“Women Founders in Talent Acquisition” Webinar Transcript

[Katie Fortunato]

Hi everybody, welcome to the RecruitmentMarketing.com webinar. I’m Katie Fortunato, I’m the president and co-founder of RecruitmentMarketing.com. And if you are new to us, we are a new platform connecting the talent acquisition professional community with the technology providers who are powering the hiring strategies of growing organizations.

And we are currently working on a new product called the Marketplace, and it’s designed for talent acquisition professionals and providers, which we’ll launch sometime over the summer. We will be featuring a, well, we have a growing list of about 1,400 tools in our directory. And our mission is to make it easy to research and find new technology and software for every stage of the hiring funnel.

So we are here to zoom in on a few of the women founders in the space and also ask what’s made them successful. And we want to talk here today about some of these leading technologies, helping to power hiring strategies at RecruitmentMarketing.com. We often hear from readers that they want to know more about AI, DEI, and hybrid work.

So today joining me are three incredible entrepreneurs and leaders to talk about solutions. And while we’re here during this Women’s History Month, we’d love to get to know about the journey to entrepreneurship that these ladies embarked on. So, Mona Tawakali, she’s the chief strategy officer at Recruitics.

Welcome, Summer Delaney, the CEO and co-founder at CollabWORK, and Milena Berry, the CEO and co-founder at PowerToFly. So happy Women’s History Month, by the way. Agenda for today, and then we’ll jump right in, and I’ll offer a little bit of context from a survey that we hosted in partnership with The Muse.

We just published it today, and so you can find that. We’ll drop a link in the chat. But this survey illustrates some of the disparity that we’re seeing of women in the workplace.

And one quick housekeeping update, because we will hold the audience for some questions for the panelists, please use the Q&A box at the bottom of the Zoom window. Now let’s get started and look at the data. I’m going to share my screen here.

Am I good? Okay. So we asked over 1,000 women to share their feedback on the state of the workplace today.

And here are a few of the key trends and challenges that were reported. There is gender bias and hiring process. About 42% of women encountered gender bias or inappropriate questions during a job interview.

About 41% felt discriminated against during a job interview due to gender. And 38% hesitated to apply for a job based on a perceived gender bias. Women in the U.S. in the Southeast reported greater challenges, almost twice the rate compared to other regions, in fact. 74% of women in the U.S. Southeast encountered bias or inappropriate questions during job interviews. And the representation for women in your organization in leadership matters. 79% of job seekers seek out companies with equal representation of women in managerial and leadership positions when they are looking for a new job.

And yet, 55% felt there was insufficient female representation in the leadership team at their organizations. So we will turn it over to our speakers to give us the real story about the data. So why don’t we switch over to our panelists and tell us about yourselves and your company and give us a scope of what you’re working on.

Mona, why don’t we start with you?

[Mona Tawakali]

Thanks, Katie. Hey, everyone. My name is Mona Tawakali. I’m the chief strategy officer at Recruitics. I came to Recruitics about four and a half years ago by way of the KRT marketing acquisition where I founded a new agency out of a 45-year-old company. So a pretty unique founder story.

But today, I oversee the overall strategic marketing direction for all Recruitics customers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Recruitics, most people know us as the founders of programmatic job advertising, which we did 12 years ago. And that essentially uses data and algorithms to produce great results on job sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter.

While we started doing that 12 years ago, we’ve come a long way since then. At Recruitics, we say everything we do is built on data. We are a data company at our core.

In fact, the name comes from the two words recruitment and analytics. So we consider ourselves the best end-to-end talent attraction and conversion platform for the recruitment marketers and talent acquisition professionals. And we do that with cutting-edge technology combined with world-class creative and advertising services.

But to simply put it, we partner with the world’s leading employers to make it easy for them to attract and hire great talent.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thank you, Mona. Okay, over to you, Summer.

[Summer Delaney]

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining today, and Katie, thank you for having myself. My name is Summer Delaney, and I am the founder and CEO of CollabWORK. CollabWORK is what we call the first community-powered hiring platform connecting companies to the hidden job market. And those are really platforms where the best talent are networking, whether it’s the newsletters you read every day, the Slack communities that exist outside of your internal work Slack, discords, WhatsApp, Facebook groups, really these pockets of the internet that the best talent are networking, upskilling, and discovering opportunities from sources they trust. We have data that 89% of people are more likely to apply to a job if it comes to a referral or a community leader than a cold inbound source.

So really, for companies, we’re really trying to get your jobs in front of the right candidate profiles, and candidates, we’re trying to match you to the right jobs based on your communities and professional associations. Super excited to be here and share more.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thank you, Summer. And Milena?

[Milena Berry]

Hello, everybody. So my name is Milena Berry, and I’m the co-founder and CEO of PowerToFly. PowerToFly is a platform really with a huge focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

So that’s kind of what we bring to the table and to this conversation. We’ve been around for about 10 years. We were first initially very known for really talking about gender in the workplace, bringing women to exciting opportunities.

And recently, in the last five years, we’ve really become a lot more intersectional with 65% of our audience being non-white, a stronghold in the LGBTQI plus community, and etc. And again, personally, from my perspective, as a woman in technology, queer, immigrant, parent, etc. Identities, I really find that it’s really important to not just think about diversity in the workplace as gender only, but as our whole selves and solutions are similar, the needs are a little bit differentiated, etc.

In terms of just working with our customers, we really are a two-sided platform. As I said, on one hand, we really help organizations with employer branding solutions, down acquisition solutions, and then training some DEI. And that takes all sorts of forms like producing content, summits, a lot of events work.

So really a lot of exciting things of how we bring this impact and DEIP impact into the workforce and then on the other side, on the candidate and the applicant side of things, we believe that we solve for the black hole of applicant tracking systems problem that a lot of job seekers experience these days, in that we create these experiences where job seekers can interact with hiring managers directly and experience the brands of our partners, just by virtue of working with hard-of-fly or committed to DEI, right? And then of course, everybody in the working progress. So pause here.

I would love to connect with all of you, whatever it is that you need, if I can be helpful on the DEIP front.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thanks, Milena. And just right on topic and with the survey, but as we just saw in the report, we saw that for job seekers, as they’re looking at hiring decisions, they are for new jobs, they are looking at the composition of their leadership team. So can you talk about when you started your business, the mindset that you had for your company and how you’re thinking about this mindset of sponsoring women in leadership and bringing this up at the core value from the start?

[Milena Berry]

You’re directing it to me because I know like the rest of the panel can absolutely talk about it. Yeah. Well, so for me, it was really interesting because again, I found myself about 10 years ago in a place where I had three kids under the age of five, roughly, in kind of five years, three kids.

So it was a few years in my life where I couldn’t really do much else. And then eventually, the youngest of those three, now I have almost seven, but when she was little, I started kind of understanding and reading and trying to figure out what’s my impact in the world going to be. And at that time, it was really interesting to observe that a lot of women were leaving the technology field.

And yet I was, my former general chief technology officer, there was a female in tech with a great position stayed in the workplace. And so I started to reflect upon what were those, what enabled me to thrive while so many were leaving their careers. And there is definitely a big theme there around flexible remote work.

The fact that I didn’t have to commute to an office that I could show up at school when, you know, there was, I don’t know, a concert or somebody need to be picked up and being taken to a doctor’s office. I think a lot of women drown into logistics of trying to combine career and motherhood and remote work makes this more manageable, remote work with health, I should say. What we experienced since COVID is entirely new and charted territory.

And yeah, let’s not go there right now.

[Katie Fortunato]

For another time. So this question is for Summer and Mona as well. But from your clients, are you hearing about any sticky and effective policies that they are starting to implement to kind of address this brand attraction for women?

[Summer Delaney]

Yeah, great question. I can start, you know, from our clients, you know, we’re hearing, you know, similar to I’m sure what we’ll talk about that. And the studies show that, you know, really, people want companies to lead by example, to not just talk the talk, but walk to walk about elevating people in the workforce.

And so we’re seeing really effective use cases of companies, you know, highlighting not only the women at their organization, but having those women actually showcase, you know, how their companies are helping them, whether it’s through childcare, whether it’s through benefits to take care of elderly parents, you know, the burden that tends to fall on tend to be female caregivers in the household, how companies can really help people in those difficult times.

And we’re seeing that from our from customers and talent who, you know, sometimes are hesitant in this market right now with the massive layoffs to make a move to a new company, because they are afraid about their job security. We’re seeing that employees that actual employers that actually have those policies are seeing higher retention, and also potential employers that are offering those benefits, as part of that compensation package about being really transparent about the their company culture, or actually attracting that passive talent that that buzzword that many TA leaders are trying to attract to their companies.

So we’re really seeing that, especially this month, it’s great to highlight all these accomplishments of company cultures. But this should really be a 12 month conversation. It shouldn’t just happen in March to really position your brand to be successful.

[Mona Tawakali]

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more summer. And I love what you said about leading by example, you know, when we’re talking to clients about how to attract more women into leadership roles into the company, you know, what we start with is that it’s an inside out approach. We can’t amplify unless we know what’s really authentic to the culture, and what that company is all about.

And once we get to the root of that, we can define that in a way that will attract the type of talent that you want. But you know, another point that’s really important to make right now is that consumers are demanding authentic content right now. They don’t want polished videos, they don’t want polished content, they want user generated content that really gives a true depiction of what it’s like, who you’re going to work with, what their personalities are like, what makes them tick.

And that really attracts more women into the workplace when you can do that effectively. We have a product at Recruitics called Jammer, and it does exactly that. It helps you collect user generated video content in a really authentic way.

And that’s what consumers want right now. That’s why influencers are so powerful and help build brands in a really transparent way right now. But beyond that, you know, when we think about kind of building a DEI strategy, it really comes down to, you know, in my opinion, five core pillars.

You know, I started talking about the employer brand, and that’s, you know, are you representing your diversity externally within your earned owned and paid channels. But then it also, you know, when we move further down the funnel, it’s about the recruiting and hiring practices, and what are some of the barriers that exist for diverse talent within your funnel. From there, it’s thinking about what are your inclusion and equity practices internally, so that you’re thinking about that to your point summer every single day of the year versus just in March.

Retention and leadership development is so critically important. And then finally, establishing goals, measuring to those goals and ensuring that you are tweaking the strategy along the way to ensure that you’re succeeding.

[Katie Fortunato]

That’s a great point. And on that is what would you tell practitioners, what are some of the key KPIs that they should be looking at to know if they’re moving the needle? And what should they start looking at?

And then how are they measuring if it was successful?

[Milena Berry]

Yeah, I mean, I actually think KPIs is an interesting thing in general, in recruiting tech and in DEI tech, because a lot of the companies are kind of reinventing the wheel internally, especially with the DEI lens. But I think in general, it’s very important that you start by understanding your representation, and that not just overall, but by department, by function, by maybe senior or early career experience executive. And then you have to, to Mona’s point, create a plan, ideally something like a three-year plan that says, this is how we’re going to move these metrics.

This is what we think we can get to in a three-year span. And again, you start with the identification of the demographics and how to identify, not just about gender, but also about ethnicity, about all the other vectors of diversity that we have. And then you look at all the way in your funnel, when you start from top of funnel to bottom of funnel, how is that representation holding up?

And you have to make sure that, of course, you’re selecting at the very bottom of your funnel, you’re selecting the right person for the job who’s mostly skilled. You’re not looking at the diversity metrics at that point. But you look at the diversity metrics is in the beginning to make sure that you really have a representative set into your workflow and into your pipeline altogether.

And again, it starts with employee branding and reaching out to those audiences. So I think you’re kind of measuring, yeah, what’s your top of funnel brand exposure, then you’re going into how many of these are becoming leads, how many of them being transferred into applicants, and then at the end, what does the workforce look like. And another point is also to think through retention rates of those underrepresented groups, because we know that whenever there’s a shakeout in the workplace, we know which groups are most disproportionately affected, it’s always the underrepresented ones.

So to make sure that if you are in the unfortunate position of doing a layoff, you know, disproportionately laying off more, you know, black folks or women or folks with disability, right, like you have to be really mindful of your attrition is not going the wrong way.

[Summer Delaney]

I think another thing to add is I’m sure many of the people in this call are really active in their ERG groups. And a lot of times, those groups do such great work, but it tends to feel like another job on top of their full time responsibilities. People tend not to be getting compensated for that work.

It’s really can become a lot of a burden of, of being that voice and that message to leadership about what different diverse or affinity groups are feeling at their companies. And so I think it’s important to address that conversation in the room that those groups are really helpful to build communities internally within companies. But there should be a conversation about, you know, what those roles are for the longevity and sustainability of, you know, as Lena said, continuing to have great retention of those employees.

We’ve seen a lot of customers of ours, the power of community, which I’m sure we’ll talk to more about that later, you know, if your company can’t offer those ERG groups or resources for women or other diverse workforces, there’s a lot of external professional communities that you can sponsor your employees to join for them to have that support, to have that network, those intimate pockets, they can have conversations about work-life balance, compensation, no other, you know, lessons from peers that they identify with. And that’s a great way for an employer to show that even if they don’t have those resources, that they’re investing in their growth, that they care about them staying at their company, that they really want them to grow within their role. So there’s a lot of ways that companies can address, you know, keeping that retention, even if it’s creative outside of the box solutions that their current company offers.

[Mona Tawakali]

Yeah, I’ll add a yes and to what both of you just said, you know, as it relates to ERG, you know, one thing that we always advise is having an executive sponsor within the ERG, either a woman leader at the organization or an ally, so that they can hear the nature of the conversation, and then they can elevate those discussions to the executive table. You know, I often say that, you know, carrying the weight of being a diverse female at the table means that I have the responsibility and the organization to that table, and it’s so critically important that you understand those voices before you enter that room. So, you know, I think that having executives take it seriously is really important, and added to that, you know, providing incentives for people that are dedicating their time to helping evolve diversity and inclusion practices within the organization.

That is a second job on top of a full-time job, and often those projects happen within the fringes of the day and in the evenings and in the mornings, and it’s really important work, so recognizing those efforts is also very critically important.

[Katie Fortunato]

Those are all really good points, and it kind of seems like it ties back to building awareness internally and even externally in your employer brand. So, it sounds like sponsorship is a good, or allyship is a really good strategy as well as creating affinity groups, so it sounds like a lot of that work goes unrealized and is happening behind the scenes, and seems quite, you know, it’s participatory in that you need your leadership to agree, and you need people to see through the mission. So, if we’re looking at technology, you know, how is technology helping to solve for that, and you know, if you had a crystal ball, how do you see the landscape of DEI evolving in the next few years, and why don’t I go to Milena first on that one? I think you’re on mute.

[Milena Berry]

Yeah, I was on mute, yep, sorry. Well, I’m personally really excited about the arrival of Gen AI in HR teching, period, and while I understand the pitfalls that it can have for DEIB and the potential negative kind of connotations and the doomsday scenario, right, like I also am very excited about actually how much of the liquidity efficiency it’s going to unlock, and so I think our industry is going to look very different when this Gen AI gets written into applications a lot more, and AI in general, and obviously what PowerToFly is thinking about is, well, how do you make that process have an even better, even a more inclusive outcome than the human process that was guarding those, you know, selections in the past?

So, we at PowerToFly were doing a lot of work in kind of launching products, whether that’s on summarization of notes or messaging with candidates and employers, right, on both sides of the marketplace, or even with our, we call it talent match, but it’s kind of an AI recruiter product, right, where you can literally upload a job posting and get an instant list of diverse candidates, magic, pipeline problem, mis-debunked, right, and so that’s what makes me very, very excited about the place and time in history that we are right now, and just looking forward to see what the next couple years are going to show. I also think there is a huge move towards consolidation in the HR tech space.

I think it’s been a little bit of the wild west and then more and more of the buyers looking at how do they move to one solution and one stack, because a huge hurdle in enterprises adopting all the innovation that happens in HR tech is just human, to be honest. It’s like the inability to go and adopt a new tool. If you’re already living inside your ATS and maybe LinkedIn, just people don’t seem to ever want to go to a third place, and so how do you deliver your value of any product within the workflow of where the user already is?

I think that’s not a big technological thing that is ahead of us in HR tech. How the whole market actually works together and is integrated together, I think there’s just a lot of exciting stuff happening there.

[Katie Fortunato]

It’s really exciting, and also the future is we have to protect the future as well and make sure we’re creating really trustworthy products. As early adopters of technology, how can we make sure that we are being ethical and fair and knowing that we’re reducing bias in the process?

[Summer Delaney]

I can start with that one. I’m sure that everyone on this call is aware there’s a lot of AI bias laws that are going into effect. New York, where I know a few of us panelists are located, have some of the strictest AI bias laws.

As we build AI into our solution, we’re really mindful to be compliant. We were at HR Tech in October, and half the buyers we spoke to said they’re bustling, that they want every AI solution on the market, bring it to the office. The other half said, I don’t want to touch it right now, because I’m really afraid of what the long-term implications could be from a compliance perspective.

I think for us at CollabWORK, we’re using AI really mindfully and really at the macro level of how we’re sourcing community groups. How our technology works is, we integrate with over 40 applicant tracking systems. Like Mlena said, there is that appetite to have that consolidated tech stack, not have an additional platform.

When we take your job requisite, we actually analyze, okay, what’s the function of the role? What’s the industry? Is this an internship, a fractional role, an executive?

What are the best communities for that very targeted talent profile you’re trying to reach? Then we amplify through bots, essentially delivering your jobs to that newsletter, to that Slack group, to that Discord, wherever the talent may be networking that would fit that profile. We’re really using AI for us personally on that kind of macro level of who the talent pools are.

There was a question from Himanshu earlier in the chat about, do we think AI will replace TA jobs? I think AI can actually bring the humanity back to human resources. It can really give that automation of the mundane tasks and actually have recruiters and talent acquisition leaders do what they’re best at, which is helping the candidates navigate through the process and helping companies identify the best candidates for those open requisites.

I personally believe that it’ll really be an efficient tool and use compliantly a way to automate those mundane, but still, I think there’s always going to be a role for the person, the recruiter, the someone who knows the company culture that you can’t train necessarily a model to do to really make sure you’re selecting the best candidates.

[Katie Fortunato]

Yeah. This has been touched a couple of times in this conversation, but at recruitmentmarketing.com, we hear all the time that implementation is one of the biggest pain points. The adoption of any new tool can be tricky and the larger the organization, I think the bigger the hurdle.

How do you tell your clients, how do you prepare and train them to change their strategy and effectively adopt a new tool? I think one by one, maybe you all might have an answer for this, but why don’t we start, Mona?

[Mona Tawakali]

Yeah, absolutely. I actually did a podcast on this full hour a couple of months ago, and I’d be happy to share the link, but essentially, it comes down to a couple of things. First, starting with, you cannot invest in technology to have a shiny new tool.

It actually has to solve a business problem. When that business problem is a stated goal within your strategic objectives, then you always have a North Star to point to. Oftentimes, what we find is people get really excited about new technology, and it’s almost like a workout.

You get really motivated to start a workout on the first day, and then you realize that it’s hard, and it takes work, and it takes dedication and focus to continue to do that workout in order to get the benefits of what you’re doing. I think that technology adoption is exactly the same way. What I’ve seen help is having a quarterback, so someone that’s really excited and in love with that technology that is the champion for it and really invested in the success.

Change management is hard. People don’t like to change their process, so you have to keep them focused on the problem that they’re solving. You have to keep it focused on the what’s in it for me and how this is helping them do their jobs better.

I think it goes back to the question in the chat earlier, will AI replace recruiters? No, it will make them superheroes. There’s a reason why people love the word superhero.

It’s because you have something that makes you superhuman so that you can be the best version of yourself, and I truly believe that that’s what it’s all about.

[Summer Delaney]

Yeah, I echo everything Mona just said. I think that while it might be great to have that shiny new object, if it’s not actually going to help someone get better at their job, if they’re going to have to spend hours training, if the workflows are going to be disruptive, if it’s ultimately not helping get that great can in the door, fill that role quicker and more effectively, it’s just not going to be a long-term partner or right opportunity.

I think going back to what this really solves, a collaborative one, HR Tech’s pitch fest for the best use of AI out of 100 new startups in October, and the judges actually said the reason we were selected is it was a pretty easy use case. It was, okay, let’s get your jobs, let’s identify who the best talent are, and let’s get it to that talent. It was a very simple, we’re using it to cut down on sourcing time, cut down on people trying to find different professional diversity groups to post their roles and go to all these slacks and copy and paste the same message.

That’s a really simple use case that gives back time as well as increases quality. I think that tools that really prove that are going to withstand this current market and this hype cycle.

[Milena Berry]

I don’t think I can add much new here, except that it’s very important to focus on the ROI. If you’re enabling that recruiter, what are they after? They’re after qualified, interested candidates that fit the roles they’re looking for.

Enterprises still do not have what I call the reverse pitch problem. If you find a great candidate, hey, where can they be the right fit in the org? They’re still starting with, I have a job open, can I fill it in?

I do think that model is kind of broken, to be honest, and I think there’s so much talent left on the table by not trying to look at it the other way, but it is one of those things where I think it’s going to take probably 20 years for anybody to change their process, unchanged management in any other way and do it in a different way. Yeah. It’s about, are you getting that qualified, interested talent with your AI solution?

If you are, then great, you’re off to the races. Then our customers find a lot of value in using it for summarizing notes. Apparently, recruiters lose a lot of their time on just making summaries of their conversations for the people, their stakeholders.

I think any app that has a summarization of notes has been doing very well on the market. It’s one of the first thing that is a very clear ad for a recruiter workflow. It’s implemented to the most progressive customers that we have.

I see a lot of them are now starting to use it, and it’s the first very, very clear use case for Gen AI in recruiting that I saw.

[Katie Fortunato]

Well, thank you for that. What I’m hearing also is that all of a sudden there’s going to be a shift in the skill set required to be able to discern what technology is right for each organization. Whereas recruiters and leadership probably came up through the traditional recruiting model, they’re now being asked to find and research technology, vet it, make sure it integrates with all of the other applications.

This is a huge cross departmental effort, and we’re asking recruiters to now become these product managers and product inventors. What are you hearing from your clients on how they’re addressing that?

[Mona Tawakali]

I can start here. The thing I’ve heard more than anything the past nine to 12 months is we need to do more with less. When you think about, especially within the tech sector and the layoffs that happened over the past 12 months, recruiting teams were disproportionately impacted across the layoffs.

That means there were less people to do the same job, if not more of a job. They really need technology to help them do that. Furthermore, there are some great research studies out there that talk about recruiter burnout and how that’s real and how that’s going to cause them to leave the profession.

The reality is that the technology is there to really help them do more with less, but also do the things that allow them to be more strategic, to have more relationships, to drive more value within the business, which is more fulfilling work. When you get burned out, you’re burned out on doing things that you don’t love doing. That’s where I think technology can be a huge accelerator and where we’ll start to see the shift in the future of work and in this industry.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thank you, Mona. The question was, how can companies overcome these challenges of all of a sudden asking on demand new skills of the leaders of talent acquisition? Summer and Milena, I don’t know if you had any thoughts on that.

[Milena Berry]

A couple of things. First of all, I have asked everyone from my leadership team and really from the whole company to spend, if possible, at least 10 minutes a day playing with new technology. This last year was Gen AI, but it could be anything else.

I think giving people the time to learn, I think it’s important. And then, of course, identifying what are those skill sets that are important. Maybe it is digital marketing for salespeople.

Maybe it is Gen AI for talent acquisition. Maybe it is Gen AI for the sales process. I don’t know.

Whatever that skill set is that you’ve identified that you really need in the org, you can then work with… Yeah, you can basically obscure your talent in whatever the missing skill set. I think that is something we’re absolutely doing.

The other thing is that we’re kind of looking to feel… I don’t know, I’m starting to see it as almost an early trend of where, yes, companies are all talking about skills-based hiring, but what’s happened, especially in the smaller companies that are not so cash-rich in the last 24 months of economic contraction, is that you can’t backfill some of the roles when somebody leaves you or you have to lay off. And so, you’re starting to feel needs to get some jobs done based on, again, a skill that you’re missing and perhaps you’re hiring a freelancer rather than a full-time headcount person, is the other thing that I’ve kind of seen from an operational perspective.

[Summer Delaney]

Yeah, I think to continue, Milena’s great point, I’m seeing a lot of companies leverage fractional talent or contract talent in a really smart way. And even in this remote world, we’re seeing that these people are really part of their team. Whether it’s Microsoft Teams or Slack or whatever those tools are to really feel part of the process.

I think another thing that we’ve noticed on our own team at CollabWORK, as well as some of our other clients, aside from Gen AI, there’s been a huge growth in the low and no code space that really anyone can be a builder, anyone can launch a new internal tool, whether it’s an Airtable or whether it’s Notion or different dashboards. And I think that continuing to give people kind of that product hat on to think of new solutions with different tools available and workflows that make sense. And then go back to my earlier point, we’ve seen a lot of success in our own company as well as where clients we’ve worked with to actually pay for courses for people to use those L&D credits that companies say they have.

Put it to work on, I want to learn what this new tool is, or I want to take a Gen AI prompting course, or I want to join another professional community of like-minded folks where we can workshop problems. And so I think that there’s a lot of ways that companies can support with pre-allocated budget that could just be sitting there, that they can reinvest in other initiatives to really make their workforce stronger. And if people do want to experiment with different positions in the org, I agree what was said earlier that unfortunately, we’re at the point right now where sometimes we have great talent and companies don’t know how to hire them, they’re looking for that job wreck.

But internally, it’s ways to promote people if they take an interest and prove out that they have that skill set, whether it’s going to sales or whether it’s going to product or whether there’s another need in the company to really equip them with the learning and trainings either internally or externally to allow them to grow within your organization.

[Katie Fortunato]

And if I could speak for all of us here, but we all know the pain points of hiring people and especially at scale. And that’s why you’ve invented some amazing products to improve the process. But could you tell us what are you seeing about how retention and recruitment are working together?

And are we seeing a shift in that kind of internal partnership either from your customers and anyone?

[Milena Berry]

Happy to speak about it. I mean, I think in times of not hiring the people who really practice DEIB are really thinking about their retention metrics. I think it’s absolutely, whenever companies in high growth mode and let’s say they’re starting, as I said earlier, maybe your starting point is XYZ are my demographics in the company at these levels, in these departments, and then you’ve created a roadmap of how you’re going to fix some of those gaps that you identified.

When you’re not hiring, you’re limiting the input into your numbers, right? Like you don’t have control over that. You can’t be like, oh, this year we’re going to hire a hundred people.

And because we’re behind on our female engineering goals, we’re going to make sure that 80% of those 100 are going to be female engineers. So that’s going to round up our org and our goals. I’m just approximating here.

And so the thing that you can control though, is that retention and to say like, I would not like to lose those folks. And can I launch programs? Yes, the ERGs are definitely an amazing practice.

They also are not practical at every single size of organization. So how else are you promoting that sense of belonging, especially in weird times that we’ve been going through, especially in a hybrid and remote work environment, right? And I think it all comes back to also, are you listening to your employees because they’re your customers and do they feel safe at work and how can you invest in a culture of belonging, right?

So it almost starts with the B first from DEIB. So it first starts with belonging, then with inclusion, then with equity, and then with diversity comes last. And it’s the result of all those initiatives trailing up to it, right?

So absolutely very, very important thing to do. And then how do you affect that? I think it’s part of why we’re big believers on really going for and training your workforces on the DEIB skillset, not in terms of just, oh, compliance with the sexual harassment training that I have to do for compliance reasons, but no, as a way to be, I tell people to be a decent human and a decent colleague.

So you know how to be a decent colleague to somebody from an underrepresented group. And of course, as you start growing in your career journey and now, all right, first, my goal is to be a decent human colleague as an individual contributor, and then you become a manager and an executive. Well, that skillset has to become even more refined and more sophisticated because you know, you’re going to have other things to take into consideration.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thank you for that. And I’m getting a few questions from the audience here. And there’s a lot of interest in kind of this advice about the supporting, aspiring women who want to be in leadership.

So I thought we might just turn the page here. And if I could ask a few questions about your personal experiences, starting up your business, we could turn the conversation more into that. So hey, Mona, I’ll start with you.

But if you could give our listeners a quick snapshot of your background, you are the co-founder of KRT and now part of Recruitics. And so what’s it been like to start your own business and then help a market leader like Recruitics grow?

[Mona Tawakali]

Yeah, it’s exhausting. I’ll say that, you know, when I was in the process of rebuilding the company, I was so fueled by the work and the passion that I had for the work, that that’s kind of what kept me going. But as a working mom, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, you feel like an octopus.

And each eight of your tentacles are getting pulled in a hundred different directions. And that struggle is real. And that’s why a lot of women in the workforce look for flexibility, because that helps them manage it all at the same time.

So, you know, you find strategies to optimize your day, you find strategies to maximize your time. And, you know, that’s where I kind of learned the habit of waking up really early in the morning and using those couple of hours before everybody woke up to have some really quiet focus time. So that’s something I’ve taken with me through my life.

But, you know, some of the things that we’ve done through the years, you know, at KRT, our team was majority female, and we were working in technology, which is primarily male. So it’s not uncommon to find yourself at a table as the only woman in the room. And that’s extremely intimidating.

And, you know, that’s something that I felt. And so I could imagine that others, you know, on the team are feeling the same way. So we brought in a women in leadership coach to help with executive presence in those settings, and how to gain the confidence to actually enter into a conversation without waiting for the pause.

And I loved what she told us one day, and it always stuck with me, is that, you know, when you have something you want to say, and you want to enter into the conversation, count down three, two, one, and jump in. And it’s scary. But those are tips and tricks that, you know, kind of help support women grow their executive presence, which helps the leadership potential.

But being very, very intentional about ways that you can mentor and grow, you know, women in their career is something that I’m constantly thinking about. I don’t know that anybody’s kind of like, come up with the solution yet. Because clearly, there is not equal representation at the tables, often cases, and women tend to drop off, you know, in the higher levels of the organization.

Because it’s, it’s hard, and it’s exhausting. But you know, this is, this is obviously something we can spend the entire time talking about.

[Katie Fortunato]

Well, certainly women have come a long way, and we’ve, we’ve evolved, and we can, we can do all these things. We can be moms, we can be passionate about our careers, we can have hobbies, you know, with, with a team and supporting. And it’s not that, I mean, back to this survey is it’s not just the reality is it’s perceived that there’s, there’s disparity there, there is, and so we’ve come a long way, but there’s still lots of work to do.

Let me jump to Summer and Milena, because Summer started her business a year ago, Summer, and Milena, about 10 years ago, and had a long career in, in, in addressing systemic change, long before it was in vogue, and before Me Too. So I’d love to, to ask, you know, were there any challenges for you as founders Summer and Milena, and, you know, kind of that now and then perspective?

[Summer Delaney]

Happy to kick this question off. You know, a lot of what Mona said really resonated with me, I started my career as Katie Couric’s producer. So I was really lucky early on to have a very strong, very prominent female role model in the workforce who’s continued to be a mentor for mine.

And aside from that, I was really lucky that I joined a lot of, you know, outside communities, a community I often talk about is called the Media Mavens. It’s 20,000 women and non-binary identifying folks in the production world. And I, in real life, know maybe a dozen of these women, but I trust pretty much everyone in that group.

If I needed to hire, if I had a question when I was negotiating a new role, if something made me feel uncomfortable in the workforce, you know, if I was evaluating different, you know, directions going on my career path, I think it’s really important. The advice I always give is your network is your net worth, and really surrounding yourself with really strong female and other allies to promote you, to be advocates for you, and really to have that best interest. And I think as a solo female founder, I’m really lucky to have found female founder communities of people that I can lean on, people that are either a peer of mine or people like Milena, who are a few steps ahead who’ve been on this journey much longer than me, who have been in the same shoes before others that I can call or talk to.

And so I think that that’s been one of my biggest learnings is, you know, to raise your hand to ask for help. You know, sometimes I write the same message to multiple different group chats just to pull different answers. I think I’m someone who really likes to ask a lot of different opinions before I make a decision.

But the same time you have to balance, you know, moving forward, shipping new products, you know, getting the feedback you have and keep going with it. I often say that the news business prepared me for being a founder, because you would show up at 8am in the morning and have to put a newscast on at five o’clock and you had no time and no resources, but you just had to do it. I think that’s the life of a founder every day.

You’re just figuring out with the data you have, what your customers are asking for you to keep moving forward. But I think that, you know, what’s the biggest thing as a female founder on this first leg of the journey that I want to continue as we continue to grow is really building that support system around me, both from my family, my friends, and other peers that have been in my shoes.

[Milena Berry]

Totally aligned in terms of just investing in your network. I find myself very comfortable saying what I don’t know. I think that is quite unique.

And you don’t see a lot of guys, you know, if anything, that would embellish what they know, right. And I think that vulnerability and humility and saying, I do not know this, I need help. I think it’s very important to be fully transparent is just my mojo.

And then what are those networks that you’re getting advice from, right? So out of founders, really through, we have been lucky enough to raise a couple of rounds of funding, always with a different lead. So throughout those portfolios, you’re kind of in the same cohort of founders that they invested in at the right time.

So it’s always helpful. And then really learning from our investors. And then I also have a co-founder.

And so that has been a very amazing experience for me is to not be kind of the solo founder, but for 10 years, we work together and could bounce off ideas with each other and can say, all right, well, I’m a little bit find more pleasure in working with worksheets. And you find a positive. So I think it’s all about not being intimidated by what you don’t know.

And knowing that everybody who’s done something innovative or created something from scratch in their life, probably walked with the same doubts in the beginning, right, and to kind of trust the process of putting one foot in front of the other. And you will be able to solve each problem that comes your way as a business, right, I think, and then be ready to deal with all the anxiety, because I’m saying this, you know, after, you know, dealing with so many setbacks and uncertainties, and we’re dealing with so much of what I call a decision overload syndrome, right, like, because you all day long making decisions, trying to make the right decision every single time. So at the end of the day, sometimes you’re like, ah, I’m out of my decision making force right now, you know, somebody else just where we go to dinner, or, you know, I’m just kidding, but it hopefully illustrates the idea.

[Katie Fortunato]

And you mentioned investing in your network. So what what is how do you define that? And what does that mean, if you were giving some advice to a young aspiring woman?

[Milena Berry]

I would just chime in here, I’m a little bit conflicted about it, because I know the value. And every time I’ve spent time doing that, I’ve really reached great benefits. And yet I found that over time, I don’t go to every single networking factor, I’m invited to, I was invited to join YPO.

And I said no, because it was a certain commitment at a certain time when I had a small child. And then I was like, I can’t be gone for hours a month at an evening, right, that was not something I could do, because I decided to prioritize my family and the time that I delimited time I have with my kids. And so I think you should all be on your own journey with that balance, and do what your heart tells you.

And as much as possible, always be good from a career perspective, and it will bring opportunities down the line. But you also have to make sure your heart is happy with that choice. And you have to balance it as a female entrepreneur, in particular.

[Summer Delaney]

Yeah, I think on that point, you know, there’s, there’s sometimes where, you know, I think that you used to build your network a lot through those in person events. And I still reap the benefits of that. I went to a great one a couple weeks ago, and I actually just got on a call with that person this morning right before them, because I told them they have a community called Creator Economy New York City, it’s a hyper curated community, working with people that run newsletters, or run tik tok accounts.

And there’s a lot of our distribution partners. And I said to him, thank you for creating such a valuable space that I walked into that networking event, I walked out with so many new connections. But I think that you can network with people, the beauty of social media now, right, you can join Slack communities, you can join discord servers, you can, you know, write on LinkedIn, and actually, you know, I think the term thought leader gets thrown around a lot and can be a little cringe worthy, but, you know, have an opinion and state it and see how it resonates with other people and debate with people or, you know, have people add to the comments of, of what you think, I think that’s a great way to, you know, not only protect job security in the future by having a brand that people can follow you, but actually connect with people that think like you. So I think that even if you can’t go out in person, or you can’t go to those breakfasts, or maybe you’re calling in from a city where you feel like you don’t actually have a great in person community of the immediate folks around you. There’s been new tools and technologies and groups that you can actually engage and find your people I was just a transform in Vegas, a couple weeks ago, and it’s a great community called safe space, which is for town acquisition leaders, and we had a coffee meetup there and a lot of these people I’ve seen their names for months online, I’ve seen them comment on different things.

It was so great to meet in person. And so I think those moments of putting in the work and actually getting to meet those people you’ve been networking is a really exciting feeling. So let’s grab a cup of coffee virtually with someone in your office or, or finding time to connect outside.

I think that’s a great way to build your network and at least start to make those long lasting connections.

[Mona Tawakali]

Yeah, I’d agree. You know, my, my business partner used to always say you are the combination of the five people that you spend the most time with. And it’s so important to broaden your network and your perspective.

There’s never a moment where I’ve walked into a networking meeting or event, and I felt like I haven’t learned something a new perspective. And you know, it’s also an opportunity I think is as a female leader to pay it forward as well. You know, we all, we all stood on the shoulders of those that preceded us and, and, and, you know, paying it forward as a big part of, I think what, what drives more women up to leadership positions.

[Katie Fortunato]

Thank you for sharing that. And I was writing down some of the communities mentioned here. And I just wanted to get a quick sense from our listeners with something like this be helpful to have, which I mean, are there, you know, and it goes back to how do you find the right communities and that is an investment in time and probably going to a few of the events or seeing the conversations.

So I’d love to get a sense of if we should send something around for this topic specifically. And I’m, I guess I’m enlightened that AI cannot replace the importance of human connection. I think what we’re seeing, especially in a post pandemic world is people are ready and eager to get together in person.

So, you know, we are, we’re learning about that every day here at recruitmentmarketing.com and hearing that people want that community and connectivity. So, yeah, I think if we can help bring people together, it helps all of us, our careers and learning. Well, we just have a few minutes left.

I wanted to just check the Q&A chat here. And we can close on this question. But so what new technologies and or industry innovations and trends are you most interested in and excited about?

And how do you see this shaping the future of the industry? So maybe we go one by one and we’ll close on that.

[Summer Delaney]

I think something that I’m really encouraged by is, you know, we touched about this a lot during this conversation is the consolidation of the tech stack of the town acquisition HR professionals, which I think opens doors to partnerships. I think people are much more willing to collaborate and connect. You know, I thank Katie for and the recruitment marketing.com team for putting together a platform where you can discover different platforms to partner and having conversations, you know, with the ladies on this panel today that, you know, we’re all partnering in different ways with each other. And so I think that I’m even though this is necessarily a technology innovation, I do think to tie back into, you know, actually networking with people that you admire or platforms they get all the time. Hey, I just saw CollabWORK or I saw about this in a community, I’d love to learn more or, you know, at conferences or at things like this, you know, actually having really fruitful partnerships to further innovate in the industry is something I’m really excited about for this year and beyond.

[Katie Fortunato]

Alina, Ramona, anything?

[Mona Tawakali]

I can go next. So, you know, I think I think the obvious answer is generative AI. But, you know, what I think I’m more specifically interested in is, you know, how that will enable better conversion rates within the funnel.

I think that there’s a tail as old as time and that is candidates feel like they’re going into a black hole and employers don’t feel like they’re getting enough quality in their funnel. And, you know, I think any technology that is really focused on, you know, kind of solving those problems from both ends will really help take us to the next level.

[Milena Berry]

Yeah, we’re thinking a lot about that at Art of Fly, both how to, you know, stop the black hole from a candidate experience. And by the way, using AI matching, right? Both in terms of saying, hey, candidate, you’re going to be the right fit for those roles.

And then on the company side to say, oh, my gosh, you’re sitting on 10,000 leads here. And I get it. You as a small team can go through all of them.

But this is what our engine has recommended against your open racks. Like this kind of disruption is really what’s needed now on the market. And so spending a lot of time thinking about that.

[Katie Fortunato]

Well, thank you so much for those insights. And just in the spirit of leadership and productivity and new tools, if each of you could share your favorite singular workplace tool that you use to keep the trains running on time. I should include that in our recap.

And I’m also just eager to hear how you ladies make it work.

[Mona Tawakali]

I love the Zoom note taker. Game changer.

[Milena Berry]

I love Loom for synchronous working. I think it’s really helping to not have to always be, have a meeting about everything. No, just send a Loom.

I’ll watch it. I’ll send you a Loom back. Really works.

[Summer Delaney]

Loom is fun. I love Loom too. And there’s another company called Scribe, which is a really great company for doing kind of if you have processes or SOPs or workflows, either internally or externally.

Scribe.com is a really good resource that my team uses when we’re making FAQ documents and other how tos. So in addition to Loom, that’s another great tool to kind of have a living breathing workflow documentation.

[Katie Fortunato]

Super helpful. Thank you so much. So that concludes our webinar for today.

And I want to thank our listeners and our audience for spending your afternoon with us, and especially to the panelists for sharing some of the insights behind your products and also your personal journeys and entrepreneurship. So for all those attending, you will receive a copy of this transcript in your email, share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues, learn from it. And to discover and learn more about the technologies, shaping hiring strategies, please visit the marketplace at recruitmentmarketing.com slash market base, where you can also find out more information about each of these products as well. So thank you again, and we’ll see you next time.

For more tools to help your recruitment marketing efforts, visit our marketplace now. Happy hiring!

Talivity Reporter

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At Talivity, our team of industry experts and thought-leaders are committed to elevating the world of recruitment. We're here to provide talent acquisition professionals with the insights and knowledge necessary to navigate the dynamic recruitment landscape. Dive into our unique Marketplace for unbiased reviews on recruitment software solutions, and join our community by subscribing to our newsletter for the latest trends and insights.