I sat down with our Head of Operations, Katie German, to talk over our process and the results we had!
Jocelyn: What made you want to “throw out” the traditional hiring playbook and do things differently for TGC’s most recent hiring round?
Katie: Research shows that hiring practices are full of bias, hiring managers tend to hire people that they have shared experiences with, they self-report often relying on "intuition" to find the right candidate, and they follow systems that often yield the same broken results, highly qualified people are overlooked for roles due to their gender, race, class, ability, or immigration history. We were really intentional about naming these broken practices in hiring and asking ourselves how we can minimize bias in hiring to get the best candidate for the role.
Jocelyn: Can you walk us through the hiring process from start to finish? What were the parts you deliberately changed or challenged to approach differently?
Katie: Here's an overview of what we did.
- Job Description: We first made sure that our job description was very clear and that any qualifications we were asking for were genuine requirements of the role. I've often seen people throw on a requirement about having a driver's license or lifting heavy items when neither of those tasks is a key function of the role. Including those tasks can eliminate a large group of highly skilled applicants. We made sure to deprioritize post-secondary education and paid accreditations. We focused on the skills needed, not how someone obtained those skills.
- Timelines: We were transparent about the hiring process in the posting, giving visibility on all the steps, the timelines and the criteria we were looking for. We also included in the posting that we were not taking informational interviews during the hiring process. We did this both from an equity perspective and a team capacity consideration. This helps ensure everyone gets a fair chance in their application and that all candidates have equal access to the information that would help them in the hiring process.
- Evaluation: When reviewing resumes, we used a weighted matrix of criteria that were pulled directly from the job posting. If someone has something interesting on their resume, but it's not something we are looking for, such as spending a semester abroad travelling, they don't receive additional points assigned for it. We were also very intentional about valuing international work experience equally with Canadian work experience as a way of mitigating bias around immigration status and history.
- Interview Questions: All candidates received the interview questions in advance, allowing them to prepare in a way that worked best for them. Before the interview, we also worked as a hiring team to establish the criteria we were looking for in the responses. This allowed us to use the same clear evaluation criteria for all candidates, which again reduces bias.
- Compensation: We paid candidates who advanced to the interview stage a $50 honorarium. In cases where we asked candidates to complete an assignment, we designed a task that would take a maximum of 2 hours to complete, and we paid candidates for 3 hours of work at the hourly rate of the role they were applying to. Preparing for interviews and completing assignments is real work, and we feel people should be compensated for their labour!
- Coaching: For any candidates who interviewed for the role but were not successful, we followed up to offer them a free session with one of our 1:1 job coaches. We weren't sure what the uptake would be, but 100% of candidates said they appreciated the offer and would go ahead and book.
- Communication: Lastly, we followed up with all applicants to let them know that the hiring process was complete and to express our appreciation for their application. Many candidates replied to say they often get ghosted and never hear back when they apply, and having a real person email them meant a lot in their job search journey.
Jocelyn: What’s one small but impactful change a team could make to improve their own hiring processes?
Katie: Review your process! Take some intentional time to look at your hiring practices from start to finish and ask yourselves: "Where might bias show up in the process?"
So many organizations are running on autopilot with systems they have used for years. A very easy first step is to book an hour and review what you are currently doing. Pick 1-2 things that will help you standardize the process and minimize bias, and just get started. Even if you can't overhaul your whole system, you can implement 2-3 small changes in your next hiring round, I am sure of it.
We totally understand that some changes may be too onerous to take on, given your team's capacity. For example, I often recommend anonymizing applications before the resume review to further reduce bias around names, but our small team did not have the capacity to do that this round.
Jocelyn: For candidates, what are some green flags they can look out for to “self-vet” if an organization’s hiring process is a good match for them?
Katie: I always look to see if they are transparent about the hiring process they are using. Are they sharing information ahead of time with all candidates about the steps and criteria? Do they have language in their posting about equity and access? Do the requirements make sense (i.e., are they asking for a graduate degree for no clear reason? That's a NO from me).
