Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are critically important. However, despite much discussion and debate, many employers are still failing to improve their hiring diversity. Those employers that are moving the needle are those that have actionable strategies and leadership accountability.
My guest this week is Rachel Hirsch, who is a Recruiter at Frame.io. Frame.io have a genuine focus on diversity equity and inclusion and have tangible results to show for it. In our conversation, Rachel shares the strategy and identifies the key elements that have driven their success.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ The key recruiting challenges at Frame.io
▪ How unconscious bias affects diversity in sales leadership
▪ Narrowing requirements to the things that matter most
▪ The complications of the pandemic
▪ Building trust with candidates
▪ The critical importance of allyship and leadership accountability
▪ The results have Frame.io seen from its strategy
▪ What does the future look like
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by SHL. From talent acquisition through to talent management, SHL’s science and technology maximize the potential of your greatest asset your people. SHL help you create the diverse, agile and innovative workforce you need to succeed in an unpredictable environment. Their data driven people insights, unmatched portfolio of products, engaging experiences built on science and global expert services are all delivered on one platform for all your people. Answers Visit shl.com to learn more about how SHL can unlock the potential of your workforce.
Matt Alder [00:01:05]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 339 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Diversity, equity and inclusion are critically important. However, despite much discussion and debate, many employers are still failing to improve their hiring diversity. Those employers that are moving the needle are those that have actionable strategies and leadership accountability. My guest this week is Rachel Hirsch, who’s a recruiter at Frame IO. Frame IO has a genuine focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and have tangible results to show for it. In our conversation, Rachel shares the strategy and identifies the key elements that have driven their success. Hi Rachel and welcome to the podcast.
Rachel Hirsch [00:01:55]:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.
Matt Alder [00:01:57]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Rachel Hirsch [00:02:03]:
Yes, absolutely. So my name is Rachel Hirsch. I am a recruiter at a company called Frame IO. We are based in New York City and we are a cloud based video collaboration software. We were founded in 2014. We currently have about 235 employees and we’re growing really rapidly. It’s definitely not the worst time to be selling cloud based collaboration software for distributed teams. So it’s definitely been a very exciting last year or so for us. Personally, I currently focus on business recruiting which primarily involves recruiting for our sales organization, but I do also handle recruiting for some other teams as well. So finance, legal, our people team and the marketing team as well.
Matt Alder [00:02:46]:
Talk us through some of the kind of key recruiting challenges that you have, the things that you’re facing at the moment.
Rachel Hirsch [00:02:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, it’s been an interesting time, right? We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. The last year or so has definitely presented some unique challenges and you know, I think we faced a really interesting time as well because we really grew a lot. As I mentioned, we are a cloud based collaboration software and so our business really thrived throughout the Pandemic. In the back half of 2020, we experienced a ton of growth for the year. Overall, we actually hired over 100 people and nearly doubled in size. We hit about 220 by the end of last year. So it was really fun and there was a lot to do. As I mentioned, I do primarily focus on our sales organization from a recruitment perspective, and we grew a lot on that side across that org. And it was really fun to be a part of that extreme growth and really try to make sure that I was supporting our sales organization in a way that was most effective.
Matt Alder [00:03:51]:
Now, I know that as an organization, you’ve got a massive focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. How does that sort of sit in the strategy about back how you go about recruiting?
Rachel Hirsch [00:04:02]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we. We do really focus on this as an organization. Diversity and inclusion is actually something that I care about on a very personal level, and it’s actually one of the main reasons why I decided to join Frame IO. I really felt like Frame IO’s company values were very aligned with my personal values. And it’s one of the things that keeps me the most engaged and excited about working here, even as I’m working from home. And I think it’s tough to stay engaged with the company that you work for when you’re working remotely. You don’t get to really interact with people as often as you would in a physical office space. But I think this component and feeling this alignment with my organization has really helped keep me engaged. And I think from a sales perspective, it’s no secret that the SaaS sales world is predominantly male and predominantly white, and that imbalance only increases as you move up in terms of seniority. Unfortunately, as women, we’re stereotyped as being more passive and timid. We’re less competitive, driven, and persistent. Overall, of course, I do not think that those things hold any merit, but I definitely think that as a society, our unconscious biases have affected the number of women who are in sales as well as sales leadership. And while I do think that the gender balance has gotten better over the last few years, I definitely think that there is still work that needs to be done to achieve equity. And so as an organization, we’ve decided to really try to make a conscious effort here because I don’t think it’s enough to just, you know, try to focus on diversity and then not actually do anything. And it’s funny because whenever I am speaking with someone and they say, you know, I really just try to find the best person, or I don’t really focus on that. And I just think about it on a conscious level, I’ll say, oh, okay, interesting. So what does your organization look like? And then those are the orgs that end up being the most white and the most male. So I think in order for us to really move the needle, we’ve tried to create conscious goals and KPIs and metrics and have more of a conscious strategy in order to make progress.
Matt Alder [00:06:17]:
So talk us through that strategy and some of the tactics that you’ve used to, for example, get more women into your. Into your sales team.
Rachel Hirsch [00:06:25]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to start by saying that we do deeply care about all forms of diversity here at Frame IO, including race, sexual orientation, gender identity, employees with disabilities, and so many others. But right now, we can only really report on gender based on the HR system that we have in place as a company with just over 200 people. So this is why we have the metrics and are able to report on gender alone. And one thing that was really interesting, as we were experiencing that massive hiring push on the sales team in 2020, was just trying to get more creative about how we could get more people into our pipeline. And we started to think about our process of recruiting overall, our strategy, and what we could really do. And as an organization, we decided that it would be most important to narrow our requirements for a few roles on the sales team. And we really just wanted to focus on the things that mattered the most. I think a lot of times hiring managers will create a really, really long list of requirements, and they think that it’s going to get them this really specific, special person. And I think in certain cases, that could be true. But I also think that sometimes if your list is too long, you’re actually lowering your bar for talent overall just by trying to check every single box. And so we decided to really tighten it up and focus on the things that we thought were the most important and things that we were seeing in our top sellers. What were the things that those people had in common? And for us, we felt that those were things like grit, drive, persistence, people who have a positive mentality overall, especially in sales, where you’re facing so much rejection. And by doing this, we actually ended up having better candidates in process overall. And our pipeline also became more diverse overall.
Matt Alder [00:08:18]:
Obviously, over the last 12 months, you’ve had the impact of the. Of the pandemic to deal with as well. How has that made things more complicated?
Rachel Hirsch [00:08:26]:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s no secret that this has had a massive impact on all of us from a personal and professional level as well. And I think one of the things that I’ve noticed just for my own role is that a lot of my conversations have become more human and less transactional. Most of my phone screens actually start with a quick check in. And of course, they used to start this way. Hello, how are you doing? I’m doing well. How are you? I’m doing well. And then in a pre Covid era, I would just jump right into my phone screen. But now it seems like people really give you an honest answer when you ask how they’re doing. There is a check in that happens initially that sometimes lasts a few minutes. And it’s a really nice human moment that I’ve been experiencing with people. I think it’s helped me build a lot of empathy with my candidates. I’m starting to build a deeper level of trust with people. It’s something that I’ve actually really enjoyed and I’m hoping that this carries on moving forward as we move into this new, hopefully very soon, post Covid era. But it’s an interesting time to be in recruiting overall. Right. A lot of people are looking for new opportunities after unfortunately being let go due to the pandemic. And it’s funny, I have a lot of friends who know that I’m in recruiting and they’ll say things like, oh, you must have the pick of the litter right now. And I’m sure there are a lot of people who need a job. And that’s true. Right. There are a lot of people who are being let go and need roles. But we’ve also seen quite a few people who are in a very stable situation or it’s mostly good and they’re really uncertain about leaving. There’s a lot of anxiety about the potential of leaving a current company and moving to a new one. And so we came together as a recruiting organization here@FRAMEIO. One thing that we decided to focus on in quarantine is really maintaining a top candidate experience. And this is something that we focused on a lot prior to the pandemic. But moving into this new remote first culture, we knew that there were going to be other things we were either going to need to add or adjust from how we approached this previously. So we’ve always kept a close touch with our candidates throughout the entire process, really never letting more than 24 hours go by without some sort of touch point. If I don’t even have an update for a candidate, that’s fine. Sometimes I’ll even just email them to let them know that and really don’t want them to feel like they’re hanging or there’s any uncertainty. We found that keeping people engaged at this level has really helped pull candidates through the process. Now that we’re in quarantine, we’ve added a few new things. We used to have candidates obviously coming into our office and prior to their interviews, we would walk them around the floor, give them a tour of the area. And now that we’re all remote, we obviously can’t do that. So we actually have a video tour of our office that’s led by our senior director of recruiting and de and I, Anna. It’s a great way to show people the space and just help remind them that we are an organization. They aren’t really going to be stranded on an island. We are a group and we do hope to get back to something in the future. We also send a thank you note through paperless post. We used to give our candidates a handwritten letter pre pandemic, but this was a way for us to shift to this remotely. And we also share a lot of information about our onboarding schedule. This is something that we get a lot of questions about. And I think people are really uncertain about what onboarding would look like from their homes, their apartments, their bedrooms even sometimes how would they possibly get integrated and up to speed at a new company with a bunch of brand new faces and, you know, how could they feel like their company was setting them up for success? And so we share our entire plan with them. As I mentioned, we did hire over 100 people in 2020, so I definitely think we have a good system here. But they don’t know that. Right. They don’t have that same sense of security and confidence that we do in our remote onboarding plan. So we try to just share as much as we possibly can with them and we try to do that overall. Overall, we’re trying to provide candidates with a lot of transparency throughout the process because we really think about interviewing as being both ways. We want our candidates to evaluate us as much as we’re evaluating them. And I think by sharing as much information as we possibly can with them, it does really help build trust with our candidates during what is a very anxious time overall.
Matt Alder [00:13:03]:
So we’ve talked about how you really focused in on the core job requirements and how you have worked really hard to give the best possible candidate experience during a very stressful and strange and disruptive and difficult time. Talk us through some of the other tactics that you have sort of particularly in terms of how you sort of find candidates or market to candidates in the first place to bring them into your retreating funnel.
Rachel Hirsch [00:13:33]:
Yeah, great question. You know, I think one thing that is one of our biggest advantages is actually our senior leaders. And we’re really lucky to have some great allies here at Frame IO all the way up to our executive team. One person I’d like to call it in particular is our coo, Scott Giffis. He’s been one of our strongest allies since the day he joined Frame IO, and he’s constantly helping me, in particular by setting us up to chat with different networking groups, whether it’s a group for women in sales. He’s shown us various job boards that he found to be effective at his prior organizations or just through his network. And I think one thing he does really well is just simply showing up. And I actually mean that quite literally. He really just attends our events and encourages our other leaders to do the same. And I think it’s funny because a lot of people will say, actions speak louder than words. And I think in a lot of situations that’s true. I really think it matters that Scott is not only just saying, hey, everybody should show up, but he actually comes. But I think what Scott does best is valuing both his actions and his words. He’s not only coming, he’s encouraging others to do the same. And he’s really creating a culture of accountability across the leadership team. And I think by Scott leading by example, it’s really created a situation where our other leaders feel comfortable showing up, they feel held accountable. I know that other leaders across our organization, in other departments, are starting to do the same. And Scott’s been a really great mentor to me personally and really has reminded me of the importance of allyship from top leaders at an organization.
Matt Alder [00:15:18]:
Talk us through the results you’ve seen in terms of who’s joined the organization.
Rachel Hirsch [00:15:21]:
Yeah. In 2020, as I mentioned, we did experience quite a bit of. And luckily, we are able to track gender based on the HR system that we’re using and the size of our company. And I think it was really interesting for us to look back on all that we had done. And it’s always nice to see progress and feel like you’re making progress, but actually being able to see it in a quantitative way, I think is really reassuring and helps sort of provide feedback back to the organization of, hey, I know this took a little bit longer, or it took a little bit more effort or we had to be a little bit more strategic, but look at what we were able to accomplish. And so in 2020, we actually took our sales team overall from 33% women to 53%, and we also took sales management from 20% to 54% women. We also saw the importance of maintaining top candidate experience, as I had chatted about before. And even in the pandemic in 2020, I was able to keep my offer acceptance rate at above 90%. And I do think that a lot of that goes back to the experience that we put forth for our candidates. We’ve had quite a few people who even don’t make it through our process get rejected because we felt that they weren’t the right fit. And they’ve had such a positive experience that they’ll turn around and say, hey, I know that I wasn’t the right fit for this job, but you should really consider my colleague. I know they’re also looking, and I had such a positive experience that I wanted to recommend them your way. And so I think it’s really nice to feel like you’re making progress, but to be able to see it again from a quantitative perspective has been really nice for us as well.
Matt Alder [00:17:02]:
Final question. What’s next? What are the future plans for talent acquisition at Frame IO?
Rachel Hirsch [00:17:07]:
Yeah, you know, I mean, again, we experienced a lot of growth last year. We essentially doubled the size of our company. And when you’re growing at a rate like this, you have a lot of new faces. Inevitably, it’s just a math equation, right? You’re going to hit a certain point where a majority of the people at your organization are relatively new. And so I definitely think we have a focus on making sure that we are supporting those people not just through their first week and a half to two weeks of onboarding, but really as the months progress. I think as a growing company, sometimes you can fall into the trap of thinking, well, this person’s been here for a while, so let’s give them a little more responsibility. Because then we’ll look back and see how long they’ve been here. And really, it’s only been five, six months. They’re still brand new. And so I think we’re trying not to lose sight of that and making sure that we’re helping our employees feel supported as they continue their journey as an employee with Frame IO. Otherwise, we’re just focused on continuing to scale and grow as an organization. Overall, we do still have a lot of growth planned for 2021, and so we just want to make sure that we’re being really strategic here and scaling the organization in a way that’s going to set us up for success. We’re definitely committed to keeping diversity a top priority for us throughout this growth. So I’m really excited to see all of the progress that we can make in 2021.
Matt Alder [00:18:25]:
Rachel, thank you very much for talking to me.
Rachel Hirsch [00:18:28]:
Absolutely. Yeah. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Matt Alder [00:18:31]:
My thanks to Rachel Hirsch. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
