Michele: 

Hello, everybody, thank you so much for joining me for another edition of I don’t know this special special time you’re having here with a pandemic pandemic rather called COVID-19. With us today we have Melissa Dobbins, who is the founder of a great tech startup call career dot place where they’re combating bias in hiring. Thank you so much for joining me, Melissa.

Melissa:

Thank you for having me.

Michele: 

It’s great to be here. Virtually, of course, exactly. It’s a pain clinic, I would shake your hand but we have to be socially distance.

Melissa: 
To be honest, I hate that term socially, distance, distance, we do not want to socially separate each other.

Michele: 

And you know what? I’ve had that discussion as well. We’re socializing more online and we are still shows showing how tech is not tearing us apart. It’s actually bringing us together as a society. So I’m liking the different spins like Like you said, it’s not social lead isn’t it is physical. So tell us why did you start career that place?

Melissa: 

Well, it’s personal. Just like with a lot of entrepreneurs when they get started, it’s a problem that affects them personally.
And I’m no exception. For me, it was my own journey as I climb the corporate ladder in the world of high tech, as I ran product management, product strategy, organization. missions, you know, to be successful means to get to an exit to get past that to get past the build stage, and someone sees how great the products are, how great the company is, and they acquire it. But downside of an acquisition is you go from growth mode into sustained mode, and I love growth. So I would go back into the job market and look for my next venture. And every step of the way, it got harder and harder. Because the types of questions that I was being asked as a director than as a VP, were things like, can you fire people because it’s emotionally difficult? And can you handle working with a bunch of men and other questions like that. And it became very, very clear that they were so distracted by what they saw when I walked into a room by the assumptions that they made because of what it looked like and what I meant that they forgot to ask me about what I do and how I could add value to their organizations.
And I kid you not, it got so bad.

I started walking out of more interviews that I completed, where I stopped them in the middle and I say, look, what you’re asking me is illegal. It’s inappropriate. It’s not relevant. Here are the questions you need to ask me in order to know if I know how to run a roadmap. I know how to do future strategy for an organization if I know how to help a company get to exit. Give me a call when you’re ready to ask me those questions. Leave. And you know, it started that frustration of why is this the way it is? Why can’t people take the time and think about what they need, why they so distracted by what they see. And it got to this point where I had this eureka moment, either I had to put up with this problem, or I had to become part of the solution. So I decided to do the latter. And I started this company crewed up place, which is a tech company in order to help organizations and individuals focus first on what matters and not get distracted by what doesn’t not get distracted by what they see. And we saw the property through things like anonymity.

Michele: 

I love it. I absolutely agree the struggle is definitely there. For those who don’t fit the picture of what a company’s culture looks like, or they are they want it to be when you were when you were out in corporate. Not even Corporate but startup space right? Sometimes corporations do have intrapreneurship. But what was your biggest accomplishment in your career in tech thus far? And definitely Career Career place being part of that?

Melissa: 

Yeah, I mean, there’s there are several things that that I looked back at as either fantastic learning experiences or accomplishments, everything from watching the careers of the product managers that that worked for me and what they’ve been able to accomplish. Since we’ve worked together, which is fantastic. The more you’re able to teach and show others to go down the path, the more you’re able to hold them up and give them opportunity. It’s just so satisfying. And then of course, with crewed up place, culminating with all these experiences, pulling into my organization, just seeing the differences that we’re making within our customers within our organizations. I mean, we’re seeing hiring managers coming to us Are are heads of HR talent acquisition, where they’ve made their very first hire in and then select the demographic here from the first offer to someone with autism. And this excitement because they never had a process that would allow for someone on the Autism scale to make it through. And now they had an offer out for the very first time to bringing in the first woman of color into the executive team. And all of this was because they stopped making the assumptions and they first defined what it is they needed. And then followed that path. And between that and the anonymity people were making it through that they have never even been given a second look to and just seeing these stories over and over again is just such a fantastic feeling that it’s working solution is working and we’re making a difference one hire at a time. I love it. You love that, you know is that is that?

Michele: 

It can work it can happen and when it is it’s like okay This is a win for not only you, but for so many people in that process. And that’s the best part about, you know, startup

Melissa: 

well, and with diversity and inclusion, it really is a win win. There isn’t a single winner because teams big teams that are more diverse that have a diversity of thought, which is usually seen as diversity in demographics, but when they they’re able to see through problems with different angles and have different wisdoms and experiences brought to all the problems, they solve them better, they’re more motivated, they’re more productive, they’re more creative. Meanwhile, we’re opening the doors for so many individuals that have not been evaluated and considered fairly, for no other reason than the assumptions that were made rather than the individual behind those resumes behind those assumptions. So it’s a win win all around and why wouldn’t it feel fantastic to be in a, in
a business that allows for that

Michele: 

I absolutely agree, I guess that we have a lot in common as we are. So now you’re looking at COVID-19 and continuing the hiring process through COVID-19. Are you seeing any companies that are reverting back? Or are they like, you know what, we want to still make sure this is a priority for our organization?

Melissa:

Well, it’s a little hard to tell right now, being in the midst of the pandemic in a crisis mode, what we’re seeing the most stuff is just a freeze of all decisions, a freeze of all hiring or freezable strategy. Everyone’s gone into survival mode. And we’re seeing a lot more people in HR, unfortunately, that are thinking about furloughs and layoffs and they are about hiring. That’s not universal. There are definitely organizations out there hiring and they’re just going as fast as they can and the bar became very, very low because we have to keep these these images These professions going for things come to a standstill. So where I think we’re very much interested in paying attention to and watching is what happens when we come out of the crisis mode. When we have those 17 plus million people and counting who filed for unemployment coming back into the workplace and organizations turning back on, are we going to see that inversion that sometimes happens when we’re in an employer’s market? Where there’s a lot of competition for every job, in which case we do see a lot of resurgence of bad behaviors? Or are we going to see the strikes that diversity and inclusion has made through the past few years in this this time where it’s the employees market and trying to pull in that talent? Are we going to see those persist? And it’s an open question. I’m really, really hoping we see a lot of those good practices and behaviors persistent.

Michele:

I actually agree with you and unfortunately, like you said, a lot of employers have started, started to lay off Freeze hiring to decide where they’re going to go. As you’re looking through how employers do hiring through through career plays, are you also looking at how they are training their employees as well?

Melissa:

Not in the major focus area of what we do. And one of the things that we decided early on was to focus very heavily on the inclusive nature of the hiring process. So from the job description to the hire selection, that doesn’t mean that training and culture and the entire experience from onboarding on is not crucially important to diversity and inclusion, but it’s not our particular focus area. That being said, we do have a lot of recommendations and thought around, know how you do want to train how you want to, for example, you want to hire for potential as much as possible and bring For those gaps, rather than hiring to fill all of those, there are specific skills because what you might be getting First of all, if you’re not looking for the purple unicorn or the purple squirrel unicorn or whatever you like to call those very elusive individuals that check every box and pay dearly for them. But But when you’re doing that what you pretend to happen is you’re not prioritizing that potential, that growth, that team dynamic, that new way of thinking that you can bring in augment the team. You’re just looking for something that slips into one specific slot, and there’s a lot you could miss when you’re doing that. So training, culture, all of that is absolutely key. It is not our primary focus,

Michele: 

okay.

When it comes to removing bias out of hire, what’s a common myth that you hear

Melissa: 

the most common one we hear at least the one that that drives me the most craziest?

Well, there just aren’t any people in the demographic here who want this job. There just aren’t any Women Engineers, it’s not that they don’t want to hire them. They’re just not there. There just aren’t any female executives, there just aren’t any women of color who want to be VPS. All of those are just not true. So what we see is this excuse this, whether it’s the culture excuse, whether it’s the accessibility excuse, it’s not my fault. We’re not diverse. It’s just there aren’t enough people out there, or no one like that wants to work in my culture, or whatever those are. So that’s probably the most common is excuses. It’s almost giving people permission to have the profile of employees that they do, rather than looking closely and asking, why do I have a profile of employees that I do?

Michele:
Yeah, and evaluating your process, like what?

Melissa: 

Exactly.

Michele:

And I guess maybe that’s just the engineer’s approach or, you know, the analytical minds like, Okay, this isn’t working out. Let’s try something different. Right. And I distinctly remember Doing customer discovery and going to a career fair. And at this one career fair talking to five companies, who all said, Well, if I could find a woman, civil engineer, that’d be great. I said, you’re talking to one. And they were all shocked. I was like, Well, where do you go? And I literally just asked me, where do you go to recruit? And they’re looking at me like they’re doing something wrong. And I just start calling out all of these engineering organizations that they are like, I had no clue about those. So it’s like, what is your process that right and and when you look at, especially when you look at ranking peoples, so entry level is
the numbers get very thin in a lot of demographics. The reason is not because we are born with fewer directors or VPS. And let’s say women versus men. It’s a cultivated problem that we’ve been cultivating. So then it’s the question of what what are your promotion practices? How are you evaluate Adding people for those promotions that have been feeding that next level up across all of the industries and organizations. So just to your point, it’s where you’re looking to source. It’s how you’re cultivating the talent once you’re there. It’s what you’re valuing and how you’re communicating what you’re valuing. All plays into who you’re attracting, keeping and progressive.

Michele: 

I love that.

Those three steps who you’re attracting number one, and I think they they that gets lost in translation. And I always ask, like, well, we don’t know if we’re doing a good job. And it’s like, well, are your people of color referring their friends and family like, well, they’re the engineer, I’m pretty sure that only when they know. And I always laugh of like, not go through my phone. I’m pretty sure. African American women engineers across across different industry so

 

Melissa:

well, and then think about even the language. So a recent conversation that I had was all about references, we’re actually talking about COVID reference Is, and my my intern having a conversation who’s who’s younger, was struggling with some of the references he was coming across because he had never lived through them. And so these very important important messages were completely lost on him. He wasn’t responding to 911. He was not in the workforce during the 2008 crash. And so to have these points of references didn’t work for him. So imagine when you’re having a reference loaded job description, for example, and the references don’t resonate, not only do some of the meaning get lost, but you actually feel alienated. And it’s amazing how many times we use these references based on our own cultural preferences. As you might notice, mine from my background, but my cultural preferences, but that ends up alienating people. And so you know, if you have problems with certain demographics, it could be one of the first places to look is simply how are you communicating your culture, your jobs, what you’re stressing and that could end up being a And leading to more people than you realize.

Michele: 

Those are definitely key tips for any employer out there looking and working to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace. So definitely, definitely love. Love that response. What has been one thing you learned that you that was just very surprising for you?

Melissa: 

I probably shouldn’t admit it. But it was a very big lesson to learn our lesson. We learned it fairly early, but it was shocking. So when we came into this, my co founder and I are both longtime business to business technology people. So my business partner did the engineering, the engineering team, I run product design teams. We work together in the past, and I’ve done b2b technology in a lot of different facets for businesses. So when we came in into this facet in the hiring process, we have made the assumption that the biases the distractions were before process problem. So it’s not that you didn’t know what you were looking for. It’s that you’re getting distracted as you were evaluating it and going and making left turns you should have made. What we found fairly quickly was the prominent way of evaluating talent across a lot of different industries. A lot of different sizes was I know, but when I see so wasn’t a really well thought out defined list of here the questions here’s what I’m looking for here my requirements and wider requirements. It was a I know what when I see it, and if history of humanity teaches us one thing, no, we really don’t.
So we have to take a very big step back and start talking about how no you don’t but
that’s okay. We’re not supposed to know it. When we see it. We need to put the forethought into what’s really important because otherwise we’ll end it Do this look for people like us?

Exactly, because the logic is amazing. So therefore, if you’re like me, you must be amazing. And before you know it, the entire company, the team is all people who are similar and whatever those similarities are, and that that comfort level that logic is what gets in our way.

Michele: 

Wow, that that, um, is somewhat surprising.

How could it be that way? is somewhat surprising just from my own experiences. I would like you to tell all of our listeners how to get in touch with you.

Melissa:

Absolutely.

So you go to our website, which is www dot CareerFH dot place right there.

And if you click the contact, you’ll be able to contact our organization contact me or you can always go
to LinkedIn and look me up. My name is Melissa Dobbins and Melissa Dobbins and career dot place. You’ll Write up front. And I’d love to hear from you.

Michele: 

Thank you so much, Melissa for joining us, everybody. I hope you really enjoyed this session. Continue to tune in and we will talk to you next time.
Thank you