Candidate experience seems to be an evergreen topic and certainly one that will be with us and continually evolve for some time to come. We often talk about the challenges of delivering a quality candidate experience at scale, but for companies who are scaling quickly very often, it is about delivering a custom candidate experience at speed.
My guest this week is Anna Chalon, Director of Recruiting and D&I at Frame.io. Whatever your candidate experiences are I guarantee you will get some valuable takeaways from this conversation.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The recruiting challenges at Frame.io
- Creative thinking and empathy in recruiting
- Speed, transparency, and thoughtfulness
- The role of technology
- Avoiding unconscious bias
- Measuring success
- The future
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. We’re currently living through crazy times and I know that wherever you are in the world, you will have already been affected in some way by the unfolding situation. Before we start this episode, I just wanted to share a couple of sentences that really resonated with me from an email I received from Libsyn, the company who provide hosting for the podcast. It’s from their president, Lorianne Sims. Podcasts deliver the comfort of a friendly and familiar voice at a time of uncertainty and when personal contact and connections with communities may not be a possibility or an option. For some, your voice may become more important than ever in helping people feel connected. Whether providing a sense of community, informative content or entertainment, each of you can be a lifeline for those affected in all parts of the world. Listener numbers to the Recruiting Future podcast have increased by a third in the last seven days and I’m taking my role of providing continuity and a calm voice to our talent acquisition community very seriously during this difficult time. I’m going to continue to publish at least two shows a week and I’ll add to that if the demand’s there. I record several weeks in advance, so some of the content I publish may not entirely reflect the current situation. However, it’s vital to carry on talking about the key topics that this podcast covers as employers will still need to focus on long term strategy. I also want to keep sharing practitioner stories so people can upskill themselves by learning from the experience of others. As the new normal we’re going to emerge into takes shape, then I’ll obviously be bringing you voices to talk about that, but at the current time, speculation, guesswork and random predictions are not really going to be very helpful. The purpose of this podcast is to be inclusive and help move talent acquisition forward, so please let me know your thoughts and feedback, Stay safe and listen to the proper scientists. Now, on with the show. Support for this podcast is provided by shl. From Talent Acquisition to Talent Management, SHL has the people insight to help you build a talent strategy that achieves outcomes like increased productivity, internal mobility, engagement and leadership diversity. SHL brings transparent AI technology, decades of trustworthy data science and objectivity to help companies attract, develop and grow the workforce you need to succeed in the digital era. Visit shl.com to learn how you can unlock the full potential of your greatest asset, your people.
Matt Alder [00:03:11]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 249 of the Recruiting Future podcast Candidate experience seems to be an evergreen topic and certainly one that will be with us and continue to evolve for some time to come. We often talk about the challenges of delivering a quality candidate experience at scale, but for companies who are scaling quickly, very often it’s about delivering a custom candidate experience at speed. My guest this week is Anna Chalon, Director of recruiting and D and I@FRAMEIO. Whatever your candidate experience challenges are, I guarantee you’ll get some valuable takeaways from this interview. Hi Anna and welcome to the podcast.
Anna Chalon [00:03:56]:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Matt Alder [00:03:58]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Anna Chalon [00:04:03]:
Sure. My name is Anna Chalon. I’m originally from Paris, France. I studied private law in Paris actually before moving to London, London and then to New York about eight years ago to pursue a music career. And after many immigration headaches, I was able to finally get a green card and land my first job in tech. And over the last two years or so I’ve been leading recruiting and DNI at Frame IO, which is a video collaboration software headquartered in New York.
Matt Alder [00:04:39]:
Fantastic stuff. So tell us a little bit more about Frame IO. How many, how many people do you have and, and what sort of recruiting challenges do you have?
Anna Chalon [00:04:48]:
Sure. So at Frame IO we have about 130 people. When I started we were 50. So we’ve had a lot of growth which has been really exciting to be a part of. And this year we’re actually planning to double the size of the company and we just opened up a second office in la. So some of the challenges that I don’t think are necessarily specific to Frame IO, but just to tech in general and especially in the New York market, is that it’s a candidate led market, so it’s highly competitive and therefore we have to be very creative with the way we approach recruiting so that we can stay competitive, move quickly and provide a best in class candidate experience so that we can have a chance to attract top talent. I think the other challenge when being a smaller company is that realistically we cannot compete against big companies like Google and Facebook when it comes to compensation. So it’s also really important to stay transparent around what we can offer and what we can’t offer so that candidates can make the best decision and see the pros and cons of joining those smaller, fast growth type of environments.
Matt Alder [00:06:05]:
Fantastic stuff. You mentioned being creative in terms of how you recruit there. Tell us a little bit more about that yeah.
Anna Chalon [00:06:12]:
So I think we have to think about what it’s like to be a candidate on the other side in a, in a candidate led market. So when they’re Getting hundreds of LinkedIn recruiter emails per day and they’re in processes with many companies getting a lot of offers, so it changes the balance quite a bit. So we just have to think in an empathetic way. If we were on the other side, what could make a difference? So that’s what we try to do here and try and be a little bit more thoughtful. From a lot of the things I have seen, it can feel a little bit more robotic or like being caught in a machine. And I don’t want that, especially because we’re dealing with humans. So I try and think of ways that we can create a bit more of a customized kinetic experience. I’m also aware that we can afford to do that because we’re much smaller than really big companies that might not be able to do that. But I think that’s where we can play that to our advantage. The fact that we’re smaller and can have a little bit more of a high touch approach to the candidate experience.
Matt Alder [00:07:19]:
Tell us a bit more about some of the things you do in your candidate experience to make it. To make it kind of really stand out.
Anna Chalon [00:07:25]:
Sure. So we care a lot about candid experience and I think it translates directly to offer acceptance. So for the candidate experience, we have a maintainer glass door rating above 90% in the last two years and our offer acceptance rate have stayed above 85% in the last two years as well, including tech roles. And I think the way we were able to do that is by having those high touch approach to the candidate experience. So I think of it as three pillars. The first one is speed. I think it, it’s really important to move quickly because again, candidates are actively interviewing. So we try to get back to candidates within 24 to 48 hours max, if not sometimes same day from their previous round. That’s a big rule of ours. And then we really try and keep the whole interview process from first screen to offer to two weeks. Sometimes we can even do it faster. So that’s. To me, the first pillar is speed, which takes a lot of strong project management skills on the recruiting team side and good tracking system. The second is transparency. I think it’s important to be upfront as to what we can offer and what we cannot offer. We cover compensation on the first screen always and then at least two more times during the interview process. So there’s no surprises there. We also are transparent about what type of environment it is, how much work there is to do, and we try and do a lot of that again very early on in the process so that we don’t end up moving really far. And then the candidate realizes it’s not a good fit for them because it should be really a two, two way street. They also need to make sure they get all of the information. And then the third pillar to me is the thoughtfulness is like extra touches. So what we do is for every candidate who comes on site, we actually give them a little gift bag with branded M&Ms. And a handwritten note. Again, I know we can’t afford to do that because we’re small enough and it must be really hard if there’s 100 candidates coming on site every day, which we don’t have, but I think that really makes a difference. And the number of times I hear them being so surprised and delighted, I think that makes a big difference. And we also get everyone who interviewed them to send them a thoughtful note if we extend an offer. So those are the three things that we do. So speed, transparency, and thoughtful touches.
Matt Alder [00:10:01]:
Fantastic stuff that makes a lot of sense. And I can see how that would contribute to the success that you have. How about recruiting technology? There any sort of technology tools or platforms that you use to kind of help you with this?
Anna Chalon [00:10:15]:
Yeah, so for our applicant tracking system, we use Greenhouse, and I think it really is helpful so that we can keep track of all the, the candidates that are in process. There’s a good reminder tool in there that I love to use so that again, anyone who came on site that day or who had even a phone screen, we can set up a reminder for the next day so there’s no way they can fall through the cracks. We can also send reminders for interviewers to submit their scorecards. So I really like that, that tool. We also have our own spreadsheet to keep track of any active candidates. So that way we can double check ourselves between Greenhouse and the spreadsheet. So that’s the tools that we have to keep track of candidates. And then we also use other tools for more of a sourcing purpose, like LinkedIn Recruiter, we use Hired, which helps with more tech talent and a few other tools. But Greenhouse is our main tool.
Matt Alder [00:11:12]:
You’re also doing some interesting work around helping people to avoid unconscious bias. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Anna Chalon [00:11:19]:
Sure. So everyone has unconscious biases. I think it’s a very, very interesting topic and I definitely recommend to take some online tests to see because it’s pretty eye opening. And I think sometimes we can be in denial, especially when we consider ourselves open minded. It can be hard to recognize that we still have biases. But I think we need to remove the shame factor and just recognize that we live in a world that is full of biases. And so our upbringing shapes us in a way that will trick our brain to make, to make quick conclusions that are flawed oftentimes. So I think recognizing this to me is the first step. So we do an unconscious bias training for every new hire within their first three months. And we try and have a lot of little sort of game in there that just can get people to use their brain in a way that will create unconscious bias just so that they can recognize how it happens. So one of the thing, actually one of the quick exercise that we do is ask everyone if we have a bat and a ball that equals $1.10, knowing that the ball costs a dollar more than the bat. How much does the bat cost? And most people will come up really quickly to the conclusion that it’s 10 cents. Right? It’s like a dollar, you’re thinking a dollar more, 10 cents and it’s actually 5 and you can look it up. It’s pretty, it’s actually pretty easy. But just being able to do a quick exercise like this and realize how quickly your brain screams the wrong answer is really interesting. So I think that’s a good, good exercise to do for, for everyone. And then we do a lot of other things in terms of sourcing strategy, reshaping our interview panels so that it’s never an all male panel at the minimum, hopefully a little bit more diverse than this. But to me that’s sort of the baseline and making sure that we’re just talking about this constantly. So it’s okay to have little slip of the tongue and say the wrong pronoun for someone or to say maybe talk about a future in it we haven’t hired yet and say assume that it will be a he. So all these things happen. I think it’s just about making sure we’re calling them out. Not in a confrontational way, but just as a little reminder so that we can be aware of our biases.
Matt Alder [00:14:01]:
That’s really interesting stuff. And I’ve got that bat and ball question consistently wrong for years before my brain finally realized what was going on there. Do you sort of measure success in this area? Have you got any metrics? What kind of results have you been seeing?
Anna Chalon [00:14:19]:
Yes, so we’ve started reporting now on a quarterly basis on our progress. We’ve mainly been able to track gender for now because of the size of the company and legality of tracking other groups. But starting next quarter we will actually be able to start reporting on other categories. So on a gender standpoint, when I started we were at 23% women and two years later we’re now at 36% in the company overall. And then in management functions specifically, in the last 12 months we went from 19% to 40% women. So that’s really, really exciting to see. And there’s still a lot more work to be done, especially in the higher level position with director and above and the executive team. So that’s something that we’re constantly talking about. But it’s definitely encouraging to see that it is possible when you’re putting the right, right things in place and then hiring the right people who will keep supporting these initiatives. It doesn’t have to be all women or people of color, but making sure that we’re also recruiting allies and people who will help push these initiatives forward, I think make a huge impact. So a lot of more work to be done, but it’s still encouraging to see the progress that we’ve made.
Matt Alder [00:15:47]:
We’ve talked about a lot about the interview process and how you’re managing people’s expectations and doing whatever you can to be as unbiased as possible. You mentioned right at the start that you obviously have a lot of competition in the talent markets and geographical markets, the market that you work in. What do you do to source or attract people to the business in the first place? How do you cut through all that noise and really get your message out there?
Anna Chalon [00:16:18]:
Yes, I mean, that’s really tricky for sure, especially when you’re a smaller company because it takes a lot of resources and, and budget to be able to put our name out there. So what we try to do is obviously do some employer branding. So we’ve just started some new partnerships and especially when it comes to diversity, partnering with, with organizations that help promote different groups within the tech industry I think is really, really helpful. We’ve also looked at our job description, so making sure in order to attract diverse talents that we have inclusive language. So just looking at the job description, making sure it’s inclusive, writing the job description by saying you is actually more impactful than at the third person where a lot of women actually will not identify as well. So that’s a quick trick that we can do. And then removing gender connotated word like rock star or ninja that sometimes I see in job descriptions can also make a big, big impact. And then just sharing the culture. So we try and host events on a regular basis. We actually had one last night for a woman in sales panel. And so making sure that we share on social media the kind of event that we do and the kind of work environment that we have so that candidates who identify to that type of environment can feel related to it and comfortable applying. And then we do a lot of sourcing. A third of the people that we hired come from completely cold outreaches, again, because we are still building our brand and our name recognition. So we still need to do a lot of blind outreaches.
Matt Alder [00:18:07]:
Final question. What’s your view on the future of talent acquisition? What do you think things are going to be looking like over the next sort of 18 months, two years?
Anna Chalon [00:18:15]:
Yes. So I think as we move towards more of a remote culture, I think it will be really interesting as I think we’ll probably move toward more and more video types of interviews, maybe even hiring people we’ve never met in person. So I think that will be interesting to see how that changes things. And also that will broaden the pool of candidates because when you start being able to source across the world and not just in a city, it opens up the pool of candidates tremendously. So that will be. I don’t know exactly what will be the consequences of that, but I think that will be really interesting. And then the other thing that I’m hopeful for is that we’ll keep moving in a direction where the population of the tech companies are more representative of the world that we live in, and that we can get to a place where we have 50% women in all positions, including leadership, where 50% of the CEOs are women, and where in terms of race and ethnicity or sexual orientation, gender identity, that everything is properly represented. That’s my hope. And I think we’re moving in the right direction. So I hope to see this come true.
Matt Alder [00:19:32]:
Anna, thank you very much for talking to me.
Anna Chalon [00:19:34]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Matt Alder [00:19:36]:
My thanks to Anna. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find it by searching for Recruiting Future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
