Why Hiring Managers Don't Know How to Hire And How to Fix It w/ Allyn Bailey

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with talent futurist and keynote speaker Alynn Bailey on why managers don't know how to hire, and how to help them.

Allyn shares her insights and experience with...

• Empathy and first impressions are crucial.
• The hiring process is highly complex and often improvised.
• Consistency in assessment is essential but rare.
• Accountability in hiring starts with managers.
• Practical experience outweighs observation.
• The ripple effect of poor hiring.
• Confidence in hiring requires support systems.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Allyn Bailey. And here is why she is awesome. She's a talent futurist, keynote speaker, and the senior director of PR Media and Events and Executive Director for Hiring Success Stories at Smart Recruiters, a next generation hiring operating system for global corporations, including LinkedIn and Visa, she's held previous executive and leadership positions in recruitment and talent, including an Intel corporation.

And she's here to share with us why managers just don't know how to hire. Hello, Allyn,

Allyn Bailey: Hello. Good morning. How are you today?

Russel Lolacher: I'm good. Not fueled by coffee yet. That's going to change after this, but I'm, I'm, I'm fueled by the excitement of the conversation,

Allyn Bailey: Let's go. Let's go. Let's talk hiring and how fricking hard it is for everybody.

Russel Lolacher: But before we do, Allyn, I don't want to, don't, we don't get to jump the gun. Sorry. You're not special. You get to, you have to answer the question everybody else gets, which is what's your best or worst employee experience?

Allyn Bailey: Okay. So I've told this story before, but it, it bears repeating because it was probably my most uncomfortable experience in the workplace I have ever had. So, I was in a position in my life when I had been the wonderful recipient of of being rifted. That happens to all of us, us Gen Xers probably about 50 million times every other year we feel like we're in one state or another. And it was one of, it was my very first time and I very, very much, I was younger, in my early 20s, and I very much needed my next gig. And I had a wonderful opportunity, a beer distributing company, flew me in to interview. And so it was my first time flying in to interview.

I had, I was just, I thought it was real hot stuff. I was like, great. They flew me in. It's going to be fabulous. I can't wait to get there. And I showed up for the interview. And the receptionist said, great, why don't you go right over there into the lounge, have a seat, grab yourself a drink, and they'll be out to get you in just a moment.

So I'm like, okay, great. I know how to do this. And I walked in. Now remember, I'm very, very nervous. I really, really need this job. And I walk around the corner into the lounge area, and I'm thinking I'm going to go get a cup of coffee. But I realized sitting in front of me are two pots for coffee and next to it, an entire set of beer taps with beer glasses next to it.

And it's about 11:30 in the morning. And I'm like, okay, I need this job, it's for a sales distributor, training sales people to be able to sell beer products. Am I supposed to drink the coffee or the beer? I don't know what to do. And I, I'm in my late 20s. I have a complete breakdown, like emotional breakdown in the, in the back lounge area.

I'm barely pulling myself together and I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't want to. So as I often do, I decided to go with the best of both worlds. So I poured one of each and put them next to me and just sat there and waited for them to come and get me. And nobody, nobody else seemed to notice this was going on.

It was like a normal deal for them. They didn't think about it one way or the other. And I went back to the interview and nobody ever mentioned it again, but it sat with me forever. Whenever I think of people coming in to those early moments when they're just starting to meet people and we forget how anxious riding that is, right?

And these little things that are just part of our natural environment that they have no idea how to navigate become huge moments for people. So that is my biggest one. It's a little bit funny, but it's also... it was traumatizing. I still to this day see beer taps and get a little anxious. Just like, I don't know. Do I drink it? Yeah. I did get the job, by the way.

Russel Lolacher: So in your experience, when you talk to hiring managers, what are you taking from that experience that you're telling them? I'm guessing it's around first impressions.

Allyn Bailey: It is. Well, it's around first impressions, but I think it is deeper than that. It is around taking a deep breath and putting a sense of empathy into what you're doing, right? Remembering that yes, we are all busy. We, we need to fill these roles right away. Usually by the time a hiring manager is getting ready to hire somebody from the role, they have had to beg and plead to get that role funded.

They've probably, their teams are understaffed. They themselves are maybe taking on extra work or burden. This is frequently the position most people feel themselves in. They're stressed and they're anxious and they also feel like if I don't get the right person, I'm going to be really in big trouble, right?

So their qualifications and what they expect is often very high. Their anxiety is very high and they're often very, very busy. And so they're not paying attention to the environment that they set up in front of them. And the, the small, interpersonal things that we need to do to be able to really understand who people are and to make connections with people is really hard to do when you're in those kind of high stress, high, high high intent, high impact moments.

So I ask hiring managers to take a deep breath for half a second and remember the day and how they actually felt when they had to go in and interview for a job. Cause many of them have forgotten and they forget what that moment is like.

Russel Lolacher: So let's jump into the question head on here, Allyn is why? Why don't managers know how to hire?

Allyn Bailey: Because even though it is the most complex thing. I believe one of the very most complex things you will do as a hiring manager. In fact, we have recent data that tells us globally, 44 percent of managers that we talked to said it is the most complex thing that they do, and they are spending more than 50 percent of their time on it.

We do not spend any time except for in the moment of the hiring process, really working with managers to understand how to do this, right? So it is... and I'm, I'm careful as I say that you'll notice what I didn't say. I didn't say we don't train them. I didn't say we don't prepare them. What I think it really is, is we, we don't, in the moment, in the time at which they are actually having to go through the hiring process, we don't take the pause to reflect that this may, this is one, stressful for them and two, we, we don't, we make assumptions that they know what to do.

We assume by the time they got there, they knew what to do. And they assume, by the way, that they know what to do until they get into the moment and realize, oh, crap, right? One of the biggest challenges they face is, the understanding, having comfort in the decision that they make, right? That angst about decision making, The lack of decision making support in that framework.

And so the consequence is they move to gut reaction. They move to that belief system that says I can, I can just sense when somebody is going to be right for this. And then we teach them enough over time so that they learn not to say that. But that's still kind of where they're moving, they're moving to gut, right?

Because when you are lacking a, a comfort level of how to do something or a comfort level in your own decision making ability or the decision making process, what are the logic, the logic you need to go through to do that? And there is logic in the hiring process. You, you naturally go to gut. And then everything starts to fall apart from there.

Yeah, that's why it's, it's because it's highly, highly impactful, super important. And if we talk about it, we do it in the very beginning, maybe during some, let's assume they get manager orientation. Maybe not. Let's say we did that. Let's say we did that. We probably mentioned hiring a little bit in that process. And here is your process for getting approval to hire. Here is your process for getting your head count aligned. Here's your process for the interview process. We very rarely spend time saying here is what you need to consider and think about to help you make good decisions,

Russel Lolacher: I always have a problem with consistency too, because we, we talk about this and sure, but some managers hire a lot more than other managers. It could be for lots of reasons. Sometimes it's cause they're a bad leader and they keep losing staff. So they become really good at hiring or not so good at hiring, but there's also others, and I've talked about this on the show as well.

I had a team, same team for 12 years. I was horrible at hiring because I never had to, I never had to learn how to hire because my team was happy and content. And my retention level was really high. So when people were like, Hey, can you help with hiring? I'm like, sure. Could you teach me how to do that again?

So it feels like there's a consistency issue that also needs to be addressed because things change also in the hiring process. HR has decided to do a whole new process in this on day three of panel interviews. How do we approach consistency?

Allyn Bailey: Super important conversation because remember most hiring managers have the experience that you just reflected on, right? You don't hire every day. In fact I went through that whole spiel about how complicated it's just to figure out if you can get headcount approval and to navigate all of those, those components.

So that's a reflection of the fact that it's usually a very gated process. You may, most hiring managers may do it once, maybe twice a year if they're lucky. Frequently, we're working with even very senior hiring managers who, again, hire once a year, maybe, or there are teams and suddenly they have to do it, they haven't had to do it before.

So, consistency, unfortunately for us, in the talent acquisition space, has fallen into giving rules and guidance around how to navigate the process. And we haven't talked about consistency in how to, how to assess. How to select, how to disposition multiple perspectives and points of view, right? And I think that's what we need to do.

So if we want to address consistency, we need to pick these key moments in time where decisions need to be made and talk about the proc... not just the process, the, the logic and the thought around how you navigate that and have a consistent way to do it so it feels simpler. And it is in those moments, it is in the, it is in the deciding who you're going to pull through, right? Getting people to the next stage. So usually for hiring managers, it's moving to that short list and saying, who am I actually going to interview? So giving, having some frame for that for people. The second is usually around the process of how do I decide what questions to ask them and then how to determine whether the responses to those questions meet how do I, how do I determine the value of those, the worth of the response to those questions?

And then the third is it usually, not only I'm interviewing, but other people are interviewing. I'm having to collect all of their perspectives and information. How do I disposition that to help me make a good decision as I go forward? If we focus on those spaces and helping hiring managers in those moments, I think we help them be able to create consistency over time and realize that we're not going to enter, we're not going to train them on that.

On during this wonderful manager orientation is hypothetically existing or on their once a year mandatory hiring training to get certified with for the company. We're going to do it in the moment to be part of that relationship as a recruiter or as a TA professional or as, in all honesty, maybe it's even in an automated way that we provide them that information in the moment.

to help them be able to navigate that.

Russel Lolacher: What are your thoughts on getting managers to shadow with, so for instance, take someone, okay, like myself who didn't hire very often. So I'm getting rusty, much less knowledge. What do you recommend that I would possibly shadow another hiring process just to, because I'm, I can see how it works for someone else.

I can see how the process goes. It's more top of mind because I'm not getting that experience myself.

Allyn Bailey: I'm pausing. So y'all, nobody on the ever else can see my my pausing moment on my face, right? I'm reflecting and thinking, and here's why I'm doing that. So my gut reaction is to say, yes, of course, that's a very helpful way to go. What I would challenge is, when we think about shadowing, think about what we're asking people to do during that process.

Just walking alongside, meaning kind of being there as a passive observer. I don't think it's going to get the impact that we're actually hoping it will. We do this all the time, by the way. Old, old hats are in the L& D space are coming back to me as I kind of reflect on this. Listen, we do this all the time where we say, listen, if I show people.

If I have them watch, they will understand and be able to replicate and do, right? But that's actually not accurate. If you show people, and let's assume they pay attention while you're showing them, they get information, but it isn't until they actually do it with, with a safety net or with guidance that they actually start to internalize it and be able to do it without somebody sitting next to them. So my recommendation would be, listen, if you've got new managers, yes, shadowing is great, but think about how you incorporate them into the process in non decision making spaces, but where they can be involved tactically and, and put them on a panel. Make them, put them as part of the interview, an interview team, ask them to be a part of that, that conversation as people are making decisions and inputting their thoughts to that. They're not the decider at that point. They are not wholly responsible for making the choices and decisions, but they're involved in that process with you and learning as they're doing it.

Because that's how people start to ingrain and start to feel real comfortable in doing things. It's a difference between watching a YouTube video and

Russel Lolacher: Making a YouTube video.

Allyn Bailey: Making a YouTube video, right? Two very different things. Trust me. I've been on that journey myself lately. It's very hard.

Russel Lolacher: So I talk a lot on the show about leadership impacts, good and bad. So we have a challenge here. We have managers that do not know how to hire. What is the impact to the prospective employee? What's the impact to the organization with managers not knowing how to do this?

Allyn Bailey: There's a huge amount of impact. Well, I mean, let's let, I mean, let's take it down to its very basic core. Companies like work does not happen unless individuals are there to do the work, right? Like companies do not, execute on what they need to do. They definitely don't innovate. There is, it is a core essential requirement that you have the right talent in place in order to be successful as a company.

It's just, it's a, it's a given. You cannot, you cannot survive without that. Now, in a really complicated spaces, you may have one or two of those individuals and a lot of others who are just kind of fly by night and in and out, but somebody has to be there and knows kind of where you're going and what you're doing and, and, and is helping you execute to that.

So that talent piece is critical. You, you have to have great talent. How good that talent is, how comfortable that talent is in showing up authentically as who they are and participating in the, in, in not just the task work, but the thought work associated with groups of people coming together in organization to deliver something is dependent upon, the people in the hiring managers and the individuals who bring them into that fold.

Who bring them into that story. So when we don't do hiring well, when we do not run an experience that is focused on pulling people through the process to help them show up as authentically as who they are and for us to be able to understand how best to leverage who they are in that larger ecosystem or organism that we're building, we do a disservice to not only the individual, let's, let's, we can, we can automatically say it can feel like a crappy experience or not a valuable experience for the people that we're hiring, and in circumstances where they need the job and we offer it to them, they'll take it, but they're not fully engaged and they're not going to participate at full level, they're not going to give you the full of who they are and what they can do, and they're probably going to leave as soon as they can.

So that caused a challenge. But for you as a company, as a team leader, as somebody who is trying to get the best out of people to be able to accomplish something, it basically cripples you, right? It makes you unable to do what you need to do at the ability and at the level you could. So it cripples you. It holds you back. It, it is essentially like walking in and saying, I'm going to break one of my kneecaps before I go run the marathon. I'll make it. I'll run the marathon. I'll drag my leg behind me. It's going to hurt like hell. I'm going to do it. But I would drag my leg behind me as I go, right?

That's what you're doing when you don't create a good, initial bridging together of talent with what you need to do.

Russel Lolacher: So...

Allyn Bailey: A lot of words. Thanks.

Russel Lolacher: No fair. It's very curious about like the short term and the long term effects of this not going well.

Allyn Bailey: Well, I think again, short term effects are, short term effects are immediately visible. They are just the inability then to meet your immediate objectives and goals. If I am and I'm and I say this thing with a broad brush because it could be at different levels. Let's take it just a very let's take it at a base level.

Let's assume I am just, I am hiring individuals to work shifts at my fast food restaurant. Okay. If this does not go well, and I do not get the right person into a role, at its best, the thing that can go wrong is that they're not able to execute, or maybe they don't show up for work, and I end up not being able to, to deliver, the fast food numbers that I need to deliver or my drive-thru rate, I need to run a drive-thru. The drive-thru numbers are not great because they're slow any of that, that's the worst that can happen, bad service. But that's not the worst that can actually happen, what can actually happen is if I get the wrong person in, they then start seeding both maybe bad behaviors Maybe a perspective or a point of view, an attitude, things that will then shift the dynamic of my entire workforce.

And so now I don't just have slow drive-thru numbers because they're slow at the drive-thru or people giving wrong change at the cashier because maybe they don't count well, like they can't do the skill. But now I have created an environment in my already cohesive work group that is having downstream impact. So now. I'm also not getting food made correctly in the back because people are now suddenly gossiping is now a thing right. Or suddenly I have people who are seeing others are showing up late for shifts that they don't need to show up either or maybe they don't close down well and my, my restaurant. So there's it is not just the impact of that one employee it is that one new person coming into the team and the impact that has on the larger team and how that affects your ability to deliver. I think we don't think about that enough.

Russel Lolacher: So whose responsibility is it to fix this? The individual manager, executive HR? Like if, if we're looking at, here's a problem to fix, managers don't know how to hire, who are we pointing the finger at to take accountability and responsibility for it? Or should we be looking at?

Allyn Bailey: So I'm going to say a couple of controversial things here. This is what I do. It is not HR. I'll tell you why it's not HR because HR is incapable of being the people who drive this. HR is a fundamentally, sorry guys out there all of my wonderful HR peers, but fundamentally it's based on compliance and process and as much as we think it's about the human piece, that's not. That's, HR is meant to, it's at its root, is there to keep the company from getting sued.

Okay. So they're going to do that piece. It is the leader and the executive, the individuals who are, who are building that middle management layer, those who are hiring and making day to day decisions. It is those leaders who need to teach their teams and set the example and the parameters for their... for the people that they're, they're tapping to lead as they go forward. That's my personal perspective. I think that's who it sits with. Now I also think at the end of the day, it also sits with the individual hiring manager, that it cannot be shifted off to others, that it is part of the responsibility of the job.

It is a core fundamental piece of what you need to do. As I mentioned, I just, I mean, I can, we were looking at stats out there today that say, listen, we know that people are spending more than 50 percent of their time on this, particularly if they're frontline managers. This is, this is a core piece of what they need to be doing.

It is, it is, and if they're not getting the support they need from their leaders above them and telling them and getting the expectations for them, it is their accountability to go and figure out how to be better at it. It's not like there aren't resources. So I'm, I'm very careful about that. I, I don't think it's anybody's responsibility to go out and train you and guide you and bring you along.

It's great if they do. But at the end of the day, you're the one who's making those, those choices and you're going to have to live with it. So what have you done to set yourself up to do that well.

Russel Lolacher: So let's fix the problem.

Allyn Bailey: Take accountability folks. That's it.

Russel Lolacher: How do we fix this from a micro macro level then?

Allyn Bailey: I think one from a macro level, we have to understand the impact that talent actually has on our ability to deliver. And because of that, we need to have the right conversations at a macro level about, relationships, people, and how people interact together. And so that people are having that that frame of mind as they're going forward. At a micro level, I really believe it is about everybody taking accountability, waking up every morning as they go in to do what they need to do and they're starting to think about whether it's managing people, hiring people, or just leading and guiding people, whether it's an official or unofficial role, taking accountability for how they show up to do that.

And understanding that the results they get are a direct reflection of how they show up and what they do and how they treat people in that process to get there. If they don't take accountability for that, no amount of larger training programs, process design, et cetera, is going to change behaviors.

Russel Lolacher: Is it also worth looking at all those other things too? Like your processes being reviewed every six months or under surveying. So one of the things I even talked about recently on my many episodes of the show was why do we never interview prospective employees, successful and unsuccessful, going how was your experience? I know you didn't get the job, but how did we do by you? How was the manager? Did they show up?

Allyn Bailey: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: And nobody ever does that.

Allyn Bailey: No, they don't. We all talk about it like, we'll have like a special project where we do it, right? But transparently, the biggest thing we usually end up doing is like going in and looking at our job descriptions and deciding if we need to rewrite those. That's, that's what people spend their time on instead of asking questions and going deeper.

So yeah, of course, right? Having, having those opportunities to go and do things in a macro level that create an understanding of what is happening and why it is happening and what the, and what the what is driving that is really, really important. So, so I spent early on in my career, my, my focus was as an experience designer, right?

And I used to tell people that I can throw data at you all day long that can tell you what is happening. I can look at it. You have application drop off rates. You have inability to to, to close conversion at the, at the back end of the funnel. You have employees who are leaving your, your exit and retention rates are really low or Retention's low.

Your exit rates are high. Here's what we've got going on. I can point at data all day long. If I don't go to that next level and start talking to people, build hypotheses, talk to people, and then determine if those hypotheses are correct or false about why that is happening, I cannot make adjustments or changes.

So, at a macro level, of course, I should be building systems to do that so people understand that's an expectation. I have to understand why. What is only going to get me so far? I need to understand why and then take that information and make choices and decisions based on it. However, what I will caution is, if you only do that, if you say, okay, so I'm going to put a process in place where every six months, HR or the TA team, or maybe even as a panel of group of executives are going to go out and interview, 5 percent of the people who didn't make it to find out what their experience was, or great, that's all been done, but those were not the people who needed to hear those stories firsthand.

The people who need to hear those stories firsthand are the people who are interviewing, sitting on the ground and making those choices and decisions. So, if instead you tell me, every six months we're going to go through this process, but I'm going to bring through that process five or six hiring managers across my business who are going to be part of the interview team, who are going to be talking to people, going to be engaging with them, and then part of us having a conversation about what happened, that's impactful.

That works. I, that's why I'm, I'm cautious to tell people, yeah, go out and do a little research and find out what's going on because the people who are doing it aren't the people who actually need the information. They're just getting it and saying, see, I told you all you did a crappy job at interviewing people. They hate you. You're, you're mean. You didn't ask good questions. You didn't read their resume ahead of time. You didn't like, yeah, yeah, I know I'll do it better next time. But they have no emotional impact to that information. They didn't sit on the other side of the table and listen to somebody tell them about going and not knowing what to do and how impactful it was not being able to figure out whether to have a cup of coffee or, or grab a beer at 10:30 in the morning, right?

These are... that's what they need to hear.

Russel Lolacher: So is this, this is this the antidote to the, but we've always done it like this before ism? Did this... does this move the needle on that?

Allyn Bailey: Absolutely. In my experience, the only way to move the needle on that is doing action based research with people who are directly involved in the output and the action. And then getting them, you have to think about how the brain operates, right? So, there's a difference between accommodating and assimilating information.

So, we accommodate information when it comes into us and it's a new piece of information, or somebody tells you this is the rule, or this is, I believe X is happening this is how people feel about it. And if you don't have direct experience with it, you accommodate it. Meaning you take it and you align it to something you already know, right?

It's like this. So, okay. Yeah, okay. You're right. I should be nicer, but I don't really invest in it. I don't create a new file card. It'll simulate a new behavior, a new frame, unless I have some sort of emotional connection to that information and data. So you, you have to build them through the story. Sorry, I didn't mean to go down that whole path of experience design, but I think it's super important.

We don't, we too often say, I'm going to go out and do all this work for you. Whoever it is, hiring manager, business leader to tell you all the things and why things are happening and then we wonder why no action is taken on that and it's because they are not directly involved in understanding that information.

They're only getting it as second hand reports. It's like reading the news vs. being at the news.

Russel Lolacher: Does diversity have any impact on how we approach these things? I ask from a generational standpoint because Boomers and Gen Xers might have different expectations of what a hiring manager does and doesn't. Whether they are the hiring manager or the person that's applying for the role. While millennials and Gen Zed, I'm Canadian, have different expectations of what they're being presented in those first contact points with an organization.

So how do we look at that in this scenario?

Allyn Bailey: It's a super big, it's a super, you're asking a really big question that I think we as a, as a industry, as HR professionals, as, as leaders in the TA space, even as business leaders trying to understand how to navigate the world in front of us, have done a disservice to. We've talked about this idea of generational behaviors, expectations and we talk about it, but I think the shift that we are seeing currently... and I'm cautious, I don't, it's, yes, it's generational, but I think it's more about expectations. People can blur across those lines a little bit. I wouldn't look at one individual and say, you're from this generation. So I expect this to be the case. But I think we can make some common assumptions, right?

That what we're starting to see is a difference in my relationship with work. This is where it's key. I'm Gen X. I'll say it very proudly. I know who I am. I know that, I know that my expectation for work is very different from a lot of the people who work with me as I've as I've aged in my career, we have more and more Xennials.

We're starting to have a few of those little Gen Alphas coming in, right? But it's not about their expectation for how you treat them. That's all the same. It's more about their understanding of how they choose to have a relationship with work, which is very different. That's what we need to understand.

So when we think about diversity, inclusion, and representation. It is very much about understanding that the people that show up to your interview are going to come from a variety of different perspectives of their relationship with work. And what I mean by that is, are, are they, do they assume they're going to work for a company for the next 20 years and cash out with their retirement plan?

I hope they're learning that's not the case anymore, but there's a good portion of us who still like we're doing that thing. Or are they really, do they job hop? Do we look at their resume and we have this immediate assumption and go, Oh my gosh, they're job hoppers or they're, they can't be dedicated.

They can't, there's no way they're going to be able to do this job. But if we think about it, there's a whole population of people at this point who are looking and saying, it's not, it's not about job hopping. It's about, I am growing through my experiences and I am happy to be at a place for two months here, five months there, a year here.

It has nothing to do with my dedication while I'm there at that particular time or my lack of effort. It has everything to do with my relationship with work is very different. I don't see it as this, like, I'm not building a relationship to a company for a long period of time. So, generationally, yes, there are huge issues and differences. I think we need to understand them. But I think we need to understand them in the evolution of what work means to people. And that is a very complex conversation. Again, to have with hiring managers who are in the midst of what I would call a very kind of frontal lobe process, which is I am in crisis, I need to fill my role.

And I, and having a conversation at that point about the variations of how people are going to show up and what their expectations are during that process, it's going to be very, very hard. And I think it's, I think it's like, if I think it's like the next, it's like the, it's like the next level belt.

I don't know if they're ready for it yet. I know we want to have that conversation. I just don't know if they're ready for it yet.

Russel Lolacher: And often the other one is, well, I'm too busy to do all that extra work to cater to my particular audience. I need a forum that is rigid and is the same thing over and over again, a process, a checkbox. Because everybody's excuse of being too busy, which I hear you, but I also think, well, then nothing ever gets fixed.

Allyn Bailey: Well, that's it. Oh gosh, that's my, like, that's my favorite one, right? There's what's is that? There's that favorite meme out there that we've all had for years where they're running around on the square wheels. And the guy's running behind him with a round one. I said, I have a better way. Like we're too busy. We're pushing this thing, right? That's a common, that's a common motion. And that's exactly where, by the way, if you understand where your hiring managers are at, that's exactly where a majority of them are at. It's not that they don't want to, it's that they are panicked about their ability, like, to move forward.

And maybe they don't even recognize it. They're not going to show up and say, I'm panicked, right? I think that we need to be aware of that. And I think that we need to be... think about the things we can do from a process perspective, setting them up. So if you start thinking about what can HR control, what can TA teams control in order to support these hiring managers in this space? It is about those things that set up commonalities and expectation and process that we can start to put in place, right?

Understanding each individual is going to show up and behave the way they're going to behave. But if I have done things that say, listen, I, I understand my core demographic and who we're hiring at this point. If I run panel interviews, I am very likely going to disenfranchise that particular population. We know that's going to happen. So fine. I don't do panel interviews in my company. I, instead I say, we're going to do two interviews and they're going to look like this. And here's the questions you're going to type of questions you're going to ask in this one. These are the type of questions in this one. So we set up the boundaries. So HR's job is set up the boundaries correctly to allow for individuals to flounder their way through it the best they can without making too many mistakes.

Russel Lolacher: So how do you know you're on the right path, Allyn, especially because I hear it and how you're talking about we need to build confidence with our hiring managers. So they're not flailing. So they're not going into this process going, I don't know what I'm doing time in and time out. So what is success look like that we know we're getting this right?

Allyn Bailey: So success looks like a couple of different things. I think we, one looks like, being able to get the right talent in to be able to perform the way we need them to perform, to be able to move forward, right? So it depends on your company and your dynamics. You can figure out how you can start to assess that and be able to provide that feedback, right?

It could be, maybe it's lengthen time, maybe it's skills. There's a, you can have a whole bunch. We can have a whole conversation about how you, To help that, to have that dialogue, but you probably, you need some basic parameters to say, this is how I'm going to give you data to tell you if we're hitting things on, on, on the mark, right?

Great, I can do that. But I think the second thing is, working in a way that allows people to error and to have a safety net to pick them up on the back end. So, for example, if I have a new hiring manager who's coming in, I can't make an assumption just because they are an executive with 30 years of experience that they're, they're going to manage this interview process and this hiring process the way we may want to build that experience.

Great. It's okay to turn around and say, here's how we're going to do it, right? We're going to start off by before you, you hire your full team VP. What I'd like you to do is sit in with George during his interview process. I need you to be an interviewer for his next role. And I want you to walk through that process with him, be involved in it.

And right. And then I, as your executive coach or your leader, I'm going to have some debriefs with you about what that experience was like, what you saw work. How would you change it? What would you do in that space? Get them involved in building their own, their own storyline for what experience they're going to create.

Get them involved in thinking through what do they want to develop and create? And how do they want that experience to go? And then when you send them out there on their own for the first time, be that coach to come back and help and ask the questions and say, how did that go? Did that meet the expectation? What would you have done differently? You can have that dialogue. And then after you've gone through those stages, then lead them to their own devices and just watch the data and see what happens and see if it's working successfully. But we often jump to the last mode first, which is we're all busy.

Here's the process. Have a good day. Hope it works for you. That's not how we build confidence in anything. So it's a very simple process. I show, we do it together. You do it by yourself with a little bit of with a, with the knowledge that somebody is there to help if you need them. And then you go off and you do it by yourself. That's how confidence happens.

Russel Lolacher: Unfortunately, one of the solutions managers and leaders are finding in there too busy is trying to look for shortcuts, which can be good and bad. So I'm super curious about your thoughts around technology and how technology can either help or hinder with this. Yes, in the back of my mind, I'm going AI, AI, AI, but that also breaks my heart. So what is your approach to thinking how technology can be, it can be a good tool and a bad tool.

Allyn Bailey: I think technology can be a decision support aid. I have to be, that sounds so corporate when I say that. I'm going to, like I said it when I, God, that's like, so, that's so buzzwordy. But here's, here's basically what I mean. I, let me give you an example. I'm going to use a, an example using ChatGPT. Not about making the hiring decision, but how I so I write a lot.

I've always been a writer I I write a lot of opinion pieces. I have a lot of thoughts. Okay, and I'm and and i'm i'm very vocal about them, which is probably has good and bad moments to it. But here's here's the deal. So ChatGPT comes along. Now, there's a debate out there. Do you use it? Do you not use it?

Are you a real writer if you use it? Are you not a real writer if you use it? Should I have it in that space, right? What I have discovered is that I love it I love it because I use it as something to organize and distill my thoughts, but I guide it. I guide it in what I want it to do. I don't say, write me a paper on the complexities of hiring and leave it and say, oh, it wrote a paper, I'm done, right?

Instead I say, I have all these thoughts, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I need them to get organized in a cohesive way so people can understand them. Do that. And it will, right? But that's all, it's prompt engineering. It's understanding how to leverage it. It's the same thing when we think about AI tools and solutions for decision making support in the hiring process.

So we have algorithms that can go and give you match scores. We have tools that can tell you when people, are most likely to be relevant for a different type of role, if they're sitting in your pipeline. Those are all great decision supports, right? But they are fed by your analysis or info or your insight into what it is that you need.

So it goes back to the core. If you can't ask the right question and it's based on what you really need, then that decision making support isn't helping you. And it's and if you use it as a shortcut, which is it, the machine told me to do it that way, and I'm sure it's smarter than I am. It gave me the top 10 people, and I'm just going to interview the top 3 on that list. And off we go. And okay, we can all pretend people don't do that. But, of course, they do. You're, you're hurting yourself, because you are missing out on the opportunity of probably things that the machine couldn't see that you as a human can see.

So it can help you, it can shorten the time, it can provide you some some insights you may not have had previously that may prompt you to have a hypothesis to think to the next space. That's all great. Use it. It helps us think when we, our minds are crowded with lots of stuff. it helps us sort through it. That's my, that's my personal opinion on the use of, of AI and decision making support tools.

Russel Lolacher: I want to wrap up our conversation and thank you for all of this. Been really interesting. With something that really impacts, I've heard over and over again, impacts employees relationship with the organization, because again, applying for a job is their first impression of working for that organization.

And two of the things that come up the most is ghosting, which is the horribleness of organizations and their inability to communicate through a job process. And second is transparency. How honest they really are about the culture and working there and so forth. What are your, what is your feeling on both of those?

Because I don't think leaders and hiring managers really understand the damage they may be doing by going down this path.

Allyn Bailey: So both of them transparently make me so angry. Because this is like, this is something we just know better as human beings. It's just so ridiculous. I mean, I mean, it really is, right? It's just, it's laziness, and it has a huge amount of impact to our ability to build the right types of teams and environments for people, and it leaves a really bad taste in people's mouth.

I tell people every day, there is not a company on this earth who the people who you are interviewing are not impacting your consumer brand. They are having a, it is because it is a much deeper relationship to go through this emotional push and pull of, I need a job. Are you going to hire me? I am in a very vulnerable space. Even if you've, even if you've gone and headhunted me and you've asked me to come in and buy but a vulnerable space putting myself out There and saying well, okay. I'm interested. Do you still want me? I'm asking you do you want me and if you can't figure out how to leverage?

I mean even if you can't figure out how to send the thank you note, thank you note yourself, for goodness sake in this day of automation and technology support, you could get the stupid letter out there, right? Now at the end. It may be a horrible experience, but it's a step better than a catastrophic experience with a generic letter. And then you can do a step better and you can actually become a real human being. And I always tell people, here's my guidance. It's very clear. You need to treat people and give them the response level reflective of the level you have asked of them. So if it has been a completely just kind of they submitted an application and it was kind of this very happened on the back end with the computer, I can send you a generic response.

That's fine. I can do that. If I had a sourcer or somebody pick up the phone and talk to you, if anybody ever picked up the phone and talked to another human being to get them to pitch themselves at some level, they reco, they should get a phone call back. That's the way I say it. That's at the end. If we just follow those basic rules, we can start to address that. And it is the hugest problem. It impacts brands dramatically. So I can go off on that all over the place, but this ghosting thing is a pain in the butt and we just need to stop it and we're doing, and we just, and we keep saying, oh, it's hard. And we what if I, if I do that, I may say the wrong thing.

If that's all a bunch of excuses for people not wanting to do the hard thing, which is in every relationship and the hard thing to say, thank you but no, thank you. It's hard, but guess what? Bucket up. If you have, if you are willing to put people in the position to have to tell you who they are and put them, make themselves vulnerable, you have the responsibility to be a vulnerable enough back to tell them when it doesn't work.

Russel Lolacher: I don't think we're clear enough to let leaders know that sometimes they actually have to lead.

Allyn Bailey: Right.

Russel Lolacher: And this is a perfect example of that. It's like, it's too hard. I don't know what to do. Why are you in the position you are if you're able, if you're not able to do these things?

Allyn Bailey: That's right. That's right. I mean, I, listen, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. If this is your first, your, your first line manager, you're in your first kind of role in this space. Yes. Then it is my job to, as a, as a, as a leader in the company to coach you and to guide you on what you need to do in that space.

But once you've done this a couple of times, then it's on you. That's, that goes back to when you said who's who's responsible for making this thing work? You are! You, if you are asking it is a personal experience. Hiring is a personal experience. And as the person who is making the decision, who is the hiring manager, the person in that space, the end of the day, the buck stops there.

And we don't hold people accountable to that conversation.

Russel Lolacher: So here's our last question, Allyn, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate this and spotlighting all the bad stuff, but some of the, some of the light at the end of the tunnel of how to get out of it. What's one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Allyn Bailey: Assume good intent. It sounds so I know like so la la out there, but I, I, I have to force myself to do it as well. We get busy. I keep going back because we get busy. We have so much to do. We have Slack. We have email. We have, in person conversations. We have projects we're trying to get done. We have all this stuff going on.

And we get into the middle of these conversations or these dialogues that aren't face to face or don't have relationship base behind them. And, things irritate us. They make us angry. People don't do what we think they're supposed to do. They don't behave the way we want them to behave. All of those things happen and we start assuming all the worst things, right?

They don't like me. Oh, my God. They just don't want it. They're just not willing to put in the work. They're done with that, right? We tell ourselves stories. It's a natural event, but we have to pause. And if we just all pause for a moment and said, wait a minute before I respond, let me assume good intent.

If I assume their intent was good. Until they prove me otherwise, I'm going to assume your intent was good. I'm going to respond in a different way to you. And that's going to build a better bridge together.

Russel Lolacher: That is Allyn Bailey. She's a talent futurist, keynote speaker, and the senior director of PR Media and Events and Executive Director for Hiring Success Stories at Smart Recruiter. Thank you so much for being here, Allyn.

Allyn Bailey: Thank you so much. This was great. Thanks, Russel. I appreciate it.