Faire und gerechte Einstellung erfordert eine Strategie zur Mitarbeiterbindung (S2E14)

Anita Chauhan (00:16)

Hallo zusammen und willkommen zu unserer neuesten Folge von „Looks Good On Paper”, unterstützt von Willo. ⁓ Ich berichte aus Toronto, wo es gerade sehr kalt ist. Wir sind heute Morgen mit einer Menge Schnee aufgewacht und ich friere ein wenig am Fenster, aber ich bin sehr gespannt und freue mich auf ein sicher sehr interessantes Gespräch mit unserem neuesten Gast. Ich möchte Gillian Emerson im Podcast willkommen heißen. Gillian ist Leiterin der Abteilung für Talente und Partnerschaften bei Toast, wo sie dabei hilft, die Einstellungspraktiken von Technologieunternehmen neu zu gestalten, indem sie Gerechtigkeit zu einem Wettbewerbsvorteil macht. ⁓ Gillian war eine der ersten Mitarbeiterinnen von Toast und hat dabei geholfen, die Personalabteilung von Grund auf aufzubauen. Ich bin so gespannt. Ich finde es toll, was Toast in ganz Kanada und Nordamerika leistet. Bevor wir hier angefangen haben, habe ich bereits erwähnt, Gillian, und darauf können wir noch näher eingehen, wie schwer es ist, als Frau in der Tech-Branche Fuß zu fassen. Ich finde Ihre Aufgabe großartig. Ich würde gerne von Ihnen hören. Was habe ich in der Einleitung vergessen?

Gillian (01:10)

Mm-hmm.

Anita Chauhan (01:16)

Was hast du heute hier bekommen?

Gillian (01:18)

Ja, auf jeden Fall. Danke für die Einladung. In Calgary ist es sehr sonnig und warm. Ich weiß nicht, warum wir getauscht haben. Normalerweise ist es kalt und eisig, aber heute ist es in Calgary sehr sonnig und schön. Ja, danke für die Einladung. Im Grunde genommen bin ich zu Toast gekommen, als wir gerade angefangen haben, eher zufällig, wie viele Leute in der Personalbeschaffung sagen.

Anita Chauhan (01:22)

Was?

Gillian (01:39)

⁓ Ich habe mein Grundstudium in Ontario absolviert, wo ich Psychologie studiert habe, und bin dann nach Calgary zurückgekehrt, um meinen Master in Management zu machen. Ich habe dann irgendwie meine Pflicht erfüllt und dachte mir: Okay, Beratung scheint der natürliche Weg für jemanden zu sein, der einen Master in Management macht, aber das war überhaupt nicht erfolgreich. ⁓ Ich habe einen Schritt zurückgetreten und mir gesagt: Okay, lass uns über die Schule nachdenken, lass uns uns wieder darauf konzentrieren. Und dann kam ein Projekt auf. Toast wurde gerade gegründet und sie nahmen an einem Projekt namens „Propel Project” der Universität von Calgary teil. Dabei bekamen sie ein 50-Stunden-Projekt mit einem Studenten. Ich habe mir ihre Website angesehen. Sie war noch sehr einfach aufgebaut. Sie hatten noch keine Mitgliedschaft eingeführt. Das gesamte Projekt war noch sehr vage. Und ich dachte mir: „Melde mich an.“ Und so ...

Ich habe mich dafür angemeldet, meinen Lebenslauf und mein Anschreiben eingereicht und wurde dann glücklicherweise ausgewählt. Und ich habe einfach bei allem mitgeholfen, von der „

“ Bei allen Projekten, bei denen sie Hilfe brauchten, habe ich Umfragen und Fragebögen erstellt, Feedback gesammelt, und das hat sich sehr schnell zu einer Rekrutierungstätigkeit entwickelt, da ich natürlich einen Hintergrund in Psychologie habe. Ich hatte schon immer Talentakquise oder Personalbeschaffung im Hinterkopf. Also habe ich mich dort wirklich engagiert. Und dann... entwickelte sich das Ganze zu etwas ganz anderem. Und so waren wir in den letzten drei Jahren sehr erfolgreich dabei, Unternehmen dabei zu helfen, mehr Frauen für ihre technischen Teams einzustellen. Ich bin zusammen mit April Hickey, unserer CEO, gewachsen, um diese Rekrutierungsfunktion auf der einen Seite des Unternehmens aufzubauen. Auf der anderen Seite des Unternehmens haben wir eine Mitgliedschaft, die Frauen in der Technik unterstützt.

Anita Chauhan (03:30)

Das finde ich großartig. Das erinnert mich wieder an vor 10, 12 Jahren, als ich gerade angefangen habe. Zunächst einmal komme ich aus einem nicht-technischen Umfeld, und sie sind aus der Regierung gekommen, und ich wusste nicht, was mich erwarten würde.

Gillian (03:44)

Ja.

Anita Chauhan (03:45)

Und jetzt wissen Sie es wahrscheinlich auch, oder? Man ist einfach nicht darauf vorbereitet. Ich denke, vor zehn Jahren war das noch ganz anders, aber ich glaube, dass wir hoffentlich mehr Frauen in MINT-Berufen sehen werden, die diese Positionen übernehmen. Aber Sie haben vorhin tatsächlich gesagt, dass Sie einen leichten Rückgang beobachten oder dass Toast das bei Frauen in der Tech-Branche festgestellt hat.

Gillian (03:54)

Mm-hmm. Ja, ich denke, generell ist es toll, Frauen zu gewinnen, aber letztendlich muss man sie auch halten. Was wir beobachten, ist, dass Frauen in die Tech-Branche kommen, aber dann nach ein paar Jahren wieder aussteigen, vielleicht in einem bestimmten Alter, was wirklich schade ist. Deshalb setzen wir uns sehr dafür ein, Systeme aufzubauen, die natürlich von oben nach unten ausgerichtet sind, damit Frauen in Führungspositionen vertreten sind, aber auch Vielfalt in die Prozesse einfließt. Und zwar durchgängig, von der Bewerbung über das Vorstellungsgespräch bis hin zum Angebot und dann zur langfristigen Unterstützung, um mehr davon für Frauen zu fördern.

Anita Chauhan (04:42)

Ich finde es großartig. Wir werden uns gleich näher mit diesem Prozess befassen. Aber warum gehen wir nicht gleich zur ersten Frage über? Was ist der größte Fehler, den Unternehmen bei der Personalbeschaffung immer wieder machen, obwohl er eindeutig nicht funktioniert?

Gillian (04:50)

Das ist cool.

Ja, dazu möchte ich sagen, dass meine kurze Antwort natürlich lautet: Es werden nicht genug Frauen eingestellt, es gibt keine vielfältigen Pipelines, aber das ist ein viel größeres Problem als nur die Nicht-Einstellung, wenn man sich alle Bewerberpools ansieht.

Ein Teil unseres Daseinszwecks besteht also darin, Unternehmen dabei zu helfen, ihre Pipelines zu diversifizieren. Wir beginnen immer mit einem Erstgespräch, um zu verstehen, was über die Stellenbeschreibung hinausgeht und was Sie wirklich suchen. Aber auch, wie sieht die Zusammensetzung Ihres Teams aus? Wer leitet diese Position? Wie viele Frauen sind im Team? Wie sehen die Beförderungszyklen aus und all das.

Dann integrieren wir das in unseren Prozess, damit wir sicherstellen können, dass unsere Kandidaten von Anfang an informiert sind. Das größte Problem, das wir derzeit bei unseren Kunden sehen, ist jedoch, dass sie zu uns kommen und Unternehmen im Allgemeinen zu uns kommen und sagen, dass sie wirklich mehr Frauen einstellen wollen. Ich habe ein Team, das ausschließlich aus Männern besteht, die Leute kündigen, was auch immer das bedeutet. Und es ist großartig, dass zunächst einmal der Bedarf und der Wunsch besteht, mehr Frauen einzustellen, denn genau das brauchen wir, um mit einem Unternehmen zusammenzuarbeiten.

Es gab Unternehmen, die zu uns kamen und sagten: „Ich habe Schwierigkeiten, Frauen für uns zu gewinnen. Ich weiß nicht, warum ich sie nicht halten oder einstellen kann.“ Aber dann sagen sie, dass ihre Arbeitszeit 60 Stunden pro Woche beträgt und dass dies die absolute Erwartung ist und es keine Flexibilität gibt. Und die Frauen sitzen da und denken sich: „Okay, flexible Arbeitszeiten sind mir wichtig. Was ist, wenn ich meine Kinder abholen möchte?“

Und genau dort können sie letztendlich bessere Ergebnisse erzielen. Obwohl es großartig ist, dass Unternehmen zunächst mehr Frauen einstellen wollen, führt die Tatsache, dass sie diese Prozesse nicht bis hin zum Bindungsmodell durchsetzen, zu einem Teil der Abwanderungsrate, die wir beobachten.

. Anita Chauhan (06:37)

Sie ⁓ Auf jeden Fall. Ich denke, eine wichtige Sache ist natürlich, dass dies ein globaler Podcast ist und wir mit Menschen aus aller Welt sprechen, aber wissen Sie, angesichts der aktuellen Lage in Kanada, wo wir eine Rückkehr zur Büropflicht erleben, sehe ich bereits, dass sich dadurch so vieles verändert, wie ⁓ Frauen am Arbeitsplatz arbeiten, meine Freundinnen, Kolleginnen, es verändert einfach die Art und Weise, wie man mit seinem Job umgeht. Und das sehen wir auch bei einigen großen Technologieunternehmen in Amerika. Und ich denke, manchmal ist es für mich fast eine Taktik, einige davon loszuwerden, weil die Leute dann freiwillig gehen.

Aber als Frau in der Tech-Branche weiß ich, dass solche Anforderungen die Hürden für die Einstellung vielfältigerer Teams sogar noch erhöhen.

Gillian (07:22)

Hmm. Ja, auf jeden Fall. Ich sage immer, dass es meiner Meinung nach auf die Wahl ankommt. Ich glaube, wenn Menschen dazu verpflichtet werden, das eine statt das andere zu tun, dann überwindet man eine Art Unbehagen. Ich frage mich immer, ob ich zu Toast gehen würde, wenn es ein Büro gäbe. Ich glaube, ich würde gelegentlich hingehen, aber angesichts der Tatsache, dass die Personalvermittlung für mich als jemand, der
‍

Anita Chauhan (07:43)

Ja.

. Gillian (07:50)

an extroverted introvert, get exhausted by the social interaction all day every day. So being at home is my saving grace. I think as long as you give people the choice in how they want to set up their working model, that implies more trust as well. As long as you're hitting your KPIs and what you need out of your job, it shouldn't matter where you're doing that from. So I think the choice is what's really important. It's also very interesting when we've hired internally for our own Toast team,

Anita Chauhan (08:18)
Yeah.

Gillian (08:19)
I've often gotten applications from people that are like, oh, I'd love to work from Toast to work from home so I can be there for when my kids get home from school and I can start dinner. And they say that in cover letters and they think that that's a negative connotation. And to me that speaks volumes of that person being like, yes, I can work my butt off throughout the day and fulfill my day and then...

also be there for my kids and do what's important. That balance is something that we inherently value. And I think companies that don't see that as a valuable thing of allowing their employees to have choice in how they engage in their work every day, it can be really harmful and it can show that they don't trust their employees to be able to

Anita Chauhan (08:49)
Yeah.

Gillian (09:04)
do their best and do what they need to.

Anita Chauhan (09:07)
It's really interesting what you said just there, right? About like flexibility. I find a lot of people almost hide the reason they want it. One, it's not their employer's business, I do want to say. Like you have a life outside of the workplace. How you choose to spend your time, outside of work hours is not really their business. But this is so important and it's really also part of, I find it's very gendered in some aspects where like you're almost ashamed or

Gillian (09:21)
Mmm, yeah.

Anita Chauhan (09:30)
you're like, well, I need to pick my kid up. I almost don't even want to mention that when I'm looking for a new job. So I find it really cool that like, Toast has fostered that environment where they felt empowered enough to actually share that. So kudos to you guys on that. You know, at Willo we have a lot of candidates who are in different life circumstances and it's actually the whole point. Like how we're able to actually now remove like the barriers to interviewing has removed some of the time. Like not just women, folks, you know, that have like a disability, neurodivergent, like,

Gillian (09:35)
Mmm.

Anita Chauhan (09:58)
all these different barriers. And I think it's really cool to see you guys actually have an entire company that fosters that.

Gillian (10:02)
Yes, 100%. I think it's interesting being in recruiting and seeing kind of like the norms that we all think we're supposed to do or what everyone's told me that I'm supposed to do when I apply for a job. And so then I've had a lot of those conversations. If they mention that upfront, I'm like, oh, that's totally fine. You don't need to worry about that.

Anita Chauhan (10:15)
Yeah.

Gillian (10:20)
It's okay. Take my feedback and kind of take it for how it is. I think too on this topic, one of the questions you ask later is what does removing the CV look like? And we do this for a lot of our recruitment processes with our clients where it's like, we scrub the name, we scrub where they went to school, we scrub what company. If they worked at Google, we won't tell our client that they worked at Google or any of the kind of like well-known companies.

All of that is not of pertinence to the actual capabilities and abilities and skill set of the candidate. And there's so much socioeconomic bias and the school you went to and there's foreign work experience bias. So often I talk to talented people who have been in the industry for 10 years and they're like, I have hundreds of applications and I've yet to get an interview. And they're like, I worked in X country.

Anita Chauhan (10:50)
Hmm, wow.

Anita Chauhan (11:02)
Yeah.

Gillian (11:08)
And if that wasn't Canada, that company doesn't think that that is relevant or valuable. And so as part of kind of our process, all of that is totally anonymous. And it's really interesting when you ask our clients, hey, like how did this person stack up? And they give us feedback. Then we tell them, hey, they were the ones that you thought had their work experience at Google.

That person was the person working out of Brazil. That person was the person that has a stay at home parent and that's all they've done for the past three years and now they're coming back into work. That kind of stuff they didn't know or weren't aware of and now they're like, oh my god. And so they have to reset what a great candidate is.

Anita Chauhan (11:41)
Absolutely. So my next question is like, you know, what signal do people use or overlook all the time? And, you know, I like the second part of that question because it's about, you know, what do, what are they missing? Because you said you scrub it. Like, what do you think that people actually need to be looking for? Because I think like, again, like we all default to the CV, default to the name, default to the school, the gender, all the sort of things that shouldn't matter at all. Really, we should be looking for what they're capable of.

So like, what do you think are like some of those signals that you've started to see people overlook or look towards when they do the hire? Because they didn't have that scrubbed CV.

Gillian (12:16)
A lot of it is self-taught and so one of the kind of like examples, most frequent things that I hear from people is I'm self-taught, I'm a bootcamp grad and I am not getting interviews. If I'm a computer science degree graduate, I have a job. If I'm self-taught, I'm just ignored. And like

Anita Chauhan (12:27)
Yeah.

Gillian (12:37)
When all comes down to it, I've worked with amazing self-taught and bootcamp grads that I have placed in jobs where they thrive, they do amazing, they have the skill set. And so to your question around what are the important skills that people should be looking at instead and being a little bit more of an out-of-the-box thinker, it's people that are passionate, that show proof of their learning, proof of their application.

Anita Chauhan (12:52)
Hmm.

Gillian (13:05)
and looking beyond the resume and saying like, a they said that they did this thing for two years and they gained this skill, that's what they developed, but now how did they do that? How can they prove that they know what they're talking about and what they can do? And that doesn't just apply to people that are self-taught or bootcamp grads, that also applies to people who have bachelor's or master's degrees.

Trust that they're the right person to get the job done and figure out the different ways in which you can evaluate that through kind of like the unheard of stuff that like what you wouldn't think about or the non-technical skills or maybe it is the technical skills that come through not through schooling by being self-taught and kind of just like expanding the out-of-the-box thinking.

Anita Chauhan (13:19)
All right. And on to our third question, which we kind of touched upon already. But if you were suddenly to remove CVs or resumes from your current hiring process, what would that look like?

Gillian (13:31)
Yeah, so that's an interesting question. Obviously for us, for like our own Toast process, we were moving that already for working with our clients. When we're hiring internally, I then have to take that hiring manager standpoint and be like, okay, what am I really looking for here? What is the most important? What I always like to do for when we're doing an internal hire is think about the top three things that we're looking for, not to get attracted by the shiny stuff. And that a hundred percent has happened to me.

Anita Chauhan (13:36)
Yeah.

Me too!

Gillian (14:00)
⁓ in the past, especially

when we did our first hire on the talent team of being like the FAANG companies and my God, they worked here. They want to work for Toast What? ⁓ but taking a step back and really understanding like what's important. For example, for one of our recruiters having contingent recruitment experience we have found has been very important for us just in recognizing like the speed, ⁓ and understanding the general

process involved with recruiting contingently. ⁓ And then other parts of examples, like some form of like seniority with it, examples of past success with time to hires, how many hires, cadence that we've seen, and then otherwise trying to just like limit the noise. We try and do something different each time we hire someone.

The last one, for example, we put out a LinkedIn post and wanted to just like extend it to the network. If you know a kick-ass recruiter, sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear. ⁓ If you know a kick-ass recruiter, tag them below, something like that. Just to bring in kind of like those different perspectives, we want the tried and true of working with them in the past and recognizing those really awesome people that might not be out there.

Anita Chauhan (14:58)
when you're a little bit.

I always love that network effect as well, by doing that where it's like friends of friends might even include, bring someone in. Hopefully you're not like hiring with that bias of like, oh, I know this person through this, but it does open up that wider net to people that you might not have already been able to get in front of, right?

Gillian (15:32)
And we were shocked, like, we were shocked at the amount of people and the interest that came through with that. And I was like, oh my God, there's so many amazing people out there that we have never worked with, come across, and they might be even be in the same city as us. And so ⁓ just kind of taking a different approach with it has been important. I challenge people to...

rethink how they evaluate resumes and how they typically look at those kinds of things when they're going through these processes to take a step back and question, why do I look for certain companies? What am I looking for out of those? What are the true needs that I need out of those companies? And then go from there.

Anita Chauhan (16:05)
you

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that so much. It's such an interesting place that Toast sits, right? So you're seeing internally, you're seeing all these other companies. So I think it's, I just really already applaud the system that you have been building with the companies you're working with because, for some people, and this is one of the things that we've seen, it's like the idea of decentering the resume or the CV from the practice is kind of scary, right? We are just so used to it, along with all the other things you talked about, like scrubbing the name and understanding, like, you know,

Gillian (16:21)
This is.

Anita Chauhan (16:40)
where they come from, all this stuff. I think what's really interesting to see is that Toast has done this in practice and that's scaled out and it is actually working. And I love that type of story. I love that we were able to tell that here.

Gillian (16:52)
With every single first submission that we have, we have a detailed explanation of why we do it the way that we do. What are the biases that come up? Socio-economic bias, ⁓ foreign work experience bias. Why are we doing these things?

Anytime that you can attach a why to it, it helps people expand their minds and their thoughts around it. So that's what's been really helpful with us, I would say.

Anita Chauhan (17:18)
Really quick, what type of trends do you see in hiring and recruiting and sourcing for 2026?

Gillian (17:26)
So we chatted briefly about this at the start. The obvious answer that everybody is saying right now is AI. How are you using AI? How is it like better serving you and your process? And for sure, there are so many amazing ways that we have used that. However, what we have been having a lot of conversations about internally within our Toast community on LinkedIn, all of that, is this AI

Can we bring back personalized approaches to hiring while using it in the best way possible? We are also looking into, for this year it's gonna be of top of mind for us, is how our AI hiring process is affecting women as well. So I read a really interesting article recently about how using AI to hire,

Anita Chauhan (18:07)
you

Gillian (18:15)
is hiring people based off of previous successful hires. And when your previous successful hires are white men from these certain backgrounds, then your AI is going to specialize towards that in picking those resumes that demonstrate the kind of matched background of skills experience ⁓ to making those hires. And who does that limit?

Anita Chauhan (18:27)
⁓

Gillian (18:38)
people that aren't there already. And so ⁓ we want to bring it back to making it a people first approach always. Use AI tools to like help speed up your process for sure. Understanding at the core of it, why aren't you hiring women? Why aren't you retaining women? And how can we help introduce you to great people through people? ⁓ But really the AI fatigue is becoming very real.

across the board, I think.

Anita Chauhan (19:05)
I know ⁓

working in marketing, a lot of pushback. There's a big shift. I think it's just, you know, it's in everything. And we see the positive. It's interesting though, as well, at Willo as well, we see a lot of companies asking for, you know, AI, but they don't think they really understand what it means. So I think there's both ends of it. I think that the human things are going to get more human this year. The intentionality of AI usage is going to change significantly. I think you've touched upon that brilliantly as

Gillian (19:13)
Mm-hmm.

Anita Chauhan (19:32)
like I love that Toast is thinking about those types of things and how it actually impacts already, you know, marginalized candidates, right, and giving them access in such a different way. ⁓ Jillian, this has been so lovely. I don't know how the time flew so fast. Thank you so much for your thoughts and insights. I'm so excited to share this with the world. Thank you.

Gillian (19:52)
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.