Eric Knauf! Live on Shally's Alley

All right, hey everybody, what's up? Happy Friday, September 27th, and you are now live on Shelly's Alley. Despite the torrential downpour in Atlanta, uh, and the massive flooding that's been going on here, it's, um, the most rain that we've had since 1919, I've read in the, in the news. So that's a, that's a lot of water coming down here in Atlanta and in other parts of the region. So hopefully you are safe and somewhat dry. I know we're definitely not dry, but we are safe. So thanks for joining us today here on Shelley's Alley. I have a guest that is essentially a repeat offender because you might remember Eric from our panel on ageism not that long ago. And I learned a little bit more about some of the recent work that he's been doing. And he actually wrote an article on LinkedIn. If you go to his LinkedIn here, let me publish that on the marquee here so you can go find it. But if you go to his LinkedIn, you'll see the article that I'm talking about and the topic is belonging. It's actually specifically related to belonging in talent acquisition, or belonging related to talent acquisition, and how to help build your talent acquisition function, uh, strengthen it with employing belonging. So here's the link. Here we go, should be working.

There we go.

So Just E. Knauf. E-K-N. Did I say that right? Knauf?

I've been called worse many times. Knopf.

Knopf. E. Knopf. E. Knopf. No, I'm just kidding. And you'll see the articles, actually more than one. But the main one here is titled, Want a strategic advantage in talent acquisition? Enable belonging in your organization. So my first question is, kind of just enlighten us, if you will, because honestly, I'm not very strongly familiar with the whole side of DEIB in the organization after TA, right? Like, I'm— I usually get a lot of what I do has to do with sourcing and enabling diversity in talent acquisition. But this is kind of— this is new to me, this idea or the understanding that you can enable belonging in the talent acquisition part of the cycle. So, can you kind of bring it together? I know what belonging is. And I think most people might be familiar with it. But how does that relate to TA? That's the biggest gap is connect the dots for me.

When I saw the numbers, it hit me hard. It's like, wow, I am really good at recruiting in this one little area. And I have left half the equation off the table. And I just came back from HR Tech and a lot of our brethren were there. And we had this conversation and collectively folks were like, yeah, we're leaving half of the opportunity to close on the table. So let's back up a little bit. Belonging, right? D-E-N-I-B, D-E-N-I. This is not a conversation on that.

Right. Not on what it is.

But yeah, this is, this is something that is far more— this ties to a core human need that we have. And in the one article, there's, there are other links embedded in there on what belonging is all about. But in an, at its essence, Maslow When you talk about hierarchy of needs, core to our existence, our viable existence, is a sense of belonging. And part— I mean, that's family.

Damn, man, we're not even 10 minutes into the show. We're already doing Maslow.

Yeah, we're there.

We're—

I'm gonna go fast. So, okay. All right. The org psychologist that I want to be would say, start with it. What's most fundamental to all of us? And again, this is, this is in our families. This is in our relationships with friends, but it's also at work. We spend 8 hours a day, theoretically, roughly, with a group of individuals. How harsh is it if you don't feel like you belong? Oh yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty harsh.

There was an article too. Articles came out of late that had me thinking. One came out a couple of weeks ago, um, in The Atlantic, about the youngest— about Gen Z being the loneliest generation.

Well, is that partially because of COVID I mean, well, they were in isolation, like literally locked down prisoners of their own home for probably one of the most important years of their social you know, socialization or upbringing. I mean, like the formative years of middle school and in early high school, uh, they were, they were stuck at home, right? That's pretty lonely right there.

It's pretty lonely. And so I, I was talking with a 26-year-old software engineer with one of the big tech companies, and I asked the question, is this true? I mean, is it, is this article real? And he said, yeah. You know how many times he's met his team in 3 years? Never.

Never. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Right. So, so yeah, there, he's lonely and the generation is, but then there was another article that came out. I saw last week, it was a repeat from HBR 2017 that talked about burnout and the core underlying theme in individuals that have burnout is lack of their having a tribe, not having those peer relationships at work. So belonging, that this too is belonging, part of something. And in the article, second paragraph, I talk about a really important number, 51% of voluntary attrition.

I saw that.

Is tied to this.

I saw that.

So sure, people do leave for money. People do leave for a better opportunity. They leave for training, development opportunities. Maybe the family has to move, whatever it is.

But yeah, they say, you know, the common theme is they say you don't leave a company, you leave your manager. I mean, it could be, you know, one of the biggest reasons is, you They just are underappreciated, undervalued, underutilized. You don't feel like you're being developed. I mean, there's a lot of reasons. But to have it be with such a variety of reasons— compensation, too much travel, the company may be declining. I mean, there's so many reasons. You're saying 51% of those is belonging. So, I can't imagine if that's true. I'm not saying it isn't. But let's assume that it's true. It is by far the leading reason why people leave organizations because I can't imagine any of those others is 49%. So, all right.

So consider this, right? I mean, you've done a— you've done recruiting a year or two. You've closed a candidate or two over the years, right? What are those? What are those lures that you— what are the levers that you pull to close somebody?

Well, I like to twist their arm until they say, hire me, please.

Submit. Submit.

Exactly. Um, but no, no, I understand what you're saying. I mean, what are the levers that you pull? You know, most people, if you're, if you're not a very good recruiter, you're going to save money, right? Because you can just throw money at the salary compounding argument, right? No, no, that's not— to me, honestly, I, I have made many hires where the compensation was equivalent or even a few where it was less. And I personally have taken a job on several occasions in my career, which, which, uh, is a brief career of 30 years, where the compensation was less than I was previously making. It's gone up and it's gone down. And I can tell you the times that I took a job where I was getting paid less at the new company, like for example, when I went from Google to Microsoft, um, which was like the salmon swimming uphill because the, uh, People from Microsoft were leaving for Google in droves and I was going the other direction and I took a pay cut. Why did I do that? I did that because of the team, the company culture, the challenge, the scope of the job. You know, it was never about the money even though they gave me a really nice chunk of equity that over the term of over my lifetime, did end up paying more, you know, in long term than my salary at Google versus at Microsoft, it was definitely not because of the money. But I've also had, and I wrote about this in my message to you, I've also had a really negative experience with belonging. So it was a— it's— I'm very skeptical. I'm not saying that this isn't true. I just— I'm maybe the counterpoint, right, of like Consider this. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I want to hear this.

Consider this. So you have, you have the tried and true that we as recruiters have historically used to close candidates. And the example, what you just used with Microsoft is exact. That's it, right? Those are, those are some of the levers that we would draw upon.

The band over time, better culture, long term. Promotion ability, learning opportunities, span of control. It could even sometimes be just simply a matter of I want to travel more or I want to travel less.

But you know what? Half the people, 51%, leave because they want to find a tribe.

But that's not why they got there. So, you're saying that's why they leave. I think where— what I want to bridge the gap with is You argue that salary, career trajectory, and vision are not enough now. So, you're saying that's why they leave. What I want to know is, can you explain how the need for belonging is redefining the EVP that I'm using? So, when I'm recruiting someone, when I'm recruiting them, I'm not just using salary. We know that. I'm not just using career trajectory. We know that. And I'm not just using the company's vision and direction. I'm also using benefits. I'm also using all these other things. And what you're saying is I need to be using belonging?

Yes. It's there. It's not— it's you still are going to use all the other stuff around EVP that we use for EVP. You're still going to—

It's always a package, right?

Right. It is. And the better recruiters are going to take time Before they seek to close, they seek to understand, right? What are their motivators?

What are the motivations?

And what I'm suggesting is that we need to spend more time seeking to understand perhaps there's this whole piece, 51% of individuals that would really like a relationship with people in a tribe, community, their own folk.

Why not, I ask, the leader? In other words, I want to be in a team where the person I report to is the belonging. In other words, I feel like I belong with them.

That's part of it. So when people leave their manager, they cease having that with their manager. It's gone.

Right.

But the article around in HBR about burnout. It's not just the leader. It's peers. It's those work friends, those people that sustain you.

And that's the bad experience that I had with the lawyer.

Yeah. And if you don't have that, yeah, you're gone.

I had that, but I had— it was a bad experience.

And I don't want to play armchair psychologist on this, but I do think, though, that the research all points to the fact that organizations that have low belonging have a disconnected, a fractured workplace. And so, and you feel that as an individual, but the corporate outcomes are lacking as well. Collaboration is down. Innovation is down. If you want people to come to the office, if you want people to return to the office, give them the opportunity to connect and have relationships with folks at work.

But what about— and again, this isn't my skepticism. I'm definitely not disagreeing. I want to understand. And for me, my method of understanding is very Socratic, right? I seek to I seek to poke holes in the argument in order to convince myself. Right? So, take this as a— I'm very curious and I want to understand it. But what about when you— Hmm. What about when your manager leaves you? You see what I mean? So, you go into an organization. You work with someone that you really like. And you get along with and you appreciate. Maybe they even, you know, maybe they were even the reason that you, you even got to that job. Uh, they were the attractor. And then you, then you join and, and you get along with a team. You belong because your manager is kind of keeping everyone together, or at least it's what it feels like, right? And then that person leaves and a new manager comes in. Your team didn't change, but Everything changed.

Belonging became fractured. Okay, so I'm going to go back.

Got it.

In the article, one of the things that I talk about is the credit is trust credit. Exactly right. So on day one, you show up even pre-boarding.

Day one, I show up with a full trust credit account.

You have a whole account.

Yes. Yeah. This company is going to take care of me. And then, but then what you're saying is that there's these, I don't know, transactions that occur where my trust credit keeps getting lower and lower.

Yeah, boy, and they took a whack at that trust credit. There's a— they, they really sucked a lot of it away, right? And, and so it's over time that this happens. And sometimes it happens right away. People show up at work and they discover that folks the next Monday, everybody got together over the weekend and they weren't invited.

Yes, that's the 90-day, 60-90-day drop-off where you're like, you're wondering, was it us, was it them? You know, but that's definitely a problem with what they call quality of hire is, you know, to me, like this is my own personal pet peeve. I've always had a massive problem with quality of hire because it's interpreted as the quality of the candidate. It's not. It's the quality of the placement. In other words, maybe a great candidate, maybe a great job, but together, not so much. And it's not either the candidate's fault or the company's fault. It just, I guess what you're saying is that the reason is that candidate didn't belong there.

Well, yes and no. What I'm saying is, as so, and not to plug the maturity model, but folks, in there, there is a maturity model that is baked in there in the article that goes from disconnected to highly connected in the thriving workplace. In a thriving workplace, people are invited to go to coffee with their colleagues from day one, and it keeps going. People say, hey, we are going to get together after hours. Do you want to go join us? So it's—

Except when you're remote.

Well, no, you could still— no, there's still ways that you can engage individuals on a remote basis. And what I'm suggesting is maybe, Shelly, you just haven't had the opportunity to work in high belonging-based environments.

Well, I did. I did work in a high belonging-based environment where the culture shifted because of an acquisition. So So, for 3 years, same company I was with for 5 years. But for 3 years, the culture was fantastic. And it was like everything was, you know, I definitely felt like there was some belonging there even though I, as you can imagine, I'm quite quirky. There were other quirky people there and everything got along great. But then, the company as the overarching organization, the CEO retired and they acquired another organization. And instead of feeling like we acquired them, it kind of felt like they acquired us because we adopted their culture. And that was not a fit for me. So it literally changed because of a leadership change. And it wasn't right away. It took about 2 years for it to trickle down.

Well, and so one of the things that you're, what you're experiencing is the, or have experienced is the manifestation of that or the lack there— or the lack thereof, right?

There wasn't. So there was and then there wasn't. There was and then they took it away.

And so it is possible that you can't fake this, right? You can't fake— either you have it or you don't. That trust credit is there or it's gone. It's either or, right?

But you said that it depletes.

It does.

What are the warning signs? Right? Like, what did I miss? For 3 years, it was great. And then, and I'm trying not to make this personal, but I do also want to relate and maybe other people can relate to the experience. It was great. I did belong. It was definitely there. And then all of a sudden, I found it. I found that I didn't belong, but somewhere along the line, there was I belong, and then there was I belong less. And like, there must have been something. It couldn't just have shut off. I missed the warning signs. What are the warning signs?

You know, and it's kind of like the frog, boiling a frog, right?

So true. Yes. We turn the water— for those of you who are not familiar with that analogy, the frog in the boiling water is, you know, you put a frog in it. This is a horrible analogy, but you put a frog in a pot of water that's nice and warm, and the frog's enjoying the warm water, but you slowly turn up the heat, and the frog doesn't notice until it's too hot and it's scalded by the boiling water. Yeah.

It's changed. Everything's changed, but it's not aware of that incremental change.

So what are those warning— which, what should I watch out for next? What are the warning signs that trust is— that my trust credit account is depleting before it's too— before it's gone, right? So what's the in-between trust?

Do you still drop coffee? Do you still connect after hours on stuff, personal stuff? Not work. Forget the work.

No, I see what you mean.

It's those personal relationships. That start to fade. And that's actually what was in— that's what Harvard was saying in the one article. It's not so much that, okay, let's go over the spreadsheet one more time, or let's talk about one more problem with— or let's complain about John Doe because he's such a jerk. No, that's not— this is about—

so yeah, it's social, it's social time. With your work friends that isn't work time.

Correct.

Yeah.

That's— and when that goes, that's warning. When that starts to go, starts to deplete, that's the early warning indicator right there.

Okay.

And what I'm suggesting is there are a lot of folks out there, 51%, that don't feel like they have that. And so, but what does that look like? And how can you as a closer, Cassie has actually made something that she talked about, something she loved. And it's the question that's asked at the beginning. It's a recruiter can actually ask the individual, so tell me, what's it like working with your colleagues? Tell me about— I want to understand folks that you're— that you work with. Now, if you are in— if the recruiter is in a an environment where it's disconnected and the bare necessities of awareness aren't even there. I don't— I— please don't try to sell somebody on something that isn't there. Right?

Right.

But your own personal experiences of relationships that you have, and you could be remote. The cool thing is it actually is even more powerful potentially if you are remote and say, you know what, I am remote, but you know what, you know what I've been able to experience. I have found my tribe here. I found my people.

And to be clear, you're not saying that this is I'm white and there's white people here. I'm Black and there's Black people here. I'm gay and there's gay people here. This is different.

That could be that. And that could be.

And so, but what you're saying is this is not a, diversity as in the old-fashioned, you know, protected classes type of diversity. This is about regardless of what your protected class is, do you feel like you're included? Yes.

I'm going to tell you, there's somebody, she is a DE&I leader and has her own firm. But she was telling me, we were talking about relationships in work. And she said at the age of 32, she had, she had 4 kids. And her peers on a Thursday night might want to go out and have drinks. She had 4 kids, young kids. She was going home. She was doing, she was doing bath time, dinner time, homework, diaper. I mean, she was doing what what parents do. And culture. And then she couldn't find her people because they were— everybody else was interested in doing that. So this isn't about race, gender. This is about people that can relate to you. And so, if you could find those individuals within your organization, that's belonging is finding people there that can relate to you. And we could go in a whole separate conversation of, you know, how does that tie to DE and including the equity piece. That's— but what I'm looking at here is an untapped lever for recruiting and closing candidates. We can, in talking with candidates, If we take the time and seek to understand what relationships matter to them, what dynamics around community and tribe mean to them, and can convey to them that, yes, we can help you with your career growth. You know, the manager is great, that we are doing some cool things with our technology. Or product offering, whatever, whatever the case might be, all those levers that we historically use. Do you want an unfair disadvantage? Hit them where it— where half the candidates, half those that are open to leave.

I— gosh, this is— I get it. You've sold me on the idea. First of all, I understand clearly that belonging is important. But I still— you've sold me on the idea that we should consider this. I just don't know how we can weave this into the interview process or whatever it is. Are we sourcing for— first of all, are we sourcing for belonging? Or are we recruiting for belonging?

You could do that too.

Okay, so I don't even wanna go into sourcing yet. Let's close the loop on recruiting. When we're recruiting, when we're interviewing candidates or we're having that initial, you know, there's, it depends on your organization. Some organizations will have like a scoping call with a candidate where they're like, all right, is this even gonna be a fit before they even apply? Other organizations just, you know, don't interview until they apply. But whatever it is, you have this call, you have this initial call with your candidate. Are you really in a position to be a PhD in psychology and understand how they feel about belonging?

So, you can actually— no, you're not going to be that PhD. However, you can say a really good question that all recruiters should be asking anyway.

Okay, here we go.

Is what are you motivated in? What motivates you? What are you looking for? Okay, I'm sure they're going to be the script answers. Well, I want an opportunity where I can prove myself and I want, you know, You're going to hear that. We all have, right?

Yeah, yeah. I want more money. I want a better team. I want better culture. I want better— there's a lot of— I hate to say it, but there's a lot of rote answers to that that people are even trained on.

Yes, they are. But if you could actually ask questions about, so tell me about the type of teams where you thrive.

Right. Behavioral questions.

Yeah, yeah. Tell me about it.

Situational, behavioral.

Yeah, yeah. And just— and it doesn't— you don't have to spend an hour with them on that. But just to understand that, because then when you come back and close, you share an experience that directly relates to that. Yeah, you could talk about your own experiences around psychological safety. You could talk about your own relationships that you have fostered, that you've cultivated with individuals in the organization. And you're, you know, tell me, you could tell them about your bestie at work. Those are things that, that Gen Z are craving.

Okay. All right. Now, is there room at all for people that just want to show up to work and get a paycheck?

There is. And you know what? 49%.

Okay. They're there. Okay.

They're real.

All right.

And you're— and I'm not saying—

In other words, what you're saying is that 49%, this whole issue, not issue, but this whole concept of belonging is not necessarily going to influence their decision to take the job. Right. Okay.

What I'm suggesting is I want to improve my odds.

I got you now. Okay. So, for the 49%, use whatever worked already. But if you want to increase your odds of doing a better job of recruiting, then we address as, "I understand now." And then we have to— so we have to identify, "Okay, I get it." We have to identify what their belong— if they have a belonging need. If so, then what their belonging need is. And then somehow figure out a way to communicate that without being deathly obvious. Like, "Oh, you like soccer. We love soccer." You know, like that's too cheesy, right? Too campy for that. Okay. So who's doing this well? Can you share?

So they're— all right. Everybody says that they're doing it well.

Right?

Every— everybody says that they're doing it well.

Who's doing it except— of all the ones that are doing it really well, who's doing it so exceptionally well that they should be written a book about?

Which, by the way, I'm writing a book on it. Just saying.

See, I just fed you that one right there.

There you go.

Lob them up and you just hit them home.

That's right. That's— let's go back to one on how companies scale more mindfully. That's a separate conversation.

But the button— hold on, I got to find the eject button. Never mind.

In all seriousness, I love you, Shelley. In all seriousness, Glassdoor does a pretty good job of, if you look at those that are 4.4 and higher, what you'll find. And so this is, you did say something earlier though, you used the word culture. This is part of culture, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I have a, I have a, a dear friend that used to work with my company, was part of my company actually when I was while I was still running Hireforest back in the day. And she was part of the organization who literally is a PhD in organizational culture, wrote the book, goes around all over the world teaching organizational culture. And I'll tell you that one of the biggest things— and she was— not that this is terribly relevant, but it does explain a little bit. She's a member of the LGBT community who's been a member of that community openly for a very, very long time since before it was even accepted. So, she's gone through a lot of difficult environments where being a woman married to another woman was like, oh, how can you know? So, she has a lot of experience with this. And I can tell you that the biggest lesson that I learned from her is that there is no such thing as organizational culture. Subcultures inside of the organization.

Micro and then— Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It could be. Now, obviously, you know that there's a team culture, right? That's obvious. But the team culture should align with kind of the larger organizational culture that is part of that department. But she was telling me that, you know, like the research organization and the sales organization, it can be completely wildly different. So I think if you're if you are intending to recruit based on culture, the challenge is that you have to understand the culture of that team, which is— that's a big ask.

It might be a micro, to your point. Yes, a company. And I've been in environments that have really high Glassdoor scores. But there are some cultures that are cringeworthy.

Or conversely, companies that have, right, that are known to be like sweatshops or whatever. And then they have teams that people are, you know, but you know what though? I mean, so as, as a candidate, this is a question that I asked. I probably shouldn't have, but it is a question that I asked. Uh, the question was, how many people have left this department, um, unexpectedly? Like not been fired or laid off. I'm not looking for any proprietary, whatever, but how many people have actually like bailed out on this department? In the last year? And the reason I ask that is because I'm sensitive to— by the way, this is a recruiter talking to a hiring manager, right? Not a candidate interviewing. I don't know if I would have the cojones to ask that as a candidate interviewing for the job. But I'm asking the hire— I'm trying to— when I establish the conversation with the hiring manager, one of the things that I like to do is to be able to sell the manager in these 3 areas that I— I'm sure you probably wrote the book on this. But the 3 areas are like macro. Okay, I know what the comp— I know how to sell the company. I know the company pitch. We are the employer of choice in the blah, blah, blah, whatever. I know that. And most recruiters know that because it's part of like when people ask you what's great about your company, etc. The second level though is connecting the job to the success of the organization. In other words, how does this job, Eric, that I'm offering to present you for a candidacy for, how does this job contribute directly to this organization's success? Because that aligns your vision of being successful with the vision of the company being successful. And it doesn't matter what the job is. Every job, any job, if a company is paying you money, there's a reason why they're paying you money. So there's a reason they need that. So, there's a reason that it aligns to success. But the third one is this exactly. I want to be able to sell that manager to the candidate. And I ask about a couple of things. One of them is, what makes you a great manager?

Do you—

it could be, are you known to be the kingmaker? You know, you're the manager whose people get promoted a lot. Are you known to be a good coach? Are you, you know, a celebrity in the field? Are you an innovator? Like, what is your attraction that I can tell people, hey, this manager is really good at, right? And then the other question is how many people have just, you know, basically ghosted this department?

Bailed on. Yeah. You know, so, um, the manager, the frontline manager is the most important role in any organization.

No, it's not. It's the recruiter.

And there are different archetypes for managers.

Yeah, right.

And as you just mentioned, I mean, there are different archetypes, right?

Are you a mentor? Are you a leader? Are you a manager?

I do like to ask, yeah, that I mean, the question, why should somebody work for you? I'll be as blunt as that. Why would, why would anybody want, why would they choose you over anybody else?

Kind of like, why would they choose this company over the three, right? Why would you choose my company over any other? Why this job over any other? And why this manager over every other?

Yeah. And so absolutely. But you can actually go one step further. What are your, what do your team members say about you?

That's the question. Interestingly enough, that Cassie just posted. Do you ask people they— so do you ask people they coach, do you ask the manager's direct reports what the manager is good at?

Cassie's absolutely right. I mean, I— so just to bring this back to the notion of the why, right? It's the stories that we tell from not the manager, but from people that work for the manager. Those stories about them as a human. We spend so much time closing on black and white things, things that are in print, things that are on the website, things that are on the career site, right? We close on that stuff and we're really good at it. We're really good about, hey, the last— the reason this job is open, because the last person was promoted and, and, you know, and all, all those, right? But to actually have, as Cassie, if, if you, if you can actually put voice to what it's like to be in a part of that team, to be part of that community, you are, you are Somebody then not only can see themselves there and doing the work, as you said, you know, how is it connected to success?

Yep.

But they actually could start to feel that connection with individuals there. And that gives— that will give an advantage to you when it comes time to close.

Do you coach the candidate, or should you coach the candidate on asking behavioral questions themselves to identify belonging? In other words, you know, some— this could go either way. Some recruiters coach candidates through the interview process and some don't. There's the camp of, well, part of the interview process is to determine whether or not they're a good candidate. So, I'm not going to give them a leg up. And part of it is, well, I know my organization. So, I'm going to give them a leg up because I've, you know, it's part of my job. But whichever camp you're on, The question is, for those that are in the, I would like to coach my candidates better, would you coach the candidate on asking belonging questions? And if so, what would that be?

Great question and very simple. Yes. So the question I would encourage you to ask, so I flat out say, I would encourage you to ask about tribes. I would encourage you to ask, tell me about your people there.

Tell me about your people, your team, your peeps.

Yeah, your team.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

What are they like? What do they do? How do they— I mean, tell me about them. And that might not come out. I mean, will the manager—

I mean, I think that's absolutely— yeah. Tell me about the people I'm going to be working with. Hey, I'm going to work for you, but I also am going to work with the people that report to you. So tell me about What is your team like? How do they like to work? What's their work style? Where do they do, you know, do they do anything social? And by the way, I would say that if you're a social person that likes to socialize, then you would ask that. But if you're not a social person that likes to socialize, maybe you're the kind of person whose, you know, tribe is more into, you know, solving puzzles or whatever. But like, for example, this is an example for me is this company that I joined had a Slack channel. For chess competition in the organization. So there literally was a company chess club and anyone could join. And I thought, oh, this is fun because my son plays chess and I would pretend to be a chess player. So I joined the channel and I really felt like these are people— everybody, everybody in that channel was somebody that worked outside of my— like, I would never encounter them for work purposes. All right. None of them were having anything to do with magic.

This is where people find their tribe.

So I was with a bunch of chess geeks.

Yes. This is exactly where people find how they could envision themselves there. This is exact. So it's, and again, we, you mentioned earlier on DE&IB, right? So is there, is it, is it an ERG for chess players? An ERG for single parents, an ERG for musicians so that they can like jam together.

So timeout, ERG is an employee resource group, which is like a support group for— go ahead.

Yeah. But, and what you're calling out is, so yes, it is that, but it's also what are those really specific things that you value.

Like, do you have a whiskey drinkers club?

Yeah. I mean, I just had a whiskey shirt on.

Do you have a soccer fan club?

But yes. And that's— and I'm curious, what do people do internally to come together? Slack is a great place. I mean, I would encourage them to ask about Slack or Teams or—

Yeah, whatever the chat channel is.

Whatever tooling they have. And actually, you could actually ask the candidate that, you know, that you could actually, without being armchair psychologist, is, hey, just out of curiosity, did your last organization— do you have anything in Slack or Teams where, for—

not, not about your job? No, your people at work? Yeah, right.

This whole thing is not about— when I talk about belonging, I'm not talking about a bitch fest because somebody decided— I'm talking about where you actually— places that fuel you.

At your last job or your current job, what made you feel like you belonged there? And then try to— okay, cool. I like that. Like that. What about— so can we go back to remote?

Sure.

Um, I mean, look, I've been doing— I've been working remotely since 1999 when I, when I first started at Cisco. And of course, you know, Cisco, the internet, right? So it's been, you know, 24 or 25, actually 25 years working remotely. I've had jobs where I was at Pfizer for 5 years and I needed to go into the office there a couple days a week. So that would technically be hybrid. Um, there was some remote work, you know, just laptop back and forth, but I've been remote for most of my career. But for a lot of people, this is a new concept that, that's kind of up in a post-COVID world where remote or hybrid or work from home has been introduced for certain jobs and maybe not all jobs, but how do we, how do we foster, but so belonging in a remote world. It's kind of, it's a lot harder to detect, don't you think? What's success? How do you ensure success in a remote-first environment when you're trying to establish those belonging attraction? We're talking about talent attraction. You're trying to attract candidates that are, that will be successful in your tribes, but you're remote.

So the good news is, the technology that has enabled us to be remote has also made it possible for us to connect in other ways.

But what if you don't know that? Like, for example, I'm the recruiter, right? I'm the recruiter, and I have no idea that there's a soccer fan club on Slack.

So, and I think that's part of— so let's take a step back. We talked about earlier that if it's a disconnected organization, it's kind of hard to authentically sell belonging.

What you don't know. It's not that they don't have it. It's that you don't know it.

If you're disconnected. So it's, this is where this is, this is an opportunity for us as a function to step up and actually become aware of what that looks like.

Gotcha.

right? It's incumbent on us because then we have the ability to close on things that matter to these individuals as people, as humans, not just somebody that is going to do a job. And so we— it does, it does. It's incumbent on us to dig a little deeper and be that much more aware of our own organization, right? And sure, I mean, am I Do I have a chessboard? Yes. Have I— I haven't played chess in 20 years. Right. But it'd be interesting to know. I mean, again, when you ask somebody, going back to the question, what types of activities, what type of clubs, what types of things did you find joy in? I need to know enough about my organization to know whether or not that's even happening.

Okay, okay. So take the time to find out where, if, if, where, and how. If it's happening, where it's happening, how it's happening. And so it's kind of your job to, as you're learning to sell the company, as you're learning to pitch the EVP of the company, why we're a good employer, why is this a good job, um, also ask around. I mean, I guess the same thing goes back to the hiring manager. You could ask the hiring manager, how does your team interact outside of the workplace, or what do they do? Okay, I gotcha. I gotcha.

It is those social connections, those social connections, um, that increase the likelihood of retention.

And that's the quality hire thing that we were talking about before, right? So the, the fact that I despise the whole concept of, of quality of hire because it's such a misleading name that makes it feel like we're measuring the candidate, right? Like, is Shelly a good quality person versus is matching Shelly with this company a good quality hire? The retention is one of the most commonly accepted ways to measure it. Yeah.

So there's a tendency, people have a tendency to go the extra mile for people that they care about. They will, they will.

I'm shocked.

Right? Surprise, right? And that's, and that's, and that's one. And that's, so that's a byproduct at a corporate manifestation of belonging is productivity. It's retention. It's those things. So there are financial reasons why companies ought to be doing this. Increase collaboration, increase innovation.

And you have an article that you linked in one of those articles that you sent me, by the way. So let me put this up here again. The article is this. But if you go to that, you'll see links to the others, which one of them is measuring.

Yeah, measuring. There's another one, why belonging to begin with, right? That's— you might want to start there.

Start there.

Um, but I, I would like to— if we could come back to something that you mentioned, and that is, what about remote, right? Um, I— this is where it would be nice to have everybody to be able to see, everybody who's listening, uh, to see their faces, because I would want to do show of hands.

It's just Cassie and Nick, that's it. Just—

okay, so Cassie, Nick, question for you too. Cocktail parties, remote virtual cocktail parties. We've done them, right? Pandemic is like how we get together. Show up with something, whether it be Hint or, you know what, something, right? Coffee, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah. At my last company, they sent a, um, you know how you could do DoorDash?

Yeah.

Um, it was like, it was, it was a company specifically, they, they work with liquor stores and they send a cocktail package.

Yeah.

That is you, you sign up for which cocktail you want. You can even sign up for a non-alcoholic cocktail. And then you get this kind of bartending kit with the, with the glass and the package and the, you know, and the, and the serving. And then you actually get together on a Zoom call, uh, by the way. Then the delivery is a DoorDash type of driver, but they check your ID and everything, so it's all legit and above board. Um, and you have like a cocktail hour. But in fact, part of the cocktail hour was at the beginning of it there was a bartender that actually showed us how to make the cocktail. And then we all made our cocktail, and then we hung— and then he left, and then we all hung out and, you know, had our cocktail for half an hour.

I'm gonna go one step further than that though. So yes, I—

we—

those are great, and you could do the barista type of thing as well. Yeah, you could do all that. But, um, what about, um, so I, I listened— I consume books books, a lot of books. Um, that's my, that's my thing. Audible and I have a relationship.

Okay. All right.

Okay. But book clubs, you can do that virtually.

All right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So a lot of the things that people do anyways, you could actually do, uh, what— when you come together, you could do virtually. I've actually seen where people go into the kitchen and they cook together. They bring their device in and they go into their kitchen. By the way, one of the stickiest things that teams could do is have dinner at somebody's house. Now, that's if you want a really something really great for a tight relationship with your team, have dinner with them, break bread together with them. But do it. So there are many things that you would traditionally do in person that you could, you could still do because of this technology that we have.

But the key here really is to, as a recruiter, you need to understand or figure out or find out what those things are that are available. And then you try to make that map, just like you're matching the job skills and you're matching the motivation. This is kind of another angle of maybe a component of motivation, actually, but you're matching that motivation with belonging. Um, okay, so last question, and this is, this is the, this is the doozy that I, that I, when you first introduced this topic to me via email, um, and it's the one that I wrote back to you and I said that, um, that sourcing is tricky, right? So going back to the sourcing question, you highlight in the article the need for recruiters to target candidates from companies with low belonging maturity. In other words, and I'm not gonna share why I was, what I objected to.

It was visceral. It was a, yeah, you had a strong reaction.

I did have a strong reaction to it. But reserving my judgment because this is your idea, can you tell us a little bit about that? How do we source candidates based on belonging?

So there are organizations out there.

What do you look for?

That are frankly toxic.

And they may be known. It might be—

they may be known.

Or you might, you know, read about— so you're saying maybe kind of like troll Glassdoor and the other—

LinkedIn. You could, I mean, take a look at LinkedIn. And if you see numbers, If you take a look at number of hires as opposed to growth, you know, if they're just perpetually hiring just to backfill, that says something.

Yeah. So, so, so in other words, the statistical analysis part of me is like, all right, look for organizations that have a much higher turnover rate for the same job than others. Similar jobs, right? Like you're, let's say baristas. Organization A has 40% turnover for baristas and organization B has 120% turnover, involuntary turnover for baristas, then, you know, you got to target that company because obviously something's— something—

You do that anyways, right? I mean, this is going to sound horrible, but that's— I mean, a company announces a downsizing. What do we do?

Well, downsizing is not belonging. I mean, but I see what you're saying. Yeah.

So, I mean, you— That's right. People an opportunity is what we're doing, right? That's right.

And that's why I got over my visceral reaction.

Yeah.

Because I thought to myself, I'm still just giving somebody an option. It's the, it's the original, well, all reserve job. It's so, I guess you're saying look for the statistical deviations in turnover, look for the, the, the employee sentiment reviews and things like that. Anything else?

So let— I mean, you said Glassdoor, right? I mean, that's a real— and there are other platforms out there wherever you are in the world, right? But take a look at organization, take a look at where there is churn. I would also, though, I mean, coming from ERE, I— there was a solution there. I'm not going to pitch anybody, but it was an employee referral. Solution. And it's going back to those individuals who you just hired. Talk to the individuals and seek employer referrals directly from those individuals that you just hired.

That's always a good technique. But, but you're saying is if you identify that the belonging is there, yes, they missed it. And now they have it. Well, then part of it is go back to the people they knew. And that's the trigger.

That's the authentic self.

Okay.

They could speak to it for themselves.

So how early do we pitch this? I mean, from a sourcing point of view, now we're in my wheelhouse. From a sourcing point of view, I have a whole sequence of campaign triggers. And for example, I'll do 7 points of personalization and 7 different outreach. I personalize 7 different ways and I touch the candidate 7 different times in different ways like, you know, email and so on. I really never advocate, never advocate that on the first contact, whatever that be, text, email, call, I don't advocate that on that message you include any major red flags that would indicate that it's not a match. In other words, that's not a good time to talk about salary. It's not a good time talk about, and I think belonging is one of those. Like, it's not— it's too early when you're reaching out to someone just to see if they might potentially be interested. Um, it's too early to get into anything that's too lengthy, right? So at least for me, now you can disagree with that and that's fine. Where do we introduce this? Where do we pitch belonging in that sequence? Do you say first contact, or is it when they reply, then you tell me about your company, then you're interested? Where, where is the appropriate place?

So, Shelly, I don't think that it's— I think it's early on, but it's very early on, like, but it's contact. It's— but it's not— you're not pitching belonging. You're pitching your sense of belonging. Why do you feel like you belong? Why did that employee that reports in that one team— why does she— why does he feel like he belongs? So you could literally say, Exactly. Yeah. So Nick, you're absolutely right. They know, they know when you, I mean, they hear it in your voice, but if you could articulate for Jane Doe or you say for yourself, you know what? I found my, I found my tribe.

Okay.

Right. That's, you don't need to say anything else.

So you could do, you could do that in the first outreach.

Yes. You, yes. So here's what you talk about, the opportunity. But I said, I got to tell you, I found my tribe here. And better than that, I also get to do the magic that I love to do, my job. So it's like, and so again, it's the additive. It's that you're serving up. Sure. It's that 49% that we've historically closed on. You're serving up though, a whole new level of of intimacy with that candidate that they historically don't get.

Okay.

And so, Cassie, you know, it's, you know, years ago, I gave a presentation in Singapore on sourcing and using social media to identify interests and then to help close them. And now there are technologies out there that will scrape for this. But I do think though that, I mean, you're absolutely on to something. I think that might be in a subsequent conversation with them. Once, as you're getting to know them, I had a— so I saw your last point there. Cassie, there's a guy that I've hired a couple of— I've been blessed to work with him a couple of times. He's a semi-pro barbecuer. And this guy, his chicken is— his jam is chicken. And I found out about this early on. I let the hiring manager know that this guy was a semi-pro barbecuer. He said, hold on a second. He got somebody in that company who was a professional judge at barbecue events on the call as a surprise guest on the interview.

Nice.

And it was like, it immediately, like, just, it was a sucker close. And yeah, right. But, and so you were— that, that's what it was, right? And And that's not necessarily the thing on belonging, but immediately, he was like, "Oh, well, all right. You know, these are my people." That's awesome.

That's awesome. All right. Well, let's see. So, we talked about a lot of the different parts of it. And this is a great conversation. I think people should, you know, definitely go check out your 3 articles. That are connected. Let me drop that in one more time there. This is it. This is the article. This will take you to Eric's LinkedIn post, and there's links to the other ones there. As we leave, and thank you for staying a little bit longer with us, as we leave, I have two questions that I ask everybody. I didn't get a chance to ask you this last time because you were a member of a panel, so we didn't really get to it. But I definitely want to ask this time. Who should be our next guest? You could just recommend it. That doesn't mean they're going to accept. I might invite them and they may not accept. But who do you think I should invite?

Have you had, uh, Jackie Clayton on?

A long time ago. Um, it's— she's due for a— yeah, you know, this show's been on for a really long time. It started during the shutdown in the pandemic. That's how long it's been around. So it's, you know what, I'm going to reach out because even if it's been a while, but yeah, this, let's do that. Jackie Clayton. All right. And then the last thing is related or not to what we talked about today, I like to leave people with a thought for them to think about for themselves. I, I fancy myself as a thought provoker, not a thought leader, but a thought provoker. So ask us a question for us to mull over the weekend.

Okay. I geek out on HR tech. I love it. I love it. However, going back to what I mentioned in Singapore, that, that when I was— it was, I think it was a Boston Sourcing Summit. My question is, how can we be more authentically human? Okay, in our job, in what we do, in how we approach—

you give us something a little bit deeper, because that's just too— okay, run that by me. How can we be more authentically human?

The most disruptive thing we could be is a person, human. But there's some great technology out there that do the outreaches for you. Okay, there's great technology out there that would augment what we do. But use that technology to free you up to be more human. And if that's— and if you're gonna do that, what does that mean? How can you use that time? I mean, you've just been given more time because of technology. How can you use that to be more human? More human?

Okay.

Because going back to the notion on belonging, I, if I can connect with somebody, you know, Nick said, you know, the candidates hear it. If I could be more human, more vulnerable, more authentic, more uniquely human, I, I, maybe I'm goofy, but I, candidates want to hear that. They don't want to engage yet with one more bot.

No, I get it. So yeah, the question that stands is how can you be, how can you be more human? Okay. All right. That's huge. All right, well, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate this. I— please check out his articles. And, um, if you have an opinion on this and you want to be on the show, would love to have you back. Next week, our guest is going to be Neil Patel, so stay tuned. And until then, be kind