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Very powerful statement, Ron!

100%

Completely agree - this has been one of the hardest mindsets for me to shift in my org currently

What about googling a candidate?

Also the googling - knowing how much falsehood exist

Totally agree!

It’s an incredibly difficult mindset to shift

Thanks Celena

We've used Spark hire, it's good.

So google = background check-ish after interviews, etc.?

Seems like googling is different than asking through a network, since it is public, and I do think that you want a candidate to be able to respond to it.

Agreed, Cliff!

I want to be sure that I properly understood something that was previously said: Ron is discouraging the practice of asking around in your network about a candidate without their knowledge. Is that what I heard?

Creating spaces for Vulnerability makes this process so much more human! This is so critical!

Thank you all, hopping off but look forward to watching the rest!

We remind the panel that it is hard to interview, people can be nervous and shy, others over the top with enthusiasm. The interview is just one of the platforms we consider, that's why you do references. Some talk the talk while others walk the walk. We owe it to the candidate to consider all of their qualities.

Respond in the chat! What other pitfalls do you feel are common in the selection process?

I love hearing that example - I hear that often especially for female candidates "they need to be more confident" - and not pausing to unpack where that is coming from.

I am 'guilty' of Halo Bias

In answer to your question- that is correct Allison Ohle.

I have also seen biases about candidate clothing. And we realized that we needed to prepare candidates by letting them know the expectation for dress in their interviews.

Do you have tips around handling external candidates vs. internal candidates, where we just by nature have more background knowledge?

I think a common bias is basing your view of a candidate on their personality instead of their skillset, especially when working to analyze the future relationship between the candidate and their manager

We often hire internal candidates and I feel like that can get complicated with biases because of who knows/has worked with the candidates

We really try to emphasize performance tasks--any tips on what's reasonable to expect in terms of new production of content to be assessed (vs. past work)? Interviews are over-centered in hiring process for most jobs that don't require good intnerviewing skills.

Where someone goes to college. There is an affinity for certain institutions over others.

Having the same hiring managers speak and mention the lack of equity in the organization (historically) and that allows for more bias during debriefs, etc.

Extroversion bias (similar to friendliness) plays out in all day interviews with groups of people. My introverted self is exhausted and low energy by the end.

^^

Constantly speaking about we need more candidates of color and not putting in the structures to support that.

How we set a positive and consistent tone with each candidate, they all need to feel as they were the first one to walk into the room or zoom. Keep the same energy for each of them, our body language matters to them too.

mmm, that's interesting Jonathon

How to balance trajectory pathways without appearing to lean into nepotism?

Celena/Ron, that's helpful on the performance task issue. Agree on the balance.

I am now on the fence on performance tasks. I believe in compensation for performance tasks, especially if the ask is big on time and product.

I love asking for work samples from prior experience rather than new work

When we do performance tasks we have our candidates send them in anonymously most often especially when we are considering internal candidates.

Curious to hear thoughts on cover letters

@alicia so interesting!

As I see a lot less use of them recentlty

Who else wants to work for Ron lol?

@Shalesa - you are too kind!

what are your thoughts on not asking follow up questions in an effort to give everyone same interview experience?

@Madiha - not asking follow-up questions leaves doubt on the table. I personally recommend asking follow-up questions, esp when something is unclear in the response!

thank you

I hear your concerns, thanks for raising those. Do you have any concerns with her ability to meet the competencies that we are looking for?

Would reference the total pool and the predefined rubric and considerations designed to identify the best candidate.

This concern should have been raised much earlier in the process, if hiring a Black staff member was truly a priority. If the candidate is strong and the decision has been made I wouldn't change the selection at this point

Maybe redirecting the question back to them: "what would your recommendation be?”

I would be interested to know the Why behind this person raising this concern -- what's the value ad of someone who is Black, and was that something we considered when determining competencies and qualities at the beginning of the process?

id love your input on future recruiting cycles on how we could have had a pool of candidates with more Black candidates.

Such a good scenario to think through. I'd probably say something like "I appreciate you raising the concern. Do you feel that this candidate meets what we are looking for? If so, it feels as though we should move forward. And then more broadly, I'd love to spend time talking about how we can increase the representation of Black staff members on our team."

I assume ref checks were made and we should value the committee's work. She should be offered the position, we have probationary periods for a reason based on their work. You should know going into the process what your goals are for your organization. We want diversity and we want the skills sets that were presented.

I think optics is a dangerous excuse. Diversity on your team is valuable because different life experiences are critical to perspective. Optics" devalues the real value that candidates from historically underrepresented communities may bring. When someone mentions the optics problem, I always dig in on what's behind that. Hiring for optics is performative. --my two cents

This has been great. Thank you Ron and Celena.

I want to commit to bringing even more training to my team of hiring managers on how to reduce bias in hiring process so they understand where and why many of our policies come from

Double down on the development of our Equitable Hiring Playbook and training.

Great presentation, thank you both for these key points!

keeping an open mind on all applicants

I'm going to push for more concrete competency rubrics.

I want to make sure that we have clear rubrics for all stages of our hiring process that are aligned to the competencies we look for.

No problem!

outlining objective competencies(rubric) in the beginning of the process to ground feedback & expectations

Ensuring that we don't engage in discussion about a candidate before everyone has completed their rubric.

Clear processes outlined before we start the search

I think I'd like to do a refresher on exactly what you talked about with our whole team. And consider adding a shortened version to hiring manager and client training

Continue to share bias awareness tactics

Checking myself about my own biases. Also calling out in a respectful manner of course things that are unfair in processes and systems and then coming together to brainstorm the solutions

Develop a "communication skills" rubric as that's where I see a LOT of bias creep in.

This has been great. Big shift for me has been the issue with back-door references. And rubrics--super basic, and very important. (but also not so basic! pushes the committee to be really clear about what they are looking for.)

Plugging Edgility! They lead an awesome CoP for Diverse Charter Schools Coalition https://diversecharters.org/disrupt-bias-talent-outreach-strategy/

I'm thinking a lot about trainings and conversations to have as a hiring team before launching a search, and how it might be helpful to do some language norming about the types of common biases, look fors, etc so we all have shared, normed language and group comfortability to speak about it when it comes up!

I want to push for maybe adding performance based tasks as part of the interview process

Record thoughts in a rubric before discussing candidates with the rest of the panel

I want to push our search committee members to more deeply own their own bias as set a forum where we can explecity share that as a group. My hope is that by being vulnerable and transparent about our bias we can have folks that call us out on them, thus creating more equity for our candidates.

Great presentation, thank you

Larger survey here: https://edgilityconsulting.research.net/r/FNQF5YL

Great presentation thank you

Thanks all!

Thanks Ron and Celena!

Thank you!

This was great! Thank you both Ron and Celena….I appreciate the folks in the chat….I learned quite a bit today!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you both for this. Very informative!

Thanks you both this was great!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

thank you!

Thanks, all. Relevant and helpful info.

Thanks so much for this! Appreciate the insight.

Thanks so much! 🙂 Have a great rest of your week!

Thank you!!! Cant wait for the recording :-)

Really helpful, thank you!

Thanks!

Thank you!

Wonderful -time well spent- thank you!

Thank you all!