[00:00:00] Talent acquisition is a critical part of a company's ability to function effectively. The idea of screening or interviewing for job and company fit is not new. We can all agree that this is an important factor in the whole process, but where does it belong in the process itself in this episode, your ideas about where this factor should fit, maybe challenged in a good.
[00:02:24] My guest is yawn Vander hoop, president of fit. First technologies Yon is passionate about helping businesses find the right people in the most efficient way. Fit. First offers a suite of technology services ranging from applicant screening to reference, checking to career matching. This was such a fun interview, as you will recognize from the few laughs we had on air Yon is a very engaging speaker, was strong convictions and the data to back those up.
[00:02:52] Enjoy the. Hello and welcome back to talent management truths. I'm joined today by Yon vendor who who's the founder of fit first technologies. Welcome to the show young.
[00:03:07] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Thanks, Lisa, it's going to be here.
[00:03:09] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. So I thought it would be interesting for our listeners to first, to hear a little bit about who you are and about fit first and what you do.
[00:03:16] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: I'd say I'm sort of a career misfit in a lot of respects. So, you know, it's funny. I, I, my career has not been linear by any stretch. I started. As a management trainee with Hilton international hotels. So on the operation side of things back in the early eighties and accidentally found myself in HR, and it was one of those things.
[00:03:37] I mean, the industry is such that there's a lot of movement. Anyway. They try to tell you that the movement is, is planned and deliberate. And really it's more based on. Turnover. So it turned out that the assistant director of personnel, as they were called back in the day, had moved on to something else.
[00:03:53] And I happened to be in the right place at the right time. And the director of personnel tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, would you fill in for a few months? And I thought that would be sort of the next step on the management rotation. And again, one thing led to another, the industry being such as it was Richard, who was the director got promoted to the UK.
[00:04:12] I found myself in my mid twenties, the youngest director of HR at the largest Hilton hotel in the world and a learning curve near vertical. and it was a wonderful time in my career. I mean, you know, in terms of you know, manager and mentor, Richard really pushed me hard when he was there. You know, there were lots of times it didn't feel great and I didn't necessarily appreciate it in the moment, but I really began to appreciate later on what opportunities that had afforded to me. You know, worked through some pretty significant stuff at Hilton before Frito-Lay came along and recruited me to join them. So I spent about six years with the Frito-Lay organization with some pretty big regional assignments. So at first it was Ontario, both manufacturing, as well as sales and accounting and you know, other departments.
[00:05:02] And then they gave me Western Canada. So I was living in Calgary, but Serving everyone from thunder bay to Victoria. So there was lots of, lots of exciting things going on.
[00:05:11] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: on hopefully getting some lovely bowls of lightly salted on the side. That's
[00:05:16] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Oh my God. You, if you've never tasted a miss Vicky straight off the line or, or a Cheeto.
[00:05:22] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: It's that
[00:05:23] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Oh, my word.
[00:05:24] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Divine.
[00:05:25] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Oh, unbelievable. So anyway, it was, it was, it was Frito-Lay for about six years and was recruited from there to run HR and Canada for office Depot, which I did for about four years. You know, in hindsight, I would say the, the pattern that came clear at the end of all that Lisa was I had operated in subsets of us or, you know, Canadian subdivisions of us organizations, which is always a special kind of pain on a.
[00:05:51] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah.
[00:05:52] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: You know, each time when I joined the Canadian division had an awful lot of autonomy. So as a member of the senior leadership team, you know, I, I worked with others around the table to figure out what our strategic plan was going to be. And then to execute the heck out of it over the course of the year and each time
[00:06:10] that was a roaded while I was in the job.
[00:06:14] So, you know, the America. Look north and say, Canada's not really that different and why don't we operate it at our Chicago? Or why don't we operate it out of wherever? And so our roles really went from being very strategic to being executing somebody else's plan. And again, in hindsight, what I realized about myself is when I'm executing somebody else's plan. I lose a sense of ownership. That's really important to me. And that's where I started to disengage each of the three times. And, and it was after my third stint with office Depot that I looked in the mirror and said, you know, I can do this corporate thing really well. I'm just tired of what I have to do to make it work.
[00:06:50] You know, I I'd been very successful, but I came to terms with the fact that I was really a bit of a misfit in the corporate. And what was interesting was as I transitioned out of corporate and started my first business, which was consulting, I found myself doing a lot of work with organizations, primarily in the U S because that's where all my contacts were when I started my consulting business.
[00:07:12] And I, and I kept running into great people in great organizations, but who themselves had also become missing.
[00:07:18] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Oh, interesting.
[00:07:20] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: And they hadn't always been misfits. And so what was, what was cool? Was it along the way for about five years, Lisa? I, a big part of my work was working at the intersection of people and organizational systems. And one of my entry points into that work was around doing leadership development work and specifically.
[00:07:40] Coaching, but more teaching leaders in organizations to use the coaching skills as part of their repertoire and using coaching as a tool to deepen relationships, to unleash performance, to build engagement, all the rest of those things. And in doing that training almost every time. And it didn't matter which of my clients I was at.
[00:08:02] There'd be people who come up to me at the end of the, you know, two or four day coaching training session. Who would say, I mean, the stuff you always want to hear, that was, that was a great session. Blah-blah-blah but, but at some point they'd say in the conversation, you so clearly love what you do and it comes across in the delivery and that they hesitate for a second.
[00:08:21] And they would say something along the lines of, I used to have a piece of that. That was, that was me when I started. that's what got me starting to think about this notion of fit, right? Because, because I think the one universal truth is I haven't yet spoken to anybody who hasn't been able to put their finger on the time in their career when they were a great fit when they were on fire and in the zone and it was effortless and they loved the work they were doing and the people they were doing it with.
[00:08:47] And they can just as easily put their finger on the time in their career when they were.
[00:08:50] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. And sometimes it's in the same role.
[00:08:53] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: It was for me at Frito.
[00:08:54] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: too. Yeah.
[00:08:55] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: the only thing that changed was my manager
[00:08:57] And I, and I I'll tell you, I mean, in the course of two or three months, I went from being confident, successful, doing great work, feeling great about what I did to feeling completely unsure of myself and undermine. And taking a lot of that home with me.
[00:09:15] So it results, you know, when, when things are going well, it infuses your whole life and when things aren't going well, it infuses your whole life. And the only thing, literally the only thing that changed was a new boss came in
[00:09:24] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Interesting. Yeah.
[00:09:25] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: and I made the mistake of convincing myself that I could fix it. So I hung in about 10 months longer than I should've done thinking that it would change and I could make it work. And it was exhausting.
[00:09:34] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Well, it's inter it's interesting. Cause like, cause I can relate to that and I can tell you that many of my clients that I work with, I see people go through this and you know, we often say stuff like, you know, I stayed too long. I knew much earlier and you know, I've kind of been challenging my thinking around that recently, and I'll tell you what.
[00:09:49] Because I think that it takes us time to figure out why is there a lack of fit all of a sudden, like, so in your case, it was the management. What, but beyond that, if you, if you, you know, unravel that a little bit further for me context, it changed not the leader. And so the things, you know, I really thought about what I really loved doing part what was core to me building starting fresh, fresh slate.
[00:10:12] It was no longer. Right. And there were other different things that came in that, you know, like there was some values misalignment. And so once I was clear on that, then it became apparent. I had to do something about it. I had to move, but it took me a while to figure that out. What do you think about,
[00:10:29] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Well, I think, I think two things are true. I, I th I think it's hard to see clearly when you're in it.
[00:10:34] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: yeah.
[00:10:35] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: And it's especially hard to see clearly. When you're in it, if you don't have a coach or somebody who's working with you from the outside, because at times like that, it's really hard to confide with coworkers. And so unless you've got somebody who's external to the organization, who's really only focused on supporting you in your success with no, no agenda attached to it and, and giving you the, the gift of being able to step back and see things as clearly as you can, while. It's just really hard. So that's, that's the value for me of hindsight,
[00:11:05] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah.
[00:11:06] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: but what that episode in my life, when I was doing that work with organizations really underscored for me, this there's a Legion of people out there who have become misfits.
[00:11:15] And so fit's not a static thing, right? If, if the fits, if the fits right at the beginning, that's no guarantee that it's going to be right to you. Or five years later. And because everything is dynamic, it's organic. Things are always in flux. They're always growing and shifting and changing and, and there are times when they no longer are working and people have been taught to suck it up and, just let it pass.
[00:11:36] Or the, you know, we got a mortgage and we've got kids growing up and the paycheck's important. And I don't think many organizations really understand how many people are, have become misfits
[00:11:49] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Right.
[00:11:49] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: in their organization because it's, it's hard to, it's hard to identify. It's hard to track, you know, the reality is they're still showing up for work every day or most days they're still, you know, their work is fine.
[00:12:01] You know, everything is fine and yet nobody's on fire anymore.
[00:12:05] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So how does, so clearly this has led to, perhaps how you named your company. Tell him, tell me about fit first and, and. You've been describing.
[00:12:16] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: It's another accident. Know, it, it, I mean, it is came out of a series of events. One of my clients at the time was uh, retail company here in Canada and a were already large. They had four brands. they were, they were in, I think, six provinces and growing like crazy. And like everybody in retail.
[00:12:38] You know, the challenge is how do you find the right people for your business? And they had two particular pain points. One was because of where they were in their growth cycle. They had no choice, but to recruit experienced people from outside the organization. So they were paying a premium, a big premium to bring in people who had done two and three times and other organizations exactly what this organization needed, done to support their growth. And the challenge was. More than half the time those people were flaming up, not because their knowledge and experience, you know, this asset, the company had paid a premium to acquire was misplaced. It wasn't at all, but because they weren't, they didn't fit the culture. So the company had a really tough choice to make either, do we build a wall around this person?
[00:13:18] Not let them interact with anybody in the organization and try to extract what we can from them or do we just. And the second pain point for them was, you know, in any retail. So like hospitality in the sense that a big part of the business model is based on finding great people at the associate level.
[00:13:37] But the certain proportion of them need to be promotable because that's the pump that feeds your front level management, mid-level management and on up, and, and that pump wasn't priming for them. They had lots of great associates, but none who were promotable. I can still remember the one day I was, I was in there working with the, the leadership team one of their monthly meetings.
[00:13:55] I can't even remember what we were talking about, but something came up and the CEO was triggered. I mean, he was angry and he was pointing at me and he had spit flying out of it. And he said, you know, this, all of this stuff, we're paying a huge amount to figure out the talent management side of things and it's not working.
[00:14:13] I need you. And he was, this was when he was shaking. I need you to go down to HR and find out what we're doing wrong. And, and so I did, you know, I, I went and sat down with them and had them walk me through the process and the steps and why, you know, what was working and what wasn't and what was really unsettling.
[00:14:28] Lisa is if. Had brought with me and I didn't, but if I had brought with me a list of best practices from my days in corporate and, and let's face it, I mean, Frito Hilton, office Depot, all pretty sophisticated companies with lots of really good practices. So I'd, you know, I'd learned, I'd learned for some really good places, but if I brought that list of best practices with me into that meeting, I'd have been able to tick almost every one of those books.
[00:14:54] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Hmm.
[00:14:56] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: So they were doing everything right, but something fundamental was misfiring.
[00:15:01] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So how did you figure that out?
[00:15:02] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Well, I didn't right away. So, you know, as, as coincidence, coincidence would have it, I met the guy not long after that who became my co-founder and business partner. And Tim lives out in Halifax. He'd been. On his actually, as it turned out, we didn't realize it at the time. We'd, we'd been contemporaries at Frito for a period of time.
[00:15:22] And he left that organization, got into performance. Coaching in organizations had used assessments in the course of his work here and there. But the conversation was a pretty. Sporadic one, because we'd meet up for dinner. When Tim came into Toronto, we'd grab a beer somewhere and, and we kept picking away at this question that, that you phrased, you know, what was, what was missing.
[00:15:45] And we were looking at the Gallup work, you know, all of their research into engagement. We looked at a number of studies HBR had done some longstanding work to study. The success of salespeople over long periods of time. We looked at academic research around predictors of performance and, and it all came together.
[00:16:05] This one night we were up at a restaurant. I remember it was in Mississauga called moose. Winooski is on Mississauga road up by the 4 0 1. with you know, the brown paper table tablecloths and a cup of crowns on the table. And Tim and I started to doodle literally. So our business plan came together on this tablecloth and essentially what had come clear to us is, we'd all been in the habit when we were in corporate and all of our clients were in the habit of starting from the. And looking at a pile of resumes. And I still remember having the biggest, it was, I was in this in the days before applicant tracking systems. So we were doing it old school with, with piles of paper resumes and figuring out based on somebody's education and experience the, the particular schools they'd gone to the particular employers they'd had you know, looking for patterns that would have.
[00:16:53] Put somebody in the, a pile. And if they didn't have that pattern, we'd put them in the C pile. And if they sort of had the pattern, we'd put them in the B pile, but they were all made up rules. And, and this one study that really got our attention in the, in this research phase that we were in, came out of university of Manchester. In the UK and it's, and we liked it because it's it's research that had been repeated over over time and the, and the stats didn't change. But what they were studying was the predictive value of each of the bits of information that we capture about people as we take them through the selection. So everything from, you know, interests and experience and education right through to possibly if the company is going to administer a psychometric and or what their thinking style is.
[00:17:39] and what struck us in that research was the data that's in the resume is a very weak predictor of success. In fact, it's the three weakest predictors of success. Statistically speaking. And I don't want to dismiss the resume because obviously it's, it's still a critical bit of information, but sometimes we put too much weight in certain things and it can be misleading.
[00:18:01] And so, and so if you look at. The mechanics, if you look at hiring as a process and most organizations, and we did this when we were in corporate is, you're starting from information. That's a weak predictor of success to get down to the short list and then trusting the interview process when you get in front of people. And if you look at it from a lean perspective, if you look at lean manufacturing process, for example, you always want to have your most predictive. Elements at the front end of the process, because that's, what's going to give you greater consistency of the back end of the process. And we were looking at this research from the university of Manchester and seeing thinking style and behavioral fit as the most valuable predictors, the most reliable predictors of somebody's success. Rarely being administered in the process. And if they are, it's usually with the shortlist and our question became a, what if we could find a way to actually snap that in at the front end.
[00:18:53] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: So
[00:18:54] it really comes down to like switching up the sequence and also the waiting attributed to each of the, of the indicators.
[00:19:01] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Yeah. That's exactly what it was. It was, it was, it was primarily shifting the sequence is getting to get the most reliable bit of data as early as you can in the process.
[00:19:09] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: A little bit about how you, you know, tested that out.
[00:19:13] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: well, so our first system, the prototype that we'd sketched out on the brown table cloth bear in mind, this is 16, 17 years ago now was almost comical. Simple because we didn't have access to behavioral science. At that point, we couldn't afford to buy our own really rigorous behavioral science. We were making assessments available to our clients, but they were other people's tools that we were reselling.
[00:19:42] And because they were big and complex and expensive, they tended to reserve them for the shortlist at the end, which is fine. So we thought, well, how could we help them get it better? And, and, and our first step was to put the first interview on. So at the same time, as you know, we were collecting a resume and a cover letter, we would also serve up a first interview to candidates and we clustered questions.
[00:20:04] Based on what we call the four critical aspects of fit. And the four critical aspects of fit is, is a phrase that we coined, which came out of looking at some of the academic research around fit. But it also, what we discovered was it dovetails really nicely with all of all of Gallup's work around engagement.
[00:20:20] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Hmm,
[00:20:21] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: you look at Gallup Q 12 questions, which are the, you know, Gallup was the first one to come to market with this employee engagement. They're slant on is it's really about the relationship, right? It's about the relationship that the individual feels with different components at work, but those different components of work really fall into forecast. You know, my relationship with my manager, my relationship with my work, my relationship with my coworkers and my relationship with the organization, you know, I feel proud to work here. I, I, I, I feel proud to tell my friends that I work here and what I do. And so we just twisted that up very slightly and said, well, if an organization is looking for engaged employees, then the starting point has to be helping them find people who are going to be engageable in the reality.
[00:21:04] That's waiting for them.
[00:21:05] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, I like that word engageable.
[00:21:08] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: And that's, that's an important part of the fit, right? So yes, you need an engaging manager. You need an, a, a manager who builds followership, but if you don't have the right raw material, somebody who's engageable in that reality, then it's not going to click. so we started to talk about the four aspects of fit as predictors of engaged ability and made it about fit with manager fit with. The way we do it around here, fit with the people I'm spending my day with whether that's customers or coworkers, and finally fit with the organization itself. And, and so in that very early 1.0 version platform that we launched, the questions that we baked into the online interviews for our clients were open-ended questions related to those four aspects of fit.
[00:21:50] And we'd always say, So it would be things like Lisa, tell me who was the, who was the best manager you've ever worked with and what was it about that person that made them such a great manager for you? and the, because of the way the question was phrased, it would force people to go deep into their memories, right?
[00:22:06] It's not a, it's not a top of the mind response because they need to go deep to, tell you this.
[00:22:11] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: That's exactly. Well, when you and I were talking in the green room, that's exactly what I was describing to you when we were trying to get at that fit, both fit for current state and aspirational fit for where the organization was trying to go as a culture,
[00:22:23] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Right. And, and, and there's no right wrong answer to those questions. Right. So the person's without, without realizing it, they're telling you lots about their attitudes. They're telling you lots about what has worked for them in the past and why and what they respond to. But we'd always pair the opposite question.
[00:22:38] So Elisa, who was the worst manager you ever worked with and what was it about that person that made them an especially poor manager for you? And so you'd get both sides and then we'd ask a similar pair about, you know, fit with coworkers. We'd ask a similar pair about fit with the job. And in these open-ended answers, we'd get all kinds of insights into their attitudes, their values, their beliefs, their standards. And so what was, what was happening was, you know, there was, there was no way for us to score any of those answers, but the clients that were using the system were reading those open-ended open-ended responses and really holding them up against what they know is waiting for them in the organization and trying to decide subjectively completely subjectively, which ones are likely to, you know, based on what we offer is this person likely to thrive or.
[00:23:25] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Right.
[00:23:26] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: And it took us about four years after that, before we had the reserves to be able to commission some really big and expensive work with a team of behavioral scientists to take the you know, the really rock solid behavioral science that was in those assessments that we were offering up to our clients to use with their short list and bake it into the front end of our. so the twist now for our clients was, yeah, we were still collecting the resume and the cover letter and taking people through pre-screen questions. But the final part of the process would be a really short, typically six to 10 minute behavioral questionnaire that was specific to the job they were applying to. But the upside for the employer was now everybody who applied had a fit score besides.
[00:24:12] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Okay.
[00:24:12] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: And so they were sorting the stack based on fit score, starting with the person who's most compatible behaviorly with the open position and looking at their resume to make sure that there's no red flags and that they're at least in the right ballpark in terms of knowledge and experience. And it was about six years ago, maybe close to seven that we came to market with talent sorta, which is that platform.
[00:24:34] And And it was scary, Lisa, honestly, it was, it was, it was like having a baby in the sense that, you know, you, you, you know, this thing's coming to market, but you don't know how the world's going to greet it. And so we were really curious cause we, we knew all of the features and benefits that we baked into it. So we could, we could describe it intellectually. We, we could describe what it did, but we, we couldn't for the first several months. Describe the value to employers because we needed to have clients using it long enough to tell us what they saw. And, and what was, what was interesting was we had feedback that started to shape up and predictable waves. So the first wave would be, you know, this is saving us a lot of time. We're spending time in fewer interviews, but with better people. And so, you know, we're filling our positions. More quickly, we're spending less time in bad interviews with people who look great on paper, and we're able to spend that time that we've gained much more strategically than we might have otherwise.
[00:25:30] So that was always great to hear.
[00:25:32] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, high value.
[00:25:33] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: The second wave was almost, it came in two parts. The first part was, you know, as we look back, these people that we've hired have been a great fit for our business since we asked them. So what does, how do you know. And there was very few metrics that they could give us hard and fast, but they'd say things like, you know, they're onboarding faster, they're productive sooner.
[00:25:53] They're staying longer. They're taking friction out of my operation, whatever it was, but almost always, then they'd sort of cock their head to one side and say, you know what? We realized there was a lot of these people that we've hired, who are doing so well with us or people we'd never have looked at in a million years based on anything in their resume.
[00:26:08] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Mm.
[00:26:09] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Yeah, that was always my reaction. That was the isn't that interesting. So, you know, our, our hypothesis had always been, there was a lot of a lot of great candidates getting lost in the, in the shuffle between the long list and the short list.
[00:26:23] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Right.
[00:26:23] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: But we had no way of proving that until now. Right? So this is one of our, one of our clients going to phrase that we love to use.
[00:26:32] They said, you know what? We're, what we're, what we're finding is this fit. First approach is helpful, helping us find great people in surprising packages.
[00:26:39] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: It's so interesting. It seems to, you know, this has been a theme that's coming up in a few conversations I'm having about turning on its ear, the tradition of looking at those linear progressive, you know, career paths and thinking that's the only way. And when in actuality, a lot of. The best fit, the best performers are those surprising packages.
[00:26:59] People that fell into something accidentally or how to, you know, unconventional stint over in something completely unrelated. Right. But yet brings them all kinds of perspective and, and expertise that. Ironically directly relatable to the job at hand. So it it's, it's very, very interesting. So one of the thing that I want to make sure we have time to talk about is earlier you were telling me about some work that you're exploring doing in the U S with a large American college and, trying to Re-skill, up-skill a huge number of people.
[00:27:31] And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about that endeavor, what that could involve, and, and how's some of this technology in your thinking around fit would play into it.
[00:27:41] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: No, it's another accident. You got it. You're getting a theme in the conversation, Lisa. So it, you know, not long after we launched talent sorter. We became curious to see if we could make the technology work the other way around. All right. So, so we built talent sorters. 200 people for fit and open possession. What we were curious about was could you have an individual go through the the behavioral assessment and an interest inventory and maybe a couple of other bits and pieces, and then project them into a universe of occupations and help guide them to better choices. and it turned out it worked really well in that direction, too.
[00:28:13] And, and so we started to build out different iterations as we were building it and testing it with different groups. We had some really amazing opportunities presented to us that we hadn't pursued, but they just sort of fell into our lap to work with agencies and organizations who work with folks who are not mainstream.
[00:28:29] Let's just put it that way. So the first was an agency that works with people who have intellectual and physical disabilities and their task is to bridge them into employment. We ended up working with probably 10, maybe a dozen organizations who do the same work with folks on the autism. Similar work with formerly incarcerated, with at risk women and youth with veterans who are struggling to reintegrate.
[00:28:52] And what was, what was, there were two things that were really valuable for us to learn through that exercise. One was we were able to discover that the, the technology, the science baked into it was really helpful in bridging those folks into employment opportunities in part, because it was able to take some of the perceived risk off the table for the employers that were. you know, the conversation shifts really quickly when the career advisor or the job developer bringing their client to meet with an employer says I'd like you to meet so-and-so. And as you see on this report that I just put in front of you there in 86 fit score for that open position you have. Now, all of a sudden, it's not what's wrong with so-and-so it's, what's possible with so-and-so and what's the w you know, what could we, what could we do together?
[00:29:34] and so we've started now to build out a much more robust. Career planning application which is really the backside of talent sorters called job demise. And in job to Maya's, we've got a space for individuals to go and, and self navigate towards jobs that are likely to lead to happier endings as we like to describe it.
[00:29:54] And there's also a space for anybody who's an intermediary in that relationship. So career advisors, but what's interesting is we originally designed that space for folks in workforce. Spaces, but we've got a really cool diversity of people in organizations that have started to show up in that intermediary space.
[00:30:11] We've got industry associations using it. One of them is the Ontario electrical league to help them find more apprentices. And we've had just incredible results there. Not the least of which is they've, you know, we, we talk about the emphasis on diversity and equity and inclusion in today's world as we should.
[00:30:29] Without any real outbound effort, what the electrical league has found is that 24% of the candidates they've hired are diverse candidates who come from pool pools that had been underrepresented previously in the. Which highlighted for us, how focusing on the resume as the starting point, really excludes people who have non-traditional backgrounds, it doesn't matter.
[00:30:53] They, they just can't hope to have the right combination of keywords and phrases in their resume.
[00:30:58] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: think that were necessary to have.
[00:30:59] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Right. And so one of our clients. Beautifully. And this is another one of these gems that just landed in my lap that we use liberally and, and the way they put it is, you know, what we've learned is aptitude is evenly distributed in the population. Opportunity is not. And when you think about what's in the resume, it's nothing more than a summary of the opportunity somebody had access to up until now in their life, in terms of access to skills, training, education, meaningful employment networks. You know, all of those things. And, and when you, when you let go of that as a barrier and just put on a different set of glasses that help you look for aptitude rather than pedigree, you're going to find aptitude all around you. And so that's, you know, you mentioned the work at Dallas college. They've, they've landed a significant grant from the U S department of labor to Repurpose some folks who've been displaced by the pandemic and by technological disruption and other things, their mandate is to fill, to train and to place 4,000 people in careers, in advanced manufacturing it and transportation logistics.
[00:32:05] And so, you know, we're, we're along for the ride with them. And in part it's, you know, the front end it's going to be to help them identify people who are naturally well-suited to those careers. The investment in training is going to be well-placed. And so that they're going to be likely to stay in the jobs, waiting for them at the end of the training commitment.
[00:32:24] And I suspect that we're probably going to need to screen at least 10,000 people in order to find those 4,000. cool thing is
[00:32:32] we were using reason to optimize for that. And we're also using optimize to create a safety net because, you know, when I said to them, so let's say it's 10,000 that we screened to find your four.
[00:32:41] What do you do with the Casper? What do you, what do you do with the 6,000 people who showed up and, and what is it too bad? So sad. So what we're doing is, is we're actually doing two things. We're, we're giving them their career planning report that projects them into the entire own occupation library of 1300 careers and chooses their best picks with the idea that they can take that report back to the agency that referred them.
[00:33:03] So whether it was urban league or Goodwill or wherever they came from, at least the agency is going to have something tangible now to help redirect them to something that. Lead to a better outcome for them. But because Dallas college is a network of seven campuses across north Texas, that's a community college that trains people for careers.
[00:33:21] They're also going to take that data and say, what else could we be preparing these people for? So Dallas college is actually going to be preparing a pretty significant safety net for those folks as well, so that they don't feel stopped if they're just not
[00:33:33] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Well, I'm even thinking it may lead you know, it could inform new programming that they offer.
[00:33:38] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Absolutely well
[00:33:39] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, congratulations on that particular piece of work. Cause it sounds like, you know, it'll be very meaningful and it's very timely because we're seeing more and more. We hear about it all the time.
[00:33:49] People that have been not cast out, but um, But it displaced yeah. As much better term, you know, through the pandemic. But even before that and with technology just, you know, moving at an ever increasing rate, it's going to be more imperative that right. That we start to, to help people figure out what's the next adventure.
[00:34:09] Especially if it looks nothing like their first or second or third rodeo.
[00:34:13] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: Right, and, and building from the resume to figure out your next step is. You know, so that's, I think, you know, we spoke a little bit about this before we before we hit record, but, you know, I think it didn't occur to us and we're learning so much as we go Lisa, but you know, the, this whole notion of, instead of helping somebody figure out their next move, based on their skill adjacencies let's instead help them figure out what their next move could be based on their behavioral adjacencies, trusting that if we're moving towards something that's more future friendly. But there might be an investment required in skills or knowledge that that investment is going to be secure.
[00:34:49] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, it's a, it's a whole other, you know, way, way to look at it. And I think what really occurs to me here is how important it's going to be to, to challenge the traditional thinking. That's still very entrenched. I wish there in general. Right. and given the growing urgency, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:35:05] How do do we, I mean, fit first is doing it's part, you know, but you've got a product and so on and I'm thinking, what about the rest of. Talent acquisition professionals, listening, HR, talent management, you know, what, what are some ways that we can start to help facilitate that kind of.
[00:35:21] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: I think, I think there's a few ways, right? So it's interesting because I was on a call earlier today with a group of HR professionals from a member organizations of the Idaho manufacturers. and you talk about tight talent pools. I mean, Idaho is a small state. You know, they're desperate for people and what I shared with them and answered a very similar question was where we've seen success in other places, Lisa, which is, each of the organizations actually starting to think as a community and thinking. In partnership with community colleges, with workforce agencies, with organizations who work with, people from different walks of life, whether they have disability or whether the newcomers or whatever it is, but really starting to think now of the labor pool as a regional asset, that we all have a responsibility to steward effectively. and it's incredible how, when. Leaders in a regional context like that begin to engage as a, unit, all the different aspects of their community how solutions start to appear and it, and it starts with taking an intensely personal centered. View of what an individual's full potential is and helping guide them through the education, the development and the career opportunities that are going to help them well, it'll help them maximize their potential, but at the same time, guess who else has potential?
[00:36:41] It maximizes along the way, everybody.
[00:36:43] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Yeah, it is truly win-win.
[00:36:45] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: So, so that's part of it. And then, and then internally I think the other piece is, you know, we've, we've always had a huge challenge with hiring managers who were stuck and fixated on a specific resume type. And in our experience has been objective data like that situation I described for you where the job developers meeting an employer and putting a report in front of them saying this is an 86 fit score. Objective data can often win over subjective beliefs about what's important in a resume. And, that's shown itself more than once in our relationship with our customers
[00:37:17] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Right. Bringing data, being able to tell us with that.
[00:37:20] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: data that's accessible, understandable, and that makes sense to people.
[00:37:23] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: Help help nudge people along. Right. Open them up to new ways of thinking and operating. Yeah. Well, fascinating stuff you and I could spend hours I think w.
[00:37:33] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--guest136625--jan: I'm not sure anybody's still listening, but
[00:37:37] jan-van-der-hoop_recording-1_2022-03-02--t08-18-04pm--61157a395affa4006d0cfc64--lollyg: I think there's a lot of, a lot of nuggets of wisdom here you on. So thank you so much for coming on the show and
[00:37:44] sharing with us, your, your views and, and, and what you do and how your company is, is helping with the challenges of the day when it comes to getting the right people in the right place at the right time.
[00:37:53] And a pleasure. Thank you.
