The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
Welcome to The Breakthrough Hiring Show! We are on a mission to help leaders make hiring a competitive advantage.
Join our host, James Mackey, and guests as they discuss various topics, with episodes ranging from high-level thought leadership to the tactical implementation of process and technology.
You will learn how to:
- Shift your team’s culture to a talent-first organization.
- Develop a step-by-step guide to hiring and empowering top talent.
- Leverage data, process, and technology to achieve hiring success.
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The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 141: Navigating tech hiring trends and cultivating inclusive teams with Shathiya Rengalwar.
Join us as host James Mackey and his guest Shathiya Rengalwar, People Leader, unpack the intricacies of tech hiring, discussing the surge in layoffs and the subsequent challenges for hiring teams.
Explore talent acquisition strategies, emphasizing the pivotal role of networking and relationship investments. The episode also sheds light on building diverse and inclusive teams, with practical insights into inclusive hiring practices and the ongoing commitment needed for workplace diversity.
0:37 Shathiya Rengalwar's background
2:03 Hiring trends and layoffs in the tech industry
14:46 Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
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Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough hiring show. I'm your host, james Mackey. Today, we're joined by Suthya Rengarwaran. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing awesome. James, Great to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really happy to have you. Thanks again for contributing. Well, I was hoping you can do a quick intro.
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in India. I'm an engineering, started my career as a software engineer and eventually landed into the talent. I actually took some time off when I had my daughter years ago Gosh, time flies and it did give me an opportunity to explore recruiting as a career. The company reason I had was I wanted to help people learn their dream job and over the years recruiting has definitely helped me build deep connections, long-term relationships, which I value the most. But I've also broadened my scope outside of recruiting the last few years, particularly within talent management, employee relations, people ops, organizational structure, culture and whatnot. And there's not quite rewarding as witnessing the growth of not only individuals but some companies, and I'm definitely fortunate to have been on this journey at various startups where I've had the privilege of building high impact teams while driving innovative talent and people initiatives. I do find the ability to impact an employee lifecycle, all the way from hiring, onboarding their experience, as the most rewarding part of my job.
Speaker 1:I love it. Awesome, thank you. And right before we hit record, we had just actually started to talk a little bit about layoff training in January 2024. So I just figured, you know, since my interesting conversation we had, we jumped on the call and I just figured, hey, let's just, we can just talk about this a little bit more. We were talking a little bit about the market in tech, the correction it seems like layoffs have been happening now for 18 months. When is this stuff going to end? And everyone tuning in.
Speaker 1:What we had just discussed prior to hitting record was my thoughts are okay. I am seeing a bit of an uptick. I'm seeing more companies hiring, starting to hire again, not significant, but I'm seeing movement. I'm seeing demand. My company, securevision, does embedded recruiting for tech companies primarily, and so we're starting to see more demand, more growth stage SaaS companies coming to us saying, hey, we need recruiting support Again, not nothing like we were seeing in 2021, but we're closing deals again, which feels pretty cool. So what's your personal experience right now in the market, because I know you're, of course, in tonic position and people leadership Are you seeing any type of uptick in hiring or demand right now for tonic position, or does it feel pretty consistent with what you were seeing last year?
Speaker 2:There's some uptick. There's good news. There's good news for sure. I do see more. Hey, I'm joining XYZ. New job announcements more and more happening and I also see a lot more roles open for people side of the house, which is great. But then the marketplace has also experienced significant shifts, especially in the context of the recent layoffs, and several factors have influenced hiring practices. If you take sourcing or going through the other interview process, the candidate experience and something to note, james, is layoffs often lead to a surge in readily available talent pool, both tech, non-tech, and, from what I'm seeing and hearing, the hiring teams are overwhelmed. The volume of inbound candidates they receive for the role. They post a role overnight. They end up getting thousands of applicants and often the posting gets taken down within a couple of days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the bottleneck is moving around. The need for sourcers probably is maybe not quite as high in some cases. The need for coordinators is probably going up. I think that the need for pipeline control and forecasting out with the time that interviewing teams have interviews because you can't just flood a hiring manager with an ID interviews for a month they're not going to have time for anything else. So it's like historically the issue might have been hiring plans were so big that companies wouldn't factor in. Does the interviewing team have a time to even support the amount of work that has to be done to hit the hiring plan? That's still an issue because companies just typically don't a lot of times don't think about that when they're putting together a hiring plan.
Speaker 1:But now it's also from the perspective of from a sourcing standpoint. Are we being selective enough and are we forecasting and budgeting the amount of time that we're going to need to get these cans in? Are we cutting our top of funnel? It's not about just job postings, but it's a lot easier these days to okay, I have an SCR opening. I can get like 10 qualified candidates in my pipeline that are past a phone screen with a recruiter in a week, and so it's. Let's not just continue to flood top of funnel. We have to be more selected and just cut off the tap, like the pipeline. We should be able to make one good hire out of 10 candidates. We don't need to review another 50. And so I think that there's some discipline and strategy needs to go into ensuring that our pipelines are actually not getting too big as well.
Speaker 2:Another thing to think about is the talent teams are pretty lean. Everywhere it's probably a one-person team or maybe a handful of folks, and given the sheer amount of applicants, there is a much higher risk of ghosting being templated rejections with lack of substantial feedback or just not even getting a chance to talk to somebody and I think I was talking to someone last week.
Speaker 2:The conversion from application to getting an interview was bizarre. It was 50 times to one, or even more so. As a job seeker in this market, it is tough. It is very challenging. They're all top talent, but then you need a chance to show how awesome you are and for that you need to talk to someone on the hiring team, which seems to be such a challenge for a lot of people it is.
Speaker 1:It's like the importance of network is more important now than really ever before. I remember doing a poll on LinkedIn, which I don't do many of them because I don't necessarily always think they're quite helpful but I remember doing a poll and I think this was before the market took a dive in tech, but there was something like 80% of people. I asked the question how did you find your current role? And it was agency recruiter, application, internal talent, outreach, your network, and I think it was. I got around 30,000 connections, followers, whatever, 33,000 followers or whatever, most of which are tech industry, and the answer was like around 80% of the people that engaged in the post had found their current role through their network.
Speaker 2:I echo your thoughts there and I can personally vouch. Other than my last job at Panther, which was through an exact search form that they had in place, most of my previous roles have been via my network.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh for sure, and I started my company so long ago that I haven't been in the interviewing game. But I will say that most of my business in recruiting is runoff referrals and relationships. I think every single active customer I have right now is a result from an introduction from somebody I know. That's just the reality of, I think, how a lot of it's working People cannot rely on just applying right now it's working relationships and a lot of times too, it's deeper than just asking someone for an intro. It's like even when things are like, the one piece of advice is kind of taking a pivot a little bit. But I would say to people invest in relationships when things are going well, invest in relationships when you have a job that appears to be stable Life and our career is coming seasons and you always have to be building relationships. Yeah, because otherwise when somebody laid off and then you're making asks of people and that was the first time.
Speaker 1:And being in town at a position is hard too, because when things are going well you're so freaking busy trying to fill all these roles for your employer or to build a scalable TA program. I don't have time to do the networking or to build these friendships or whatever else. But it's like that capital that you can kind of cash in on those relationships when things are tough. Now I even had somebody pretty close to me lose their job. Out of work for several months financially became a struggle and I was able to, based on real relationships I've developed, reach out to someone in my network and be like hey, I need you to just find a way to get her a job. You just make it happen, basically.
Speaker 1:And he did, and that's really the power of investing, and it's not just about your network loosely, it's develop real friendships, and I feel like it's just something that people constantly have to do because in a market like this, if you're going to leave it up to luck or just skill, even confidence is just not necessarily enough right now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely agree. It's not only about networking has another huge advantage there's this opportunity to learn from each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. It's like you, get out of your own little world and learn from each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are the best practices? Yeah, well, what are you doing in terms of DEI, or what are you doing in terms of metrics or any new tool I should be checking out? It's always great to be in touch with your network and continue to build newer connections, newer relationships. It's a small world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I have one other thing that I want to touch upon. There's this huge myth around let's say, james ever heard that idea that best candidates are always happily employed and they're not constantly looking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty common belief myth, I would say but it's not true, particularly in the current times where being laid off doesn't necessarily say much about the individual values or skills, but it often speaks more to a company's hiccups in terms of their strategy or growth plans or not able to cope up with the economic hurdles.
Speaker 2:Here's the kicker Leaving out folks who are unemployed means that companies are missing out on a gold mine of talent, because there's a lot of people out there top quality candidates out there looking for job opportunities. They bring a lot of experience and resilience, particularly searching in this market. You have to be resilient, you have to be persistent, you have to be a go-getter and that with navigating all the twist and tumbling of the current market situation, you can even think of real life experiences like parents. A huge ask here to companies that are hiring is they should be focusing on the real deal, which is skill, experience and the potential. The beauty here is this approach not only makes hiring easy, but it makes it more inclusive. You're able to access diverse mix of talents and experiences, which helps you with building a world-class teams in the best way possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can you just speak to your point, too, about a lot of great people being unemployed. Yeah, something that was confident people that I know are unemployed right now or have recently been unemployed. That's where I was saying too. It's like your relationships in your career are almost sometimes even more important than your competency. They're both important, but you cannot just win in your career by just saying I'm just going to be really good at what I do. That's not enough. You're not going to win.
Speaker 1:We're social creatures, a species, a species like you. It's our social interactions, our communication skills. All of these types of things are critical to our success. People are going to be incredibly vulnerable. Without working those relationships and even investing in those relationships, creating friendships like genuine friendships with folks that work in our industry, it's still going to be hard. There still is a good chance that you're going to get laid off. It could take months to find something. So I'm not saying that the people that are unemployed have not necessarily done this that's not what I'm saying but to give ourselves every advantage possible, consistently investing in that.
Speaker 1:I think, too to get to your point about companies, or thinking that if somebody is unemployed, that maybe they aren't the best. I was seeing probably even more of that at the beginning of this 18 month correction. I think at this point, maybe, hopefully, there's a better understanding. I don't know if this is the case, but I would hope that people are getting to the point now where it's okay With several hundred thousand people get laid off. Come on, this is obviously something that has to do with the tech market economy as a whole. You're right. There's so many great people out there looking for work right now. Whether they're working or not is almost irrelevant. It's just. Let's just focus on getting the best person, regardless of what their situation is. Absolutely yeah, okay. So so, de and I, to wrap up our podcast today, but just based on your experience, I would just love to see how you approach it, if there's, if you have any lessons learned, best practices, anything that you really wanted to discuss today. I'd be really interested in having the DE and I conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, james, this is something that's near and dear to me, very passionate about building divers and inclusive teams, and I've been a very strong advocate for launching DEA Council initiatives at Branch Panther, so would love to share some of my learnings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I want to begin by saying building a diverse and inclusive team is not just meeting coders. It's about fostering an environment where individuals from different backgrounds feel valued, respected and included. And, first of all, leadership needs to be on board. There should be a commitment from the leadership and they should actively demonstrate inclusive behaviors and communicate their commitment across the board, setting clear expectations at all levels of their arc and making it a core value. Leading by example is critical here. Yeah, when it comes to building a diverse and inclusive team, for sure.
Speaker 1:And so for companies that are starting to make more of an emphasis here, it's okay. So it starts with leadership. Let's say leadership decides. Okay, this is a priority. What are some of the initial steps that leadership teams can take to really create meaningful progress over, let's say, three to 12 months? What are those?
Speaker 2:initial steps. First look into the team composition, like where are we today so you can start working backwards or forward looking. This is where we are, this is where we should be, or these are the changes that we should be making, because again it shouldn't end up becoming token hiding system, because that's not healthy. But the reality is it all starts with hiding. Bringing people from different backgrounds, cultures, through the door is the first step, and I'm going to get a little more tactical here, because having an unbiased interview process is very important. There.
Speaker 2:We have to ensure that the hiding process is fair and free from unconscious biases. Coming up with a diverse interview panel to assist candidates, getting multiple perspectives, would help in making a much more informed and unbiased hiding decision. So that's there. And also building interview process seem to be accommodating special request and not using that against the candidates. Using that we launched at Panther is making sure the process is inclusive to accommodate disability and we did ask candidates would you need any sort of accommodation, something that we're able to provide, and just being more inclusive and mindful and empathetic. And that's the first step. But things don't stop just bringing people through the door. We have to say-.
Speaker 1:So they get started, yeah, so when it all begins, when you build a diverse team right now we got to lead a diverse team and make sure everybody's opinions are valued and working together. That's I've heard some people later say, yeah, that's really kind of where the work begins.
Speaker 2:Exactly Setting them up for success, making sure they have an inclusive environment where they feel supported this, again pretty crucial and significant, and this is where the employee experience comes into play. That's where your policies how are you thinking about? Policies, total rewards and all of that On top of it, regularly reviewing and updating policies to ensure that they're inclusive. And if there are potential biases, particularly in some of these areas like promotion, compensation, benefits, you end up with a lot of unconscious bias. People don't do it on purpose, but then it just creeps in. So, just making sure that there is no potential biases in the systems that you have in place and, james, what I've noticed is there is a strong need for education and training to folks, the broader team, to help increase awareness, noting and understanding and also to challenge stereotypes and a lot of in the past.
Speaker 2:When there are issues or friction points, I've always noticed it all boils down to lack of the awareness. If you are not part of the minority group, you don't necessarily understand their experience. You wouldn't even know. I just simply said this. But then, if you're on the receiving side, it could be offensive or it could be very hurtful, and language matters the most, particularly when you're in a remote setting when you're not sitting right next to the person language, it could end up in a positive or a negative situation. So being mindful of words and phrases that may unintentionally exclude or hurt certain groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a big one that really is, and that's part of the culture that can be developed. And I suppose, too, trying to attract talent that's aware to it's like education of existing talent. But then also part of the culture maybe is also looking for folks that maybe already have a level of awareness or prioritizing this to a certain extent or really see the value in it. And, yeah, I think, more than what you just said too, like people that really understand it's more than a metric.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a way of being, it's a way of working and, yeah, like it should be, like you see the inherent innate value and it's something that's important to you as a human first, not just work.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it's very nuanced. It's very nuanced. But with any process or initiative, you should frequently check in on how you're doing the help initiative. That's very much needed and that could only happen if you're regularly collecting and analyzing that diversity data quarterly, looking into the team composition, looking into the hiring numbers, but also attrition numbers. Are there any patterns? We should consult.
Speaker 2:Looking for those signals is really important to understand what's going on. And feedback Feedback is a gift. You have to set up a mechanism to hear from everybody, not only folks from minority groups, but from the rest of the company, getting inputs from employees, erg groups on what is working, what isn't working. That's very important as well.
Speaker 1:I agree, and we are actually coming up on time here, so this has been a really fun conversation. I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining me today, and you're welcome back on the show anytime you want to come up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. This was such an engaging conversation, james, and thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 1:For sure, absolutely, If everybody tuning in. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Take care.
