The past few weeks have been a career highlight for me.
Parity is currently in a massive growth phase, and as such we needed to add a few more amazing humans to the team. Frustrated and struggling to find the right match in this candidate-short market, we knew we would have to think about it differently. I also thought it was a great opportunity to prove to our community that the future of hiring must change and that hiring top talent does not mean hiring people with previous industry or functional experience.
After brainstorming and collaborating with my team, the #RuleChange project was born.
This initiative had two main objectives - to hire for Parity in the most inclusive way in order to attract diverse talent, and then to also show our clients the benefit from this route of hiring.
We needed to reach far and wide on various different channels and asked our network to share on both personal and professional mediums. We had to reach the people who;
Had given up hope on the traditional recruitment process
For various reasons did not have solid work history
Trigger people to take the plunge to consider a new career.
Our tagline was ‘No CVs - Customer focussed roles available - expressions of interest’. We only asked for their first name and email address and guaranteed EVERYONE an interview.
The response we received was overwhelmingly positive. We had a huge amount of people express their interest, and 45% of those people showed up to the first day of interviews! The stories, backgrounds and diversity of these professionals was amazing and my team and I felt a strong sense of responsibility and purpose for these individuals.
We continued to host another 2 group interviews and had 70-80% continued participation. We still did not have the participants full details, work requirements or CVs. We were simply deciding on their candidacy by interviewing them for their potential and cultural fit. My team engaged with these wonderful humans in an incredibly inclusive and welcoming way and to say I was proud of them all is an understatement.
We were always looking for 3 hires, however decided on hiring 5 of the participants - it was just too hard to decide. The best part was offering these awesome humans a permanent job, however the hardest was having to let the remaining participants down. By the end of the three sessions, we saw 12 very deserving candidates being let down and told they were not successful. I remember each call well and armed myself thinking they would feel frustrated (this is often the reaction of candidates who do not get offered the role they have been interviewing for). Rather than being contentious, they were grateful. Rather than blaming me or my team, they asked for feedback to improve for next time. Rather than taking it personally, they were curious to which of their peers landed the role. Many of them told me they enjoyed our approach, and more importantly that the whole initiative gave them hope.
Honestly, this whole process has been one of, if not THE, most favourite projects of my career. I believe the whole process meant something to everyone involved, including my team.
What were our lessons from all of this?
Hiring based on human skills CAN work;
Allowing people to feel safe in an interview process brings out the best in people;
When a role doesn’t require technical skills, it may be in your best interest to give the ‘underdog’ a shot.