Working with Collaborative Future to create an inclusive hiring process

Tess, Founder of Collaborative Future, and James, Director of Digital & Strategy at William Joseph Design, discuss the experience of hiring a full-time employee through our radically inclusive hiring processes.

In July, William Joseph Design signed up to our programme in order to hire a new product manager to their 10-person team that designs products, services and brands for organisations working for positive change.

Today is Rania’s first day as their associate product manager and it is amazing to see how we’ve helped her to discover a role that she will absolutely thrive in. James shared with us that thanks to the hiring process we designed for them he is “more confident in our decision to hire Rania than any other hiring decision I’ve ever made - by a mile.”

We spoke to James to hear his reflections on working with Collaborative Future and wanted to know why they chose to work with us.

“One of the biggest problems William Joseph Design had as a team, and the tech and design sector has as a whole, is the lack of diversity of the people that join this industry. People come from quite similar backgrounds and have similar experiences which means they ultimately come to similar conclusions when building and designing products.

The broader the perspectives we can have within our team the better decisions we will make for ourselves and our clients.”

To try to address this William Joseph had paid to put job adverts on job boards that target specific demographics but they hadn’t had much success. “Probably because people see our company and don’t think they fit”, James acknowledged. Product management is also a relatively new profession so it’s more likely to be people who are already part of, or connected to, the industry that see themselves within these types of roles and who thus actively seek these career opportunities.

“We knew Collaborative Future would reach people we couldn’t” was one of the reasons William Joseph Design decided to work with us but together we also implemented a radically different hiring process to be more inclusive and ensure we found the person with the most potential to grow into the role given that many of our interns have had little comparable work experience.

There were no CVs, candidates got paid for their time, interview questions were shared in advance and the hiring managers, Ellie & James, were asked not to share their views with one another until it was time to make a final decision. How did all of this affect the experience for both them and the candidates?

“I loved the lack of CVs - they are totally useless in discovering what someone is capable of.” We reflected on the sheer amount of time they take to read and also for candidate to write, ”Which is fine if you know what an employer is looking for but you never really do because job descriptions are also often inaccurate”. Many employability programmes invest endless money into CV-writing workshops but from day one Collaborative Future have always been clear that this core aspect of recruitment is fundamentally flawed for both employers and applicants, plus the way many of us interpret CVs is laden with bias.

Instead, James and Ellie kicked off the process with the candidates we put forward by hosting 30 minute chats to share more about their team and the role. This was simply for our interns to find out more and go into the process knowing what was expected. They were then set a real-life task which they could complete flexibly in the following week but had to prioritise doing it within 3-4 hours.

James shared how this approach helped them to “Dig into the quality of the work a little more too because it makes it more realistic. The way we structured the task ensured we could identify the underlying capabilities that we were looking for such as initiative, time-keeping, prioritisation. The fact we could actually see how they organised themselves in a specific amount of time, what they prioritised and how they chose to communicate that was as close to a realistic scenario of working with our clients as possible.”

More often than not employers will test for these capabilities by asking questions like “Tell us about a time when you had to work to a deadline”. In our many years of running hiring processes we’ve found that the problem with this approach is that it favours people who can tell a good story or have “charisma”. Whereas with a realistic task that reflects the work they will be doing James felt he was able to compare candidates on a more “like-for-like basis. And spot the patterns and differences.” no matter whether the candidates had had relatable experiences in the past or not.

The fact our interns were being paid for their time participating in the process was also really important for James. “In so many scenarios young people have to give up 6 months of their life for free before they can even persuade someone to read their CV.” Paying people fairly for their time is a fundamental part of our Collaborative Future work placement scheme in order to make meaningful work experience more accessible to a wider range of people. We also believe it shifts the power dynamics and makes it possible for people to genuinely demonstrate their talents.

This is also why we encouraged William Joseph to share their final-stage interview questions in advance. This is perhaps one of the most unique aspect of our approach to hiring but James saw the value of doing this immediately:

“The interview isn’t a test. It should be an opportunity for people to genuinely show how good they can be - and the quality of discussion was just so much higher because we shared questions beforehand.”

“We had good conversations with all of them where we they really understood us and we really understood them. In fact almost everyone we spoke to could fulfil a role a William Joseph. But we know we genuinely made the decision based on the person that’s right for the fit for role.”

While both Ellie and James agreed Rania was the best fit because of the way she prioritised her time, organised her thoughts and communicated her conclusions following the task, when we all met to discuss the candidates they did have some differing opinions on how much each person aligned with their needs as a business. At the start of the process we’d recommended that Ellie and James keep seperate scoring and notes on the candidate, and refrain from sharing their reflections with each other until they had seen all of the candidates.

“Not sharing our thoughts during the process was so challenging but it felt like it was a good thing. The way you described it as making sure we weren’t doubling down on our biases made a lot of sense. In fact we are looking at taking that approach in user testing too.”

The reason we recommend this to employers is because often the most dominant voice can persuade a colleague to alter their opinions before they’ve had a chance to come to their own conclusions. This approach helps to ensure people get space to articulate the unique talents they spotted in candidates, even when others may have come away with a different view of them.

We’re so excited to see how Rania grows as part of the William Joseph team and the Collaborative Future programme will continue to play a part in both her development and Ellie’s development in her role as Rania’s manager.

“All the support you offer for Ellie as Rania’s manager moving forward is critical for us as a small business - it will build her capability as a manager and she’ll also have a network to share ideas and challenges. Plus the fact Rania continues to be part of the collaborative future community means we will ultimately get a better employee thanks to your workshops & coaching.”

And it’s not just Rania and William Joseph Design who benefited from this process. The other interns that we put forward received extensive feedback on their application and it’s already helping us to work together to recognise how they can put those strengths to use in different roles.

If you’d like to work with us to radically improve how you hire talent and develop the existing talent within your organisation book a free consultation call with us or email us.