Pathways to employment: Creating opportunity for the marginalised | with Siobhan Sweeney & Richard Bradley

Welcome everybody. My name is Johnny Campbell. I am the host of Today's Shortlist, our weekly podcast and live show that discusses all things talent and talent acquisition and hiring in the world today, with a heavy focus on diversity and inclusion. So. So welcome to Today's show. Today's show is episode 60. We've hit the 60 mark. Thanks for joining us on the last 59 episodes. If it's your first episode, you're very welcome. You can find out more about our previous 59 and delve into our inexperience in the first couple of episodes onto hopefully some amazing chats over the course of the last 59 shows by going to socialtalent.com the shortlist. If you're listening to the podcast, welcome. You can pause me. You might be listening to me at 1.5 speed or whatever, but this is also a live broadcast that goes out on LinkedIn and YouTube at 4 o' clock Irish time every Wednesday. That's 11am in the US on the east coast and 8am on the west coast. So do join us because if you're listening live, we always welcome your comments, thoughts, ideas, whatever you want to jump in, just use the chat on YouTube or my LinkedIn profile, ohnycampbell, and you'll be able to join us there. What are we going to be discussing today in episode 60? Well, we're going to be discussing pathways to employment. How do you create opportunity for those in society who are the most marginalized? And there's still a huge amount of work to be done, of course, when it comes to truly embedding a diverse, equitable and inclusive model into the workplace. And every day we hear stories of discrimination. We've heard them on this show when it comes to people who are marginalized, particularly when it comes to trying to find and build careers. And the data for those who are more marginal, the most marginalized in terms of their employment in society is pretty dismal, to be honest with you. Barriers exist at every turn for those who don't fit the status quo. Even in companies that have embraced DEI initiatives and have it plastered all over their websites to a lot of degrees, More change is still needed. And that's why we're delighted today to shine a spotlight on people who are determined to make a difference, not just supporting efforts, not just saying that they're trying to be more inclusive and diverse, but literally creating opportunities for individuals who are finding it the most difficult to find employment, which is a route to income, which is a route to pretty much everything else that somebody might want to do in their lives. Firstly, joining us today we have Siobhan Sweeney. She's the Director of Development, Inclusion and Diversity at the Open Doors Initiative, which is an organization based in Ireland dedicated to creating opportunities for marginalized individuals, particularly refugees, non native English speakers, young people with educational barriers and people with disabilities through training, education and employment. And we also welcome Richard Bradley. He's the Managing Director in the UK and Ireland at the renowned recruitment company Kelly Services, who has teamed up with Social Talent and Open Doors to try and launch an initiative to train people in sourcing and provide an opportunity for employment. But before we get to all of that, welcome both of you, I'm going to hand over to you first, Siobhan, tell us about yourself, tell us about Open Doors and tell us about how you got there.

Thanks so much Jonny. I'm absolutely delighted to be here chatting to you both this afternoon. So thank you for having me on the show. And I guess in terms of my career and to give you a whistle stop tour, I worked in one of the largest banks in Ireland for the last 14, nearly 15 years called Allied Irish bank and where I started my career and would have been involved in large change transformation projects. And the last role that I held was head of diversity and inclusion for the group. So over 10,000 staff based in Ireland, the UK, the US and really focusing on what diversity and inclusion means for the bank and how we can bring that to life and really make sure that there's a real sense of belonging within the organization. In 2019 then I started working with the Open Doors Initiative to set it up. It's a non for profit CLG. We started with 14 companies supporting the work that we do. And I am proud to say that today we have announced that we have over 100 members on board supporting everything that you talked about there, Johnny, in terms of helping people from marginalized groups get into employment. We work with a variety of companies as well like yourselves, many multinational, semi state organizations that really have the ethos and want to do a lot when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. And my role I guess involves working with the companies and working with participants and helping participants on a day to day basis get into employment or at least give them the tools and the skills and the education to make sure that they can get there.

Siobhan, thank you. And Richard, maybe you can explain and get a little bit of context to Kelly Services and your particular role and how you are, how and why you're so passionate around the area of creating pathways to employment.

Yeah, thanks. Johnny? Yeah. I'm Richard Bradley. I'm the managing director for Kelly Services staffing business in the UK and Ireland and I also oversee the RPO business that we have in emea. Why am I passionate about this? I think firstly, it's the right thing to do. I'm not the brightest, brightest star in the galaxy and I managed to overcome a lot of those barriers that were there and I've managed to do well for myself. I have triplet boys, two of whom have autism, and I do worry about their opportunity to access the workplace in the future. So, you know, as much as I believe that I have a burning desire to do things for the right reasons, there's also a lot of personal bias there. I think the other thing that's been really good and particularly inspiring and one of the reasons I joined Kelly is there's always been a desire to do the right thing. And particularly in the US we've got a equity of work program that's been spearheaded by Peter Quigley, who's our CEO. And a success story for somebody who was a single parent, come from a single parent family and has risen the way through the ranks and has had to suffer some real hardship. And I think we can all see that there are artificial barriers that are there that we are creating that don't need to be there. We're struggling to find great talent and I think there's some great talent out there that gets overseen and I think for me that's a crime and we've got to do something about it. And I'm lucky that there are a few other like minded individuals out there like Siobhan and, and Johnny.

I'm really excited for the chat we're going to have today. Welcome you both. I know you're both super passionate about this and I'm excited to talk more about our project. But let's start as we always do, with some news. So the first piece I want to kind of chat with you both about is this article that we're appeared in HBO or Harvard Business Review and it's entitled Research what Inclusive Companies have in Common by J. Ye Cheng and Boris Groysberg. So that's research what inclusive companies have in common. And we'll share the link live on YouTube and LinkedIn. But we'll also put it in the show notes of the podcast. I do recommend you check it out. I read through this. It's a big, it's a bit of a big read, right? But the survey of 19,000 HBO readers and they analyzed, they asked the readers about the level of inclusivity and diversity in their organizations. And they also asked them to rank the organization on nine different cultural aspects to see how they were prioritized. And they ran and crunched the numbers and what they came up with was the conclusion that inclusive organizations are most likely are the one strongest corridor was that they're more likely to have a learning oriented culture. There's a lot more in this than that, but I wanted just to stop there and get your both of your senses on that. Siobhan, first up for yourself, having led DNI at a group level for a large bank in Ireland, does this research surprise you? Does it run in parallel with what you experience yourself or what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think that's really, I guess interesting that that point has come up. I have recently just finished a master's in organizational psych and behavior in DCU as well. My master's was about diversity and inclusion. Altruism or selfishness? Why do companies engage in diversity and inclusion strategies? And one of the big themes I guess that came up for me was around the education piece. A lot of companies felt and a lot of staff within those companies felt that the education was missing, that there was people within the company that wanted to do something in the space of DEI or but they didn't actually know how to go about doing it. So it doesn't surprise me at all. I think that there is a lot of companies talking about this agenda. There's a lot of companies talking about culture within their organizations, but sometimes they don't know how to go about it. And that's where I find a lot of my work is people have the right intentions but sometimes they don't know where to start or they might bite off too much and then not deliver on anything. And I think that definitely when it comes to education, education is power. And the more educated we can make and awareness we give to our staff, the better they are and the more informed they are to do their job to the best of their abilities and also to make sure that people feel that sense of inclusion on a day to day basis. I have definitely seen it through chats that I've done through different meetings that I've gone into and like done a blue sky thinking around a number of different topics on especially when it comes to their employee resource groups or their networks and look at well, what education can we do in this space or if it's their talent acquisition teams. But where are you sourcing your talent? Where are you going out to for diverse hires So I think that there's so much that we can do in that space that organizations aren't doing at the moment. And I don't think that they aren't doing it for the right reasons. I think that sometimes people can be so busy and caught up in the day to day hustle and bustle of their roles that sometimes we forget to think outside of the box and actually step into other people's shoes and look at the world around us to see what is best in class and what are other people actually doing in this space.

Yeah, I think you're right and some great comments there. And thanks for pointing at the research background you have as well. I think that's really informs a lot of the kind of perspective you have. And I know I looked at this and when I thought deeply about it and more deeply about it isn't just about, you know, on a surface level is the organization willing to do learning? You know, it's the cultural aspect as well. I think Siobhan, which is the I got out of this was the fact that, you know, they experiment more. There's a kind of, not just an acceptance but an expectation of trial and error. You know, learning culture isn't just about do we do learning. It's a cultural thing about an attitude to experimentation that leaders take the time to make space for learning for themselves, lead by example and show others all these things. And I have, I'll ask you, Richard, if you, you know, what your thoughts on this are next. But like I have tons of experience with organizations that we work with because we're a learning platform who are 100% committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, but don't have time to do training. I don't mean training in diversity, I mean just training because they don't have a learning culture. And I read this and went, ah, and I see the connection. I see that that is going to be an obstacle according to the research here in actually achieving really good outcomes. Richard, what do you think about this?

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really, I think it's a really interesting topic. You know, for me, if you look at the correlation between organizations that have a strong learning and development culture, they hire people that are curious by nature. So I think some of the stuff that you're seeing coming through this report is it's really interesting that what, what they're saying is companies that invest in their people and give people the opportunity to learn and develop and have that culture by nature are more curious, more open minded perhaps, and therefore Perhaps that it enables people to, to be more open to that level of inclusion. One of the things that really resonates with me that Siobhan talked about is that difference between diversity and inclusion. And there is a real difference. And I'm stealing this. Somebody told me this once at a conference and I love the analogy. Diversity is making sure that everybody gets invited to the party. Inclusion is making sure that everybody gets to dance. And I love that analogy because, you know, Johnny and Siobhan, you both talked about companies are committed, they're prepared to invest. But actually are they prepared to do more than the tick box exercise and actually start to include people and actually think about what is the effort that it's going to take beyond the we want to do the right thing and not many people out there want to do the wrong thing, but it's the energy and the effort that it takes to do the right thing. And I think that ties in nicely with that article, Johnny, where people are saying, you know, if you're prepared to invest in time, education and timing and that type of investment in your people, then you are likely to get that type of investment in your culture and the outcomes of your people.

And I think just to add to that point as well, Richard, that you were making there in terms of that analogy that you talked about in terms of diversity and inclusion, I've also heard as well, like belonging to. When it comes to belonging, it's allowing people to pick the music at the dance. And I think that I'm sure there's going to be another one as well. So you. But I think that in terms of that it's when we think about diversity and I know even the recruitment, the recruitment end of things, when people ask me about diverse hires and even when we read it through the different reports that exist, PwC, McKinsey, the Deloitte's, and they talk about innovation, growth, higher revenues when you have diverse employees. But what about when all these diverse, when this diversity comes together within an organization, are our leaders trained? Are leaders trained and are they upskilled to be able to different, to be able to handle the different cultural conversations that you're going to have in the room? Because if you don't have that training and if people aren't equipped, equipped to deal with different backgrounds, different challenges that people have gone through, you're not setting yourself up for success. So it's great when you look at all of these articles and they tell you all of the positives around diversity. Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. But when you delve into, I guess the research and the academic, the more academic articles behind it, you will see the negatives as well. If there is improper education, training and awareness there, Jonny. And I think that's where, I guess there isn't always a focus in terms of organizations having got to think about, okay, we're going to hire all these people in, well, are we making sure that our leaders are all trained and our managers are trained and know how to deal and have the skills to have difficult conversations if they arise? And not only that, but are we bringing the people within our organization on this journey with us? So I think that when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, it is very much a journey and you have to start somewhere. I absolutely think that you do have to start somewhere. But it's really important that you bring the workforce on that journey with you, whether it's a chief diversity officer, somebody that you have leaving idleness, or your employee resource groups that are leading this agenda that, that you talk to your staff and you let them know what you're doing and what your purpose and what your North Star is of this agenda. I just, I think that's absolutely vital that people aren't, I guess people aren't wondering what the hell is going on here now, what's happening on floor.

I want to take that into our next news article because I think it goes down to the level of the individual. And this is a really good post from post by Refinery29 on their blog by Wendy Liu and Kelly Dawson. And it's my disability is obvious in job interviews. Is that a bad thing? Subtitle being the interview process can be a disability minefield. And this is like to your point, Siobhan, around the training for the managers and the leaders. Yes, in managing the teams that, you know, diverse teams are going to hire for. But this article highlighted, it tells the story of somebody who has had a tracheotomy and has a tube in their neck and need that permanently there. And interviewing as a, as a potential reporter, managing social media stuff, you know, from an office based job and being asked, you know, I think the reporter said that she was asked, she or he was asked, you know, what's it like during the winter for her? Does she have any problems with the tracheotomy? I kind of go like, what's that got to do with doing the job? And it threw her and she didn't get the, didn't get the job in the end and totally threw off the next three interviews and all these things. But it was A great perspective of one person's difficult journey to get a job and the kind of stuff they have to deal with, which may not come from a bad place. I'm not saying that the interviewer was trying to trick her or maybe they were just intrigued, but it's the kind of inappropriate behaviors because somebody hasn't had the right training. Is this speaking with folks that you deal with day to day? Siobhan, is this quite typical of the experience of some, somebody, let's say somebody particularly with disabilities, when they interview for jobs?

Yeah, it is. And you know what, when I hear these stories all the time, like, I still get like goosebumps when I hear them. I know, Richard, you talked about your own personal experience with your sons, but I've had, in terms of my own health, I've had a number of things go wrong in terms of my health. And I ended up with two kidney, two kidney failures, two catheter bags for over a year, a blood transfusion. And that's only part of, I guess, my story. But it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me that people are getting asked those questions. And I don't think it, I guess even on a day to day basis, when I was living with my own experience, I was asked questions. And it doesn't define you or it doesn't define your ability in terms of what you can achieve. So, yeah, it is, it's really hard when you hear participants talking about their experience and what they've encountered by professionals and sometimes quite senior professionals in organizations and getting asked questions that have absolutely nothing got to do with their, nothing got to do with their role whatsoever. I was actually, I was looking at just some statistics here before I came onto this call and it was around the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission stating that 35% of their complaints were made under the Employment equality Act between 1998 and 2015. Like 35%. And that was all got to do around discrimination to people's disabilities. Like it's dark that that can still go on in society that like in 2021, that we're still getting those questions. But I think that it, it all comes back to that first conversation that we were having around education. And the more educated that we can get, the more that we can get in there to hr, the talent acquisition teams, the more that we can get to job vacancies where you're, where you're putting an ad up that you have the likes of, we're an inclusive company, let us know if you need reasonable accommodation. It has to start from the very, very start almost when you're doing that job analysis and you're getting your job spec out there, that's where we really have to make the change the whole way through the process for our staff. It can't just come into a D and I agenda. Has to be a very holistic, I find personally have to be holistic perspective that we're bringing to this when it comes to disability. And I know through the open doors we have a service called Employers for Change. One of my colleagues, Christa Bell, is doing this work on a day to day basis where she's talking to the different companies that we work with. She's talking to them about making their websites more accessible, making their conversations with different candidates more accessible to the, to the different disabilities that they may have. Really putting a person centered and making sure that everything is really appropriate and equal and fair most of all to each participant that we deal with.

And Rich, you probably see this on scale and have done through your entire career in recruiting. You probably come across these stupid questions, as Siobhan said, inappropriate questions and practices like is it still prevalent there? Is it still out there, do you think?

I do. I think it's probably, I think it's probably, as Siob said, it's well meaning. I don't think people are. I don't think people are. I think there's still bias out there and I think there's a lot of unconscious bias. I think there's also a lot of people out there that mean well and ask questions. Exactly. That example which is, you know, does it, does it change when it's cold like in for. I don't believe that there was any malice behind that type of comment. And you still see it today. If I look at the number of people that I've personally placed in my 24 year career, I've placed one person with a disability and I don't consider myself to be a person that doesn't look at disability and look to try and support people from those types of backgrounds or with disabilities. But it's, it's just one of those things. I think a lot of it's hidden and I think people do mean well by a lot of the questions that they ask. But they're still there. People are still asking crazy stuff that's just inappropriate whether it's around gender or disability. It still exists today, unfortunately.

I want to change gears a little bit because I want to talk about how we've, how we begin to make a change and fix some of these issues. And I want to just call out a reader comment from Colin Donnery. Colin, thanks so much for your comment. I'm going to have to have you on the show, my friend for sure to dig into this more. But Colin just wanted to point out that in his role in Turismoua, which is an organization here in Ireland that works with individuals who are unemployed, they've helped over 40,000 people back to work. And I know Colin's got a got a huge amount of experience within that organization of getting to understand different individuals, challenges from all different backgrounds, more the long term unemployed and broad categories and getting them back to work. So I actually would love to have your perspective in more detail, Colin. So we'll call you on the show over the next few weeks for sure. But I want to move on to kind of job creation because training is great and I know that Siobhan and myself met a couple of months ago and I was really impressed by Open Doors are doing. And when I spoke to Siobhan and her colleagues, Siobhan was impressing upon me that it's great to train people, it's great to give them skills. They want jobs, people need jobs. And if you're unemployed from whatever background, especially a marginalized background, the article second news article referenced for example, a stat I think in the US 18% of disabled people were employed in 2020 compared to 62% of non disabled people according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So like that's a fourfold difference in employment in the US and it then touched on, for example, if you're black and disabled are poor and disabled, your odds are even worse. So there's a lot of intersectionality involved in these things as well. But when you look at an opportunity for growth, Siobhan, maybe would you mind sharing with us some of the successes that you've seen in terms of programs that work and what makes the them work. I know you talk to me about skilling and mentoring and advocacy. Maybe you could share with us some of the projects you've been involved in today's and we can talk a little about what we're hoping to do together.

Do you know what? Mentoring is one of my favorites? I guess I've always, I've always been really passionate about mentoring and coaching. It's something that I've availed of personally and it's something that I ran and I started in AIB and in the bank, out to all of our staff, out to our 10,000 staff, especially when it came to focusing on gender. I started A program called Mentor her and then with the Open Doors initiative, I guess I really wanted to continue that because I know the power of mentoring and talking to some of the participants that we work with, as you mentioned, Joni, intersectionality is absolutely there and you can just see some of the barriers that people are faced with and so much higher, higher barriers that they have to encounter on a day to day basis. So I found that by going out to our companies that we work with and asking them if there was people out there that wanted to be mentors and would they come forward. And I ran it as a pilot and I couldn't believe how many people out of the organization came forward and wanted to be part of the mentoring program and put up their hand to be, to be mentors that asked me was one hour a month over a six month period for the pilot. But as a result of that short pilot, the amount of people that got full time roles, either through their mentor and their mentor, brought them into their company and put them into jobs that were going and let them interview for it, or through the mentor's network, open them up then to their own network and let them, let them apply for different roles within their networks. I guess. So the power of mentoring has been absolutely so beneficial. Also people not only with jobs, but people have got into different education and programs that they might have been trying to get in before but couldn't for different barriers that existed. It could have been down to funding, it could have been down to they're not speaking English as their first language. So by having the mentor and by having that one to one time with somebody and somebody really, I guess understanding their skill set and what they can offer to a company and I mean in terms of the participants that we deal with, there's some people with PhDs, there's some people with multiple masters, there's some people with so much experience from their home country. And then there's the other scale, the other side of the scale where people have never actually worked before and are looking for that experience to get their foot on the ladder and get a hand up. So I definitely really believe in mentoring. That's been huge. And then I guess just the flip side of that, we've recently had a job sports that we've created on the Open Doors website. So that's with the companies that we're working with them do different things like education and training programs. They're now opening up roles to the participants that we work with and our talent pool that we have. So that has been another outlet that we can go for to participants if they're looking to get into finance or HR or whatever sector it is and let them know about those positions as well. So I think they're the two things that I really noticed that have been really, really helpful and are making a difference to the people that we work with.

And Rich, maybe remind us about the context of the employment market we work in today. I know you specifically folks in the UK and Ireland, but you absolutely, through the network have a broader perspective on the globe. Like my understanding is there's a demand and there's so many people screaming out for talent. So there seems to be a disconnect between people who can't find jobs and other untapped resource, let's say. Plus, you know, this massive demand for people. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we create a number of barriers. It was really interesting. We did a piece of work and we were looking at the number of people in IT support jobs, for example, massive demand for IT support jobs. Less than 30% of people in IT support have a degree. 64 of all job adverts require a degree for somebody to be an ITP support person. So we're creating these artificial barriers ourselves. There is, there is an unprecedented. You know, I, I've been in the industry 24 years and I've never seen a market like this, not just in the UK and the island. Globally, we're busy in the us we're busy in Singapore, we're busy in Hong Kong, we're busy in Germany, we're busy in Ireland, we're busy everywhere. And we're creating a number of challenges for ourselves. And I don't necessarily think the problem is always with talent acquisition and hr. In fact, I think that those are probably the more enlightened communities that we have. But it's. How do we get the message down to people into an organization that two things, one, talent isn't there in the way that it, it used to be. And more importantly, the talent that you are looking for, the skills that you're looking for, they don't exist because we don't know what we're going to be trying to solve problems like in five or 10 years. So actually is this a great opportunity for us to start to find people with the right soft skills and approach and bringing young people or people from different backgrounds and give our opportunity, opportunity to develop and grow those people. The amount of internal mobility that happens in organizations and it's a big generalization is really scary. It's such a small amount. And if you think there is a massive opportunity here for very talented individual people, that if perhaps people took a bit more of a deep breath and accepted that they move people up, they created opportunities, opportunity for their people, those people wouldn't leave, they would stay empowered in the organization. And that creates, and I don't want to say at the bottom of the but more entry level jobs where talented people have struggled to get into the business can develop. And for me it's just, it's stuck. And what I do hope is that perhaps Covid has one of the benefits that we get is it does create more opportunity and more lateral thinking about how we go to that talent pool because there are not enough skilled people to fill the roles that we have available today. So we either keep staring at the beer glass going what are we going to do with it? Or we change our approach and we fill it up in a different way.

So like both of you, I asked myself a couple of months ago, what can I really do to make an impact, right? Because I know Siobhan, you, you probably asked yourself that and you went to work for Open Doors, right? And have made a massive impact already. I'm Rich, I know we've talked about this in terms of what can we do to make an impact. Both of you might not be aware, but last month on LinkedIn globally, apparently there were more open roles for recruiters than there were for developers, more postings, advertising vacancies for recruiters than there were for software developers for the first time ever. And it got me thinking about, hang on a second. There's a load of opportunities for recruiters. And I know through working with organizations over the last 10 years, I've seen them do it with our training platform and the content on our courses. I'm not saying we're not the only way you can do this. Of course we're not. I've seen people take it, take in individuals with zero experience of recruit recruiting and quite quickly train them up to be unbelievably competent recruiters and sorcerers and administrators who've gone on to great success. Your point around customer support in it, Rich, it's the same in recruiting. You don't need a degree to do a job in recruiting. And I worked with even one of your former employers to prove that they used to hire degrees and then they realized through an accident that the best talent actually seemed to come from people without degrees and they changed their whole hiring process around this. But it's easy to do and it hit Me knowing both of you, that maybe we could pull some things together. And one of the things that one of the reasons I wanted the three of us to get together to have a conversation is I wanted to hopefully solicit our audience's help because we pulled together to try and not just talk about it, because it's great to come on and do a show and talk about it and say people should do something, but it's perhaps more effective to take action. What we want to do is on Social Talent's part, we're going to train people up to be recruiters on our online learning platform. So we're making a shout out to anyone who has been marginalized and we're not putting any criteria on how you define that and cannot get work and, you know, feels that they will be marginalized from whatever background. If you're willing to work with us, we'll basically train you up using our online platform from wherever you are, you log on, get an account. But critically, to Siobhan's point, we also realize that just watching videos online is not going to be enough to get this person job ready. And Rich, me and you discussed this as well. So we need mentors. And to Siobhan's point around mentorship. Mentorship is about getting through the learning and getting feedback as you learn a new skill and a new profession. But it's also about advocacy. We started with a team of mentors from Social Talent and some from Kelly Services. And they're going to be our first mentors for the first cohort who will go on this program. And the program is for Ireland to start with, but we have a similar program that we're working on in the US with the National Industries for the Blind. So at the moment we're willing to take volunteers who can be mentors from anywhere, but particularly focused on the US for that particular project and for this project with open doors in Ireland or Ireland and the UK who can mentor because we want to create opportunities for employment. At the end of that, we want people who have networks or work for companies that have jobs in Ireland for that group or in jobs have jobs in the US for that group with nib. And the belief is that if we have training, which I know my company can provide mentorship, which we can provide a limited amount, but hoping that we have an audience who are listening today who would be willing to volunteer or spread this amongst their team or network. If we can get volunteers to give a. Siobhan said, an hour a week of their time over a 8 to 12 week period to mentor somebody through becoming a source or becoming a recruiter, becoming a recruitment admin. There are plenty of jobs as we all know, evidenced by that LinkedIn stat. And Rich, you're an organization that are hiring and I'm delighted to say Kelly services have volunteered to take on applicants from this scheme in Ireland as well, which is fantastic and thank you for that support Rich. But we need more employers and more mentors and we welcome any amount of individuals that you know, if you're a listener, if you're watching the show, you meet somebody, you come across somebody, you have a family member or friend who you think will make potentially a great recruiter. I think it's a absolutely great job that anyone from various different backgrounds which may not be able to be considered for other jobs can do. And we've had individuals come who are blind, who are deaf, who have physical disabilities, who come from different overseas backgrounds, who came to Ireland as refugees, perhaps individuals from the traveling community who've approached us so far for this program. And I cannot think of a background that wouldn't potentially suit a role in recruiting. So rich, you know, 24 years in the business, about the same as myself, you know, am I wrong in this? Am I wrong in thinking that it's a really good profession that we can bring a whole lot of people in, not only can we give them jobs, but by seeding diverse recruiting teams, potentially that's one of the best ways we can impact diversity hiring in organizations.

Absolutely, mate. I mean, you know, we've talked about this long and hard and I think recruitment is 20% knowledge and skill and it's 80% about that individual and who they are and what they bring to that role. And you know, I've seen some people with first class degrees in recruitment. I've seen people that have, you know, one of our most successful recruiters, Kelly in the UK used to work as a cashier at Sainsbury's. It's one of those industries that if you, if you're passionate and you've, and you've got a desire to do something and work at it, it's such a fascinating place to be. It's. The world needs recruiters. We need people that can source, can hold conversations, you know, whether you've got a disability, whether, you know, one of my sons has autism and his level of attention to detail for searching and finding things on the Internet. If I could get away with hiring an 11 year old boy into our business, I'd do it because he's better than Some of the people that I've got sourcing, and that's the point is it's attitudinal. Whether you create your own barrier to work and you don't want to work, that's down to you. But what we're saying here is there's a massive opportunity out there. We're really passionate. If you can bring some passion, some curiosity, we can help you learn those skills and we will be as advocational as we can to try and find you that role. But it is all down to mentoring and networking and finding that. But Johnny, I'm, you know, you know how I feel about it. I just think it's a cracking opportunity for, for not just people trying to find an opportunity, but for people who are genuinely struggling to hire good talent. This is a great way to have a flexible resource and be able to find talented people. That can change the way that you look at hiring talent and that has got to be valuable.

We have our first volunteer to mentor, Jared Wheeler. Thanks, Jared. I really appreciate that, mate. I'll be reaching out to you. Appreciate your live comment there, Siobhan. What is, from your experience, what is a mentor getting themselves into? What are some of the responsibilities a mentor needs to think about and what makes a good mentor?

Yeah, I guess for me, I guess my experience of doing this over the years and mentoring other people, I guess make sure that you have the time. So time is the big one. Don't say that you're going to mentor somebody and not follow through. If you're going to commit your hour a week or your hour a month, you schedule it in the diary. Make sure that you commit to that as best you can. Obviously sometimes things arise, there's emergency situation situations as we're all working from home and have different situations, but as best you can definitely stick to that. Make sure that during that time that you zone out on other things. So whether you have your email turned off, your phone turned off, that you're completely concentrating on that person that you're going to be speaking to, that you're fully listening and you have an empathetic ear in terms of their situation and what they've dealt with. Because sometimes they, you will start with people wanting to tell you their life history or whatever it is as the starting place for where they have come from, what they've been through to where they are now and where they want to go. So I think that listening and bringing empathy to the table is absolutely so, so important. And I think then in terms of starting up and Your first initial conversations, making sure that you have your goals and you know what your North Star is and what you want to get out of how many sessions that you have. So whether it be like four, six, whatever amount that you actually commit to having with your mentee that you know what your overall goal is. So if that's to make sure that somebody is able to do an interview to the best of their ability by the end of it, to make sure that they have a world class cv, whatever it is that you make sure that you know what your goal is are you steer the conversation in that way that you're focusing on the overall outcome. And I think just for me, I think that the listening and being present and being in the moment for that person, it can be a very vulnerable time for some people to share and open up about how they feel and their experience to date and different scenarios that they've actually gone through and their experience to date. Just for me, I guess it is being in the moment and listening and I think if one person can give that time like it's life changing, it's. You can make such a difference to somebody's life without even almost realizing that you're doing it. Last week I helped four people just do mock interviews and get ready before they had their interviews Tuesday. And the gratitude that they had towards me and it took nothing of my time and my experience to be able to give that back. But if every person just donated something small that's life changing to somebody else and you're really impacting their experience that they could have, whether it be going for an interview or whatever it is next. So that's definitely my experience of mentoring so far.

I think it's a win win in terms of, as Rich pointed out, you know, we have a shortage of recruiters in the world. There's a massive shortage. And you know, I'm working with our customers to try and talk to them about how the best way to hire recruiters is not to hire experienced recruiters because they don't exist. Look at, to your point, Rich, internal mobility. Look at the most junior people and see how you can quickly progress them to the middle because we know for sure we can fill in the more early in career recruiting and sourcing roles that can be done. I get, you can't just get someone in who's got no background in recruiting and turn them into a fully fledged talent advisor in a month. Not going to happen. But you can move somebody who's been a great sourcer for a while into a talent advisor position quite quickly and then replace the sourcing role and then give that person a route or route to a great career in recruiting. So you just got to think a little bit about balancing mobility to some say, all right, we may have these jobs that are more senior where we just don't have the talent pool and for whatever reasons even the most marginalized society don't have the experience. Great. Can you move around your roles? Can you try and create a situation? And this is the more creative thinking that has to be done at a corporate level is there are roles you can fill genuinely and largely the more less experienced roles, the easier. Where it is easier to hire somebody from a background that you haven't hired from in the past and just do more internal mobility with your current staff to push people up to create that opportunity. I'm so conscious we're at time. I can't believe we're nearly at the 45 minute mark. But let me just make a quick call out. If anyone is interested in volunteering like Jared did there, please just jump into the comments. Or you can send me a private Message to johnny socialtalent.com and reach out to any of the team here in Social Talent and let us know. I'll post on LinkedIn and on the social site a link to the job post that we have created to give people an idea of the role here. And please share that with anyone you think who might know or might be interested in that themselves, who will be a good candidate for a career in recruitment who maybe doesn't have the opportunity today that we can give them that opportunity. Please reach out. And on that I'm going to ask both of you to beyond what you've already given today, going to ask you to both contribute one last piece of advice to our shortlist that we ask all of our guests to contribute to. And I'm going to start with yourself, Rich. What piece of advice can you give to our listeners in addition to what you've already given today, so generously from either that you know your own career that you've gained through your own work experience and knowledge, or perhaps advice that was given to you over your career that stands out. What's that advice you'd share with folks today?

Oh, be kind, I think is the. Is the piece of advice that I think has carried me well in everything I do. And I think the way that I would extend that is be kind to yourself. You know, there are enough reasons to to beat yourself up in this world. So my advice is be kind to yourself. Realize that everything you do has a positive impact on somebody somewhere. So don't give yourself too much of a hard time.

Siobhan, I guess for the if there's companies listening here and people within their organizations, I think barriers is a big thing and I know that we've touched on it through the conversation here today. But please look, if you're not already doing it at the barriers that you have, especially coming at entry level into organizations, do you need X amount of experience? Do you need those degrees? Yes, absolutely. Within certain professions you do, but not for all professions because it absolutely doesn't define you or your ability. And then to participants that are on the line and listening out and anybody from a marginalised background, we do have like a number of jobs that are listed on our website and different opportunities, including the Sourcera one that Johnny's talked about through social talent. So please get in touch if we can help you out when it comes to employment or pathways to employment as well.

Siobhan and Rich, really appreciate your time today and more widely your time for this fantastic initiative and Siobhan, all the work you do as well with your teams. Thanks both for joining me. I'm looking forward to working with both of you to try and get this pilot up and running and hopefully you can extend it a lot further. If you're an Irish organization or work for an Irish organization, do check out open doors as they are fantastic organizations doing wonderful things across the community and your company can get involved as we have in Social Town and Rich has for Kelly Services in doing more with their partner organizations and their members as well. Thanks both for joining us and thank you for listening folks and joining us here today, really. Hopefully that's going to inspire some of you to action and maybe to help us out. We just need a small number of people to get our pilot up and running to really kind of make a difference. You'll make a difference to one person which is enormously powerful and hopefully help us scale this to tons more as we grow out of this initial pilot in both the US and Ireland. So do reach out to me, Johnny Campbell, johnnyocialtalent.com or you can message me on LinkedIn or drop your name into the comments here on YouTube or on LinkedIn. We'll be back next week for Show 61 and we'll be continuing the theme and exploring more of the topic around diversity inclusion by taking on a panel that we recorded last November of four industry experts from Process, from Oracle, from SAP and from Sodexo from all around the world to different corners of the globe, giving their perspective from a large enterprise point of view on what it takes to drive real diverse hiring processes. What are the challenges, the obstacles and the international considerations? I'll be broadcasting that and playing that panel that was previously only available on a private audience group. We'll be showing that and presenting it on a podcast from next week, Wednesday 28th of July. You can join us live to listen to it at 4pm GMT Irish UK time. That's 11am in the US east coast, 8am on the US west coast. Or you can check out the podcast which will be live on Apple Spotify next Wednesday evening. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you can get involved either by helping yourself with your own time if you you can spare that time, or sharing the job post which we'll post live later today with any of your network you think can help us find talent who could be a future recruiter hiring diverse talent for your organization. Thanks for listening.