Welcome back to HR Coffee Time, the free weekly podcast that's made especially for you to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR career without working yourself into the ground. I'm your host Fay Wallis, a career coach who specialises in coaching HR and People professionals. And I'm also the founder of Bright Sky Career Coaching. I thought I'd start today's episode with a question for you. How are you getting on with recruitment at the moment? If it's going well, I am so happy for you. If it's not, I promise you're not alone. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to over the past few months who have said it's a nightmare, that they're struggling to find candidates for their vacancies, and that there seems to have been this perfect storm as a result of Brexit, the pandemic, and reports of the over 50s leaving the workforce in droves.

Fay Wallis: 00:01:02

I've even heard of situations where people are accepting roles, but not turning up for their first day of work because they've changed their mind about the job on the day. But all is not lost. The situation isn't hopeless. I promise, there are things you can do to start to find brilliant people to fill your vacancies who want to work with you, and who will turn up on their first day, as well as all the other days after that. My guest for today is going to share some simple strategies to help. Their name is Nemo D'Qrill. And they passionately believe that good candidates haven't gone anywhere. They've been here the whole time. We just haven't had strong enough recruitment processes and methods to see them to encourage them to apply and to recognise their potential and skills.

Fay Wallis: 00:01:54create your career goals for: 2023 Fay Wallis: 00:02:31

And now let's crack on with the main part of the show where you're going to learn how thinking more objectively about the requirements for your vacancies. And stripping out the bias from your recruitment processes is going to help you tap into hidden talent. Welcome to the show Nemo It is wonderful to have you here today. And it would be fantastic if you could just start off by sharing a little bit about your background and the work that you do.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:02:58

Hello Fay, thank you so much for having me, about my background, that's a difficult one, I've done a lot of things. I am a mathematician, that's always what I come back to. More interestingly, I used to be a flautist to the Danish Queen. And as an academic, I delved into the behavioural sciences, very much on the maths and data side of things, which eventually allowed to combine with my other passion, which was DEI, I've been heading up a research centre for cluster for seven UK university on gender and sexuality. And recently, I've had the pleasure of combining my love for tech, and my love for DEI. So that's a very briefly about who I am and what I do.

Fay Wallis: 00:03:44

Thank you, Nemo. Well, we're going to learn even more about you and your work as we work our way through the interview today. And to start off with, it would be brilliant to hear where your interest in recruitment methods came from. I think it's such an interesting story.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:04:01

So well, yeah, it's a funny one and academic that sort of got interested in recruitment. What in the world happened there? Well, a Senior recruiter, a friend of mine, from a recruitment agency, I will not name but safe to say that all of the audience will know, told me that most recruiters across the world and in particular in the UK made that decision based on CVS and intuition. And at this point, I realised every single pay gap and systemic bias out there why that came to be not because the people were mean, not because they were trying to but because it is an monstrous task to stand there as maybe a 25 year old recruit or even younger, and try to hire for a different role that you have never done based on this piece of data that all of the studies are showing. It's really fraught with biases and inaccuracies.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:05:00

And I thought to myself, could we possibly do something a little bit better? Now, could we use some science, some of the ways we in academia, look at people, and try to see what happened if we use these objective things, and combine that with this process to enhance the process, never removing people. But giving people the tools to do a very difficult job a little bit, but and the shocking thing was, as many people that have entered this space has found out is that some fairly small interventions can have a dramatic impact. And I know we're gonna get into some of these interventions later as well.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:05:36

So I never thought I would get involved in this space. But I saw that there was a possibility to have an impact and to change something, which I thought was a bit broken. That is so much talent that is underutilised. At every single stage, where I think one amazing thing that has been happening with this staffing crisis is that all of a sudden, people are forced to look a little bit beyond roster proof. And some companies are starting to realise, hey, you know, this DEI thing, this diversity thing we wanted to do, we can actually find those people and fix our staffing crisis at the same time.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:06:17

This is one of the reasons that a lot of the most progressive companies are starting to drop all of their requirements. And this includes the Big Five because the talent is there. And isn't it beautiful at the moment that is coinciding with the DEI phase like the, the two different problems come together and there isn't as much of an issue. And who will try to dial back the passion a little bit?

Fay Wallis: 00:06:41

Well, there is no need to dial back the passion at all. It's wonderful to hear the passion coming through. And I think you're absolutely right, it is fantastic to see that actually, these two things, two such important things can come together and move forward. I spent a long time working in executive search. So for a headhunting firm, and I wasn't one of the headhunters myself, I was in a standalone HR role while I was there, but I could see that and and everyone that could see it as well, that our traditional hiring methods are flawed, you're going on such narrow criteria. And I then moved into a larger engineering firm where I was responsible for internal recruitment.

Fay Wallis: 00:07:25

And again, when you're in those roles, you know that the processes aren't perfect, but you just don't know how to change it, or what the right thing is to do to make it even better. So what it's fantastic to learn from you and from other experts in this field, is the fact that there are steps we can be taking. So I would love to just move you a little bit further along in your story to see if you can maybe share some really practical tips on what anyone listening today can do to start making their recruitment practices more inclusive and strip the bias out that is preventing them from being able to tap into this really vital talent.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:08:12

Absolutely. So I think one thing to be said there is, it's difficult to hire, it's really difficult. And trying to look broader makes it even harder, because now you have to look at different people, meaning that your standard scoring systems get even worse. And that's just hard. So what can you do? Well, there's various things that are really quite significant in their impact. I know everyone thinks of it as a little bit of a joke, but just removing the names from the CV. It's a simplest possible thing. And it's not enough. But just doing that prevents dozens of cases of bias for every single hire, the stats are consistent. And instead of believing that your company is special, why don't we just assume that there is a chance you're to fall prey to some of these errors, right?

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:09:06

Using at the interview, stage yourself, using scoring systems at range in advance, which skills competencies and work preferences you think are the most relevant for this job? And ask questions related to how to assess these. And then write down the numbers, compare them with the people next to you and use these more, or at least closer to more objective means as opposed to how did you feel about the person because how we feel about people, unfortunately, isn't always appropriate for whether they can do the job. And when people are different, we probably don't feel as strong a rapport almost by its nature is looking at similarities with others. But all of the studies have shown that when we have differences, we actually do better. We have more innovation, we have a faster and more productive workflows.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:10:03

There's a study coming out from Edinburgh University, showing that neurodivergent teams outperform neurotypical teams on almost all fronts. But there is more conflict. But conflict is not a bad thing. That just means disagreement. It means more engaging brainstorm, as opposed to people saying the same things. When you reach out, make sure that your job descriptions are fairly gender neutral. Try and make sure that they are culturally sensitive that you don't or insensitive depending on what we mean with the worst but that you don't end up excluding various groups. And try to make sure that people realise that your company is genuine, and wanting to consider people that might come from a background that is normal, quote, unquote, with the word normal. Or if you think all of that is too difficult, you can use this technology we build at Sigma Polaris, of course.

Fay Wallis: 00:11:00

But did you want to tell us a little bit about the technology that you've built? Because I think that will be really interesting for people to hear about, because even if they don't think oh, yes, I'm going to go ahead and use that technology, actually, the thinking behind it, and the principles within it, I think can be incredibly helpful for everyone just to be aware of and to think about how they could start to recruit and assess using these ideas.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:11:25

Absolutely. So it's basically taking that scoring system a little bit. But putting it also as step one, the first contact that people have with your company. It's using various scientific and academic online assessments. So people sit through the assessment to try and determine some core skills and competencies of individuals and some work preferences. And then using that to determine which pupil to engage with more qualitatively via phone calls and interview. Which is the same idea as what has happened later. But it's so much harder to do it the first step. But the shocking thing was that when you have done this, we present an average 29 cases of bias for every single hire, which indirectly so much more diverse group of applicants, but also people are more likely to get hired, because they're better.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:12:21

Being nerdy for a moment, we're talking about type one and type two error and academia type one error is a false positives. It's people that have a beautiful CV, that have a fantastic haircut and a three piece suit that you couldn't say anything about. And some of them are awful candidates. But you can still waste a lot of time, or even end up hiring one of them just because they look good. The second type of error is type two error, it's a false negative. Many people have grown up not knowing how to write a good CV, I find that like some of the most brilliant minds I've ever known, I have helped them rewrite their CVs. And I know that the first iteration I saw there would never have gotten the job. I also know that anyone that would sit on the other side of a table from them as a hiring manager would either hire them for the job that they applied for, or create a new job just for them, because they were astonishing individuals, getting these people a chance to shine.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:13:20

That's where you find some of these hidden talent that might be harder to find, especially if you're looking for the talent in a place where you normally don't. So the tech basically works that you sent all of the applicants through the assessment you write to them, we say due to our dedication to DEI, because our culture in the company is that we want to give everyone fair chances. And we have this on such a profound level of our ethos that we do it from step one, we want to give you the opportunity to take our assessment with us and then have a fantastic interview. If we are suitable for a job. Applicants take this assessment.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:14:00

And HR or the line managers directly is depending on the size of the company, can then log in, or integrate into their own system with an open API and see all of the applicants ranked relative to the needs of the road. That's a different things your you prioritise verbal reasoning more for some roles than other; arithmetic reasoning more for some, problem solving more for... et cetera, et cetera. And also, you can even see people that actually don't fit the role, but did amazingly well and might be snatched for some other positions. It basically helps you in a completely unbiased way names hidden, never touching CV data or bias data, asking questions that have been carefully curated to not make errors of systemic gender, age, cultural biases or similar - profile and rank the best people.

Fay Wallis: 00:14:56

I got to have a go at trying out the the assessment that you've put together. And it was really interesting, because I wasn't really sure what to expect, even though you had spoken to me about it before. And so for anyone listening who's thinking, what does this all actually look like? How does it all really work? It was a series of different questions, which, to exactly what you just said Nemo were some were based on verbal reasoning. Others were more mathematically based. I mean, I didn't know what some of them were assessing, whether it was you know, behavioural preferences in certain situations.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:15:32

Very much by design.

Fay Wallis: 00:15:36

What I liked about it was that you've made it quite fun. So you use lots of names of characters from stories that people will be familiar with. So it just makes it that little bit more engaging. But it is such a powerful idea, this idea of, well, who cares what qualifications people have got, obviously, we can't say that about everything. For certain roles, you've got to make sure that people have got certain qualifications, but actually look at their skill sets and try assessing their skill sets. I know that traditionally, though, for particularly senior hires, assessments have of course been used for years that look at things like mathematical reasoning, verbal reasoning, etc. And I know that people have got mixed feelings about those, and there can be quite a lot of nervousness about taking them.

Fay Wallis: 00:16:29

So I think there's something here as well, if you are going to start introducing assessments to make sure that you're not scaring people away by the fact that you're using them. So again, for anyone who's listening who thinks, oh, you know what, we don't really do anything like this at the moment. This does sound like a good idea to see if we can start assessing first skills and behavioural preferences by using assessments or tools, what would your advice be to them about being able to set that up so that they're not scaring candidates?

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:17:01

Like, I think one thing, first of all, like this, we've had some quite funny stories of like managers that have gotten the entire team and themselves profiled. And everyone will say, this is super, like really accurate for my team members. But I'm better at maths. And a lot of senior people really struggle with the ideas of, of getting judged based on skills because they have moved beyond that level, in their career, and frequently will be spending a lot more time trying to utilise that knowledge and the leadership abilities and all of these things. And that is fine. You don't need to be a top arithmetic reasoner, when you are a senior executive, which is also one of the reasons that this is absolutely much, much better to say mid management down. Because when you start getting more senior, you need the headhunters that you mentioned you previously worked with, you need much more qualitative approaches. That being said, we have helped hire a CTO before.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:17:54

But at that point, we became a tiny piece of the puzzle. Now about this fear of taking the assessment, you're completely right. And I think one of the things that is quite, very much by design, we mix in a lot of questions about work preferences, where there are no right or wrong answers. So instead of hitting someone with seven hard Math problems, all of this is spread out. And this makes it much more engaging. And we actually have 85% completion rate, which is completely crazy, because we're making it entertaining. And this is where you have to decide what is it you're actually looking for. Because if you're only looking to improve your candidate experience, well, in that case, there's a lot of games that are quite fun. They don't teach you much about the people, but you can throw in the games in advance. And then people can take those and they have a nicer journey with you.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:18:43

If you only want to know more about them, you can throw some really heavy assessments after them. They will take a long time, and they're also cost an awful lot of money. And in the middle in between that you're completely right. It's difficult to find a place there where you don't scare people away. And I think this is why once again, we have a DEI opportunity going on. If you're saying we're doing this because we want to be fair, well, anyone that isn't willing to go through that is probably someone that doesn't resonate with the ethos of your company. Where if you say we have a test for you, please take it otherwise, goodbye. Well, in that case, well, you definitely limit your sample, and it becomes a barrier. On the other hand, if you position it nicely, it can actually become an asset. And that's an amazing opportunity we have right now that we'll probably have for the next 10 years, but that we didn't have 5/10 years ago.

Fay Wallis: 00:19:38

Oh, well. Thank you for clarifying all of that and for giving us those ideas and suggestions. Nemo. It's exciting to think now that by more and more people hearing about these methods, so hopefully everyone listening today, changes will start to happen and it's going to be good for everybody for the organisations that we work in and for all of these people who have got so much potential, but it's just not being tapped into.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:20:05

Yeah, it's even just nowadays, if you're a b2b marketer, you're applying for b2c role. All of a sudden, they might not be considered. And, you know, like, it's sometimes we've just gotten so narrow on the way we like on the type of people were willing to look at. But we completely forget, like Steve Jobs once said that innovation was putting two different ideas into the same room and executing upon it. Now, if you put to have the same b2b marketing of the same patterns, the same room, how are they going to come up with anything you'd like? At the moment, you're now paying 2x? For one extra fine, right simplifying, because all humans are different, right? But still, the more different you get, the more than you get for your buck. I was trying, I was trying to use slang, I'm Danish for the audience sake. So in case I failed, I do apologise.

Fay Wallis: 00:20:57

You haven't failed. And though I was just thinking you will have some real life examples of organisations who have used your methods to successfully hire some brilliant people, would you be happy to share one or two examples with us to help really bring this idea to life?

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:21:17

Absolutely. Deutsche Bank, they used for one of their partners, our tech to hire and retrain Junior graduates to become developers, because there's a tech shortage. Or maybe there was a tech shortage. But regardless, they were really innovative and looking broader. One of the people that got hired was a female music graduate. The tech showed that she was amazing. She sat through several rounds of interview, and she got hired. Normally, she would never been considered. Another example. Like we also helped a phenomenal woman who had studied a PhD for a very long time, and had financed herself partly by teaching. And she had become extremely adept at dialectics teaching theory, she was astonishing.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:22:10

And normally, if you looked at her, she had no education background as such. But she became a Senior Education Officer, or executive for an edtech company, the most senior one they had. And she did phenomenally well. Again, after several rounds of interviews, and other people that have been position had much, much more suitable series. But she was astonishing. But you couldn't see from her CV, but the mere fact that she applied means that she probably knew, or at least believed that she could do the job. And she outperformed almost anyone we've had to date. And we've had over 10,000 people through the assessment. And she got the job and did fantastically well. Like there's so many stories like this, like people that just applied because they've really wanted to get that job. And were astonishing people.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:23:05

And then the companies that we work with, we also have the privilege that many of those are the people that realise that if the people look different, that may be an asset, maybe not a problem. And when we hear some of these stories come back to us like those are the reasons that I am here in Sigma Polaris. It's just astonishing when these individuals come and say, normally, we wouldn't get a chance we applied and applied and nothing happened. And then because of a different, slightly different process, we got a chance to shine, then we showed them.

Fay Wallis: 00:23:38

It's really uplifting to hear those stories. And I haven't thought about this for ages. But when I got my last role, where I mentioned the internal recruitment responsibilities. I remember that was a part time role. And at the time, this is years and years before the pandemic, I mean, part time roles were just like gold dust, sadly, they still are not as available as I think they should be. But I applied for the role. I really, really wanted it. And I noticed that the role was being advertised through several different recruiters that the company was using to try and fill the position.

Fay Wallis: 00:24:12

So I applied through one got rejected, applied to the next got rejected, applied for the next got rejected. It was the smallest recruitment company that I applied to that thought, oh, maybe she would be right for the role after all, and put me forward and I got the job. I thought gosh, it's so interesting. Yeah, remembering what it's like from the other angle as well, and how my CV just wasn't a perfect fit for that role at all. But they were able to see there's enough here that actually we think she could do the job.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:24:45

Like it's astonishing how subjective some of these things is. I got turned down from an and suffer an entrepreneur accelerator once, which was quite funny because I only applied almost as a joke, because I knew I was going to get in because it wasn't that good, I got turned down, which I was just sort of laughing at a little bit. And then I could contact the two weeks later if I wanted to be a mentor in the same accelerator. Where, like, we all have stories like this, and yeah, no, absolutely. Like, it's just like, it's amazing that we're starting to hear more and more stories going the other way as well. So, yeah, yeah.

Fay Wallis: 00:25:24

I really hope that this is inspiring, anyone listening, or giving some really great ideas about some little changes that they could potentially make that could have a really big impact. And for anyone who is listening, if you do decide to make any of those changes, please do let us know, we would absolutely love to hear from you. I always love hearing from anyone who listens to the show. And you can always reach me on LinkedIn, or just by dropping me an email. But I'm suddenly keeping an eye on the time and thinking, Oh, my gosh, I could talk to you about this topic all day long Nemo, but we better start thinking about wrapping things up. So I'm going to move you along to ask you if you can share your top nonfiction book recommendation with us all. It's a question that I ask every guest who comes on the show.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:26:11

So I have and you warned me in advance that you were gonna ask that question. And I look, I looked at my bookshelf. And I thought modal logic and Introduction to Game Theory, fantastic books. But I also realised that the audience is less likely to actually pick up that suggestion, though, if you are, please send me a message. And I will suggest good literature. Now, instead of that, I decided to bring the Art of War by Sun Tzu. Now, this is not because I'm encouraging war or even violence, I am borderline pacifist in many different ways. But it's because it's a fairly short little book. That is, very old. It has short little stanzas that you can read it in a couple of hours. But they used to say in ancient China that you could read it in a couple of hours. But you had to read it every single day for your entire life, just to have a bit of an understanding what it was about.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:27:11

I think it's a beautiful book, because it applies some very simple rules in an array of context that you can then think about, and consider why they did the things. I went through it with my old flatmate, who was a fellow PhD of mine who has gone on to become a much, much more successful academic than I can ever hope to be. And we went through one stanza at a time, and talked about why the suggestions and why the things were said, and tried to understand the underlying reasoning, trying to understand if there was cultural significance or not. And the main thing, I think, so for learning, and the reason I would recommend it, is because I think it shows that perspective is extremely important for everything. It shows that the same situation can dramatically change what you're supposed to do, depending on the information you have available. And it suggests, at some point, do nothing and search for more information. And it's just it's a joy to read. So the Art of War by Sun Tzu, you've probably heard about it before. It's not going to take much of your life. You've read it once. You may never read it again. Or maybe you start to read it once a month.

Fay Wallis: 00:28:29

I have heard of it before, but I must admit that I have never read it. And I'm pretty sure it's not been recommended on the show before. So thank you so much for sharing that. I will put a link in the show notes to it. For anyone who's listening who thinks they might like to take a look at it as well. And before I say goodbye to you, I feel it would be wrong of me not to mention the fact that you're writing a book, aren't you Nemo?

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:28:53

Yes, I am indeed. So one thing we've never actually shared with your audience is that I am non binary as well, I go by they them pronouns and DEI is a thing that's you know, it's I have a great passion for now. I think it has been amazing to see that the DEI movement has moved so far the LGBT movement has given such a big voice. But I also feel that we have seen an awful lot of polarisation of the entire DEI and gender debate. And I felt that it was time for someone to write a fairly brave and controversial book, tried to set a flag in the middle - recognising great points on each side of the debate.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:29:39

And try to just help educate normal people about what the different people on either side people that are not in this fight are saying. Because anyone that says that the enemy, or the opponents, or the people over there are always wrong. Well, those people are always wrong. That's a very good and interesting and nuanced arguments going on. But the problem is, there's so much shouting going on. And I think it's time to start talking. So I'm writing a book at the moment called Gender depolarization. Title is a work in progress. And I'm speaking with a couple of different publishers and agents to try and find the right help to make this a big thing. Now, I haven't actually found any, that's where the dialogues have gone that far yet. Couple of people are not quite brave enough for a central position, because you don't have an obvious camp ally yet.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:30:39

But that also means that a small little shout out for help, I really think it's important that we can talk and ask people, What is it? Why is it you're saying what you're saying. And anyone that knows any good agents, literary agents that could possibly agree with that statement, I would love to speak with, because what I have found out is a lot of people like to be in one camp or the other camp, but people are a little bit afraid of the middle. So I need some help to try and have a voice of reason there. And I'm more than happy to share a book sample with anyone interested, if you will write to me directly, obviously, under the assumption that cannot be spread any further. Because I love this. I think you can change the world in three different ways. You can change the world through technology.

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:31:29

You can change the world through ideas, and you can change the world through art. Now, my day job, I'm doing it through technology, but on the side and amazing opportunities like this Fay. And thank you, again so much for having me. I also have the joy of being able to share some ideas. And sometimes I speak only about DEI, nothing that's even tech related. And on that front, I want to have a louder voice, because we need to change this world. And it starts with things like HR Coffee Time podcast.

Fay Wallis: 00:32:06

Well, I wish you the absolute best of luck with finishing your book and getting it published Nemo, it's such an important subject to be tackling. And I'm looking forward to hearing all about it when it's released and reading it as well. I have already read the sample chapters. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. And I'm sure that you'll have other listeners get in touch with you to ask if they can take a look at it too. Which brings me to my very final question, which is for anyone who's listening, who would like to get in touch with you to learn more about the book more about you or more about Sigma Polaris your company and the assessments that you offer, what is the best way of them doing this?

Nemo D'Qrill: 00:32:50

You can find me on LinkedIn, I am sure that they will also check me in on that at Nemo D'Qrill. Alternatively, you can send a message to Nemo@sigmapolaris.com. That is Sigma like the symbol and Polaris like the star. But I'm Nemo D'Qrill and I think I'm the only one in the world.

Fay Wallis: 00:33:10

Wow, what a great way to be able to sign off from something by being able to say you're the only one in the world. I hope you enjoyed meeting Nemo and learning from them. They shared so much that I thought it would be useful to wrap up the episode with a quick recap of their key pointers to create more inclusive hiring practices that can remove bias and lead to a more diverse group of applicants. Whether that diversity have to do with gender, cultural background, disability, neuro diversity or social mobility. And those tips were to remove names from CVS, use scoring systems at the interview stage, not based on how you feel about people. Make sure your job descriptions are gender neutral and culturally sensitive.