Talent Makers: featuring Erin L. Thomas, P.h.D and Kari Adwell

It's time to get real about today's hiring landscape. The ability to find, attract, and higher-grade people has become more vital to a company's success than ever before. That's why we need talent makers who prioritize innovative, more diverse, equitable, and inclusive hiring practices that put people first. On the Greenhouse Talentmakers podcast, we're celebrating the work of leaders dedicated to cultivating incredible talent. Join me, Mika Gabrais, Senior Manager of editorial content at Greenhouse, as I sit down with talent makers who are changing the game and hiring. Today, I'm joined by two inspiring leaders who are creating opportunities for people at Upwork, the world's work marketplace. I'm chatting with Upwork's Dr. Erin L. Thomas, Head of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and Carrie Adwell, Senior Technical Recruiter. In this episode, Erin and Carrie will share advice for companies who are hoping to diversify their talent pools in remote work environment. We'll also discuss how hiring managers and recruiters can mitigate unconscious bias. Please welcome Dr. Erin L. Thomas and Carrie Adwell. I'm so excited. We are joined today by two leaders at a great organization called Upwork, which is an amazing platform that connects businesses with great talent professionals and agencies around the globe. So, today, we've got the incredible Dr. Erin L. Thomas, who is the Head of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and the Fabulous Carrie Adwell, who's the Senior Technical Recruiter at Upwork. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Before we dive into the conversation, why don't we just take a minute for the two of you to introduce yourselves? And if you could just mention your pronouns, your current role at Upwork, and why you're passionate about DE and I hiring practices, that would be great. Thanks so much. We're so good to be here. As you said, I'm Erin Thomas. I lead Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging at Upwork, and I've been with the company for almost three years now. I'm super excited about the application of DEI to hiring in particular for two reasons. One is, in the TA space, there is such an applies opportunity to provide access to folks from a diversity of backgrounds, both into workplaces but also into whole industries. And so that feels like a very special opportunity. The other reason is because hiring is very operational. And I think it's one place along the employee journey where we can get really clinical, specific, data driven around where orgs are meeting or missing the mark related to their diversity goals. And so I like to really get in there, work with partners like Carrie, and follow the data. Yes, follow the data. I love that so much. Yeah, and Carrie, why don't you go ahead and give us an intro of your name and your pronouns, your current role at Upwork and why you're passionate about DEI and I hiring practices. Sure. Hi, Micah. And thanks for having us. So my name's Carrie Adwell. I'm a Senior Technical Recruiter, recruiting for our product and experience orgs here. I have been here since 2019, so coming up on three years and have partnered with Erin in the past and using the data, but also using our empathy and thinking about others. And so I'm going to share a personal anecdote. The reason why I'm most passionate about it is my mother was a single mother who after 15 years out of the workforce with no degree reentering in the mid 80s, just had a lot of struggles. And she was in her 40s. She couldn't ever really get footing and get a career going. And I want to help other people who have not had those opportunities. It's all about equity. Yes. And it gets amazing that you're able to share this very personal story that has really helped shape who you are today and how you help shape other people today too. So thank you so much for sharing that. And so obviously we're here today to talk about great hiring and that great hiring really comes from that passion that both of you have for bringing success to your organizations. And so hiring is hard. Like as much as we want to talk about hiring and how great it is, it's wonderful, but it's a very hard thing to get right. And so when we think about hiring, we can't just put a post up online and then just hope for the best. And we can't just use seamless or grub hub to order your perfect person and have them delivered to your door. It's just not possible. And so one thing that I really love about Upwork is that it enables people to do that really well and find those excellent people. And so obviously as greenhouse is a hiring platform, our mission is to make everyone great at hiring, but we all know that starts with creating an organized process and then also helping mitigate bias in the hiring process. So with all of that said, because I know the two of you are really experienced in this and I would love to hear insights. I would love to hear about how the two of you work together to hire diverse talent at Upwork. Sure, I can start high level and say that I partner in my role across kind of all players in the hiring ecosystem. I think in general, I partner with the TA team in two main areas. One is to make sure that we're building longer-tailed relationships with the diversity of communities and populations. I think one thing that a lot of orgs get wrong in their kind of diversity hiring strategies is they start too late. And then it's where are all the black and brown people situation. Well, it's too late. So we work closely on long-tail strategies. How do we build relationships with professional organizations, colleges, universities, trade schools and programs, identify which ones will enable us to help nurture, build and kind of map skills to our evolving needs as a company and getting in really early so that those relationships are authentic and long-held before we actually need skills. That's important. And to Carrie's point around empathy, I also think about dignity as well. And I think building dignified relationships is a big responsibility. In the shorter term around access, partnering with the TA team around just even recruitment marketing campaigns, making sure that the stories we're telling about our culture are again authentic. We're sharing diverse experiences. We are enabling folks to see others who look and seem like them. All of those signals are incredibly important, so make sure we're not missing those moments. But I also partner with hiring managers around getting real clear and what they're looking for, essentials and nicers that have really dismantling proxies and pedigree and getting to skills and working principles and the things that actually matter on the job and really distinguishing signal from noise in that way. And then I think really on the ground working with hiring managers and interviewers, so folks across the business who are involved in assessing and interacting with candidates around bringing out the best in those folks who come across your 38-45 minute window and making sure that they, you know, on that side of the table are able to bring out the best in candidates, see them clearly and, you know, to your point mitigate any individual kind of mirroring that might be going on in an interaction. Now, there's research that shows that interviews are often just a reflection of the interviewer. And so how do we enable interviewers to get their mess out of it and really spotlight the talent that's coming through? Yes. And that is so hard to do, but I love that you've mentioned these things that are so clearly essential to help mitigate bias. And so, you know, one of those things is how do we distinguish the skills that actually matter? So how are the two of you, and maybe carry, you can provide some more insight into this into kind of the recruiting side of things? Like how are you distinguishing the skills that actually matter with the hiring manager and getting them to see that they need to look at those skills rather than just, you know, I like Game of Thrones and they like Game of Thrones and they just seem really sweet and they're perfect for this role. Like how do you get them to really understand that skill? I think sitting down and talking to each other, frankly, about what they specifically need. And then I love to go and look at my candidate polls and prospect polls and find those specific things, irregardless of degree, what company they're coming from and then highlight those folks to the hiring manager and say they have these things and see what they say. And if they come back and say they, well, they don't have this or years of experience or light, Mike, but these are the, these are the qualities we were looking for. These are the competencies we're looking for. You have to keep harkening back to what they're looking for at the core of what they need to get the job done. And so that's where I feel like I have to keep pulling them back to that and highlight interesting great candidates. I love that. Can I share a story, Amika? Please do. Just to Carrie's point, there's one that stands out to me exactly in line with what she decided where we had a Sorcerer would work closely with the candidate to get them prepped for an interview. Didn't go super well, but the Sorcerer like recognized there was a gap between what she had seen in this prospect and with the hiring manager and had seen and took that time to have a debrief with the candidate kind of dismantle how they had approached sharing their portfolio. And it was just not right. It was just not going to set that candidate up for success. And so she coached the candidate had built enough of a relationship with the hiring manager to basically go to bat for this candidate and say they have more to give and show. And that candidate got a second chance. And that candidate eventually got hired at Upwork, successful at Upwork. And I just love that small story because it shows that oftentimes there's potential that might get clouded, and there's work on the ground that TA practitioners do around kind of clearing those barriers and making sure that assessing talent isn't just a test of anxiety and performance in the midst of anxiety, but it is really an opportunity again for talent to really show itself. And so I think on the ground, it's a cool tactic to think about like how do you empathize with those candidates and really see them clearly and help them see themselves clearly and present that to decision makers. But it's also a structural intervention that I would love to see from more companies providing that opportunity to retest or retry even in the course of an active search because sometimes it's just a bad day. Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that your company does that because hiring, you know, it's interviewing is a very hard thing to do. And that's not necessarily the best way for someone to really be able to show their skills. And so it's about how do you give them the tools and the resources that they need in order to shine in that experience. And so actually that's something that we do at Greenhouse too, where before every interview, the candidate is given a full schedule of what their interviews will look like, like what kind of things might come up in that conversation and who you might be interviewing with so that there's no surprises because I know for myself as someone with generalized anxiety, I really appreciate having that ahead of time so that I know what is about to happen in that conversation. And that's what really allows people to shine. So I really appreciate that. Time for a quick break. When we come back, more of my conversation with Aaron and Carey from Upwork. 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To learn more about salary history bands and salary transparency laws or to explore higher-right solutions, visit the link in the show notes. Welcome back, y'all. Let's get into more of my conversation with Erin and Carrie from Upwork. As we're talking about hiring and working in this virtual world now, we think about how it was really tough for a lot of companies to shift gears and all of a sudden go from hiring in person to hiring in a hybrid working world. I know that at Upwork, I know that you are all a remote company and you've been in this process for a long time and I feel like you'd have a lot to share with other people who are trying to still get a handle on hiring in a remote world. And one of those things that I do feel like is really helpful for hiring in this virtual world is the fact that although it can be challenging, it really opens the door for a lot more opportunities to expand your talent pools. And so what advice would you give to other companies who are hoping to expand those talent pools and include more diverse hires in those talent pools? Hire remotely, the talent is not just in your backyard or in your geographical location. And if you want to expand D and I, target certain areas where you know there are more diverse skill sets and people with different thoughts and educational backgrounds and everybody says this, but diversity of thought yields innovation, right? And then your company is more successful. And I think yeah, coming out of the pandemic, which we're still in, you know, I think there's a fundamental mindset shift that has had to happen for any organization that's going to leave an adorable imprint and legacy in the business community and on the globe, which is that work is not a place. It is a thing that people do. And I think some leaders, some companies, have had a very hard time either admitting that or leaning into that. But I think it's advantageous that companies like ours who have been ahead of that curve to your point, Mika, for decades because companies who don't get on board with that will be left behind. And we've seen so much of this balancing sort of the power equation between workers and employers, which I think is amazing and very exciting. And folks are voting with their feet and being very selective about where it is. They spend the majority of their waking hours. And so many do not miss that commute. There's so much of the DEI implications behind remote work. Folks who tend to like the office setting are the folks who are advantaged by that setting. Those tend to be folks who do not add to diversity of most organizations. So if you can't get behind that reality of work being about impact versus face time and just other very antiquated and inaccurate signals, then this conversation is probably not for you. Exactly. I want to ask you too because obviously when we're talking about diversity and equity and inclusion, people have the best intentions sometimes, but just cannot quite get it right. So whether that's in their hiring process or creating an inclusive workspace, so there's a lot of challenges that come with that. And the work is not necessarily easy for a lot of companies. So I want to ask you, Aaron, what are some of those common challenges that impact that positive DE and I hiring outcomes? Like are there specific challenges that you've seen at specific companies or anything that you know of that companies are running into when they are trying to create a more diverse and equitable and inclusive hiring process? For sure. And I think we've already pinned down some of the common barriers that I see that are largely structural. One is this narrow aperture for what great looks like. Either that being, as Kerry pointed out, tied to just very notional proxies that aren't necessarily predictive or just being vague. That's the bulk of what I see is just like decision makers don't actually know what they're looking for. And it kind of gets into, I'll know it when I see it, but that's not how a rational brain works. And so really stepping back and getting crystal clear as Kerry pointed out around the key essentials of competencies and skill sets that will get the job done is hard work that a lot of hiring managers need to put in through the partnership with their TA experts. I think another thing relatedly is very narrow networks. You know, these prototypes of what great looks like sometimes are tied to the roles and companies that you've seen before, but they're also tied to the individuals that you've met and come across in your career. And so when a hiring manager comes to you and says, these are all the great people I know that I want to bring onto my team eventually or that I think our company should take a look at doing what I know Kerry does and she can add more to this, but really auditing those lists and saying like, well, this maybe is not the most diverse network of folks. And so how can we think past the folks who first come to mine and think more expansively about your secondary and tertiary networks and just really cascading out beyond the first 10 people that come to your brain or that you've worked most closely with in your career. And I would say the third thing that often gets in the way is really around candidate experience. You know, Kerry talked about empathy, putting candidate first and really perspective taking. And again, working to dignify that experience regardless of candidate outcomes can go a very long way in both the attractiveness of your organization to a diversity of talent because these networks of underrepresented talent talk and are close and are tight knit. It's not all on glass door like people talk one to one and they spill the tea about what that was like to go through your process, whether they got the job or not. And so making sure that regardless of outcome candidates are convicted that you saw the best of them, that you brought out the best of them, that you treated them respectfully, that you cultivated an experience that they might want to go through again, is really important in terms of creating kind of this flywheel of diverse talent that again, as it's attracted to your employer brand, attracted to your workplace. And I don't know the extent to which companies really think first about the candidate. Often we're running quickly and we're thinking about just filling racks and zooming out and thinking about how that happens and being intentional about that I think can be quite rewarding in terms of diverse teacals. Yes, absolutely. And that's so true. People, they will spill the tea. We will find out. So you want to create that great process that's going to, like you said, Aaron, have people coming back because even if they didn't get this job, they might go on glass door, they might talk to other people about that experience. And if it's a positive one, maybe they'll want to reapply later in the future. And so, Kerry, I would also love to hear from you about, Is there anything that you are doing at Upwork that's going to create that positive candidate? experience like is there anything special that you're doing for candidates to really make them feel included and appreciated? I love that question, Mika, because it hits me at my core. I actually don't send automated rejection emails to anyone. I mean, except like maybe initial applicants, but if they have talked to me or hiring manager or gone through on-site interviews, they get a real email, a thoughtful email tailored to them every time. And if they've actually gone through interviews, I call them. And I email at first and if they want to call, some people don't like a call. I've learned that. So I offer it to go over the feedback and to help them in their journey. Because the biggest part of my job is relationship building on both sides of the aisle with the talent and with my clients, I want people to have dignity to Aaron's point. Like I want to treat everyone, like they are not a number and they're not just being reviewed for a job, but they're a person who comes to this with feelings and backgrounds and skills that need to be seen. Yeah, honestly, mixby feels very emotional that you care so much about this process. And that's the thing that people remember. Like that is what they that connects with them. That personal touch is so powerful. And so I think that's something that we can all learn from no matter who you are, what your role is at your company about the power of creating that authentic connection with somebody. And it certainly does pay off later. And so before we kind of begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask, we're in this hybrid and remote working world. And for those companies out there who are hiring for either hybrid or remote roles, are there specific examples that you may have of inspiring examples of how Upwork maybe puts people first in that remote work environment. And so this might be some things that could include like workplace benefits or company culture, like what is Upwork doing that is kind of unique and different to create a positive experience in this remote world. I can start and just say again, we've got decades of hybrid experience under our belts, which has been very helpful in terms of leaning into this super acute crisis of the pandemic. And that has propelled a lot of companies to becoming remote or hybrid. So that's that's been something for us to springboard from. But in the context of the pandemic, we got even more intentional and strategic about really building community and connection for our team members. You know, we've got thousands of team members across the globe. You know, we follow the sun in terms of work hours and or quite a dynamic organization. In particular, on the people team, we've really built a lot of rituals and cadence and surround is having kind of this always on culture where there are just rhythms to connection that people can slot into on demand. So everything from our weekly connect up 30 minute all company meetings pretty casual, but it's an opportunity for our leadership team to connect with all team members across all levels and share updates, share current happenings, but the majority of that 30 minutes is just open floor. What's on your mind? Questions, observations, specific to an individual leader or even just broadly about company direction and strategy. That kind of touchstone, I think it's really important for folks to have not just leaders, but with each other and to literally just see their colleagues if they may not see any other time. Outside of that, we've got of course other leadership opportunities for folks to connect and cohere and a lot of intentional programming that creates kind of these micro communities for folks sometimes crushed functionally, sometimes with end departments. My team in particular does a lot of that fostering in our upper belonging communities, which are tied to social identity in our programs, a lot of which are cohort based. So skill building, manager and leader development and explicit community building for folks from certain populations is a lot of where I focus beyond my team. We have partnerships with orgs like a better up, where you cohort based coaching and career development. So you know, this anchor of convening to enable folks to grow without compromise and in community with others is really important for us. And I think being both remote first, but also in the context of the pandemic has been really foundational for our people work and has really born fruit. So we've seen that in our quantitative and qualitative data from folks who have gone through these different experiences or who give us feedback on these more corporate wide touch points. So I think we've kind of built a nice dynamic rhythm. I think just to tie it back to hiring, making sure that on onboarding kind of get into those cadences is really important because we know when folks first come onboard, regardless of background, that's when belonging uncertainty is the highest. Whenever you're changing roles or a job or workplace, you're questioning if you made the right choice. And so us proactively answering that question of yes, you did and you belong here and there is a place for you here beyond maybe your immediate team or primary relationships is, you know, I think a bit of our strategy for helping folks feel like a part of something bigger. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that you said that I am obsessed with is enabling them to grow without compromise. Like how are you providing this, you know, all the resources and tools that people need to be able to grow and be successful and feel connected and included. So I absolutely appreciate you sharing that so much in a quick 30 seconds. If listeners could walk away with only one key piece of advice for DE and I hiring or being a great talent maker, what would you want them to know? That talent, great talent. If you redefine it is not scarce. It's abundant. It's everywhere. So start opening your view like to what Aaron was saying about narrow views, narrow networks and do some research and find your people. Yes, 10 out of 10. I love that. Gosh, I love that carry like preach it. That abundance mindset is super critical. And I think a prong of that is something we talked about a little bit earlier, which is being longer term in your thinking and your approach. You know, I think just given the pace of this world and especially in the US, we are not great with lay gratification. We're not great at like long range vision and patience. But if we can get behind that, certainly devised and deployed smaller tactics, but building into a longer range legacy for not only the input you're leaving on your company, but that your company's leaving on the talent space and that the talent space is leaving on the very dynamics of our society. So I would just encourage anyone listening to kind of think pass today, really step back and get critical about what it is you're trying to do in the long run. And to break that down, work backwards from that into the tactics that you can build into over the next 369 months and years. Yes, such great advice. And I feel like the listeners are going to have so much to learn from this conversation. And obviously it's very inspirational, but I also feel like it was super actionable and people are going to have some some great things to take away that they can get started with today. Thank you, Mika. Thank you. Thank you so much, Aaron and Carey, for this inspiring conversation. And thank you to all of our listeners. Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast wherever you listen if you like this episode. If you didn't, don't worry about it. Learn about how greenhouse promotes inclusivity and embraces diverse perspectives in our product, culture, and our community by visiting us at greenhouse.io/belonging. Special thanks to our production partner, Wonder Media Network, their producer, Alana Hurlens, and production assistants Sarah, Shleed, and Lila Watts. Until next time!