Jeff Ma
Today's episode doesn't technically have a guest. But I do get to grill Chris on a topic that is currently on the minds of many folks out there. How do we be more inclusive in the hiring process, and Chris does not disappoint as he walks us through some super insightful and very practical ways we can start looking at recruitment differently. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We are here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from we believe that humanity love should be at the centre of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And I'm joined today by my wonderful co hosts who are making faces at me as we kick this off. Chris Pitre, Frank Danner. Hello, Chris and Frank. Hello, how you guys doing?

Chris Pitre
Oh, I was smiling agreeably.

Jeff Ma
See, this is what happens when we get really comfortable doing episodes with guests. And then all of a sudden, we do one without a guest. And we just can't even keep a straight face. We just because this is how our real meetings go. This is how we know that all right. Welcome, gentlemen, today, I wanted to gather us for a more intimate and private conversation sans guests about something that, you know, we've worked through a couple of times ourselves, but I thought it was worth a powwow discussion. You know, here it loves business strategy. Obviously, we always dive into one element of business or strategy, and we kind of test our theory of love against it. So today, I wanted to talk about the hiring process and like specifically, how to be inclusive in the hiring process. And I know that there's a lot to unpack in that very general statement. But Chris being you know, I want to start with you. And I want you to share for our listeners, if you can, kind of your thoughts on how to be inclusive in the hiring process. And then the reason I'm just for context, the reason I'm starting with Chris is because for our business he has, he has a hand in it, he owns that he's accountable for that process within our business. And I'm just not randomly picking on him. Chris, how do how do we try to be inclusive in the hiring process?

Chris Pitre
I think this is a question that many companies try and get in front of because, of course, there's always learnings and there's always new things to learn. And as we know, the landscape of DEI is always evolving, and there's always this fluidity in it. So what we do today will probably shift from what we do tomorrow and vice versa, right? So as we think about sort of being more inclusive, we of course have to start thinking about our sourcing, where are we going to find candidates, right? Yes, referrals are always sort of the first stop, because it's a lot easier to go with people that you know, but if you are in an organisation where there isn't a lot of diversity present, you're probably going to get more of the similar faces inside of your organisations versus different. And sometimes this is, you know, sort of tackled in ways of where you might go to, you know, historically black colleges and universities to find diverse candidates, it could be where you go to, you know, sort of a guy you debt University, which is where you have, you know, the only university in the world. And then there's like, I think there's a smaller College in Austin that caters to the deaf community. But you have sort of different places where you can go to source, and that's one way of sort of starting to diversify your pipeline coming in. And then once you get into the pipeline, and sort of you start sort of shortlisting or sorting through candidates, this is where you have to start really looking at the biases inside of your HR organisation, or your hiring managers, etc, right? Because sometimes people go straight to the universities that they graduated from. Sometimes people go straight to the companies that they used to work for, that they've worked for before, right. And unfortunately, whether we like it or not, our brains are wired to find shortcuts, right. And so this is where you might say, Oh, they went to Harvard, they must be great, and push it forward, right? And you start finding those small little things, those associations that we have with the universities, they've gone to, where the employers they've gone to, and we might start sorting out candidates who actually might be a better fit for, you know, the role and a better add to the culture. But unfortunately, on paper, our biases are trying to find the ways to sort of quickly sort and quickly find associations that make us feel comfortable. Once you get through that process. And let's say you have sort of the right sort of trainings in place and you have the right checks and balances in that process. Then you get into sort of the interviewing part. And this is Where unfortunately, we see a lot more biases emerge, right? Because it's all about how we ask questions. What are we looking for? Like, what? What are we? What are we most comfortable receiving, when it comes to candidates in terms of how they behave, how they present themselves, how they speak, etc. And you'll start to hear in a lot of sort of debriefs, the real sort of thick of human brains in action, right? You start to hear terms like executive presence, and that is coded language that many people in the HR world may or may not know, that basically means how white sounding, are you? Right? And how if we wanted to put you in front of executives who are largely white, could you stand and sort of align with them and be accepted by them. And that's a very harsh, and that might turn some people off. But that is unfortunately, often what we are saying and communicating when we sort of call out an executive presence. And then you get into sort of the onboarding, or whoever is selected, what are their first few days like, right, and all along those steps in that hiring process, there are opportunities to be inclusive, and I gave you some quick examples. And each I didn't go deep dive, I just want to give example. So I can make sort of that theoretical stuff feel real. So you understand like, Hey, there are places where we naturally, as organisations, as HR as hiring managers, as humans, we might win. And we might lose, right as awfully we do both, right. So it's not like I'm here saying that we are awesome at all of these things. And we've hit all of these things so well. But I can't say that we have learned over time, what works and what doesn't work for us. And we're always happy to share those learnings. And also help others understand that, while you might hold some things sacred inside of your hiring process, I always say that the only thing that we want to hold sacred at softly is our people. Everything else around that should be open to change should be open to feedback should be open to improvement. And if we're going to talk about things like HR and things like hiring, I think that those processes should always support the humanity that is hopefully being brought through it. And so for me, starting with that sourcing conversation is typically the easiest, because it's just like, Oh, well, we sit in a pond. And so that's excitement, right? Like, oh, we can go to these places, and these universities or these, you know, groups in these locations, and we can find talent that we may or may not have had access to otherwise.

Frank Danna
It's interesting for me, I was doing, doing some research about artificial intelligence, and how some companies are actually using artificial intelligence in their recruitment processes, right. So they're using these tools to actually speed up the time that it takes to find the right candidates. And they're reducing the time spent writing job descriptions. They're pre scanning, with machine learning algorithms to try to automate screenings and make sure that they can find the right people. And I know that larger organisations doing this, and so I was I was interested to see how this has gone over the past few years. And I found some information about Amazon. And in 2014, and 2015, this, they were using these this AI system that their specialists built, that turned out that their new recruitment engine did not like women at all. And so the system leaned that like leans towards observing patterns from specifically male, like typical male language that was written, there was gem, there was a he actually pushed the gender imbalance further within the tech industry. And so it it definitely was built on bias, and it started to move in that direction. And so I feel like a lot of organisations out there are trying to systematise this approach by creating artificial intelligence using these tools, our personal thought, and I'd love to hear your perspective as well, Chris, from this, like, from a holistic perspective, but I know it's Softway. You know, I don't think inclusive recruitment can be automated.

Chris Pitre
And no, I mean, like, they should start to see that. Yeah, no, whenever you have AI tools or technology trying to assess humans, just know that whoever built that tool, bake their biases in whether they like it or not, right? So if I were to build a tool, if I love Real Housewives of Atlanta, I'm looking for a language that's gonna say that some candidate loves Real Housewives of Atlanta, got it, and they're gonna be, yeah, like, they're gonna like that on the way out like, they you shade in a resume like that? Right? Right. So, unfortunately, whether we like it or not, ever, if you have a brain, you have bias, and you can't turn that off when you're in the middle of coding. When you're in the brain, you build a bias, right? Yeah, exactly. You can't turn it off, you cannot turn that off. And unfortunately, many organisations have learned, very few have shared but many have learned that those tools, though, are meant to be efficient. And build efficiency have turned to hurt, you know, building inclusive workspaces as well as finding diverse candidates. And so while that's off way, we have a applicant tracking tool, we do not use any tools to help us shortlist or, you know, sort of get to the right, or the best candidates. And I think that that is largely because of our size, like we've never had to like, I don't know what it looks like when you are filtering hundreds of 1000s of candidates for one role. And so I understand that that's really why certain, you know, companies have no special tools. Right, right. But at the end of the day, whether they like it or not, whether we like it or not, that is an outcome that, you know, you have to understand. And so I know that there's been a huge surge of trying to find AI that is inclusive, and trying to find tools that help balance out some of those outcomes or side effects. And like blender, etc, canaries if you want to under like, there's a lot of sort of, yep, a lot of tools out there that are trying to balance that ecosystem, at least some big tech, not sure how expanded it is inside of other functions and inside of other industries. But as long as we are using sort of those computer based sorting or algorithms, we have to understand that there's likely going to be some people who will fit the bill. And I think the other thing is, as we start looking beyond just the sort of technology that we're using, it's also what requirements are we building on inside of that, you know, role, right? For instance, the need to have a college degree, you have many organisations who are being run by CEOs with no college degrees. So the question is, well, how how critical is a college degree in a role that reports into a another role that reports into another role, they're important to, you know, the CEO who doesn't have a college degree? And is there something that we should be sort of assessing or putting more weight on because having a college degree is not is not always an indicator of success? And every company has to look at their own data, just like we did to see what is the indicator of success, right. And chances are, there is an indicator of success in your organisation as well as indicators of great culture ads. And those are the qualities that you're looking for. And sometimes those qualities may be on a resume, sometimes they may not be right. Sometimes they may be in certain types of positions. Sometimes they may not be and I think we've talked about this on a previous podcast, but one of the things that we learned about the best sort of, you know, success in our project management roles, were those who came from or worked in some form of service, whether that be hospitality, whether that be healthcare or health services, but were they were catering to another human, and they had to push down their needs their wants their wishes, and completely find and serve someone else. Right. Yeah. And, and that was an aha moment that we didn't have until we started experimenting a little bit and in trying to, like figure out something else, because what we knew to be true, or we knew it'd be best wasn't working inside of the hiring process. But as a result of that, we have more women coming in. Right? We have more under degreed people coming in, or non degreed people coming in, right, like we saw diversity jump greatly when we change that expectation around qualities, not necessarily education, unnecessarily employers and names of employers, but we really started to look at who has the qualities and what what roles typically possess or acquire those qualities before they get into a more corporate setting.

Jeff Ma
So Chris, how do you there's like, I think, a globally kind of accepted system, like via a resume, if you will, or a see me, where, you know, it's just classic, like, here's a job posting, submit your cover letter and your resume. And it's kind of just this built in systemic kind of thing that no matter even if you're thinking and feeling all the things that we're saying, right, like, yeah, we're looking for someone different. We're looking for different backgrounds and things like that. applicants are still kind of through this through the norm, societal norm encouraged to prove that they have experience doing the same thing. Which kind of kind of breeds less inclusivity naturally, right? Like if you're, if you're looking for a project manager, and you're only hiring people who've been tech project managers are ready, they're kind of just bringing the same template to your business that already exists throughout right. So you're not you're not actually getting any that additional diversity. How do you kind of overcome that from a recruitment standpoint if you're if you're Look, if you're seeking How do you truly sift through all the noise and find those those those those different candidates? Yeah,

Chris Pitre
I think the first thing you have to do is understand, what does a successful project manager look like? And when I say look like it doesn't mean, you know, age, sex location, it means, what are the qualities that you've seen work for your clients, or for, you know, those who you are serving in terms of project management. And once you list those qualities out, you really start to then pick apart Okay, so what does that look like if someone were to list out their achievements? So if you are, let's say, in project management, you are someone who is customer oriented? What is an achievement that you would expect someone to have when it comes to customer centricity? Right? Is it being you know, winning certain awards and sales is like, is it being sort of the customer favourite, you know, person in terms of whatever internal awards that might have like, there could be a number of achievements that you might see on a resume, that could be an indicator that someone is successful at that quality. And I think that that's something that a lot of, I guess, inclusive leaders start to use in terms of languages, capability and achievement versus competency, right. And so someone may be educated and have a competency, but it's not always not always the best indicator of capability, where someone who is, you know, maybe non degreed maybe hasn't worked in a TPM position, but they have been around technology, they have sort of had to cater to different customer needs. And they have the ability to handle conflict, and differences and priority setting and all of those things with grace. And I could come from being a stay at home mom, right? that's actually true. that come from being right, like those qualities. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then when you think about it, there is no such thing as a perfect candidate who meets all the needs of the role that you might have listed. So if you think that based on where the organisation is, where the team is, where the customer is, you need someone that's more diplomatic, diplomatic, or more capable of compromise, and finding win wins, right? We can teach them about technology during in the role we can, we can coach them up on that part. But I can't coach up someone on how to be a good listener, on how to communicate across a variety of audiences whose needs are different, right, and be able to switch. But when we look at someone who may have been a stay at home parent who has children who are totally different, and know how to speak to one child differently from another child, right, and they're capable of representing that, inside of the interview, or on their resume, like that, then becomes like, okay, yeah, we need somebody that can, you know, have some very strong patients, right, but also can still cater and communicate. And unfortunately, many times in sort of traditional training around recruiting, traditional training around hiring, we tend to look at competency. And we tend to look at previous experience, and that's sort of the box that we stay in. And they were always surprised was like, well, they look great on paper, why what happened, I can't believe they couldn't do that master this one thing, or they can send out a report on time, or they can do like, there's all these like disappointments that happened later on. Because our brains told us, oh, man, they worked at this large company, and they went to this great university, they have to be great. And as someone who's gone to university that quote unquote, is great on paper, I can tell you that meaning my classmates were not from our flow. Yeah, not the ones listening to this, of course. But you know, it's, it's something where you'd like mediocrity lives everywhere. Right? And that's not to say that, you know, I could be mediocrity or certain things like you put me in front of an accounting system, I'm gonna be mediocre, if not, maybe below average. Right? And so some people, you know, have have presented themselves in ways that make them feel very appealing and, and the safe choice, when in reality, they may not be the best performer or the best culture ad, right. And I think that becomes something where if you are in that recruiting space, and you are looking at candidates resumes, and you are in those initial interviews before it gets down to the final few selections, right? You have the ability to start questioning, what are you really looking for, right? What is not being represented by this candidate at that moment, right. What what are the things that our organisation and team needs to be added to, right, what's the missing piece on this team? What's the missing thing, right? Because we add someone who's just like Frank, or just like Chris, or just like, Jeff, like, I always tell people like I don't want another me. I'm enough. I'm doing good.

Yeah, it's like Jeff can barely deal with me, I can barely deal with myself. When I'm looking for not another Chris, when I'm talking to people, I'm looking for someone that can, you know, question, Chris, that can counter Chris that can right? Be in the places where Chris cannot be right? Like, those are the things that I'm looking for. And that's just my mindset. I'm not here to like toot my own horn. But that took a while to get to because they always say like, a players hire B players, B players hire c players, right? Like all that stuff. And it's not so much that people go in and say, like, I'm gonna hire the D player, because I'm threatened. Typically, it's not the mindset, what we're looking for is a replica. So whenever you make a copy of a copy, of course, there's going to be a be great copying update, right, like, so that's what's happening, right? It's just that we look for replicas instead of looking for originals. And originals come with risk. originals are not the safe choice. originals are oftentimes not going to fit the mould that we may have created in our heads. originals are not going to come from the same places where the others other originals have come from sometimes. And so that is very uncomfortable. Because it's not repeatable. It's not an efficient, or at least it doesn't feel that way. Although it can be, you know, if your processes are set up to find that diversity. I love

Jeff Ma
that replica, verse original. Yeah. All right.

Chris Pitre
It's like, I used to watch the originals if you don't want it anyway. All TV show out there if you are interested in vampires, and witches, even though I personally am not drawn to that, but I show for whatever reason, which is very interesting, anyway, but I not to go into tangents. But I think that once you get through that bit of it, right, that that paper part of the recruiting process, when you get into the human interaction side, that's really where things can get interesting. And so one of the things that we've learned in terms of inclusive recruiting is one, I've made sure you know that all of our hiring managers, all of our hiring committees, like we want our candidates to feel comfortable and safe when they come in, like period. I don't want rude questions. I don't want interruption. I feel like a lot of people prep interviews as if they have the worst clients in the world, or if they have the worst environments in the world. And I'm like, if I were a candidate, and you were misbehaving in my interview, to try and see how I handled pressure, and stress, like, what does that say about the workplace that you're trying to hire me into? Like, do I want this like, Do I want I want to join this because this is this. This is how y'all live. This is This allows clients to do and in many cases, like clients are not rude. Clients are not interruptive clients are not yelling at you in the middle of your presentation at the first presentation. Right? And when that does happen, we walk away from them, we run from them, we don't disengage from sales, like you know, we don't continue that. So I, I've always wondered why that has been. And that's happened to so many places where someone's supposed to be the antagonist, someone supposed to be the bad guy, someone's like, good cop, bad cop, and we're gonna try and throw them off their game and see how I like that it like, to me, interviews are two ways. So you're, you're assessing me as much as I'm assessing you, there's no way that I would want to put a type of feeling in the environment, and hope that you pass the test. To me, it's a mind game, right. And then beyond that, I think it's also about making sure they are set up for success. So when it comes to hiring, and when it comes to having that first interview, where they're coming in, if it's a physical office, or if it's virtual, whatever, I know we're pandemic approached pandemic times, now, I'm making sure they understand who they're meeting with. And when I say that, like, hey, you're about to meet with Jeff. Now, one thing you should allow Jeff, is this this, right? Like, I try and give them cheat sheets, right? I believe in giving cheat sheets, I don't want you worried about trying to figure out who Sue and what they care about, and what they're looking for what they value most, right? I try and give all of that. And some people are like, well, you're making it very easy for them. So of course, they're gonna do everything to impress you. I'm like, Yeah, I want people to show up and do their best work every single day. Even when I get hired. Why would I not right? Like, why would I want to throw people off their game, right? Like if they were going into a client for the first time, and I knew everything about that client. I'm passing that knowledge board, right? Like, I'm preparing you because your success is this company success, right? So I want to see who you are when you are set up for success. And I also learned that when you set people up for success, and they come in and do whatever they want to do, or they ignore what you said, that's also very telling, that's like, oh, man, like, this person doesn't take instruction, nor do they ask questions like if they were if there was something unclear, they never said something was unclear. And I asked them what they had questions I asked him if it was if they were understood, I guess I tried to do everything to make sure that that person knew sort of what they were coming into And when they show up, and they have no questions, they haven't done any homework, they don't even know anything about what we offer, they haven't looked at the website, they haven't done any of that stuff, even though made it all available. That's very telling. Like, that's very telling. But a lot of times people ignore those signs because they're impressed by their previous employers. They're impressed by their degree, they are impressed by you know, oh, they work with beyond saying their past man, like, when we hire right, like, we get

Frank Danna
working. Working with the

Chris Pitre
exactly exactly like what didn't we have to see she's she's had the same background answers since you know, three tours ago, like, What's going on with you do?

Frank Danna
What did you do?

Chris Pitre
But we typically no questions things, right? We don't question that type of stuff when we are glamoured by someone's sort of credentials. And it's not that we are dismissing credentials, I'm just saying that, hey, that person's credentials are equivocal to maybe this, you know, work from home parent who's had the same skills and had to use the same skills and build the same skills simply by what they've had to do. Maybe it's from someone who's worked as a executive assistant, and they have been exposed to so many different senior leaders. And so having conversations and understanding how to get things done and get things moving across certain roles and functions, makes them a perfect fit for what we are trying to do in this business, right. And having that type of perspective and shifting that is sometimes tricky. But it also then turns into the style of questioning that we're going to have inside of that interview. It also gives them the confidence that what we're looking for is not the same, oh, we're not looking for a replica of anybody. We're looking for you to be your best and show us what your best is. And guess what interviews are not always indicative of success in the organisation, right? There is no data that correlates that a perfect interview means that they are going to be high performers. So somebody couldn't give an okay interview, or they could be, you know, maybe we don't know what's going on in their personal lives, right? They could be nervous, they could be right, imagine walking in and like Beyonce is the interview or like, I don't know how to perform on that day. Right? Right. So you have all these other factors that could impact the way that you show up at an interview, which is also why I believe that you should be trying to make them as successful as possible, as comfortable as possible. So that way, you can see their true selves. But, you know, if you are in that interview, and you as an interviewer, have not been trained on, you know, what are you really looking for? What qualities are you really trying to assess, because again, you're trying to be as objective as possible. Like, you know, there are some interviewers who I've seen where they latch on to someone's experience, and they become fanboys and fangirls. And that's all that gets talked about in the interview. And you're like, well, I don't know if they truly can do what we need. And I don't know if you've seen everything they're capable of, because all we talked about is that time that worked with Beyonce.

Frank Danna
She talked to Tim Cook at Apple or

Chris Pitre
anywhere. So tell me about what she wore to rehearsal that daily routine, you know, like, and that happens. And I've seen that happen in interview committees around the world, or in different organisations, I've been a part of where it's just like the wrong things get highlighted. But also the right things don't ever come up or come out, because the line of questioning is either staged, it's templated questions. These are not questions that are geared towards the actual job or role, right, as an interviewer, I have to prep as much as they have to prep. Right? And sometimes it gets easier as you've done enough of these, right? But if you are on a committee, and you're not a hiring manager, you should understand what are the things that I should be asking every candidate that will give me an indicator of how they achieve, how they handle setbacks, how they handle misfires and communication, how they respond to news, that is not great, right? Whatever the situation is, whatever you think is going to be more true of that environment once they step into it. If you don't get an handle of that, like you don't, may not fully have a good picture. And then let's say you have a slew of candidates, all that are representing diverse backgrounds, right? Like you've, you've done your homework, you've done your job, you're succeeding, and now you have a strong sort of pool to choose from for that one sort of spot. In the debriefs, you'll start to hear as I mentioned before the language of what people who are helping you decide the decision really believe meaning Where are their biases, leading them to say yes or no to a candidate. And a lot of times you hear the term culture fit. This person had a cultural fit this person had culture fit. And you know, it's awfully we had to get out of that because you know, when you say culture fit, that means that they currently are replicating what we already have here, right? You're saying that someone should be a replica, when you say I want them to be a culture ad, that means we've recognised that we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. And this person is a new piece that completes the picture that we're trying to build. And therefore, that is what we want to see in this role in this position, and then the next hire that we bring on. And if that's true, that means that there are certain things that we shouldn't expect them to be the best at, right? If you feel like Jeff is great at logic and thinking through things, and this person doesn't have maybe the strongest sort of appeal around, you know, logic and statistics, and all of those things. But they're really great at something that Jeff isn't great at, like that should be a consideration, and maybe even a plus, that's an ad. Right. And so having those debriefs can honestly be an eye opening experience, because oftentimes, you will hear things that are not necessarily true of the qualities that you're looking for, or about the qualities that you're looking for, but are about things that are coded language, or, you know, personal preferences, or things that you may sort of you may have seen and previous co workers, colleagues or peers or direct reports, as you don't want to see, right? Oh, well, they made a joke about Real Housewives of Atlanta. So I already know they're gonna be like, no. Right? Oh, you know, I asked them a question. And they took a while to get to an answer, like, I can actually be in front of a client and they're going to be stumped, like, it's not going to work, right? Like we find these small little things to use to justify a big decision around sort of who we hire. And I think that that sometimes can create an environment unbeknownst to the candidate, where they're being sort of considered not right for the role, even though their qualities are best for the role, simply because of a difference that they brought to the table, or something that they showed that someone on the hiring committee didn't necessarily feel would fit into the current mould of the organisation. And those are the things that are really hard to question, and really hard to call out and really hard to challenge people on. Because again, we're talking about people's core beliefs. Right? So when you say those things, and when you share those things, like this person doesn't have executive presence, if someone is to come and tell you like, what do you mean by that? Tell me what executive presence means to you. And maybe we should start with language that shows the qualities of what you feel executive presence exudes, but that term actually communicates something that you may not fully be aware of. Yeah, right. That's good.

Jeff Ma
So I've been taking notes. Let me see if I can summarise this. Yeah. So when it comes to inclusivity, in the hiring process, we start with the roles to fill not with looking at quotas that you want to fill for diversity, start with the actual role you're trying to fill. And then rethink what those roles success look like, right? Look for what kind of characteristics traits, not types of people, but what does it look like to perform in that role, and then start having the courage to look in different places that you can find originals, not replicas, right? looking for people that you don't replicate what you already see. But instead, bring maybe bring something to the team that's missing. And not just in terms of traditional diversity characteristics, but truly bring some to the table that maybe covers a weakness and does something new, and then set them up for success. create an environment that makes them bring their best and shows them what kind of environment they'd be coming into work for. And then check your own biases along the process to make sure that you're also the people in the room, people at the table are also able to make the right assessment and make sure and check for that culture add enough for a culture fit. And I think if you follow this, this kind of flow, then

Chris Pitre
the only thing I would add one thing, yes. And this is more around assembling your interview panel, your hiring committee, whatever. One of the things that I can't stress enough is showing your diversity inside of those panels. So as an organisation Are you reflecting the sort of the environment and the mix and the makeup that you want to have from your candidates? And so if you have a woman of colour walk into a room when all she's meeting as white men like that is likely going to send a message, whether that could be taken or acted upon or not, but it will send a message that maybe you're not truly about diversity. Yeah, right. And it doesn't mean staging people, right? I'm not saying I just go and find random people have nothing to do with every process, but like you should be thinking through who Is comprising of our interview panels. Because also, if people are of the same mind when they walk into those debriefs chances, are you going to find that they select a candidate that looks just like them.

Jeff Ma
Yep. Absolutely good add. And kind of the summary I'm taking away from all of these steps and kind of these considerations is that when you really don't start from a place of hiring for just inclusivity, and diversity, when you hire to truly find the right candidate for the role, you will then look back and find that you have created a very diverse and inclusive team, because that's where originals come from, you get enough originals, you will have an inclusive and diverse team, right?

Chris Pitre
Yep. Yep,

Jeff Ma
I like that. Yep. So I got you know, I got a whole page of notes. Thank you for the for the lesson, Chris. Very, very compelling.

Frank Danna
I loved it. I loved it. You know, the last thought for me was I, there's one statement you said that I wrote down that I definitely like highlighted. And he said, I want to see who you are when you're set up for success. And that kind of keeps bouncing around in my mind, because you're so right, every every time we're working and engaging with colleagues, we want to set them up for success. If they're trying to deliver on a task or a project, we want to make sure that they have every everything they need to do the right work. And when you're talking about the interview process, the hiring process, setting that person up for success that that to me looks like inclusion, because you're allowing them to be a part of the conversation and to feel like they can be they can belong in a conversation where they're trying to find whether or not they can belong. And I just feel like that's a very powerful statement and something that I'm definitely taking away from this conversation.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. So and maybe we'll start a new series, like class time with Chris or something like Chris.

Chris Pitre
Like we can, like, I want the listeners to be very clear, we can go deeper into each of these, because there are very sort of specific takeaways around just that idea of setting people up for success. And what that means if you're dealing with neurodiversity, what that means if you're dealing with lower socioeconomic statuses, what that means if we're dealing with different ethnicities, if we're dealing with people who didn't come from the US, right, like, all of those sort of statements and sort of areas, we can go way deeper on and we can like exhaust, but for the sake of time and people's patience, I didn't want to go,

Jeff Ma
Hey, if, if you want to hear more about those things, let us know. Get back. Yeah, reach out to us, thank you to our listeners, as always, because we do it for you, hopefully, you're getting a lot out of it. We post new episodes every Wednesday. So if you want to hear some of those topics Chris is talking about. If you have feedback for us, please let us know. If you liked what you heard, as always, please give us that feedback. Give us those as those ratings as five stars, tell your friends, we are in fact three of the four authors of Love as a business strategy available at your book retailer. Then you can cover that covers a lot of these topics as well in a different way. And we really encourage you to go check that out. So with that this is the first episode of class time with Chris we're gonna see mistakes. But Chris, thanks for the insights. Frank, thanks for joining us. And with that, we will see you all next week.