Employees are Everything: Recruitment
Growth and hiring depend on one thing: recruitment. In this episode, Traci and Rob discuss putting fresh energy into your recruitment programs and how to build diversity into the entire recruitment process. Learn some simple tweaks you can make today to your recruitment to make a huge difference in your overall hiring process.
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Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human Podcast, where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal too.
Rob:
So when I hear the word recruitment, the first thing that stands out to me is the word recruiter. And I have worked in this industry for more than 20 years now. And let me just say that recruiters don't have the best reputation. I've got more than a few stories of being contacted by them that just did not feel right, or sit right with me. And I've got more than a few stories about recruiters actively calling Sparkbox employees at Sparkbox during business hours on Sparkbox phones to see if they were interested in other jobs. And I know I'm not the only one that has this experience with recruiters.
And so, this is one of those words that I really, really have a challenge with. That actually, when I hear and talk about recruiters or recruitment, it makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. The fact that I'm having to think about this and reframe the conversation, but that's where we are.
Traci:
Yeah, it's hard because especially, as a business owner, it feels like they're trying to kidnap, or steal your people. And that hits a special little nerve with us as owners, as leaders, as CEOs, and COOs when that's such a big part of our job is hiring good people, retaining good people. And when there's this outsider, almost it feels like they're infiltrating, or trying to infiltrate, and take our talent from us. So, it can feel very violating.
Rob:
Yeah. And on that sentiment, I want to be clear, I believe there's seasons for things. And people will come, people will go. And if it's the right time, and the right opportunity, for the most part, I'm excited for people when they become alumni of Sparkbox. And my experience with recruiters is less to do with feeling like they're trying to steal my people. It's the fact and the ways they're doing it. And the honest belief that I have, that they don't have my people's best interests at heart, and why they're doing it.
And so, much of that gets into how they get paid, I think. 'Cause a lot of times the recruiters I'm talking about don't necessarily work for the companies they're representing, and they're paid a percentage of the salary of the placement they're getting. And whoo, if there ever seems like a misalignment of objectives, and goals, and some bad capitalism mixed in, it's that situation.
Traci:
Well, there are a lot of agency owners, and studio owners that are using recruiters. So, what's the upside? Do you see any upside? Have you talked to other owners that really believe in hiring recruiters, have good recruiters on their payroll?
Rob:
There's a few that I know that do it. And I think it's a personal choice. And I think this is one of the several places where we can correlate a recruitment program with biz dev. I am also one of those people who is somewhat allergic to being "sold to" in a slimy way—and I just used air quotes with "sold to" this is a non-visual medium so that's probably important to point out—and it took a long time for us, Sparkbox, to have a biz dev person, a sales program that we were comfortable with because the examples out there that I had been around in media and all that stuff were all of this salesy, slimy, get somebody to do something, or sell something they don't need. And so, I kind of made peace with that years ago, but it took a while longer to make the same piece with recruitment, having that be a part of our studio.
I think the biggest plus that I see that small business owners get out of having somebody else do it is their time because it is really, really time intensive to do it well. And that all to be said, just like sales, you don't have to have the practices that you don't want, or don't like inside of your company. So, you can make that choice. So, you don't have to follow the things that we see, and the bad pieces that exist out there. So, not all recruiters are bad, just the ones that I've talked to, or dealt with over the years.
Traci:
Okay so, let's assume we don't use a recruiter. I mean, we talked about in our last episode, turnover is healthy right now. We're in that type of a market and business. We don't know what awaits on the horizon, but so far business is pretty strong in this industry. And we've been seeing a lot of consistent growth.
So, there's two things happening here. One, we have open seats occurring probably more frequently than we have had in the past years. And we're also seeing growth, so increased utilization, decreased capacity, maybe an increase in overtime for some people. These are all signals that we need to hire. And so, let's talk a little bit about designing a recruitment program.
Rob:
And I think that the first question that comes up for a lot of people is, well, why do I need this? And when do I need it? And I think that you point out some interesting numbers. So, I went back and did a little research.
Back in 2018, the average turnover for tech companies was 13.5%. And in 2020, that number had already grown to 22%. And I don't have to tell you that it's even gone up from there to almost 30% in 2021.
Okay so, one and tech company was one of the leaders back in 2018. That's changed somewhat, but still almost 30%. That's a lot of turnover. So, what that means is soon as we get to a size of 30-ish, 35 people, we're gonna have to hire one person per month just to stay at the same size.
Traci:
That's incredible.
Rob:
That doesn't even count for any growth that you want to do, or adding new capabilities or capacity. And you're trying to do that in an environment where unemployment's at historic lows, and tech unemployment's even lower than that. The joke keeps being made that if you can spell HTML, you can be a web designer and web developer right now.
Traci:
Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. And so, we've already spoken a lot about kind retaining the people we have, but there's just so much that's out of our control. And we have to expect that people are gonna move on for various reasons. And, as you kind hinted at it, doesn't even include making that decision that we love to make as visionary leaders to expand our offerings, or add another vertical, or look at a completely different skillset to start to dabble in. And those are of fun reasons to grow, fun reasons to expand the team, and to go out and to try to find new talent.
And we need to keep that, we need to keep that fresh energy. And there's so many great reasons to bring in new people. And research shows it improves morale, it brings new ideas to the company, new skillsets, capacity for new work. All of those things are great when we're just purely expanding our team.
But when you add turnover on top of it, and especially turnover we're not really used to owners and leaders can get really deflated quickly. They start to take it personally. Start to feel like somebody's leaving all the time. “Is it because of me?” “What's happening on the team?” And then, the team morale can be affected by that.
So, off the bat, I think it's good for us to be throwing out this research, and anybody who's listening to realize if your team is healthy, if your culture is strong, and you are seeing these numbers in turnover, to know that it's normal, to know that this is what's happening right now. Hiring is hard. Turnover is high. And to frame that for your people as well, so that there is not any sort of panic, or people starting to create reasons people are leaving that aren't really there. This is a natural process that we're going through right now.
And I think it's really important for the leaders, and the team to know it's just the nature of the beast. And we have to learn to roll with it. And now more than ever, we need a strategy, and we need to design a recruitment program, and put it into action. And we need to just roll with it, and realize this is the cost of doing business. And not let it start to impact morale or our own individual psyche as leaders.
Rob:
Yeah, morale or our own individual happiness, which there are days that when people leave that you have to take a step back, and just be like, "No, this is the natural thing." Like you said, this is part of what happens.
And it's been interesting, this year, 2022, and the end of 2021, has been Sparkbox really trying to grow and mature the recruitment program. Because if I go back to a time when we started is we always had a recruitment program. It just wasn't very sophisticated because our needs weren't very sophisticated.
One of the things that my business partner, Ben, and I always did is because we went to so many events, and meetups, and every place we went to that we just kept a list of people that we had met that we wanted to hire someday. And anytime we needed to hire, we would just start emailing people, or having lunch with them. Because like most small businesses, we started out pretty centrally located. That was pretty common back in 2009/2010 when we were starting this bad boy up and we have this list. And we would add people to it. And we would track and keep touch with him almost like a really simplified CRM. And that worked at least with the growth needs we had at that time.
And sometimes people stayed on the list for a long time. And for years, in some cases. And other times they would come and go off the list. But that became our way to keep track of who we were meeting, and people that we thought were, and I know this word is problematic, but they were good cultural fits for us. They were doing the things we wanted. And that was kind before we had better language around those things.
And you fast forward to this point and we're treating our recruitment program a lot like we treat our biz dev programs is we've got marketing centered around it. We've got posts that are always on. We've got all of these things, these coordinated activities that are happening all the time, so that we can find people to both accomplish to make sure that we're staying the same size. But also, we have some growth goals right now. And so, that's become a lot more sophisticated. It includes like LinkedIn, using their marketing tools, actually writing posts with that persona in mind so that we can let people know what it's like to work here. So people can want to work at Sparkbox.
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Traci:
I mean, I think that's all so necessary. I love the crafting thought leadership around—now, of course, it's not gonna be all your thought leadership 'cause you're thinking about clients and winning business as well—but talking to potential employees through your thought leadership is a really important piece to remember.
And so, beyond LinkedIn, are there other avenues that you guys are using?
Rob:
Yeah, we use LinkedIn. We're using our Twitter accounts. We're using various job boards some in more diverse communities that we want to be able to speak into, and be able to hire from to hit some of our diversity goals. So there's lots of those kinds of things.
The other thing that we've realized over the years is our current employees are also really, really good at being recruiters. And not recruiters in the traditional sense where they're doing outreach, but being present, and talking about what it's like to work a Sparkbox, to also be posting things on their social media and their platforms in their voice. Those have become pretty critical parts of what we do as well because the web community, in our case, is pretty tight-knit and everybody knows everybody.
Traci:
Yeah. And I can tell you from experience, and it doesn't matter what industry you're in, the most powerful tool you have is your own employees, the current employees. And if your current employees are evangelists for your company, you have just completely upped your game as far as recruitment's concerned, because there's just nothing like a potential candidate hearing from an employee that this is a great place to work because that's the big unknown as you're interviewing is like, yeah, they're selling me all this stuff and it sounds great, and it looks shiny and happy, and all of that on the outside. But the fear is that after your first week of work, you're gonna think you've been duped or something.
And so when you hear from the current employees, this is the real deal. These core values, we actually live by them. The way that we do our processes, the way we handle projects, the way we support each other, the way we step up when somebody is on vacation, or we allow them to be gone. And we do that for each other. We have each other's backs. When they start to hear things like that, the blood pressure goes down, they get really sold and excited about coming to work for you.
And nothing compares to that type of endorsement that your current employees can have such an impact on your recruitment program.
Rob:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing, just to take a step further, is 'cause you brought up values and I think that's such a great place to start. And we talk about all of our different programs that are both outward-facing and inward-facing. And this is an extension of that. Your values, and the way you treat people, and the way that you want people to feel extends all the way to that very first interaction when they hear about you. And that could be recruitment. That's gonna start setting the stage for what eventual employees will feel about the process.
One of the things that we've said for years on our biz dev programs is I don't ever want to do something that if the person it being done to found out about it, that they would feel slimy. And I feel the same way about recruitment. I don't want to have any practice, or do anything that if somebody found out they were on the receiving end would be like, "Oh, that worked on me?" That kind of feeling grosses me out. And I just want to stay away from it.
So, we look at our recruitment program, the way we talk about things, how we put things out there as an extension of our brand because our goal is on both of those programs, recruitment and biz dev, is to create fans. People that want our content that agree with the way we look at the world, and want what we're selling, and also believe what we believe. Some of those people we want to be able to partner with, and sell to, and the large group of people we, potentially, could be their future employer and want to partner with them in a different way.
Traci:
Right. No, that's great.
You kind of hinted a little bit about diversity. And that you're being completely intentional about also putting out messages in the right place to try to get diverse talent interested in Sparkbox. So, talk a little bit about that.
Rob:
Yeah. So, we've worked with several organizations over the years and that are parts of under represented communities. One of them is Girl Develop It. We're long-time sponsors of them trying to do things and that allowed us... We didn't really ever ask for anything in return, but we hired several people who were involved with Girl Develop It over the years.
Another one was Blacks In Technology (BIT), that we partnered with. And I remember Ben went down to a meet up, and met the founder who lives pretty close here. And just asked, "What can we do to help? How can we help you?" And his response was, "Well, I need a website." So we built them a website. And didn't charge them anything. It was all just work that we were doing in trying to help lift their voices up because that's what I believe most of those groups need. They don't need somebody else who has a bunch of privilege showing up. They need their voices lifted up.
And part of that project was integrated job board and we've posted there. So, one of the things we constantly are looking for is places to post to reach new communities that we're not already reaching because of the network effect and network bias that exists where your network probably looks a lot like you, and has a similar background to you. And all those studies have been done over the years. And we've all heard that. So, I think you have to be pretty intentional to reach communities that aren't that.
Traci:
Yeah. And how has it worked for you as far as increasing diversity on your actual staff? And has your staff been open, and aware, and do they know that this is something you and Ben are intentional about?
Rob:
Yeah. We've talked about a lot over the years. I think that... Well, I know empirically from the numbers that diversity at Sparkbox has grown a lot over the last several years since we started being intentional about it and taking that initiative. And the work will never be done, never, ever be done.
We've heard things over the years where someone from an underrepresented group came back and said, "Well, I found your site a couple years ago, but I went to your Team page and there was nobody that looked like me, so I didn't apply." And it was like, "Oh, okay." And then, the good news was, that several years later the team page changed and they applied because they were able to see themselves, or people that looked like them on our website.
That's one of the reasons we continue to have a Team page is not just for prospective clients, but it's for our prospective employees, it's for people we're trying to hire is if we want to talk about these things here is... And visual representation, obviously, isn't everything, and you can't see all the kinds of diversity. But there are some that we know people are looking for.
Traci:
Yeah. And the tech industry is just so interesting in that regard too, when you look at the overall numbers, when it comes to diversity. And so, it's great to hear how you're helping minority communities grow and the skills needed to start increasing overall in the tech industry, minority representation.
And I can remember just years ago, even getting more involved in the tech industry and being the only woman at an event or the topics were around, how can we get more women in leadership, or how can we get more women on our teams? And now it's progressed to, well, it's not just women, but how can we get people of color?
And I think the awareness level is high. And I love hearing about the intention because when the intention is there and the awareness is there, you start to see the difference. But it's when we don't acknowledge, accept, and try that we become stagnant.And, as we know, there is just so much benefit from a development and design perspective when it comes to having a diverse staff.
And I know in our next episode, we're gonna talk more about eliminating bias as we're interviewing, because there's so much that happens unconsciously that we're not even aware. And again, to go to awareness, when all we have to do is tell our staff like, "Hey, just so you know, this is what science says, this is what kind of happens in our mind. So just be aware." So we know, and we're being more intentional when we're interviewing these candidates. So I'm excited to talk about that in our next episode.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think an important note though, is you also need to be measuring that on your recruitment steps. Because you can eliminate all the bias you want on your interviewing process, or all of that piece once you are talking to a person. But if you're not doing it on your recruitment step, you are never going to get the right pool of candidates. And I think that one of the things that we've done that's helped us a lot is actually on the application process to add an anonymous part where we actually ask some of those diversity questions, so that we can measure who's applying from what groups, so that we can change how we're targeting, and how we're changing our job postings, and all of that to help get the widest possible net that is the most diverse group possible.
Traci:
Yeah. And it's interesting, there was this study done years ago when the tech industry was trying to increase its female representation. And in your posting, just the phrases that you were using, and research showed things like “coding ninja” were actually kind of turnoffs for women. They sort of felt like, oh, that sounds very male-oriented, or things that were kind used in sort of sports terminology on postings. Not to say that women aren't interested in sports but again, unconsciously, sometimes when we see a posting like that, we might think, "Ugh, a bunch of dudes that probably don't want me around." And so, it was interesting to kind of see the research that was done just with that gender, and how they were reading these posts and reacting to them.
And I know there's been lots of studies for minority groups, the same types of studies. And there's a lot of research out there, and help out there with diversity consultants that can help you craft a post that's inclusive, and inviting, and really hits on what you're exactly looking for, and gets rid of these sort of archaic terms, or just kind of old habits we've fallen into. And freshen up the way we post, and the way we recruit.
So, it's definitely worth doing a little research, and dusting off the old job descriptions, and starting fresh.
Rob:
It's marketing. You're going to get the people that you market to. And there's tools out there that do that too. One of the ones that we've used over the years is Textio, which is textio.com where you can actually run your job descriptions through it. And it'll tell you if it's gendered one way, or the other, or what groups it's going to target more than others. And you can actually work. And they have recommendations to actually make them more neutral.
Traci:
Yeah, that's great. There's so many handy things out there nowadays.
Rob:
There is. And I think that the key here is this is an intentional piece you need in your business once you get to a certain size. And it's smaller than you think it is. That's the key here is, I think, it's easy to hear things like, "Well, you need to think about a recruiting program." And it's like, "Oh, I'll get to that when I'm big." And it's like, no, you probably need it now. Maybe it's not a dedicated person, but it's probably something you need to have, and be intentional about way before you think you will.
Traci:
Right. And everything we've talked about in this episode, it's not hard. These are simple tweaks, simple things to put into the plan, and to make people aware of, and to start designing around your thought leadership. It's not hard. All it takes is, again, awareness and intention.
And so when we say recruitment program, hopefully, that's not a big turnoff because people are already so busy and overworked. We're talking about just a few things to put into action. Just one meeting where we can really bang this out, and know that we are paying attention to it the way that we should that is just gonna make life so much easier overall for our team and for us.
Rob:
Yeah. And it's like everything else, if you're going to start being intentional about it, one of the first things you should do is find ways to measure what you have. So that way, you can tell when you make changes, what works and what doesn't. And that's one of the things that I think when we talk about marketing, we talk about biz dev, we talk about all of these softer business things. One of the things is like, what's the old marketing adage? I'm wasting half my money, I just don't know which half, right?
Traci:
Yeah, exactly.
Rob:
And I hate the idea that I'm wasting money. I know that it's some of its brand awareness and all that fun stuff. But you can put in a couple simple metrics to figure out how your recruitment stuff is working, and add to it. That way, when you start adding things to it and spending money, then you can start measuring the impact of that.
Traci:
Right. And one simple, simple tool, and this will be the last thing I say, is ask the people you hired. Or ask the people that you're interviewing. How did you hear about us? Why are you interested? What piqued your interest? What did you see or what have you heard about Sparkbox in the last year, or the last five years, or whatever? Just ask that simple question. I mean, they're sitting right there being interviewed. And I think that little poll will really help you see what's sticking, and what is really attracting people to want to talk to you.
Rob:
Yeah, that's a great thought to end on. Thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
Announcer:
The Overly Human Podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
