Updated
March 28, 2022
In this episode, we dive into re-imagining the hiring process, in particular, how it might be designed if we dusted off executive search to co-create a process that centers our values of equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and anti-oppression.
Find out more about Work Shouldn't Suck's hiring-based offerings here, including full-service executive search, our hiring process consultation, and our brand new values-based hiring course launching this April.
Guests: Katrina Donald & Tim Cynova
Guest Host: Jamie Gamble
Guests
KATRINA DONALD (she/her): Based in Treaty 7 Territory, Katrina is the Principal Consultant at ever-so-curious, and believes that listening and sensemaking practices bring us into community, reveal pathways forward, encourage and embolden us, and allow for greater impact. Her approach is relational and developmental; she works in partnership with people and organizations to co-design inclusive, collaborative, and continuously emerging evaluation and HR strategies. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Manitoba and a Masters Certificate in Organization Development and Change from the Canadian Organization Development Institute (CODI) and the Schulich Executive and Education Centre (SEEC) at York University. She is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, systems thinker, developmental evaluator, program designer, and a Registered Professional Recruiter (RPR). She’s committed to showing up for her own ongoing learning and to building workplaces that are actively anti-racist, praxis-centered, and humble as they work through the prickly bramble of change.
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design, and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.
Guest Host
JAMIE GAMBLE (Guest Host) Jamie Gamble is the Principal Consultant of New Brunswick based Imprint Consulting, and since 2002 has served organizations involved in the arts, climate change, environmental protection, economic development, public health, youth leadership, citizen engagement, and sport with consulting in strategy, evaluation, and organizational change. Jamie’s specialization is developmental evaluation, and he has authored several publications on evaluation including A Developmental Evaluation Primer and A Developmental Evaluation Companion.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about, well, that. In this episode, we dive into reimagining the hiring process. In particular, what might it look like if we dusted off executive search to co-create a process that centers our values of equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and anti-oppression? If you're interested in learning more about our hiring-based offerings at Work. Shouldn't. Suck., whether it's full-service executive search, or our hiring process consultation, or our brand new values-based hiring course we're teaching this April, I invite you to visit workshouldntsuck.co\hiring- assistance. For today's conversation, I'm joined by my brilliant colleague, Katrina Donald, and handover hosting duties to the always awesome Jamie Gamble. We spend the bulk of the conversation unpacking a fascinating and fun exploration in reimagining search that Katrina and I had the pleasure of working on with our friends at Opera Philadelphia as we help them find their first ever vice president of people operation and inclusion. Throughout the conversation, we explore how the learning from that search can inform so much of the hiring that's going on in the world today. So let's jump into the conversation. Over to you, Jamie.
Jamie Gamble:
Hi everyone, and welcome to a special edition of Work. Shouldn't. Suck. podcast. My name is Jamie Gamble, and I'm here today with Katrina Donald and Tim Cynova. And we're going to have a chat about reimagining the search process in a way that centers your values, something that Tim and Katrina have been working on very intensively over the last several months. Tim and Katrina, welcome. Let's start with maybe just telling me a little bit about you in this process. Who are you in a reimagined search process, and what are you up to? Tim, do you want to start us off?
Tim Cynova:
Thanks for hosting, Jamie. This is exciting to be on the podcast in this way.
Jamie Gamble:
It's awesome to have you.
Tim Cynova:
Thanks for the invitation.
Jamie Gamble:
I hope you're back again.
Tim Cynova:
Me too. It's exciting to have a chance to talk about what Katrina and I have been up to the past several months, and deep thinking that we've been doing along the lines of reimagining what a hiring process might be like when every single piece of it is looked at through the lens of your values, and specifically equity, inclusion, anti-racism. This is just a slice of what I get to do with Work. Shouldn't. Suck., and it's been really exciting. Doing this work has been probably one of the top five most fun things that I've ever done in my career. And I've been able to do some really fun things, but taking this thing that we think of as, "It's the hiring process. Most people hire the same way that they did in 1982, so it hasn't changed much in the past 40 years," and having a chance to really sit deeply with these things, and thinking about how do you take HR, and developmental evaluation, and anti-racism, and anti-oppression, and co-creating all of this together in a way that creates something new has been really exciting.
Tim Cynova:
And so that's how I'm showing up today in the conversation.
Jamie Gamble:
Thanks, Tim. Katrina, you've been working really closely with Tim on this, but just tell us about who you are. And you've got an HR background, a developmental evaluation background. You've got lots of stuff on the go. How does that fit into this amazing project?
Katrina Donald:
I describe myself as part R&D facilitator, part system change nerd, part witness, wayfinder, and I'm also a certified recruiter. So when I put all of those things together, when Tim mentioned this opportunity, I thought this was a really cool space to be able to converge that skillset and create something new in service of principles that I think are really, really important and critical to today's work landscape and overall the way that the world is shifting. So I was stoked to get the invitation, and I've really enjoyed taking this process that I know so well from my previous work and pausing at all of these intersections, like Tim mentioned, to ask the questions.
Katrina Donald:
How do we make this a more inclusive process? How do we be a little bit more transparent so that people know what's going on in this process, without having to A, be directly involved, or B, be completely cut out and yearning for that information? We've been really asking ourselves as we've been going along these questions, and that really brings in developmental evaluation and how it supports change in organizations. This kind of process really moves from that talking the talk, maybe more performative way of showing commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression work, and moving it into action and ways that the teams can practice and experience an alternative that will create the space for them to do it differently in the future.
Jamie Gamble:
Amazing. It sounds very cool. And we're going to dive deep into learning all about it and your journey, because you had a chance to experiment with sort of a first prototype, if you will, of this whole idea. But let's start with the why. Why does it need to be reimagined? Tim, you said people are hiring the way they did in 1982, with probably some obvious changes like the internet and maybe the use of algorithms, but you're talking about something fundamentally different. What needed changing, from your point of view?
Tim Cynova:
At the moment in time we're recording this, two years into a global pandemic where people are talking about the Great Resignation or the great adjustment where people are reevaluating what they want their life and work to be like, there's a lot of organizations out there that are trying to hire. They're trying to find people, and so they're asking these questions at a moment when they're really stressed and strapped for resources. You fall back on your defaults a lot of times in those moments, so trying to figure out what learning might come out of this to help organizations that maybe don't have the time or the resources to really dive into how could you do it in a way that centers the values that your organization holds, and in a way that becomes something new.
Tim Cynova:
A lot of times in conversations about hiring, people say, "I get the same people. I post, I get the same group of people every time. Where are you posting to get different people?" And that's so far downstream of what you should really be thinking about and how you should really be crafting every part of it to say, "All right, I'm just posting in the wrong places." You might be, but also there's so much more to this process. Over the past decade plus, I've had a really wonderful opportunity when I was the co-CEO of Fractured Atlas to work with a people team and an organization that was really questioning everything that we were doing. I spent a lot of time diving into unpacking the hiring process. Early in our work toward becoming an anti-racist organization at Fractured Atlas in 2013, I realized that we had built an amazing hiring process that was riddled with bias, and really some problematic things that we were really proud of up until the point that we uncovered all of this.
Tim Cynova:
Wow. When you look at our hiring process through a lens of characteristics of White supremacy culture, it's pretty problematic. Yet we had thought, "Wow, it's really great. It's hiring some amazing people." And it was hiring some amazing people, but it was also creating false positives and false negatives. And so that was a really a moment where we started to pull apart every single piece of our hiring process to say, "What questions do we ask? Who's in the room asking the questions? What's the candidate experience like? How do we onboard people at the very end of this process to make sure we're leveraging this trust and psychological safety and goodwill that we hope we've built during the hiring process to help set people up for success, and so that they'll thrive in the organization?" And that was really the moment where we started to experiment.
Jamie Gamble:
Thanks, Tim. Katrina, you mentioned developmental evaluation and this HR background. Similar question to what I asked Tim around reimagining the search process, but maybe bring in how this idea of developmental evaluation fits, and what drew you into being a partner with Tim and his work.
Katrina Donald:
One of the things that I remember from when I was doing a lot of recruiting was this idea that there were so many ways to understand the organizational culture. Whatever I was telling candidates about the organization came through my lens with my bias, and I was doing everything that I could do to learn about what that opportunity was and how to frame that opportunity. And some of the feedback that I got over the years was that either my story was different from what the candidate experienced, or I was projecting my dreams, desires for this opportunity. And sometimes, it didn't feel like that when the candidate came in. When I think about the developmental evaluation aspect of this, and what really drew me into the process, was the idea of surfacing multiple perspectives about the role, the ways that employees themselves are describing the culture and what it's like to work there, the way we're talking about some of the strategic initiatives that are unfolding in this moment, and how people are experiencing that to give the candidates a real sense or a closer sense of what they're walking into.
Katrina Donald:
So there's an opportunity to bring multiple voices in, have multiple perspectives in the sense-making of what we're hearing from candidates and what we're thinking is really important and critical to the role, but there's also this idea of bringing feedback into the process. And so there's a lot of ways that bias is carried through a process. You might have a really good connection with the candidate, and the next thing you know, you're totally off script and something else is happening, and that there's affinity being felt for lots of different reasons. But this idea of consistency in the process, of asking questions of everybody that are the same, and so that you're presenting a candidate the opportunity to respond to the same question... And then getting that data from the next candidate response to the same question allows the team to really think about what they're hearing in what context, and what they're learning about those candidates within the context of that search process.
Jamie Gamble:
Lots of learning for the hiree and those being hired. And that transparency and feedback you speak to sounds so important there. This was an idea, Tim... We kind of got to tinker with it at Fractured Atlas, hone the craft, if you will. And then you actually had a chance to do it as sort of a classic, not so classic search process with Opera Philadelphia. How did that start? Let's explore this case study, because I'm sure you learned a lot there. How did that begin?
Tim Cynova:
It started with just essentially a cold call email. Someone went to the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. site and submitted a line or two about, "I'm interested in some assistance for a new HR inclusion role that I'm looking to hire." And that person was David Devan, the general director and president of Opera Philadelphia, who I didn't know previously. And we had a really fun conversation, where we talked about what they were looking to do, where they were as an organization, what they're looking for from assistance. Between that moment and the next conversation, David had signed up for our shared leadership and action course that my colleague Lauren Ruffin and I taught, that Katrina also was a participant in.
Tim Cynova:
And so the four of us had this month together in, I think, June of 2021, where we were spending time thinking about how organizations can share power, leadership, and decision-making, and that's just a really great opportunity to think through other aspects of organizational design where you're centering values of equity and inclusion and anti-racism. And that led to the next conversation that David and I had together, where between that first conversation and the course, I had connected with Katrina, who I knew from our work working with a large organization in Canada, creating a leadership program. And Katrina, as she's mentioned, has these really great skills and is brilliant to add this combination of developmental evaluation, a certified recruiter, and was game when I said, "Hey, would you be interested in working on this project together and reimagining what executive search might look like?"
Tim Cynova:
As my colleague Lauren Ruffin has said multiple times, executive search, and really hiring in general, is pretty dusty. We've said this at the top. It's largely unchanged, but what happens if you dust it off and try something new? And it just sort of went from there, where we put in a proposal and bid on the work, and were accepted, and then started our relationship with them and trying to figure out what it looked like when we actually did this thing, where you reimagine every single piece of the process. And really exciting that in January 2022, they welcomed in their brand new vice president of HR and inclusion. That was a new role for their organization, and they're now gelling as a team and moving that work forward.
Katrina Donald:
One of the things I'll add to that is this idea that the role itself was so interesting because it was an HR role, a senior-level HR role that was also bridging the equity officer role in the organization. And so what we had was an organization that didn't have the current HR role to support this process, and to really speak about how this role would be located in the organization. Opera Philadelphia had a hunch that combining these two portfolios would be a way to ensure that this role and the ideas of anti-racism and anti-oppression were embedded at all of the stages of the senior leadership conversations. And so they knew they wanted that at the top level to be able to step into their commitment, but we had to really build what that looked like. And so one of these DE opportunities was in thinking about the role itself, and over the course of the conversation and over the course of the interviews and that process, it actually ended up that that role shifted to a new title.
Katrina Donald:
So it went from being the vice president of HR and inclusion to being a vice president of people operations and inclusion. And there's lots of reasons for that, but it was one of the things that really surfaced, was that this was about people and humans, and the way that these values were grounding everything that they were doing. It was a way in the organization's perspective to address that tension between the compliance part of HR and the equity pieces, which often were two sides of the same coin. And so this position was really created as a way to ground that conversation in the organization.
Tim Cynova:
With the organization, with David up front, they were game. You could tell that they were game to experiment, especially because this was a brand new position. They had hypotheses about what it could look like. They had an active equity and inclusion committee that was providing feedback. They were giving a lot of thought to this, and they weren't set in, "This is what the process needs to look like in order to drop off a candidate in this role." That allowed us to really co-create this process together with them, which set up one of the other things that we were hoping to do, where first was: Can we totally reimagine executive search to center these values? But the second was: Can we co-create this process for the organization that can inform their future searches? So with or without needing to rehire a firm to help them, but can this process really build and exercise this new muscle and these new processes that can form executive searches that they do, or any other searches?
Tim Cynova:
And then that other piece was we could just tell by talking with them that they were open. They weren't necessarily always comfortable, but they were open with being transparent around this process with their team internally, and then as we'll get to, externally as well. We published some videos where they had multiple members talking about what this role meant. And they were conflicting in a lot of places, but they were open with saying, "This is where we are as an organization. Let's be as transparent as possible within the confines of hiring process confidentiality, but let's be transparent so that the people who are interested in this role can be attracted to working with us if they don't already know about us."
Tim Cynova:
And then this last piece that we kept coming back to is: What's the learning from this for the 99% of organizations out there who don't have the time or resources to really dive this deeply into it? And this is where Katrina and I have really been sitting most recently, is as the dust is settling on this process and other processes that we've been a part of, how do you distill this into something that other people can use, if it's not going to be a multi-month executive search process, but hoping to do the in a month-long hiring process?
Jamie Gamble:
Katrina, Tim was really highlighting sort of a unique readiness, perhaps, of Opera Philadelphia. Anything that you would add to who they are as an organization, and why this process was a good fit for them, and what might have enabled them receiving this whole thing?
Katrina Donald:
The readiness that we were noticing from Opera Philadelphia were things like an ongoing commitment to conversation within their organization. Tim mentioned the equity and inclusion committee, which was a key way that the organization had begun to have conversations to see where this role needed to go, and all of the spaces that conversation was being surfaced in the organization. We knew they were taking action. We knew they were having conversations. We knew that David was interested in these models of sharing power and having more equitable process incorporated in processes like search, but also in how he was thinking about the organization in general. They had a demonstrated history of training and working with the concepts from their own perspectives, but also as a group. So these were all parts of what Tim and I were assessing as we were learning about whether or not we would be able to create a process where the committee could be open, where we could bring in processes that really, as Tim said, didn't make people feel comfortable all the time, but where people were willing to stretch and experiment with us.
Jamie Gamble:
Tim, what were the steps? Maybe just highlight for me what was different about this than a more traditional search process.
Tim Cynova:
I think this is one of the funniest things about it, because if you just look at the steps, it's pretty much the same as any other search, but as you dive into it, the approach is totally different. Much like a lot of searches, we started with team interviews, scoping the role, taking a look at the knowledge, skills, and abilities that this role would need. And again, this was a brand new role for the organization that combined two different things, HR and inclusion. Even through the entire search, it was like, "What's the right balance," because we had a lot of really amazing candidates who were coming in that had different weightings for all these things. And so getting really clear from the start: What are our anchors for this role that we're sort of going to run everything through? What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities?
Tim Cynova:
Then going to the content creation, we did a lot more than just creating a job posting. There were audio versions. There were different written versions. There were videos. That was probably a month to pull all of that content together, and edit it, and get it in the right format. Then there's about another month of recruitment and sourcing, and really taking a look at what can this process look like when everyone's mapping their networks, not just the recruiters, but everyone in the organization, and then combining this with what's the collateral that people need to make it as easy as possible to share this opportunities with their networks. Then we went through screener conversations with candidates that were coming in that... Because we were trying to make it as easy as possible for people to submit their materials, we didn't have anything, really, besides, "Just let us know if you're interested."
Tim Cynova:
You could submit video, you could submit resume, cover letter. You could email us. So there are multiple modes for people to submit interest. So the screener process was trying to figure out: Okay, so we have all of these candidates. We need to assess who really meets those anchors and KSAs. And then it went from the screener into... The screener process that Katrina and I really led just between the two of us, but were connecting with the search committee, we had three rounds for interviews, reference checks, offer, and then really working with the team and the organization to create a solid onboarding plan that would stretch out from even before [inaudible 00:21:15] arrived six months later.
Tim Cynova:
What are the conversations that you should be having at week two, first month, second month, third month that tie back to the things we were discussing and exploring in the job interview process? And what are some of those things that you want to identify that new people in the organization have such clarity on? Everything's new to them, so how can you capture those findings and those reflections? So that's what was built into the onboarding process. So on the surface, looks like many search processes that any other organization would run until you really dive into: Well, how did you do that thing?
Jamie Gamble:
So dive in, Katrina. What were the innovations? What did you disrupt? What did you change? What did you redo, if you will, as you went through this?
Katrina Donald:
Often, there are a lot of things that confuse people's understanding of what you need to do the role. We get hung up on a certain level of education, or a certain level of certification, and sort of forget that there are lots of other ways that people book can build training in their portfolio, can build experience, can build working knowledge of key concepts. And so we really tried... Even thinking about the KSAs, what we were putting in there... Because it was coded language for something else, and how we might simplify and use a way to describe what we needed without conflating it with all of these other things that confused the issue. Another piece we tried was when you look at posting a position, there's often a laundry list of requirements that people are using. And what we tried to do there is say, "We know that when you have all of these different steps for building an application, that excludes people who don't have the time, or who can't allocate their energy in those spaces on the timeline that you provide to give you all of that essentially free labor in presenting their application."
Katrina Donald:
And so we wanted to reduce the friction of finding the opportunity to be really interesting and the actual act of expressing interest in that position. That's why we said, "Any way that you would like to express interest in this is a way that we will accept." And then in that first screening process, Tim and I were listening for what it was that was intriguing those candidates. And so it was really, "Tell us about how you understand this position, and tell us about how you see your story really contributing to your understanding of this role and where you think this role could go in the future." That allowed us to sort of say, "Can we imagine what this conversation might look like?"
Katrina Donald:
The other thing is that we didn't give a detailed summary of our conversations to the team. We said, "We've spoken to this person, and they have a really great understanding of the role. They have a unique perspective they can bring, and our recommendation is that we bring them into this process." And so it was really the team who got to hear for themselves how those candidates were really conceiving of the role, and how they contributed to it.
Tim Cynova:
There was a lot of trust and rapport-building that we were doing with their five-person search committee in those first couple of months to get to the place where they would trust us that you don't need to be on the call for the screeners, or you don't need a long debrief, but that the KSAs and those three anchors around HR expertise, anti-racism leadership, and a connection to opera and or Philadelphia were being met throughout those screener calls. It really was sort of modeling how do we quickly build trust and psychological safety and rapport with people who we didn't know. No one knew us from that group, except for David, who had been in the course. And I think that piece then when it gets to the job posting... There's old research that... Old-ish, I guess, research that shows White guys will apply to a job that they're like 60% qualified for, but women and people of color, that research showed that almost 100% of those qualifications needed to be met.
Tim Cynova:
Why not include this really long list? Because it starts to exclude people. So what's key to this role that people have to have? And then you can layer on more as you get into the process, but make it as easy as possible to get people who are interested in the role, who have the KSAs to get into the process, and then use the interviews and other things during the interview process to start refining who's in that group. But also, there's been a lot of talk around pay transparency and pay equity. So in that job posting, they included how much this role would be paid, what the benefits are, who this role reports to, which is an interesting thing I've found missing from a lot of job postings, especially when you're not quite clear where this role fits. And I find this in a lot of for-profit companies. Is a vice president associate, essentially, or is this the number two next to the president in the organization?
Tim Cynova:
So including who the role reports to, how much it's going to be paid, especially now where it's located. Can it be remote? Is it hybrid? If it's hybrid and changing to be on site, what's that date so that people have what they need, and then don't ask them for exhaustive labor before you even know if you're going to be interviewed? I recently came across the job posting for the head of HR for the US Department of Homeland Security. And the amount of labor they were asking for applicants to produce before they even might be considered for this role, probably... Unless you somehow had it already or were a really fast writer, you're talking hours. How many amazing candidates just tapped out and said, "No, I don't have the time. I'm not going to do that. That's a lot of work for maybe nothing"? What might the process look like to, say, get people in there, and then start to uncover those things that you think are so key to people being successful in the role?
Katrina Donald:
What Tim is saying about providing all of that information up front actually results in this posting that looks and feels different as well. And I think that was one of the things that we were really trying to do differently, was: How does this position stand out and attract applicants in a way that maybe it wouldn't if it was just a traditional, very linear way of thinking about the role? And so what that meant was there was actually quite a lot of heavy lifting in creating that position description and the posting, because we were making sure that it was accessible. We had audio recordings of that. We had text that had highlighting so that it was easier to read for people. We had different ways that you could take in the information about the role.
Katrina Donald:
So we had attachments that people could download and consider for themselves, without losing that in just that basic text. So there was quite a lot of effort and energy that went into making sure that anybody who might be interested could look at that posting and consider that opportunity in a way that was gentle for them and interesting for them, that allowed them to express interest.
Tim Cynova:
I think one of the keys too that was a part of that job posting was everything was on one page, so that you could land on the job posting page and you didn't have to go looking other places for videos or a podcast. Because including all the stuff that Katrina just said, there was a podcast episode with David Devan talking about this role in Opera Philadelphia. There are four videos that we recorded with a selection of, I think, 10 members of the Opera Philadelphia team addressing very specific questions related to this role, like "What does this role mean to you and Opera Philadelphia?" So there's all of these materials in different media on one page that when candidates were looking at the role, they could scroll through it and they didn't have to hunt and peck around the website. And when you think about it, job search is a full-time job, oftentimes. You might be interested in a role, but you might not have the time to dig deeply into this organization before you have an interview.
Tim Cynova:
Having everything in one place for people was really helpful, and we found that people told us they only applied because of the job posting. They saw it was different. They could watch videos, read transcripts of these conversations that sometimes don't even happen in an entire job process, let alone before you even decide if you want to work at an organization and apply. All of this created just sort of a different interaction with candidates and the process, which when it came to the interview phase was really cool, because you had candidates coming into the very first round who knew so much more about the organizations, its challenges, what this role would be. They came with questions related to that, not, "What's this role?" And so you could use your time differently in this. One of the coolest things I think happened for me in this was when you saw candidates come in and quote search committee members back to them.
Tim Cynova:
They had internalized these videos so well, they're like, "Darren, when do you said in this interview blah, blah, blah, what did you mean by that?" It was just a different feeling for everyone in that process. And we know this because we also debriefed with candidates throughout the process, and we're like, "How's this going for you? Is there anything you might want to know that you don't know?" And I think this is where the developmental evaluation sort of made it feel like you're building the plane while you're flying it. And we said this many times. We sort of knew where we were supposed to go, knew what the arc was, but each phase and each stage informed what was next. So it was a lot of, "Okay, we need to retool this, because this is the thing we need to now get from candidates, or this is what candidates need to get from us."
Tim Cynova:
It was really this organic evolution that was kind of exhausting. It's not sort of a set template that you can go with, but was so much more responsive to the needs of everyone, candidates, search committee, organization. And I think that led to a process that just felt differently, and felt more human and understanding of everyone in the process.
Jamie Gamble:
You mentioned the search committee having their interviews quoted back to them. What did you notice in the search committee as this evolved over time? What was their feeling, their emotion, their engagement, their shifts? What happened for them?
Katrina Donald:
The search committee included members of the organization from across functions and from different levels of the organizational structure. And so we were constantly working with the group sense-making around people who had done a lot of hiring in a certain way in the past, and for people that this process was brand new for. So we were managing and asking them to self-manage as well the way that power was distributed in those conversations. So people had goals around stepping forward and stepping back to allow other voices. And over the course of the process, we really saw the opportunities where people were stepping in in different ways, or when stepping in was actually stepping out. And we were seeing with those spots where this structure really creates a holding pattern, and so we were learning a lot with the committee as we were going about what it was like to work in collaboration across the organizations in this way.
Katrina Donald:
One of my favorite moments in the search was when candidates actually remarked that they missed a search member that wasn't able to be in their interview for whatever reason. They were saying, "Oh, I'm really disappointed that this person couldn't be here, because I really appreciate the perspective that somebody at this level of the organization is really bringing to this search. It's making me think about the different entry points for this role, and the different kinds of conversations that this person would have." I think the other thing we noticed throughout the process was when we used the rubrics for weighing the candidate interviews, the conversations that we were able to have were really evidence-based. We heard people say, "I noticed this in this candidate. I noticed the way that they were listening to the questions that were being asked, or the information that was being offered. I really appreciated this question that they brought to the table, because it shows me that this is something that they're really curious about. And I know that's something that we are really curious about, and so there's an alignment that's created there."
Katrina Donald:
We were listening to this feedback, and we were listening to the ways that they were hearing differently, maybe, and listening differently based on the prompts that we were able to give them that rooted back to the KSAs that we were going for and the organizational values that were grounding the process.
Tim Cynova:
I think the other piece on this too was the search committee members, and that this decision was going to be made by two people. That was also listed on the job posting, all of that information. It detailed who these five people were and the roles that they had in their organization, and said David Devan and Veronica Chapman-Smith were going to be the two deciders for this role. They're really using this as an opportunity to exercise sharing power and sharing decision-making. That was clear to people coming into the process. That was also this dynamic that we were working with, because it was a little unusual to be in this process where you have two decision-makers, and you have a model that... Opera Philadelphia uses a modified RACI model for responsibility mapping and decision-making, and that was really being lived out in this way.
Tim Cynova:
So you had deciders and you had consultative members of this, and everyone in the process knew this. It wasn't a secret. And part of this commitment to transparency was on a biweekly-ish basis, Katrina and I were drafting updates that would go to the entire Opera Philadelphia team. We would detail what has happened, what the update was. And one of the really cool things was at the end of every update, there was a prompt for people to provide feedback on whatever phase we were in, and it was anonymous feedback. We set up a Google Form, and it might have been, "Where would you post this role?" So we could get that in and say, "Have we covered these yet, or should we look to do that?" Or the next one was, "What kind of questions would you be interested in asking the candidates?"
Tim Cynova:
And so we could take that in, and if we hadn't already included that, work that into the process. And then the next update would start with, "Here's how this feedback was used." So people who weren't in the entire process could see that their feedback was being turned into input that was influencing the process. And so this was a really interesting dynamic to share as much as you could, again, in sort of the confidentiality of the job search process, but in a way that really lays the groundwork for people understanding how this new member of their team was coming into the organization. And the last update, we shared... I think it was 26 pages of everything that went into the interview process.
Tim Cynova:
We had a very highly structured process that included, as Katrina said, same prompts for every candidate, asked by the same people in the same order so we could make sure that every candidate was being evaluated in the same way. And that's what we shared. We said, "Here's everything. Here's all of the scripts, all the email templates. Here's all the interview questions and scenarios." And I don't know if anyone made it through all 26 pages, but if you wanted to, it's all there. And now, going back to that prior point, now it can be a resource that you can draw upon for future searches. You might not do 26 pages, but you might say, "That's an interesting scenario. Why don't we modify it for the development role? Why don't we modify it for..." whatever it might be.
Katrina Donald:
One of the really surprising pieces for me around providing those updates... Because they were quite dense. There was a lot there. We often wondered, "Is this the level of information that people are interested in, and are we going a bit... Taking this too far?" But when we did our debrief and I asked the search committee what kind of questions they were fielding about the process throughout the process from their colleagues in their areas, what I heard back was that it was because of the updates and the checking in that we were doing, the time we were taking to do that, and the way that Opera Philadelphia was just sharing those sort of directly from Tim and I to the organization. Because of those updates, there was really limited skepticism about our process, which I think is something that there's always lots of questions around search processes, often because the doors are so closed.
Katrina Donald:
I really loved hearing the feedback that even if people didn't read it, they felt like they could see the rigor that was being applied in this process. And they also were asked about their own felt sense of experiencing, of participating as a selection committee member. And so this looks to be like a transparent and inclusive process. Did it actually feel like that? And so that was a really cool point of alignment for us too. And then I think the other comment that I heard on that question was this idea of being really curious about overall learning, and receptive to, "Could you bring this question back to the committee?" Or, "Maybe you could ask Katrina and Tim something like this." And so those were sort of the loops that I was noticing that really reinforces the opportunity in those check-ins.
Jamie Gamble:
It's a great example of the link between developmental evaluation and this process, but that is really a very DE, developmental evaluation, thing that you were bringing in. And not only informing the search process, but helping the organization to change and be ready for change, and to really come out of the hire ready to move forward. One of the things I'm hearing a lot is the shifting of burden that happens through your process. You're sort of reducing it at the front end, perhaps asking more of the organization throughout, and then increasing it as it is appropriate to do so, and so implied in that is that there's a lot of power shifts at play. You're doing this as two White people in a process that is very much about race and change. How did you navigate that, and what did you learn about that?
Tim Cynova:
This was a question that Katrina and I sat with for a really long time when we were invited to be a part of this process, invited to submit a proposal for the process. We had to wrestle with it and say, "What's our role? What would we bring to the process? How can you be two White people helping lead a search process in an anti-racist way?" And I think that's what, for me personally, that I sat with. If we were to be hired, how would I do this? Who would I work with? Who would I consult? How would I want the process to work? Whose voices are included in the process, directly and indirectly? How are my biases and my lived and learned experience problematic and hindering what might be a process that creates something new and something better? What's the responsibility, and how can I use my own power and privilege in a way that helps create something new?
Katrina Donald:
I think what I'd add is that one of the things that we hear, in this conversation, in this moment, is that the tendency is for White people to rely on our systemically and historically marginalized communities to do the emotional labor of EDI work. And so part of this, for me, is using very consciously the power that I have in my social location to surface these conversations, and to facilitate conversations that can attempt at the very outset to set conditions that we know are in service of equitable practice. And so we're not waiting for the harm to be done to learn from that situation. We're actually reducing it at the start.
Katrina Donald:
And I think that the work that Tim has been doing and the work that I've been doing very personally and with organizations allows us a lens that if this is where we can have impact in changing systems to make them more equitable, anti-oppressive and anti-racist to move forward, then that is, to me, a really good use of my energy and my skillset and my knowledge and experience in this conversation. It's always going to be a messy question, and it really is one that I have with my collaborators, or that Tim and I have before we say yes to work, how our work contributes in a way that is really bespoke to the work that we're about to take on. And so it's not saying that this is in general the reason why, but maybe in this particular case, we feel like we can have an impact in this system, or we feel like we can guide this particular process.
Jamie Gamble:
So what did you learn? You've come through this Opera Philadelphia process. They've hired someone. They're now in the organization. Cast your gaze back and tell me what worked and what didn't work.
Tim Cynova:
I think this is something that we're getting clarity. There are things in the moment where we're like, "That didn't work," or, "That was really cool." And there are things I think that as more of the dust settles, we have clarity on. There were some really cool things that the search committee did during interview processes, this question of: How do you shift power differentials that often exist in interview processes, where it's usually one person with a lot of power who's either in the room or asking the questions, and then... Especially candidates, you just have to go along for the ride. Maybe you get 5 minutes or 10 minutes at the end of an interview to ask questions really quickly, but really sitting with how can you shift this during every part of the process.
Tim Cynova:
And that included emailing candidates some of the questions in advance. Or, "This is what the interview's going to be like. Here's how it's going to start. Here's who's going to be in it," so it's not I pop into a Zoom call and there are seven people who I don't know, and I'm not sure what the first question is going to be. So there's some of that. There's leaning on the work of liberating structures to say, "How can we use something like a listening circle in this process? What might that look like so it's the same for every single person?" So maybe a usual listening circle, you wouldn't be scripted if you did the circle five times, but we needed to make sure it was authentic for what people had to say, but that it was the same thing more or less every single time so you knew candidates were responding to that. So there was some of that as we were, again, building the plane and... While we're flying this thing, we're like, "Wow, we put a lot of stuff into that one interview."
Tim Cynova:
At the same time, the search committee recognized, "We're asking candidates to do a lot of stuff pre-work for this interview, and we want to compensate them for their time." So they decided to pay everyone who is going into the second round a $250 honorarium, recognizing that it more or less was probably going to take people two hours at a roughly $125 an hour consulting fee. So every one of the candidates going into that knew, "This is going to be a lot of work, and we want to recognize that this is labor you're putting into it, and we want to provide you with this." And doing it in a way too that isn't, "Now you need to submit an invoice, and maybe 18 weeks later you'll get paid," but it was really around, "How can we get people as fast as we can this money?" And it was using things like PayPal.
Tim Cynova:
So as soon as the interview's done, or the interviews are done for that day, all the payments went out, so people had the money right afterwards. And again, I think that showed the committee's respect and care for the candidates who were going through their process, and not wanting to add more burden to them to be like, "I know this is kind of awkward, but did you send the check yet?" But there are some things that coming through, we're like, "Yeah, we put a lot into that interview process. We got a lot of good data from it, but maybe we should retool this in a different way.
Jamie Gamble:
Can you give me an example? What would be different if you were to retool it?
Tim Cynova:
When we started with the committee, I think Katrina and I probably had three pages of just questions. We thought about, "What kind of questions could we ask the candidates," and there probably were, I don't know, 75 questions there. And at the end of the day, we probably spent maybe four hours or so with every candidate, when you think about the check-ins that we had. And they're probably like five prompts per interview, so you only had like 15 things. So I think most of the interview questions and scenarios yielded us data, but they're also new. I usually think if one answers that question the same way, it's a bad question, or it's a bad prompt, like there's a giant back door that everyone just goes through. It's like, "How do you prioritize and track projects?" And people are like, "I'm a list person."
Tim Cynova:
And if everyone says they're a list person, you didn't really get any good data to help you make your decisions. So when things are like, "Eh, it seems too similar," or maybe it's like, "We didn't craft that in the right way," those would be things where I would want to go back and say, "Maybe this was cool, maybe this was a fun thing that did have some interesting conversation around, but if you get five questions in an interview, was this the highest priority one to ask?" So I think there's some things like that. And also, that yields to: What's the burden on the search committee? Taking a look at it, it ebbs and it flows, where there's a lot up front, and then it sort of dies down when you're sourcing, and then it comes into search.
Tim Cynova:
Some of the things were marathon days, because we're trying to keep all the candidates either on the same day or within a day or two so that you didn't have this drift between rating and waiting candidates. So there's some of that. I would want to not have five serious interviews on one day. People need a break.
Katrina Donald:
I would say there was probably... If I had five insights to offer about what we learned, they would be number one, that taking the time to talk about some kind of committee agreement for grounding the way that that committee would be in relationship over the course of this search, and to really talk about power dynamics and where there might be implications for the way that the system is used to operating, and the way that would feel different in this. And so to sort of have those conversations and take the time upfront with the committee. We did in some way, but I think next time I might do it a little bit differently to actually really bring in some of the learning that we've had to set the container for that search committee to engage. I think another thing that worked really well was the way that we communicated with the candidates.
Katrina Donald:
So there was an element of candidate care that we were really trying to stretch and explore in this process, and part of that was prep in advance, so letting them that, "This interview doesn't really require any immediate prep. Our focus is going to be on X, Y, Z here." If there was prep in advance that was required, that they would be compensated at a fair rate for that work. But then there were also moments where we just checked in and touched base with them, where we just said, "How are you doing in this process? And any questions for us? Is there anything we're doing?" When we started to interview, what we really tried to focus on was that we were weighing the candidates' opportunity relative to the role, and not rating the candidates between themselves. So we were really trying to say, "What is this candidate bringing to this opportunity? And then what is this candidate bringing to this opportunity? And then what is this candidate bringing to the opportunity?"
Katrina Donald:
So that was our first lens. We wanted to center the opportunity and the organization in that piece, and the candidates really responded to that. So when we got to the point where we had to regretfully say we weren't continuing with them, many people had enough knowledge about what we were trying to do and how we were trying to go about it that that regret made sense in the way that they were understanding the opportunity, and so there was a relationship. And in a few cases, actually, a relationship that's been ongoing with candidates who weren't successful in this because of their experience. I think another one to mention, the liberating structures. And I think the focus here was on how we held the space in the interviews. So we used technology in a different way. There were times when candidates watched something in prep for their interview. There were times when the candidates experienced a different way of asking questions in the interview.
Katrina Donald:
So whether we were going in the round and having people's perspectives shared in that version of a circle process, whether we were having them be sort of a fly on the wall in a conversation between two people, and then bringing their questions and curiosities into that. So when we were looking at liberating structures, we were saying, "Which of those things need to happen in the space of the interview, and what can be preloaded, or what can people reflect on coming into the conversations? So how are we best using that time when we're all together?" And then I think the last thing, the fifth thing I would offer, is just that we had a really strong commitment to sticking to time for candidates. We wanted them to be able to know and anticipate that there would be time to ask questions to the committee.
Katrina Donald:
And so even if the questions that we were asking were running long, we had a timekeeper in that interview who would ensure that our commitment to having space for candidate questions was being honored, and so we would shift and move in the moment to make sure that we have that space.
Jamie Gamble:
The readiness of the organization is key. What advice would you have to either organizations that are trying to self-assess, "Should we engage in a process like this," or someone who's going to engage them in a search, like you and Katrina did, to assess the readiness of their prospective client?
Tim Cynova:
There are different levels of doing this. I think every organization can say, "How do we have structured interviews? Let's create structured interviews." You might not do anything related to your values, but just structured interviews. As a start from, "Let's just see how the conversation goes," and, "Oh, you like bourbon? So do I." And you're like, "All right, that doesn't tell me if you're a good CFO or not." So starting with things like structured interviews, and then really into what are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that a candidate has to have to be successful in this role. And how can you tie those to questions and scenarios that you ask throughout the interview? And keep asking yourself, what data do I get from this question, this scenario that supports whether or not this candidate has these things? And again, we've talked about interview questions and scenarios.
Tim Cynova:
For the most part, we ask scenarios, not these "tell me about a time" questions that are biased against people who have that experience, but like, "Here's something real. How would you deal with this? How would you handle this? What would do you do with it?" And it really allowed candidates to show up in a way that said, "Okay, yes, let's talk about pay transparency and the challenges that an organization has if they don't have that, and they need to evolve it," or, "Let's talk about open enrollment if you're going into that, and how you balance copays with level of coverage." And so you can do all of those things without sort of saying, "Let's reinvent everything." But just say, "Let's have a structured interview process, so everyone goes through the process in exactly the same way." They're greeted by the same person at the office that every other person is, if you're doing in-person interviews. Or if one person is on video, every person is on video.
Tim Cynova:
We see this a lot nowadays. Maybe three people are located in the city where this organization is located, but maybe two people aren't. And so you do in-person with some people, and video for other. No, if one person has to do it, everyone does it. And this showed up in the interview process in a really interesting way, where we had about a 30-minute conversation with the search committee around: If we get thank-you notes from candidates, but we don't get them from every candidate in this round, do you want us to forward them along to you? Because this starts to set up... Well, now you're getting something from someone, but not from other. And then do you start to take in this thank-you letter as data that sways away from other decisions that you're making? And so there's a way for organizations to do that without saying, "Let's retool everything," and I think for the most part, that's where you should start.
Tim Cynova:
You should start experimenting with this, and then every time you do it, you add to it. You iterate. You say, "All right, those questions didn't work," or, "Let's don't have Tim ask this, let's have Katrina do it," or, "Let's figure out how to include this," or, "We learned from previous new employees that this would've been helpful to include," and put that back in. And I think this is sort of the concurrent validity, where you're pulling feedback from something that's happening at the same time into a process, where if you just ended a process, ask the person as soon as they get in to the organization, "What was it like? What would you have changed?" And then capture that data, and then include that back. So I think that's a way to really improve your process without too much work, but then there's this really deeper workaround.
Tim Cynova:
If you're going to really work to center values of equity, inclusion, anti-racism, anti-oppression, that takes some really deep thinking and work to sit with. What does it mean to do that in the process? And that's why I said start exercising as a team around how do we reimagine the search process before you sort of jump right into the deep end and say, "Now, let's do everything at the same time," because you want some small wins here. You want to exercise those muscles before sort of retooling everything, especially if you're trying to do it internally, where you're pulled between, "I'm on the search committee. As soon as I get out of the search committee, I need to go into those HR meetings, and then I need to go in operations," and then all these resource things.
Tim Cynova:
And so I think for Katrina and I, it was really interesting and helpful to be external, but really close with the committee in a way that... Sincerely, really miss getting to work with the five people on that search committee. We built the bond and rapport, and Katrina mentioned saying goodbye to candidates. You got to know candidates really well throughout the process. And when you had to say, "Only one person gets the job, so everyone else you have to say goodbye to..." So how do you hold that candidate care, and do it in a way that you stay connected with them, and really want the best for them? And so I think those are some things that I'm holding from this process, and then thinking, "All right, next time, how do you do that thing? Maybe how do you do it faster, or differently?" Because every organization is different. Everyone's different, as we know. So what does that look like then, in a different scenario?
Jamie Gamble:
So what's now? You've done this once. Would you do it again? Where does it all go from here?
Katrina Donald:
Yes, I would definitely do this again. I think we saw some encouraging signals through this one process that tells us that a process like this has potential in other scenarios. And so I think I'm really curious about how this work actually works in organizations in different sectors who do different work and different structures, or organizations of different sizes.
Tim Cynova:
I mean, I would totally do this again, especially getting to work with Katrina, because there's all these ideas that we have. We both have been involved in hiring for years, and this was just a different take on our own knowledge, skills, and abilities around reimagining the process. And so I think part of it's like, "Yeah, let's do this again. Let's try out those things. Let's see what works the same and what work works differently." And going back to that earlier point we made, what's the learning? What's available for the 99% of organizations who aren't going to use this extensive process? And so we're experimenting around hiring process consultation, a much lighter process that can work in parallel with an organization's own processes and people in a way that helps you work through your job posting, or who's on the committee. How do you set things up?
Tim Cynova:
Essentially takes this entire process that probably was like four months, then says, "What if it's boiled down to five touch points that are an hour to two over the course of the two months that you're leading this search? What might that look like, and how might organizations be able to benefit from this other learning and external input and feedback to then inform their searches, and then take this learning forward by themselves, and not have to work with an external firm?" So there's both that large-scale quote unquote "full-service executive search". There's this lighter-weight hiring process consultation.
Tim Cynova:
And then in April, what's really cool is we're gathering a group of people together for an inclusive hiring course that we're going to be teaching over four Wednesdays in April that will go through this, what's the learning, and then work with people who are either just about ready to start hiring or in their process to use these real-life case studies to say, "What's working for you?" Let's come together as a group to share these learnings, because there are so many organizations that are doing really interesting work, one of them being our colleagues in Toronto at the organization Generator, who we have a previous Work. Shouldn't. Suck. podcast with, who we really benefited from having the opportunity to talk with them, to say, "This seems a little challenging. Was this also challenging for you? And what did you do?" And so that community learning is one of the really exciting things that we're looking forward to in this exploration of how can we continue to iterate on a hiring process that's value-centered.
Katrina Donald:
That course will allow us to learn a little bit more about that and iterate our own process, but also see where this process goes when it's being held by different hands, and how that increases the likelihood that other hiring processes will look different in the future.
Jamie Gamble:
So lots of paths forward. If you are resonating with these ideas, you can do a full-on executive search with outside support, or you can build your own muscle step by step through the course, or through this community that's developing and these ideas that you are sharing. Maybe just to wrap up, would you each just share one moment? Take me to a moment in this process where you said, "Yes, this is really cool. Something really special is happening here." Let's end with just that insight into the possibility of what you've shared with us.
Katrina Donald:
One moment I would say that really resonated with me in a really exciting way was actually in the debrief. The debrief that we had with the selection committee at Opera Philadelphia, just hearing some of their stories about how this felt different, and how people felt heard and felt like they were doing important groundwork for the organization, and what that possibility is really, really spoke to me and encouraged me. I think the fact that all five of our search committee members said that they would definitely reengage in a process like this was so meaningful to me because we had put a lot of care into it. And so that care felt like it was picked up and felt back. And so that was a really, really special conversation for me.
Tim Cynova:
I'd second that too, that was really meaningful. Oftentimes we do a lot of work on stuff and we just hope for the best. This is going to do the thing we hope. To go through this with this search committee, and also to hear back from the candidates that we stay in touch with about the process, about it felt different. It was fun. It was challenging, but it was fun. It was incredibly meaningful. And I think that's why it was one of the top five most fun things that I've ever been a part of, because people showed up and they were game to do stuff that was different. And at the end they said, "Yeah, it didn't all go the way we thought, but it feels like this is something we can do now and we can be proud of it.
Tim Cynova:
And I think that, really a big thanks goes to those five members on the search committee who are a part of this with us. They were really doing it. We helped guide the conversations, but it was them coming up with, "How might we do this?" And saying, "This feels a little awkward and stressful and uncertain, but if all of you also are game for this, I'm here too. And so I think Kathryn and Darren and David and Michael and Veronica, a huge thank you to them for allowing us to be a part of that process.
Jamie Gamble:
Katrina and Tim, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. Tim, you just said feels like we're onto something. And we are here. There's this path forward that you've taken some first steps, and hopefully this podcast helps others carry the journey forward and bring work into their own practice, and their own organizations, and their own searches. And Tim, thanks for trusting me with the mic on your podcast. It was a real pleasure to speak with you.
Tim Cynova:
Jamie, thanks so much for taking over the microphone for this. And Katrina, as always, it's brilliant to get to work with you, and always learning something new through this. Thanks for saying yes to that initial inquiry.
Katrina Donald:
It's hard to say no to. And this podcast has been so fun because it really is collision of my work worlds. So thank you Jamie for being our host today, and Tim for giving us the opportunity and the platform to talk about it.
Tim Cynova:
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