's it, here I am, nearly 20 years later. 

Sudha: You know, well laid plans of mice and men. Yeah, but I'm disappointed to hear that you didn't pursue the performing arts.

It's something probably you should give a thought to. So I'd say like as an Indian parent, I think, I feel that I've been very liberal, but I didn't actively encourage my kids to pursue the arts and especially my oldest kid. But she's in marketing, she passed out of Cambridge and is doing extremely well. But she took up improv a couple of years back and she's enjoying it so much. And I'm just saying it because you spoke about performing arts. I think it's something you should give it a try. 

Rohan: It's interesting actually, I did a comedy course not too long ago, probably about a couple of years ago, which was so interesting. I was at a speaking event and I spoke to the keynote speaker after, and I said what was the one thing you did to sort of enhance your public speaking? And he said, look, the best advice I'd give you is go on a comedy course.

I thought, oh, you know what, this might be quite fun. It was the hardest thing I've done in a long time. I had to get up and do a five minute comedy set at the end of it which was great fun, but really tough. I think at the time, I also used to love doing magic, like magic was a real passion. And actually, when I got the job, I'd just got entry as an associate member of the Magic Circle, and I had to go to lectures every Monday, which were in Euston. And if I even dreamt about leaving my desk at 6:30 PM to try and get to Euston, the company would just look at me and think, where are you going? What time do you call this? And so it became really hard for me to go to lectures. 

And in a way, what you say about, pursuing the passion, that was one of the things, I think my old recruitment company simply took away something I was really passionate about because I just couldn't keep up with it. And when we started Reuben Sinclair, one of the things that we did say was we'll never really steal anyone's passion. If someone has a passion, then commit to it, go to it, don't worry about finishing work at a certain time.

Go out and pursue it because, yeah, that's one thing I do regret that I never kept up with magic as much as, I would have wanted to. 

Sudha: Oh, but that's amazing that you're enabling other people within the organisation to do that, because I think people are still worried when they come into workplaces or are working remotely, whether they can log off to do something else.

So that's really nice. 

Rohan: Yeah, we actively push, you know, people's passion and how they keep up with it. 

Sudha: Since the time it's been 20 years, especially in the last three years, how has the recruitment space changed or evolved? 

Rohan: You know, that's a really good question.

I think in some ways it had actually in some ways, no. I think surprisingly the things that are still quite the same is generally the external process in the way people still recruit. So, you know, people still write a job advert, they review a CV, they'll arrange an interview, they'll do a first interview, maybe a second, maybe a third, and then they offer a role, and I think, if you think about that process, certainly well documented that Leonardo da Vinci was the first person, I think to write a resume in like 1480s. And not much has changed since then.

So of course there's different ways now, obviously there's the digital element. You might be doing some video CVs online and so forth, but you know, there's things that are going back 500 odd years and they're still exactly the same, which is really surprising to me, but in terms of recruitment and what we actually do internally, what has changed is the technology and the attraction and searching the candidate.

As well as the way in which we develop new clients and new business. Ultimately though, it's still very much based on the same principles. I think it's a lot more data driven now than it was, you know, 15 years ago. And obviously a lot more is more automated rather than having to go through Rolodex or faxing over certain information and so forth.

So, I think where there's been a real shift. in recruitment, specifically what we do is what is probably known as the embedded model. Which is very much what RS Engage actually does today. You know, this basically allows one of our specialist recruiters to sit on site and work for the client as their own in house talent manager, utilising the sort of expertise and technologies and all of the resources of a recruitment agency and within the agency that we have. So actually you're getting a recruitment agency sitting on site working on your behalf as your own. I think that's really evolved in the way companies have recruited. I think this method actually works really well for businesses that, you know, they're looking to scale and you don't have to be hiring a ridiculous amount of people every year.

I think if you're hiring say five or six people per year and that maybe includes churn then actually utilising this method, you'll see sort of a real considerable time and cost saving. But also I think it goes beyond just finding people for a specific vacancy. 

You know, we then start to look at, like I mentioned, obviously data is really important. We start to look at data behind the talent attraction, the numbers of how many people, your business are attracting, the demographics of those people. What does your hiring process look like? Is it fair and is it inclusive? That actually starts from the attraction stage, but then also the retention of people joining your organisation but leaving there's, fundamentally something else that needs to be addressed. And I think all of this encompasses that sort of core principle of a fair and inclusive recruitment and I'd say that recruitment has really tried to develop itself and evolve itself in making sure that recruitment practices are fair. But I do think actually on this, generally in recruitment, it's a low barrier to entry, I think everyone knows that. And I think businesses today, there's a real responsibility for businesses to vet their recruiters properly, ask them the right questions, ask them the hard questions, challenge them on what they're using to find candidates and so forth. And I think you'll very quickly come to realise the ones who have capabilities and the ones that don't.

Sudha: So Rohan, would you say you're able to influence how they think or to broaden their thought process on the journey of recruitment, because it's not just one thing. How difficult or easy it is to get clients to adopt some of the new things that you are suggesting, whether it is technology or whatever, in order to be more strategic, but also to be more inclusive in how they're recruiting their talent?

Rohan: Yeah. Okay. That's a great question, Sudha. I think it's easy enough to have people acknowledge the importance of, strategic and inclusive approach to recruitment, but it can seem very difficult to actually get people to actually, genuinely adopt it. I think that's more so because when they realise the work, the time, but also the cost associated with it, you know, you can slowly see this barrier going up between sort of saying it's important and actually doing something about it.

I think we do influence how people think, some more so than others, but do they always get a specialist to help them implement an inclusive approach? I would say majority of the time, no, and actually that's because I think recruitment or recruitment strategies or recruitment principles, however you might want to look at it, is viewed as something that is It's quite straightforward.

Now, I'm not saying that recruitment strategy or recruitment is rocket science by any stretch. It's certainly not. But I do think it's how people view you know, maybe painting and decorating. I know i'm comparing decorating to recruitment, but most of the time people will say they can do it themselves.

And if they don't, it's generally because it's time associated. So it's easy to just get someone else to do it. But when you get a specialist to do it, the difference is always so visible. and, you know, it's so noticeable because it's a genuine skill set that's been adopted and practiced and perfected over time.

My job, is always to ask the right questions and to challenge in the right places. But I can't force people, but I will always try to have them think about strategic and inclusive recruitment process and the importance of doing it properly because, just like the painting and decorating, cracks will begin to appear very quickly and imperfections will stand out when the lights are on.

So I think, do people understand the importance? Yes. Are they always adopting it on the whole, I don't think they are, and if they do adopt it, do they generally get a specialist in to help them? I don't think that's always the case. 

Sudha: Yeah, like you said, it's not rocket science, but it is one of the most important steps to building a great organisation. And I don't think people are thinking that they need to spend money on it, because essentially, when you talk about time, it also means money and resources, right? 

Rohan: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, time is definitely money. I think generally, when you've actually got someone's time, they probably are more likely to go on and spend the money.

But like I say, I think generally when you've got the time, I think people are very eager to learn. And to take a lot of information and then when they've got some, but not all the information, because, if you went into it into real detail, you'd be there, for a whole week. When they've got enough information, I think it's that point of which they then start to go, well, actually, we could do some of this ourselves. And you know what, they probably can. And they do, and some do it really well. But I think actually asking the right questions and challenging themselves in the right way isn't necessarily what they might be doing.

Sudha: Yeah, that's true. So for organisations that want to do the right thing, what are the steps that they can take to reduce biases in shortlist selection, interview processes, especially, how can they use new technology. 

Rohan: But I think in terms of reducing biases, there are so many, I mean, you know, there are over sort of 13 different hiring biases that will happen in the recruitment process. And the way to go about this is to eliminate as many hiring biases as possible.

You know, we are human beings, things happen unconsciously, we need to put steps and technology in place to help us reduce layers of bias. First off, I think it's important to state that addressing bias in the hiring process is a consistently ongoing effort. It's got to be continuously looked at, but look, I think for me there are so many ways of addressing hiring biases and eliminating layers, I think, you know. We've got a list as part of RS Engage and I think there's around sort of 18, 19 different things that organisations can do on an ongoing basis. But I won't go through all of those, but to name a few, first and foremost, if you haven't started with training and educating your staff that's really important.

Provide sort of unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion training to everyone involved in the hiring process, including the recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, make sure they understand the importance of a fair, inclusive practice. I think the second way is using structured interviews, implementing something that's very structured to the process with predefined questions and a clear evaluation criteria.

This helps standardise sort of the process and reduces the influence of the personal biases that go on. I think it's important to make people feel welcome in an interview. But reducing and not necessarily having a lot of small chat, you know, as I say, it is important because that then starts to lead on to certain biases kicking in.

But it's still important to keep a friendly process. You talked about technology. I think it's really important to leverage technology particularly things like xxxxxxxx contracting systems and AI powered screening tools. Like, you know, I think these things can help in various different ways, you can anonymise resumes and applications. You can ensure that candidates are evaluated based on skill sets and competencies rather than sort of personal information, for example, which companies they've worked for or which universities they studied at, you know, so technology can really help you leverage doing that element of anonymising CVs. The other thing I think is best important is diverse interview panels. So creating interview panels that include individuals from a variety of background, you know, having different perspectives can really help in making more...