Hiring Archives - Gus Pineda

June 12, 2017

7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process

A vast body of research shows that the hiring process is biased and unfair. Unconscious racism, ageism, and sexism play a big role in whom we hire. But there are steps you can take to recognize and reduce these biases. So where should you start? And how can you help others on your team do the same?

What the Experts Say
Unconscious biases have a critical and “problematic” effect on our judgment, says Francesca Gino, professor at Harvard Business School. “They cause us to make decisions in favor of one person or group to the detriment of others.” In the workplace, this “can stymie diversity, recruiting, promotion, and retention efforts.” Left unchecked, biases can also shape a company or industry’s culture and norms, says Iris Bohnet, director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design. “Seeing is believing,” she explains. “If we don’t see male kindergarten teachers or female engineers we don’t naturally associate women and men with those jobs, and we apply different standards” when hiring, promoting and evaluating job performance. “Managers have to learn to de-bias their practices and procedures.” Here are some strategies.

Seek to understand
When it comes to biases and hiring, managers need to “think broadly about ways to simplify and standardize the process,” says Bohnet. To begin, you’ll need to understand what hiring prejudices are and how they operate. Gino recommends managers look into providing workers with education and training on the topic. “Awareness training is the first step to unraveling unconscious bias because it allows employees to recognize that everyone possesses them and to identify their own.” The idea is to create an “organizational conversation” about biases and help spark ideas on “steps the organization as a whole can take to minimize them.”

Rework your job descriptions
Job listings play an important role in recruiting talent and often provide the first impression of a company’s culture. “Even subtle word choices can have a strong impact on the application pool,” says Gino. Research shows that masculine language, including adjectives like “competitive” and “determined,” results in women “perceiving that they would not belong in the work environment.” On the other hand, words like “collaborative” and “cooperative,” tend to draw more women than men. Software programs that highlight stereotypically gendered words can help counteract this effect, says Bohnet. “Then you can either remove the words and replace them with something more neutral,” or strive to strike a balance by using the same number of gendered descriptors and verbs. “Go back and forth between the words ‘build’ and ‘create,’” for example. The goal here is to “explore and see how [these changes] affect your pool. Learn by doing.”

Go blind for the resume review
Next, you need to “level the playing field” by “ensuring you are focused” on your candidate’s specific qualifications and talents, not surface “demographic characteristics,” says Bohnet. “The fact is Latisha and Jamal do not get the same number of callbacks as Emily and Greg. You need to look at what each person brings to the table.” Again, software programs that blind the process for you are useful, says Gino. A blind, systematic process for reviewing applications and resumes “will help you improve your chances of including the most relevant candidates in your interview pool, including uncovering some hidden gems,” adds Gino. “It is easy for bias to trickle in when such a process is not decided a priori.”

Give a work sample test
“Work sample tests that mimic the kinds of tasks the candidate will be doing in the job,” are the best “indicators of future job performance,” according to Bohnet. Evaluating work sample tests from multiple applicants also helps “calibrate your judgment to see how Candidate A compares to Candidate B.” Gino concurs. Asking candidates to solve work-related problems or “partake in a skill test” yields important insights. “A skill test forces employers to critique the quality of a candidate’s work versus unconsciously judging them based on appearance, gender, age, and even personality,” she says.

Standardize interviews
Research shows that unstructured interviews — which lack defined questions and whereby a candidate’s experience and expertise are meant to unfold organically through conversation — are “often unreliable for predicting job success,” says Gino. On the other hand, structured interviews, whereby each candidate is asked the same set of defined questions, “standardize the interview process” and “minimizes bias” by allowing employers to “focus on the factors that have a direct impact on performance.” Bohnet suggests using an interview scorecard that grades candidates’ responses to each question on a predetermined scale. “Ideally interviewers don’t know the specifics about how well each candidate did in terms of the CV review and work sample,” she adds. The goal is for the “interview to become a third independent data point.”

Consider likeability (if it matters to you)
It’s natural to gravitate toward people with whom you instantly gel. “One study found that impressions made in the first 10 seconds of an interview could impact the interview’s outcome,” Gino notes. “Another suggested that employers hire people that they like the most on a personal level.” But this bias toward “natural chemistry or common interests” is another one to watch out for. Bohnet describes likeability as perhaps “the most challenging question of the hiring process.” Ask yourself, “Does it matter whether you like the person you hire? And how important is it to you?” If you do care about it, Bohnet recommends rating candidates as you would on their other skills during the interview. “By giving likeability a score, you’re making it more controllable.”

Set diversity goals
“Diversity goals are worthwhile,” says Bohnet. “They make the issue front and center” in organizations. And yet, she cautions, be careful when you broach the idea with colleagues. “They are sometimes controversial for companies because they can undermine the people who are hired in those categories or lead to a backlash from the traditionally advantaged groups.” Data can help you get buy-in. A growing body of research suggests that diversity in the workforce results in “significant business advantages,” says Gino. She recommends that “at the end of every hiring process, leaders track how well they’ve done against the diversity goals they set out to achieve.” This also encourages those involved in the hiring and in other parts of the company “to keep diversity and equality top of mind.”

Principles to Remember

Do:

Experiment with the wording of job listings by removing adjectives closely associated with a particular gender.
Ask candidates to take a work sample test — it’s useful in comparing applicants and it’s an effective predictor of future job performance.
Control for your personal feelings about a particular candidate by giving likability a numerical score.

Don’t:

Engage in unstructured interviews. Instead, standardize the interviews process by asking candidates the same set of defined questions.
Allow surface demographic characteristics to play into your resume review. Use a software program that blinds that information and ensures a level playing field.
Neglect to set diversity goals. Be sure to track how well you’re doing on them.

Case Study #1: Work to understand biases and set diversity goals
Dawn Smith, the chief legal officer at VMware, the Palo-Alto-based maker of virtualization software, says that one of the ways she tackles unconscious biases in the workplace is by talking about them “openly and candidly” with her team.

“Unconscious biases are so deep inside of us,” she says. “Unless we identify them and talk about them they are not going to change.”

Dawn also requires her employees to complete bias awareness training. Her goal is for all team members — many of whom are also hiring managers — to develop an understanding of what these prejudices are and why are they are insidious. “I talk about my own weaknesses,” she says. “If I am honest with my team, then hopefully they can look inside themselves to see what biases they might have.”

Earlier this year, Dawn had an opening for a “high-level, high visibility” member of VMware’s legal team. Her first order of business was to write the job description. To make the wording as “gender-neutral as possible,” Dawn focused on the credentials she sought, rather than on potential applicants’ personal characteristics.

“We specified that candidates needed to have been practicing law for a certain number of years, have served a certain amount of time in government, and that they needed to have a law degree from a top school,” she says.

When it came time to winnow the pool and decide which applicants were worthy of an interview, Dawn reminded both the internal search committee, as well as the outside recruiting firm she worked with, of the team’s diversity goals. “I always want to see a diverse slate of candidates that includes at least two members of under-represented groups,” she says.

Dawn does not do structured interviews; she prefers a more “conversational style.” But she is a stickler when it comes to asking for structured feedback from her colleagues on what they perceive as the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Sometimes I hear feedback like, ‘She isn’t a good cultural fit,’” – an important but “squishier” measure of a candidate’s worth.

“So I say back, ‘Tell me exactly what you mean. Why don’t you think she’s a good fit?’ And if they say, ‘I can’t put my finger on it,’ I ignore it. But if they say something like, ‘She sees things as black-or-white’ or ‘She jumps to conclusions,’ then I consider it.”

For that particular job, Dawn and her team ended up hiring a minority woman.

Dawn says she will continue to hire for diversity not only because it’s the “right” thing to do but also because “there is a business reason to do it.”

“At the end of the day, having a dynamic, engaged team with a diverse set of perspectives makes our professional conversations better and more creative,” she explains.

Case Study #2: Use software to simplify and standardize the vetting process
A few years ago, Jill Koob, vice president of sales solutions at Employer Flexible, the Houston-based human resources and recruitment company, needed to hire an operations analyst for the HR technology group.

Because of the expertise the role required, Jill admits there may have been unintentional biases at play. “I didn’t think about it, but I am sure that subconsciously I thought we might see a predominantly male applicant pool,” she says.

This is why Jill relies on software to do much of the initial vetting in her hiring decisions. “It makes the process much more independent,” she says.

After she had done the initial resume review of the pool (where she tried “not to pay attention to name or address which both can create some bias”), she asked applicants to take an assessment through Affintus, a program that helps her benchmark and rank the candidates. Top matches then progressed on to a second evaluation via Prove It, which tests candidate’s Excel, Word, and other computer-related skills.

The next step involved interviews, which Jill always approaches cautiously. “You can have a great rapport with someone in an interview, but that doesn’t mean they can do the job,” she explains.

That’s why she favors structured interviews. With the operations analyst candidates, she asked each of the three finalists the same 10 questions. “I would sometimes ask clarifying questions to go deeper, but it was always the same questions,” she says. “And then I gave each answer a rating on a scale of one to five.”

At last, Jill had it narrowed down to two finalists—a young woman and a man. She asked both for a work sample – standard practice on her team. “We give the candidates a challenge that they could face in the job and 36 hours to work up a presentation that shows us how they would handle it.”

The female candidate, Christy, had to present to a group that included the IT director and the company president. As soon as Christy finished, Jill knew she was the right one for the job. “There was no competition. Christy hit it out of the park,” she says. “She was assertive and direct — she had zero problems standing her ground.”

Christy got the job and has since been promoted.

June 9, 2017

The Uber-Waymo Lawsuit: It Should Be Easy to Poach Talent, But Not IP

A star employee leaves a company to join, or become, a competitor, and the former employer sues both the departing employee and the company who hired him for stealing its secrets. Legal battles like that are pervasive across all industries, but one of these high profile, high-stakes lawsuits is at the center of the race to self-driving cars: the dispute between Google and Uber. The suit will do more than determine the future of an important industry — it is a window into the rising number of disputes over talent mobility and trade secrets.

The case is complicated, but in this piece I’ll lay out the facts as we know them, and explain what’s at stake. Ultimately, it’s people more than information that should be free. Hiring employees from another company should be easy — and protected by law — but employers need to emphasize that those hires come with know-how and skills, but not with trade secrets.

In the escalating Google-Uber dispute, Anthony Levandowski, a key engineer working for Google’s self-driving car arm, Waymo, allegedly downloaded in 2015 more than 14,000 confidential files, or 9.7 gigabytes of data to his laptop. Levandowski then resigned from Waymo without prior notice and formed autonomous vehicle companies Ottomotto and Otto Trucking, recruiting two of his former co-workers at Waymo to his new ventures. In August 2016, Uber bought Otto for approximately $680 million and hired Levandowski to lead its self-driving car efforts. In his new position, Levandowski reported directly to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. According to District Court Judge Alsup who is presiding over the case, the evidence suggests that when Uber bought Otto, “Uber likely knew or at least should have known” Levandowski purloined and retained Waymo’s classified files, and that these “files likely contain[ed] at least some trade secrets.”

Upon arriving at Uber, Levandowski strategized with his new employer and prepared a defense to litigation against Waymo. Then, in October 2016, Google claims one of its forensics security engineers discovered Levandowski’s alleged downloading, and two months later, Google accidentally received an email from one of Uber’s suppliers with designs that “bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design.” LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is the technology that helps self-driving cars “see” their surroundings. Waymo claims to be the first company to complete a fully self-driving trip on public roads without a steering wheel and foot pedals. It accuses Uber of stealing its trade secrets and infringing its patents. The patent claims proved too weak to succeed, so the crux of the case turns on misappropriation of trade secrets taken by the former employee.

For now, Judge Alsup has ordered that Uber remove Levandowski from any role connected to LiDAR (a move Uber had preemptively made on its own accord, before, eventually altogether firing Levandowski from Uber) and compile a log of all oral and written communication where Levandowski mentioned LiDAR. Waymo was granted further expedited discovery to inspect all aspects of Uber’s ongoing LiDAR work.

During his six-hour deposition, Levandowski invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times. Levandowski also hasn’t allowed Uber to search any of his personally owned devices and refused to answer any questions that may implicate his utilization of Waymo’s intellectual property while in Uber’s employ. Levandowski knows stealing trade secrets is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years of imprisonment. The axe may soon fall because as of May 11, District Judge Alsup has referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s office. (Google also brought a private arbitration case against Levandowski accusing him of poaching employees. While working at Waymo, Levandowski signed the standard “At-Will Employment, Confidential Information, Invention Assignment, and Arbitration Agreements.”) Uber has called the lawsuit a “baseless attempt to slow down a competitor.” It claims it never received any proprietary information from Levandowski and that merely hiring an employee of a competitor isn’t against the law.

Uber is certainly correct on the last point: California employers are free to hire anyone, including the most valuable key employees, from their competitors. Talent mobility has been the wind beneath the meteoric growth of Silicon Valley. Unlike other states around the country, California doesn’t enforce non-compete clauses, which prohibit an employee from moving to a competitor or founding their own company in the field of their former employer. The pervasive use of non-competes has become an increasing concern to local and national policymakers. Research shows that non-competes reduce innovation, entrepreneurship, and, most basically, job mobility, all of which are fundamental to a healthy economy. In my book, Talent Wants to be Free, I have argued based on my own and other empirical studies that partly thanks to California remains the tech center of the world in part because of its refusal to enforce noncompetes. In 2016, I was honored to be invited to the White House to speak about my research on employee mobility and post-employment restrictions. Following the meeting, the Obama Administration issued a Call for Action urging states and Congress to push back against the expansion of noncompetes.

While employees should be free to use the skills and talent to move freely in the market, they should not be allowed to take trade secrets. The Waymo lawsuit is one of the first to be brought under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, a new federal law that amends the Economic Espionage Act and grants federal courts original jurisdiction over trade secret cases.

Uber insists it independently developed a sophisticated self-driving system, which it has named Fuji. Judge Alsup is sympathetic to the harm that can come from overly expansive claims of innovation as property. “It would be wrong to allow any company to leverage a single solution into a monopoly over broad swaths of other solutions,” he wrote. “To do so would be to allow monopolization of broad scientific or engineering concepts and principles.” Still, he observed that Uber’s Fuji uses at least one element common to Waymo’s counterpart, GBr3. If Uber cannot show independent origin for that element, this evidence will cut against Uber and favor a finding of trade secrets misappropriation. As with many trade secret cases, the heart of this battle is thus deeply factual.

The Latin proverb, Scire tuum nihil est, nisi tescire hoc sciat alter, reminds us that “Your knowledge is nothing if no one else knows you know it.” And the utopist cyber thinker Stewart Brand is famous for coining the phrase “Information wants to be free.” When knowledge is embodied in people, the phrase is even more powerful: talent wants to be free, in the sense of allowing people to move throughout their careers and build upon their experience and skills. So how can we allow talent to move within an industry and flourish, while protecting company’s secrets? Distinguishing between trade secrets and general skill or know-how common to a profession is not always easy. In some cases, the final answer may well be found in a courtroom. Still, companies should not be chilled from hiring their competitor’s best talent. They can ultimately avoid the risk of litigation by making it clear that those hired cannot bring along technology or data which were obtained or learned from their previous employer.

May 23, 2017

What I Learned from Transforming the U.S. Military’s Approach to Talent

When Army 2nd Lieutenant Joseph Riley was a senior at the University of Virginia, he ranked 10th out of 5,579 in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) National Order of Merit List. Upon graduation, he was proudly commissioned an Army officer and selected as a Rhodes Scholar to study at Oxford, where he pursued a master’s degree in international relations.

That was where the trouble began. In 2015 the Army informed Riley that, because of his time away, he was not being promoted alongside 90% of his peers to the rank of 1st lieutenant and he would soon be facing a board to determine whether he should be separated from the Army altogether. It took the intervention of Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley to save Riley. Today he continues to wear the uniform.

2nd Lieutenant Riley’s background is any employer’s dream, and his retention in the armed forces is a good thing for the Department of Defense, the organization I had the honor to lead from 2015 to 2017. But the protocols that almost led to his leaving the Army are an employer’s nightmare. When contending for talent in a competitive world, no organization — let alone the largest in the world, with the largest stakes — can afford to lose employees like 2nd Lieutenant Riley.

A case like Riley’s would make any leader take a hard look at his institution’s talent management, but it is particularly worrying at the Defense Department. When Americans reflect on what makes their military the best, it is not just its unrivaled technology, the nearly $600 billion dollars per year we spend on it, its compelling mission, or our network of global allies. America’s military is the finest fighting force the world has ever known because of the people we attract to an all-volunteer force. But the traditions and rules that have strengthened the U.S. military over the last 250 years can, at times, make recruitment and retention difficult.

That’s why, as Secretary of Defense, I took steps to transform the department’s personnel policies. Working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the individual military services, who are responsible for training and equipping personnel, we launched our “Force of the Future” initiatives to make the department more open, more flexible, and more supportive of alternative paths like 2nd Lieutenant Riley’s. But, while much progress has been made and the logic behind the initiatives is ironclad, the job of building the Force of the Future is not yet complete. What I learned, and present here, will help leaders in the Defense Department and Congress finish what we started, and I believe these lessons can help leaders in the private sector make needed changes in their talent management to keep up and stay ahead.

When I took the oath of office, in February 2015, with two years left in the Obama administration, I made a specific commitment to ensure that the U.S. military continues to be a place where America’s finest want to serve. It was clear to me then that the Defense Department would need to keep pace with the dramatic changes — many of them technological — reshaping the economy, the labor market, and human resource management.

We set out to change how the department thought about and treated talent through the full career cycle of our uniformed and civilian personnel, from their recruitment through their training, advancement, retention, and retirement.

As we dug into the challenge, it became clear that the pool of available talent from which the department can attract and recruit young Americans is shrinking quickly. The U.S. military needs at least 250,000 young people to join up every year. But of the more than 4 million men and women who turn 18 each year, a mere 29%, or about 1.2 million, are high school graduates (or have earned their GED) who meet the military’s recruitment standards and are eligible to serve. (The main barriers are obesity, drug use, and problems with the law.)

Even though the profession of arms is unique in many ways, I knew that to build the Force of the Future in a relatively successful economy, we were going to have to compete against some of America’s best employers, and so we sought to learn from them. We learned that we would need to change the way we used analytics and data and the way we managed our personnel processes. But more than that, we would need to make fundamental changes in how we attracted, developed, and advanced our talent, and how we helped the department’s people transition back to civilian life.

Attracting Talent

First, the Defense Department had to find a way to increase the pool of high-quality candidates inclined toward service. We faced geographic and awareness challenges. Nearly 40% of all active duty military recruits come from just six states. At the same time, military service has become something of a family business: Those who have joined the military are nearly twice as likely to have a parent who served. Data shows most young people are unsure — or even misinformed — about what it could mean for them to wear a uniform.

To overcome those challenges, we began to change where and how we recruited and advertised. The department started sending recruiters to the 44 states where we had fallen behind. We laid the groundwork to appeal to the influencers young people trust most — their parents and family, teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and clergy — and convince them military service is something to encourage. And we planned and budgeted to launch a new advertising and marketing campaign, which still awaits congressional approval, to employ predictive analytics and microtargeting, similar to those used in consumer marketing, to reach Americans who may not have previously considered military service.

Of course, as we sought to expand the military’s talent base, we could not afford to continue the policy of closing certain military positions to women. Taking 50% of the population off the table meant losing too much potential talent. I therefore decided to open up all combat positions to women, including infantry, armor, and some special operations units, like the Navy SEALs, without exception. Now women who meet our uncompromising standards will be measured by their contribution to the force no matter what field they choose.

The Pentagon also needed to improve the way the department attracted young officers, 40% of whom do not attend the three military academies, instead coming from our century-old, college-based ROTC program. The department found that too many talented students did not know about ROTC until they were already on campus. So the Defense Department will now offer more two- and three-year ROTC scholarships to students interested in joining after their freshman or sophomore years.

And because the Force of the Future will not all serve in uniform — 700,000 civilians do critical work across the department — we changed how we hire civilians. The Pentagon used to lose too many talented college graduates to more agile competitors, even though we were their first choice, because of the time it took to get an offer through the cumbersome bureaucracy. So Congress agreed to give the department the authorization to hire civilian employees directly through recruiting visits on college campuses. This spring, for the first time, recruiters were out there using this new authority to hire the civilians who will serve in the Department for years to come.

Developing Talent

As any employer knows, recruitment is just the first step to talent management. To develop these civilians and uniformed servicemembers, the department also needed to give its personnel more opportunities to grow. One way I sought to do so was by creating new and expanded “off-ramps” and “on-ramps” for personnel. We gave the department’s people time to work outside of the Pentagon and to bring smart, dedicated outsiders in for a time to help us think differently and imbue our staff with ideas and practices from outside the ranks.

One off-ramp is the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellowship, which selects officers to train with a forward-thinking business or organization. In recent years, the department has sent men and women to Google and Amazon, among other tech leaders. And now the Defense Department is doubling the size of this program, opening it to enlisted leaders, and diversifying where personnel can do a tour, including other innovative state governments and not-for-profit organizations.

Promotion

Of course, the Defense Department needs to be sure that its highest performers continue to move up through the military ranks. To do so, the Pentagon proposed some important and innovative improvements, but although the U.S. Senate approved the changes, the House of Representatives has not yet enacted these necessary reforms.

The current system is governed by the 36-year-old Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, or DOPMA, which established the requirement that officers advance or be forced out. While the system has fostered a world-class officer corps for generations, this “up-or-out” system has grown too rigid for today’s young people, who want more flexibility and variety in their career paths. So we sought to improve DOPMA to ensure talented officers would not be penalized for pursuing opportunities outside of the traditional “command” track or temporarily postponing promotion consideration. These are logical changes to a system that is, in some ways, dated, and I hope Congress will enact them soon.

Retention

Retention can be a challenge as young personnel start families and have to balance those personal commitments with their commitment to service. That is especially true at the Defense Department, where 70% of the officer corps is married, compared with 45% of civilians age 25 to 34, and where military members marry and have children at younger ages than their civilian counterparts.

That is why it is said often: You recruit a servicemember, but you retain a family. We accordingly expanded paid maternity and paternity leave, we created a standard that required a mother’s room for nursing at every Defense Department facility (establishing 3,600 such rooms in the process), and we expanded the hours of daycare centers up to 14 hours a day across the force to provide military parents with greater flexibility. The costs of these changes have been more than offset by higher retention of expensively trained personnel. We also found that we could increase retention by allowing family members to stay longer at a duty station of choice, in exchange for an additional service obligation.

Separation and Retirement

Finally, the Defense Department modernized its retirement system. It’s the right thing to do for any number of reasons, but in this context it’s actually an important recruitment tool. I remember when veterans were treated poorly, and in my time at the department we recommitted ourselves to helping them transition to veteran status when they move on, so that they can succeed in every way possible. We provided new career counseling as well as professional skill certification for our tradesmen, among other efforts. And employers around the country now sing the praises of their veteran employees. The Pentagon also improved servicemember retirement benefits. The department now offers a portable, 401(k)-like plan that personnel can take with them when they move on.

Looking Toward the Future

At a time of economic, technological, and labor evolutions, organizations have to change to compete for the best talent. As I learned, that meant looking in new places and in new ways, taking care of families more than ever before, and helping those who leave succeed so that they continue to be good examples to those who might join up.

When I took the oath of office, with just two years left in the Obama administration, I believed firmly that even if I could not finish everything I started, it was important to get many innovative initiatives, including the Force of the Future program, set in motion. The logic behind these initiatives is irrefutable, so I’m confident they will continue. As the new Secretary of Defense, new commander-in-chief, and new Congress continue to shape the Force of the Future, I believe they can build on these lessons. Our security depends on it.

May 4, 2017

Cybersecurity Has a Serious Talent Shortage. Here’s How to Fix It

It’s a refrain I’ve been hearing for the past 18 months from clients all over the world: “We need more skilled people for our security team.”

The need is real and well-documented. A report from Frost & Sullivan found that the global cybersecurity workforce will have more than 1.5 million unfilled positions by 2020. But the security industry is a fast-growing market, with IDC pegging it as becoming a $101 billion opportunity by 2020. So what’s causing the talent shortage?

One of the big reasons is that security businesses tend to look for people with traditional technology credentials — college degrees in tech fields, for example. But security is truly everyone’s problem; virtually every aspect of personal and professional data is at risk. So why are we limiting security positions to people with four-year degrees in computer science, when we desperately need varied skills across so many different industries? Businesses should open themselves up to applicants whose nontraditional backgrounds mean they could bring new ideas to the position and the challenge of improving cybersecurity.

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Other burgeoning industries have been in similar positions throughout history. In 1951 the U.S. accounting industry was poised for growth but was predominantly male, with only 500 female certified public accountants in the country. After recognizing the problem, leaders across the accounting field teamed with industry associations and academic institutions to solve the issue through awareness campaigns and hiring initiatives. Today there are over 800,000 female CPAs in the U.S. Security businesses need to follow this example, taking a hard look at themselves to see what’s holding them back.

There are no signs that the bad guys are limiting their talent pool — and cybercrime is now a $445 billion business. The average company handles a bombardment of 200,000 security events per day. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly more organized and aggressive, while the teams defending against these attacks are struggling to fill their ranks.

One way IBM is addressing the talent shortage is by creating “new collar” jobs, particularly in cybersecurity. These roles prioritize skills, knowledge, and willingness to learn over degrees and the career fields that gave people their initial work experience. Some characteristics of a successful cybersecurity professional simply can’t be taught in a classroom: unbridled curiosity, passion for problem solving, strong ethics, and an understanding of risks. People with these traits can quickly pick up the technical skills through on-the-job training, industry certifications, community college courses, and modern vocational and skills education programs.

We began using this approach about two years ago, and its success has been clear: 20% of our U.S. hiring in cybersecurity since 2015 has consisted of new collar professionals. Other organizations can use a similar approach by establishing apprenticeship opportunities, emphasizing certification programs, exploring new education models, supporting programs at community colleges or polytechnic schools, and looking for talent in new places. Some of our recent additions to the security team came from unexpected career fields such as retail, education, entertainment, and law. The two things they all had in common? They were curious about security and motivated to learn the skills.

Building a pool of talent to fill these new collar jobs is also an important part of the equation. A great example of this is the P-TECH educational model (Pathways in Technology Early College High School), which provides a training avenue for students to jumpstart their careers in cybersecurity. Public high school and college students in grades 9-14 get hands-on experience with the most sought-after technical skills. By combining specific elements of high school curricula, community college courses, hands-on skills training, and professional mentoring, these students are primed for successful entry into highly technical career fields. The P-TECH model has expanded to over 50 U.S. schools and 300 industry partners, with the goal of expanding to 80+ schools in 2017.

Of course, cutting-edge technology is going to be at the center of these new collar jobs. Artificial intelligence, for example, is being used in the workplace in a wide range of ways, and in cybersecurity it is already creating opportunities for new collar positions. AI not only provides a way to help overcome the skills shortage, but is also an important step forward in the way employees will work and companies will defend themselves. We’ve found that by using AI to gather and correlate the insights from the 60,000 security-related blog posts each month, security professionals can digest the relevant information much more efficiently, allowing organizations to upskill their employee base. Companies are already using Watson for Cyber Security to connect obscure data points humans can’t possibly identify on their own, enabling employees to find security threats 60x faster than manual investigations.

Companies that are interested in using a new collar approach to fill security positions should consider the following:

Re-examine your workforce strategy: Do you know what skills you need today and tomorrow to run a successful security program? Realize that skills and experience can come from a variety of places, and adjust your hiring efforts accordingly.
Improve your engagement and outreach: Don’t limit yourself to the same old career fairs and recruiting programs of yesteryear. Get involved in community colleges, P-TECH schools, and other educational programs to start building your recruiting base.
Build a local cybersecurity ecosystem: Connect with government organizations, educational institutions, and other groups. Sponsor Capture the Flag security events, and work with local middle and high schools to generate interest in the field. These groups are always looking for willing experts and mentors.
Have a robust support program for new hires: Mentorships, rotational assignments, shadowing, and other opportunities help new cybersecurity hires gain experience and learn. Remember, not everyone knows what they want to do right away. Keep new hires engaged by giving them the creative freedom to work on different projects and explore new technologies and services.
Focus on continuous learning and upskilling: To retain your new talent, keep employees current on the latest skill sets through classes, certifications, and conferences. Cybersecurity is a highly dynamic field, requiring ongoing education and exploration. And be open to employees from other areas of your business who express interest in cybersecurity career paths. Remember that AI provides employees with more intelligence and contextual recommendations at a speed and scale previously unimagined, so upskilling your workforce is a completely different ballgame these days.

Cybersecurity is a complex career field with extraordinarily challenging problems, but with a diverse pool of experiences and ideas, we stand a much greater chance of successfully defending our assets.

April 4, 2017

Preparing for the Future of Talent Acquisition – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM KORN FERRY

Image courtesy of Korn Ferry.

With unemployment rates in most developed nations at the lowest levels since the Great Recession, and with new skill sets required to keep pace with head-spinning technological advances, it’s no surprise the talent acquisition environment is incredibly competitive.

In a new Korn Ferry Futurestep global survey of more than 1,100 talent acquisition professionals, 54 percent said it’s harder to find qualified talent now than it was just one year ago. The same study found that identifying people with the right skills in a rapidly changing market is the top issue impacting recruiting.

Research: Black Employees Are More Likely to Be Promoted When They Were Referred by Another Employee

It has been estimated that more than three-quarters of all jobs are found through social networks. This is known as referral-based hiring. As referrals have grown in popularity, so has the debate about their impact.

On the positive side, referrals can result in improved job matches and reduced employee turnover. Hiring firms can get “inside” information about a candidate from their referring employee, while the referral itself serves as a vouching mechanism that signals a candidate’s competency or trustworthiness. Job seekers can discover intangible aspects about a job and organization from their inside contact, helping them better assess their overall fit at a company.

But firms that rely on current employees to refer new hires could end up with a less diverse workforce. After all, “who you know” often mirrors “what you look like.” Hiring through social networks may especially disadvantage women and people of color, who may have fewer ties to firms that are dominated by a white, male workforce. Disadvantages at the referral stage may also affect career outcomes that are further downstream (e.g., promotions, assignments, job satisfaction).

Unfortunately, companies often do not systematically evaluate how referrals relate to longer-term employee outcomes, or whether it varies across different groups of people. There has been little academic research on the topic, though some studies have found that referred employees onboard and assimilate faster; others have argued that this advantage is short-lived, as other employees catch up.

In a recent study, we investigated the relationship between network-based hiring and subsequent employee promotions, comparing results across different demographic groups. Specifically, we examined the personnel records of nearly 16,000 employees hired from 2003 to 2013 in a large U.S.-based sales organization. The privately owned firm has offices worldwide, though our study focused on offices in the U.S. Over one-third of the company’s hiring happens through referrals; the rest is done through formal hiring practices, such as on-campus interviews or internship programs. We compared outcomes for women (38.6% of our sample) and men (61.4%), and between white (55.5%) and black (18.2%) employees. (We did not look at female racial minorities specifically, because we were concerned about having a small sample size.) The average age at hire was 25 years old.

The firm followed a “promotion from within” policy that operated on a strict schedule. Employees would be up for promotion at specific points in their tenure; we called this a “regularly timed promotion.” If they were not promoted, they would be asked to leave. The firm also gave “outstanding promotions” to a few employees, who got to advance prior to their expected time.

In this sample, we found that both female and black employees experienced statistically fewer regularly timed promotions than male or white employees. For black employees, though, being hired through a referral statistically increased their number of promotions (by a factor of 1.2), compared to black employees without a referral. This did not bring them up to par with white employees.

We repeated the analysis for outstanding promotions (i.e., early promotions awarded to employees for outstanding performance). Again, we found that while black employees were statistically less likely to get outstanding promotions than white employees, this wasn’t true if black employees were hired through a referral. Black employees hired through a referral were just as likely to get outstanding promotions as white employees hired without a referral. All results remained after controlling for an employee’s education, performance, cohort, and office location.

Exploratory evidence from a follow-up lab study conducted with U.S. graduate business school students suggests that this effect for black employees might have come from a referral’s positive signal of quality that persisted after they were hired. In the experiment, we asked participants to evaluate a fictitious employee for promotion or termination based on an employee file, which included their resume, how they were hired, and their subsequent performance evaluation data. All files were identical except for two manipulations: the employee’s race (which was either black or white) and the employee’s hiring method (by referral or campus interview).

We found initial evidence that participants assigned to evaluate black employees hired by a referral were more likely to recommend promotions (rather than terminations) than assigned to white employees hired with or without a referral. When asked to explain their evaluation, we found that participants assigned to evaluate the black referred employees were less likely to discuss any hard, quantitative data in the employee file (which we held consistent across the conditions) to justify their recommendation.

In the lab study, just as in our field study, we found that women received no benefit from being referred. While women received statistically fewer regular promotions (but more outstanding promotions) than men in the firm we studied, we found no difference if a woman was referred. We did some investigations to see if we could explain the “non-effect” for referred women, but thus far have not been able to determine any cause.

Our study refines earlier findings that show referral-based hiring to be a practice that contributes to inequality. Referrals may not have universally deleterious effects for racial minorities, especially when considering a longer time frame of their career once inside a firm. This has implications for HR professionals and managers involved in hiring, who may be motivated to reduce investments in referral-based hiring to foster diversity. Our study suggests that leveraging networks to bring in employees may in fact have lasting positive effects for some members of traditionally disadvantaged groups, who can leverage these relationships once inside the firm. This is especially noteworthy given that the naturally occurring relationships that lead to referrals are often hard to replicate inside organizations.

February 15, 2017

The Most Desirable Employee Benefits

In today’s hiring market, a generous benefits package is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. According to Glassdoor’s 2015 Employment Confidence Survey, about 60% of people report that benefits and perks are a major factor in considering whether to accept a job offer. The survey also found that 80% of employees would choose additional benefits over a pay raise.

Google is famous for its over-the-top perks, which include lunches made by a professional chef, biweekly chair massages, yoga classes, and haircuts. Twitter employees enjoy three catered meals per day, on-site acupuncture, and improv classes. SAS has a college scholarship program for the children of employees. And plenty of smaller companies have received attention for their unusual benefits, such as vacation expense reimbursement and free books.

But what should a business do if it can’t afford Google-sized benefits? You don’t need to break the bank to offer attractive extras. A new survey conducted by my team at Fractl found that, after health insurance, employees place the highest value on benefits that are relatively low-cost to employers, such as flexible hours, more paid vacation time, and work-from-home options. Furthermore, we found that certain benefits can win over some job seekers faced with higher-paying offers that come with fewer additional advantages.

As part of our study, we gave 2,000 U.S. workers, ranging in age from 18 to 81, a list of 17 benefits and asked them how heavily they would weigh the options when deciding between a high-paying job and a lower-paying job with more perks.

Better health, dental, and vision insurance topped the list, with 88% of respondents saying that they would give this benefit “some consideration” (34%) or “heavy consideration” (54%) when choosing a job. Health insurance is the most expensive benefit to provide, with an average cost of $6,435 per employee for individual coverage, or $18,142 for family coverage.

The next most-valued benefits were ones that offer flexibility and improve work-life balance. A majority of respondents reported that flexible hours, more vacation time, more work-from-home options, and unlimited vacation time could help give a lower-paying job an edge over a high-paying job with fewer benefits. Furthermore, flexibility and work-life balance are of utmost importance to a large segment of the workforce: parents. They value flexible hours and work-life balance above salary and health insurance in a potential job, according to a recent survey by FlexJobs.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they’d give some or heavy consideration to a job offering flexible hours, while 80% would give consideration to a job that lets them work from home. Both flexible hours and work-from-home arrangements are affordable perks for companies that want to offer appealing benefits but can’t afford an expensive benefits package. Both of these benefits typically cost the employer nothing — and often save money by lowering overhead costs.

More vacation time was an appealing perk for 80% of respondents. Paid vacation time is a complicated expense, since it’s not simply the cost of an employee’s salary for the days they are out; liability also plays into the cost. American workers are notoriously bad at using up their vacation time. Every year Americans leave $224 billion dollars in unused vacation time on the table, which creates a huge liability for employers because they often have to pay out this unused vacation time when employees leave the company. Offering an unlimited time-off policy can be a win-win for employer and employee. (Over two-thirds of our respondents said they would consider a lower-paying job with unlimited vacation.) For example, HR consulting firm Mammoth considers its unlimited time-off policy a success not just for what it does but also for the message it sends about company culture: Employees are treated as individuals who can be trusted to responsibly manage their workload regardless of how many days they take off.

Switching to an unlimited time-off policy can solve the liability issue; wiping away the average vacation liability saves companies $1,898 per employee, according to research from Project: Time Off. And with only 1%–2% of companies currently using an unlimited time-off policy, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), it’s clearly a benefit that can make companies more attractive.

Contrary to what employers might expect, unlimited time off doesn’t necessarily equal less productive employees and more time out of the office. A survey from The Creative Group found that only 9 % of executives think productivity would decrease significantly if employees used more vacation time. In some cases, under an unlimited time-off policy, employees take the same amount of vacation time. We adopted an unlimited time-off policy at Fractl about a year ago and haven’t seen a negative impact on productivity. Our director of operations, Ryan McGonagill, says there hasn’t been a large spike in the amount of time employees spend out of the office, but the quality of work continues to improve.

Student loan and tuition assistance also ranked highly on the list of coveted benefits, with just under half of respondents reporting that these bonuses could nudge them toward a lower-paying job. A benefits survey from SHRM found that only 3 % of companies currently offer student loan assistance, and 52% of companies provide graduate educational assistance. Although education assistance sounds costly, companies can take advantage of a tax break; employers can provide up to $5,250 per employee per year for tuition tax free.

Job benefits that don’t directly impact an individual’s lifestyle and finances were the least coveted by survey respondents, such as in-office freebies like food and coffee. Company-sponsored gatherings like team-bonding activities and retreats were low on the list as well. This isn’t to say these benefits aren’t valued by employees, but rather that these perks probably aren’t important enough on their own to convince a job candidate to choose a company.

We noticed gender differences regarding certain benefits. Most notable, women were more likely to prefer family benefits like paid parental leave and free day care services. Parental leave is of high value to female employees: 25% of women said they’d give parental leave heavy consideration when choosing a job (only 14% of men said the same). Men were more likely than women to value team-bonding events, retreats, and free food. Both genders value fitness-related perks, albeit different types. Women are more likely to prefer free fitness and yoga classes, while men are more likely to prefer an on-site gym and free gym memberships.

Our survey findings suggest that providing the right mix of benefits that are both inexpensive and highly sought after among job seekers can give a competitive edge to businesses that can’t afford high salaries and pricier job perks.