all right we’re live welcome I am Jasleen I am co-founder of the disruptors and I’m a career coach for women in Tech and I also have an HR background and so which really lends itself to the conversation we’re having today on inclusive hiring practices and I’ll pass it over to Alexandria to introduce yourself thanks Joseline I am Alexandra I am the other co-founder of the disruptors uh my background originally comes out of the therapy space I pivoted into Tech with felling face first into it and now I am an executive coach for women in Tech this is uh inclusive hiring is definitely a subject that is near and dear to my heart and I think it’s super super important to recognize whether you have inclusive hiring practices or not so I’m super excited to have this chat with you today Jesse awesome so let’s jump into the question so I guess today we’re really we want to highlight all the red flags for you because this is such a meaty topic we could really go down so many lanes but we wanted to really simplify it into something that’s actionable for you so we’re really just highlighting five of the red flags yeah but before we do that I think I actually want us to Define what an inclusive hiring practice is so how would you define that jesleen yeah so it’s really important to Define it because I think sometimes we think we have an inclusive hiring practice when we don’t and I wanted to First share a stat with you to kind of highlight that so this study came out of Harvard and they did a study with recruiters who were raiding stem candidates and basically uh women and bipod candidates were rated significantly lower than white men so even if the credentials were the same and so all of it’s important to know that all these recruiters self-identified as people who were actively involved in diversity Recruitment and so just to give you insight into that study um basically if you were a woman or bypoc to get the same rating as a white man with a 3.7 GPA you had to have a 4.0 GPA as well well as when they looked at really Elite internships that they had it had a 50 percent higher rating for the white men than it did for bypoc or women candidates so really when we’re defining inclusive hiring it’s really important um you know in general it’s really about having a hiring practice that’s designed to create an equitable and inclusive experience from recruitment to offer to level the playing field for all candidates but you really want to this is a very general vague definition so you really want to do the work to Define how you’re going to measure that yourself as you’re going through this how will you know you know where are you now where are the gaps and as we’re talking through these red flags I think it will help you kind of think about how you might Define that so really go back and Define that for yourself um and we also want to talk about why should you even care about this like most of you if you’re tuning in today you probably do care about this but if you don’t um Alexandria what do you think why should we really care about inclusive hiring I think there’s a lot of reasons why we should care but if we’re just focusing in on the business reasons why you should care if you have an inclusive hiring practice then that allows you to actually create more diverse teams and it’s been proven that more diverse teams increase Innovation they increase profitability they increase sustainability of the company as a whole so if you are just focused in on I don’t know whatever problem it is that you’re solving but you have a homeo genius team you’re only going to be able to solve that problem with the experiences brought to you by that team and the thoughts that are brought to you by that team but if you can have diversity in that thought and diversity of background and experience and education and all of those different pieces then you can expand out your solution which means that you have better Solutions and you can move faster than if you’re just stuck in the same Echo chamber of thought so it makes good business sense to have an inclusive hiring practice because that’s how you actually get to diverse teams which has been proven time and time again to be good for business awesome so it’s not just a nice thing to do it’s actually good for your business if your Workforce really represents your customer base you’re going to be able to connect a market to them better so and there’s a lot of research on this that proves that as well as as Alexandria spoke to um and also I just wanted to highlight a call to action for you and I think we’ll we’ll put this in the comments I also wrote a blog post by the way um so that’s on the disrupters website so if you don’t want to take notes as we’re going through this you don’t have to because all of this is going to be in that blog post I actually didn’t put this in there but I wanna I probably will go and edit and add this is the implicit association test I really I know I shared this with you Alexandria because I had an icky icky feeling when I took this test because as someone who’s been actively doing the work I still have biases and that was like a real light bulb moment for me because I took this test probably 10 years ago and I took it again um I think it was the same test but the results were very similar and there’s so there’s different um there’s different biases that you can test whether it’s light skin dark skin gender all of these sorts of tests so you can kind of go through and think about who are you really trying to recruit and and and I challenge you to take that test for yourself and see what your results are and not in a way to feel guilty about it or shameful about it but just to kind of understand that even if you’ve been actively doing this work like us you still are conditioned by Society by the images we see by the stereotypes everything and so it’s it’s not about eliminating bias it’s about highlighting this and understanding where it is so you can build an inclusive hiring system to mitigate any sort of decisions that are made from by is and not from actually assessing the quality of the candidate yeah absolutely I definitely want to Echo everything that you just said because checking your bias is a huge piece of this work and I really appreciate that you point out that even you and I who have been doing this work for a long time it still exists we still have work to do and so by just admitting that bias is a thing because that’s how our brains work and we are generalizers and pattern Seekers we have to continuously draw attention to the work and and checking those biases so that they become aware I mean if you’re part of the marginalized group that you’re trying to recruit and so if you have like you can still have internalized racism internalize misogyny internalize homophobia all the isms right and so it’s important to know that because you might be even assessing people that do look and sound similar to you you may be um you may be assessing them with a harsher lens and you may be applying that to yourself too so I feel like when you do this work it it’s really liberating as well because you learn to be easier on yourself um but that being said let’s jump into the red flag shall we yeah we’ll just plug that we are going to dive a little bit deeper into bias next month so make sure you keep an eye out on our calendar for that because we’re going to talk very specifically about some biases that show up with ease unfortunately in the tech world and so we’ll dive into those and help you uncover some of those next month um but yeah let’s talk about the red flag so what is the first red flag that you would say that companies need to check for to see if they have inclusive hiring practices or not yeah so the first one is pretty obvious it’s diverse candidates are not applying and so this is why I said it’s really important to Define what inclusive hiring is for you because you need to understand what is the diversity you’re looking for and so if you’re not seeing those candidates you have to think about why aren’t they applying is it that you don’t have representation on your website or your marketing materials or on your social Channel is it in the job description is it the language that you’re using and there’s a lot of research on this and in the blog post I talk about some of the words that will um will might hinder someone who is underrepresented from applying um and we can help you with this as well because we help with crafting the job description and then also um you know just looking at how you’re defining that as a whole on your website and your vision statement your mission statement all the value signals that are are there in the language so really going through all of your branding with a fine-tooth comb with a thinking partner with someone who has this sort of lens and really understanding how others are viewing your company because it’s chances are if diverse candidates aren’t applying diverse customers might not also be buying so it’s really important to make that connection there’s the next red flag Do You Wanna or did you have anything else to say about that well so I want to say that not only can we help you with that if you’re not ready to hire some Dei Consultants or do that but you want to kind of get an idea of like okay what’s going on with our job descriptions there are tools that you can use online textio is a great one to help you get to a gender neutral language space and I really want to highlight how important the choice of language is in your job descriptions on your website when you’re talking to people because that’s one of the places that bias shows up and so we don’t even necessarily think about it because we’re so used to using certain words or nomenclature and it just becomes normalized that you don’t realize the effect it actually has so if your job descriptions are heavy masculine it’s going to deter women identifying people from applying for the jobs and that’s an easy change right you just shift some of the language that you’re using and you’re conveying the same idea but in a more inclusive way so look out for some tools that can help you if you aren’t ready to hire Consultants but if you do need the extra help and you want to have that you know people like us can definitely help that but moving on to the next flag so let’s just say you have diverse candidates who are applying but your candidates are dropping off in the interview process specifically if they’re dropping off very early like after the first interview or so they remove themselves from the candidacy pool that’s a huge huge red flag that means that something is happening in your interview process that’s deterring them from wanting to continue so it could be in your job description it could be in the interviews themselves how you gave them instructions on the interviews what are some other thoughts you have Jasleen about why candidates would be dropping off after that first round I’m gonna hold my thought on this one because it’s connected to one of our other red flags but I don’t want to go I don’t want to go there yet but you really need to look at everything like how how you’re structuring the interview questions who you’re bringing into the like you said the interview panel is diverse who are you bringing in and how much diversity training do they have in terms of like really truly understanding it not just how a lot of people understand it as a buzzword and we don’t want to exclude people yes but how are we really you know using a lot of cultural signals that are off-putting and this even goes back to the language in the job description but you know saying things like we’re like a family here or you know that’s like a common one where people say okay so basically I have to sacrifice my whole life to work at this company or you know we’re like a startup so that might be a signal that they’re gonna try to you know lowball me on an offer and so this is actually really relevant not just for your diverse employees but for all of your candidates but when you’re looking at diverse candidates if you’re if you’re used to being marginalized and you’re used to reading these signals you’re going to pick up on them faster than someone else might because someone else might be used to you know a little a little bit of a sense of entitlement that they know that what they’re going to get is fair so really always looking at it from that lens yeah I think that’s really important to highlight is people who have been historically marginalized and the patterns that they look out for to keep themselves safe you may not even realize your signaling are true in your culture because you haven’t been active in making sure that you’ve changed them and so while you may have the intention to not exclude if you are not actively working towards including and there’s bias there and there’s practices that are excluding because you haven’t been intentional about it you have to be intentional this is active work yeah and like and going back to that business case for Dei as well when you’re de-centering yourself in the hiring process you’re de-centering yourself in everything you do and so you know we’ve I think I’ve shared on on the page yesterday a lot of Dei is being defunded right now and so this is an opportunity first of all I mean we could talk about that and why that’s awful because of the commitments that were made and people are going back on that but it is also an opportunity to understand that you know Dei starts with you it’s about the inner work it should always be happening it’s not something we’re Outsourcing anyways we we partner with people to help us understand our biases and help us ask the right questions and again the same questions that are going to help you really thrive in your business as well well anything that goes back to some of the things that you’ve talked about too with Dei only matters when it’s hard right otherwise it’s performative and checking the box like it’s active work that never stops and so the times when it’s hard is when it matters the most because that’s how you get through to the other side right like right now it’s survival mode for a lot of companies well you need that Innovation you need that influx of thought and difference to be able to get you through this space that’s hard right now and so not dedicating yourself to the Dei work you’re just harming your business and everybody else who’s still in this with you and so expanding the work in Dei and continuing to invest in it is going to be what helps you move your business forward and get through this recession that a lot of companies are feeling the weight of it’s how you build resilience with your business too because when you say Dei is hard you know it is her it can be hard when you start but it’s like a muscle that you build right and so we’re here to help people build that muscle because when you’re really looking at everything through a lens of inclusion and you’re building that muscle eventually it will become easier so when you see a lot of these businesses like going through the pr crisis right going through the you know financial crisis this kind of muscle of inclusion it helps you with so many aspects it helps you with accountability it helps you with because when you’re people focused like and a lot of tech companies to thrive you really do need to be people focused and you need to be anticipating the needs of people today and in the future and so again it’s hard work but as you build this muscle it becomes a more ingrained part of your culture and way of being and make and it helps you make Better Business decisions and I want to highlight everything you just said like it’s a muscle right it grows just like any other skill that you’re working on they all require intention and work but then you grow and you become better and it becomes like second nature and so it’s like Maya Angelou says like once you know better do better when we’re in that place now we have the ability to know better and so we have the ability to do better which creates a better world for everybody and that’s the argument that we make all the time for why not just tech industry but all Industries should be human first we are always human that’s not going to change we don’t clock in and become something else and so prioritizing the human element is what will allow us to all Thrive totally it’s a muscle you build you’ll always still have blind spots but the muscle is in understanding how to spot spot the blind spots how to ask the right questions and again I I think I’ve told I’ve kind of sold that idea of the return on investment for the business as well because those thoughtful questions that inclusion lens helps you include everyone and wants everyone to be a part of your business and so I’ll move on to the next red flag and this one’s a bit controversial because um you kind of have to think about this through a critical lens and so the red flag is relying heavily on employee referral programs and so if you’re a recruiter watching this or if you’re involved in this space you you know that the data is clear that if you have an Erp program is going to reduce your recruitment costs you’re going to have a higher likelihood of offer accepted you’re going to have higher retention rates higher likelihood that you’re getting a qualified candidate so we’re not saying to stop uh all erps we’re not saying that at all but if your company is in a place where you’re already lacking diversity most of the people are going to recruit people that are more similar to themselves and so which is okay if they’re a good worker and you want to be recruiting those same skills but that could unintentionally be limiting um access for underrepresented groups to get into the company so it’s really about expanding your sourcing options and so at disruptors we also provide um Hands-On sourcing where we will work with you in terms of getting you a qualified and diverse candidate um and also formalizing your Erp formalizing that employee referral program with an educational lens on diversity equity and inclusion so your employees are really understanding why it’s valuable to the company and how they can think critically as well about who they’re referring and how they might expand in terms of where who they’re um whose names they’re putting forward for roles yeah I agree the employee referral can be great it’s an area of caution because people are pulling in from their own networks and so being able to even think critically about what is your own network even look like if you are an individual contributor and you are starting to not see diversity in a company that you work for and you’ve referred people in starting to think what does my own network look like and am I diversifying my own network so that I personally can grow another area of opportunity even if you aren’t on the hiring committee you aren’t in leadership any of those things you think this doesn’t apply it still does cautioning yeah and I think for small businesses like that can be your strength a lot of people that’s how they get their business off the ground and raise money and and get the word out there’s through their networks but this is now just taking it to the next level of saying okay now I’m it’s just like when you think about expanding into new markets right it’s really just how are you now this is how you got here it’s not about shame or blame or any of those things if your organization looks really white or if it looks really masculine that’s okay but recognizing okay that’s the strength that got you here now how are you expanding how are you really expanding those Networks and that moves us into the other red flag that we’re going to talk about your interviews are informal or highly feeling based and that’s a red flag for a lot of reasons right when it’s informal tons of bias gets to be entered into the equation and the feelings base those aren’t measurable or quantifiable and again bias is rampant in those areas right when you’re just like oh they don’t feel like a salesperson what does that mean right like what are you actually noticing and is it measurable or is that biased talking do they just not look like what your normalization view of what a salesperson looks like because if it that’s the case that’s bias and it’s an opportunity to check it and to adjust it so how would you suggest if they have informal interview practices how would they solve that so yeah you really want to have a structured interview and you want to make sure the questions that you’re asking are open-ended questions that allow people to expand you want to make sure those questions are tied to in the HR world we called it a bona fide occupational requirements it’s something that they really need to do to be able to do the job and when you are looking at culture fit it’s really important to understand when you’re you’re putting too much emphasis on culture fit and why you’re putting an emphasis on culture fit and how the culture fit criteria might be excluding underrepresented groups right so if you’re an organization that likes to go to sporting events on the weekends and you’re talking about that and you’re like oh this person doesn’t really feel like someone we can I’ve heard recruiters even say that like or or maybe not official recruiters but people who who are hiring into the business saying can I go for a beer with this person after work right so who might you be excluding like from certain cultures that maybe that isn’t what they do and so really thinking about okay is my interview structured and am I following the same process for every candidate how am I assessing that criteria how am I making sure that I’m filtering out the bias and really focused on can this person do the job that’s key because I think when we talk about Dei there’s this there’s this sort of misconception that we’re saying let’s lower the bar for diverse candidates we are not lowering the bar we are leveling or raising the playing field uh is how I would look at it we’re really raising the playing field so that your company can Thrive and really because like like you said at the beginning like there is a research shows a direct correlation between high-skilled qualified diverse talent and an increased level in Innovation and economic performance so it’s really shifting our mindset to these structure questions are not just to make you know they’re not just fluff just to appear like we’re doing the right thing it’s really about raising the playing field and raising the level of your business yeah the pieces I want to add there the making sure you have the same interview process includes the same interview questions if you are asking all the candidates the same questions then you get the same framing in response so you can actually compare them as Apples to Apples if you don’t ask the same questions then you don’t actually have grounds for comparison because you’re trying to take different responses from different things having the interview questions ahead of time also helps you to really hone in on what are we trying to get from this question so it also helps when you go through the review process of candidates did we actually get the information we needed are we making an informed decision because we ask the questions to actually tell us what we need to know there’s all kinds of research into how you ask questions in the framing and the responses that you’re going to get back but having set inclusive interview questions is a big way that you can level the play raise the playing field but also get the information that you need so you can make more effective hiring decisions and then I want to add the piece with the culture fit that we’ve been talking about recently and not even interviewing for the culture fit because that’s again creating more homeo genius teams but the culture ad because you can only think in the ways that you can think in the experience that you have so what could this person add to your culture how could they shift it in a way that would be helpful or beneficial or challenge you in some way as a team so that you can grow growth doesn’t happen in the comfort zone it happens at the edge so what could they add to the culture and do you need that and being aware of the shortfalls of the culture that you currently have absolutely that’s that’s a good point it’s not about culture fit it’s about culture ad and I also want to add to this because you know we’ve been talking about like structured questions but even looking at your notes in the interview in terms of the structure of the notes you’re taking and so I’ll give you an example I coach a lot of women in Tech who are in leadership or aspire to leadership and a lot of the feedback they get and research backs this up too is based on style and so it’s like she doesn’t have leadership presence or she comes across as too aggressive right where men will get actionable feedback where it’s this person you know he’s really great but he really needs to learn this technical skill so it’s something that they can take and actually action where sometimes for women it’s really again a cultural thing where it’s it’s we are allowed to have masculine traits but only within a narrow band of accepted behaviors and so really paying attention to the nodes and comparing that to your you know the white versus bypoc the women versus the men and really looking at the notes that you’re taking and how that might be seen through a different lens which is the importance of having diverse interview panels and being able to have if you have diversity in your interview panel you also have the opportunity to check one another’s bias in that moment and like ask questions like what do you mean she was too aggressive and then you can have a real conversation about what they’re intending on saying there and actually get to something measurable or something actionable versus just sitting in your own Echo chamber and so that’s why panels are always recommended as well and the more diverse you can make the panel the better because then you have multiple views and different biases that can be checked against one another yeah and also checking to make sure that you know it again it’s not performative just because you have a diverse panel doesn’t mean that everyone has the same level of Dei competence so some again to my point about the internalized isms right and so just because someone is diverse doesn’t mean that they’re not also looking at it through that lens so it’s important to think about it through all of these steps that we we talk about because yeah diversity representation yes it’s it’s great because it’s giving a value signal to that candidate but if the the men in that panel are over speaking over the women or you know not listening to some of the concerns or if there’s internalized uh you know misogyny or racism happening within the team that also needs to be checked in a way in a very mindful way because you can’t you everyone has different experiences so even within an underrepresented group you’re not a monolith it’s that that group is not a monolith and so understanding the nuances and making sure again it’s not just about you’re doing one thing to say oh yeah we’re we’ve got to cover because we have a diverse panel but really looking at it again from the attraction and recruitment all all the way through offer and onboarding and retention yeah absolutely which I think leads us to our last red flag that we’re going to talk about today and so before I have jesling talk about that one if anybody watching has any questions or comments please and we’ll answer those questions uh go ahead Jasleen what is our last Red Flag we want to talk about the last one that’s one I I kind of I wanted to jump to talking about this one before when we’re talking about candidates dropping off in the interview and so sometimes that could be because of this red flag which is that your selection process is over complicated and so I have scoured you know the internet and academic journals for for proof that having multiple steps actually produces a qual a better quality candidate and there’s no proof of this um and so what it ends up doing is the more steps you have the more time it takes the more you’re introducing bias because within every step there’s going to be and so if you think about it as adding layers and layers of bias for the sake of what because um you know I think sometimes people think no this person needs to meet everyone on the team when you have that mentality what you’re really thinking is everyone has to like this person right and so often First Impressions when it and again when we go into this series of bias um you know I I think we’re doing this in January yes I’m biased so when we when we go into bias we’ll we’ll speak to this on a deeper level but similar to me bias is is one of them and so we are going to gravitate toward people who remind us of ourselves and so the more you’re like okay we have to meet everyone on the team that’s like okay do we like this person AKA are they similar to us and also from a qualification standpoint there isn’t a isn’t really a lot of justification and so people often will say okay you have to do this take home assignment you have to do a technical interview a behavioral based interview and then you know it gets into five six seven rounds where then for that candidate applying for a job becomes a full-time job and so again like when when we talk about candidates dropping off this is another this is another way that this can happen and so how are you really improving the candidate experience so that you’re not only just losing your diverse talent because you’re losing all your top talent if it’s cumbersome if you’re really making people jump through hoops that’s a signal to them especially if you’re a good candidate that why am I working so hard I know why am I working so hard to get into this company this is probably just a sign of things to come and I tell this to my clients that you’re probably going to have to be jumping through hoops to get a promotion to you know get sort any other sort of career advancing opportunity to get people to take you seriously so really think about simplifying that process making sure everything is tied to relevant knowledge skills and abilities and place a lower emphasis on the subjective criteria absolutely and I think like I want to call out the technical interview that’s a very common thing in the tech industry depending on the position that you’re in and there is a level of necessity to it so we aren’t saying that you don’t have technical interviews but what does your technical interview entail uh how can you create more inclusivity in it and making it so it’s more accessible and so it’s not getting rid of it necessarily it’s just making sure have you checked in with your process and is there a reason that is directly correlated to quantifiable skills that you can draw that to was it just that you do it because everybody else is doing it or is there a real reason and you can measure the the results that you’re getting out of it and thinking about the amount of interviews that you have and how cumbersome that could be to somebody who’s applying for jobs are you allowing remote versus requiring in person there’s a lot of different ways that you can make interviewing simple and more accessible for more people and keeping in mind what kind of gatekeeping are you doing by not making them accessible and that’s one of the ways we’re trying to disrupt this is by saying you know we we work with Partners the qualathons with tech check where candidates are upskilling or or are doing technical projects where we can really vet these candidates to to prove that they have the ability and the technical know-how to do the job and that way if they’re if you’re working with these organizations the candidates only having to go through these kind of things once and so that it’s validated and then you don’t have to and then also is going to save you a lot of money and it’s going to save you time and it’s going to help you then Focus those resources on bringing that employee on board having a proper training and onboarding process getting them up to speed faster it just makes sense like it’s going to save like hundreds of thousands of dollars for your business in the long run if it if you’re reducing your recruitment costs and you’re able to get your employee up to speed faster and delivering results and adding value to the business faster and I want to call out some attention to that too right like the small and medium-sized businesses they there’s a lot of emphasis on we need qualified candidates who can just like hit the ground running and that’s great and I understand like why you would want and need that right business doesn’t stop moving and being aware that all jobs all Industries there’s a learning curve your company is different than any other company that they’ve worked at before there is still going to be a learning curve and while you can have like base skills right if you’re hiring for an I.T position like they need to know what servers are and how they operate and networking or whatever it is that’s required in their I.T position and there’s still going to be a learning curve of your processes your systems your servers and so being more open to the learning space and how can you with your onboarding process create that on-ramp that’s as easy as possible to go up are you actually providing mentoring are you actually providing training are you setting that person coming onto your company brand new for Success yep just learning the company acronyms can take months you know like like just getting up to speed with the acronyms and the lingo that they’re using and they’re like oh we called it this at my last company or you’re new to the corporate world and you know it’s just it’s it’s a new language you’re learning and so it just it really simplifying it is better for everyone and so I used to actually work in the onboarding department and oh my gosh sometimes it was just like getting the computer ordered and getting everything that the person needed and like all of the logistical components it it costs a lot of money it takes a lot of time and so yeah we want you to get as qualified of a of a candidate as you can we want to make sure that you’re bringing in diverse Talent we want to make sure that your business is thriving and doing in it in a way that’s cost effective absolutely yeah so we don’t have any comments happening but I want to go back over and just quick review of the red flag and then like one thing that can be done to look at it so the first red flag diverse candidates aren’t even applying your first place to look is going to be in your job descriptions and how are you representing your company on the face as a company that diverse Talent would want to apply for yep and then the next red flag is the candidates are dropping off in the first interview and so what you can do here is audit your applicant Tracking System look for the built-in bias and make sure you’re recruiting a diverse interview panel the next one is you are relying very heavily on an employee referral program and you don’t have a diverse talent pool already in your company that’s a red flag because it is potentially going to just continue with having not diverse talent coming into the pipeline so reviewing and formalizing your employee review process or referral process excuse me as well as educating your employees on diversity and checking bias so that they can expand their own networks and bring in more diverse Talent through the referral program yeah and the fourth red flag is your interviews are feelings based or very informal conversational and so what you can do about that is make sure that you have a structured consistent interview make sure all the questions are tied to a legitimate knowledge skill or ability open-ended but also a structured way of taking in the information and comparing Apples to Apples again diverse interview panel is going to help you with this as well and the last one your selection process or your interview process is over complicated so taking a look at your entire interview and selection process and you have opportunities to simplify it is every piece of your process actually required and directly connectable to a thing that you need from the interview process to make sure that you have a qualified candidate at the end of your selection process and I want to mention too um so we’re talking a lot about data and structure in the recruitment process and so we have a partner called teamable who helped immensely in this space and so we will be talking to them is it next week sorry February in February okay so they’re going to come on with us in February but I invite you to go and check out their website and look at what they have to offer as well and also DM us talk to us if you need help creating a standard process because we help more than with just this aspect we really look at your entire Dei strategy help you understand the gaps not in a way that’s overwhelming but in a way that we’re looking at low hanging fruit first looking at a way at a way that is strategic tied to your business outcomes that you want to see as well as you know your your Market your talent will really strategizing this from um from your perspective and your needs so please do reach out to us there’s also a form um that will invite you to fill out so if you want to um if you’re an inclusive employer you want to be an inclusive employer you’re hiring Tech Talent go to the job to stop jobdisruptors.com website and you want to complete the form you want to click on I’m hiring complete that form and when you do that you’re going to get a free Dei evaluation either from Alexandria or myself where you will have some quick actionable steps and a really good idea of where you are and what work needs to be done and I think we have a question coming in as well leader in Tech do you have suggestions on how to diversify my network yeah that’s a great question so diversifying your network I would say always starts with looking at who is in your network right now and then you can ask within your network hey do you know anybody that would be interesting for me to talk to to expand my area of knowledge and like being specific in whatever of knowledge that you’re trying to expand but also just start reaching out on LinkedIn looking at LinkedIn and looking for other Tech leaders in your same position that are working for different companies that came from different schools than you that look different than you and just saying hey I would be interested in learning about your experience in this position with this company would you be willing to talk with me networking events are a good way to do that looking for open houses like there are different networking uh communities that are bypoc focused or women focused or lgbtqia focused and sometimes they have open houses so even if you are not a member of that Community you can come in and be a part of that networking event as well be cognizant if they are open or or not because they may be attempting to create a safe space and they would want it for people who are only within that Community but there is outrage opportunity there too what other thoughts do you have Jessica thoughts on this because I think this is one that’s tricky so when you look around and you say okay all my friends and colleagues are white you know or all my friends and colleagues are straight or all my whatever it is right and you’re really looking to learn about this it can be tricky because you can come across as performative and so my biggest piece of advice is start doing the anti-racism work um you know on your own um I I’m a part of a Facebook group it’s it’s called moms Against Racism but like I think it’s open to any woman who wants to join and really any sort of space any sort of anti-racism space anti whatever space in the beginning you just want to be listening and observing because the big practice when it comes to this is de-centering yourself and so in those spaces those are sacred spaces where people are doing the work but if you come in too strong too performative it ends up having a bad effect and what I see happen a lot is then because you know you’ve got all sorts of different kinds of people in that group I’m very patient with people I’m I like to take the time to educate people however that’s not our job right just because you know because a lot of this is unpaid labor right and so think about it from that lens of like observing listening you know calling yourself in really paying attention to your biases and if you have a need to respond in those spaces where is that coming from and what are your assumptions you’re making about about certain issues and so start with your own work first don’t burden other people with your work decenter yourself and that de-centering is going to help help you then create authentic relationships with people who are different from you because when you’re de-centering you’re coming from a place of curiosity you’re coming from a place of authenticity you can be really deliberate about how you want to partner with somebody and not fall into the Trap of performative networking or tokenizing people to say hey we need you know a person of color on our team so let’s just recruit this person um no you need to understand and again this goes back to what we’ve said in previous events is really you have to have your own why when it comes to Dei so whether it’s tied to the business whether it’s tied well I would say first it has to start with you it has to start with your own why and then you connect it to the business but you really have to have that reason of wanting to change and understanding where you are now where you want to be and and and really keeping that Center of Mind as you’re on that Journey instead of feeling because we get a lot of feelings like white guilt white shame that leads to really behaviors that are not not conducive to creating the change that we need to see in this space so it’s about being authentic it’s about being I hope Sarah that that answers your question I know that was a really long answer but it’s really being deliberate about those relationships and being and proceeding in an authentic way reminding yourself to decenter yourself and I think just like also focusing in on the intention right and when I want to expand my network why and what am I looking for and what bias have I allowed to enter in that has prevented my network from expanding without the intention and just being aware of what biases and things are happening or things around you that could be contributing to that but yeah and sometimes you won’t be aware of it in the moment I I still do this right right where my bias shows up I’m I’m from a place of ego and or it comes from a place where I think I want to help I’m like I’m a helper so I’ll jump in to help and a lot of women are like this right and so you’re like oh I have a solution to your problem and then and then I will look back on it and I will be like oh my God that was really either performative of me um and I think this goes for like as a business too when you’re posting things on your social Channel like why are you posting it are you posting it because it’s Black History Month are you posting it because it’s International women’s day power it like it’s it’s again it’s not a check in the box exercise if if that’s all you’re doing you know it’s performative if you’re going to the easiest place and I’ve again done this myself I know in Black History Month there was one time I posted a reel of all the black women that have inspired me like Maya Angelou like Tony Robinson like and so to me I’m like I’m celebrating black women this is a positive thing what I wasn’t doing in that moment was taking the opportunity to do my own inner work of understanding where my gaps are and so that is something that I I and I’ll continue to say this I we always want to be one of the good guys and so we’re always aligning ourselves to how we are non-racist the to be actively anti-racist or anti-misogynistic or anti-homophobic we have to actually be looking for the similarities between us and the system of racism misogyny all of those kind of things we have to actually be looking at where are where am I aligned to that because we were all raised in this culture and so we’ve all internalized it so the work never stops it’s always about looking at that and once you start doing that work it’s not going to feel as unnatural making true connections with people who are different from you because now you know you know where your blind spots are you know why what has prevented you from making those relationships to begin with yeah absolutely uh Sarah if you have more questions you’re more than welcome to reach out to us I just want to recap that if you are a hiring manager you are a recruiter you are in the space of having influence over the hiring practices and you know that your company needs some help please feel free to reach out to us we do have that free uh Dei evaluation that we are giving out right now so you can contact us on jobdisruptors.com you join us next week we are bringing back Dr Carrie Anne Peart and we are very excited to talk to her again and so you can look at that event on our site and then we will be releasing our January event soon and so you’ll all be getting invites for those as well if you don’t already follow the job disrupters page on LinkedIn make sure you do so that you can get updates of when we have new events drizzling is there anything that you wanted to close with to make sure that people are walking away with today um just that again remember that we have the blog post there so that you can kind of go through this in your own time do a little self-assessment of you know check all the red flags that apply to you and take an action whether it’s you know setting up that that free call with us to kind of just explore this deeper and have a chat or whether it’s to actually take some actionable steps today it’s just one just start with one like just you just need to start like that is the main thing don’t get overwhelmed by this work just start yeah and then just start and know that you’re not alone in this process you don’t have to do this alone you don’t have to carry this all by yourself there are tons of people who are actively willing and wanting to help us and tons of others so you’re not alone and the work is worth doing so thank you all for joining us today we look forward to seeing you all next week and in future events and I hope you have a lovely day bye everyone bye

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