Experian's Global TA Director: Achieving Diversity in Talent Pools

The Talent Acquisition Next Practices Monthly series provides a forum for the TA leadership community to come together to discover and advance next practices. Each month, you’ll hear from Talent Acquisition Leaders from some of the largest and most respected organizations in the world, learn about the latest i4cp research, and share and receive ideas from your peers.

This month's featured guests are Experian's Janet Clardy, SVP, Human Resources, and Chris Brady, Global Talent Acquisition Director. Highlights from the discussion include;

• Experian took a unique approach to highlighting diversity and inclusion practices by creating an internal marketing campaign known as “Humans of Experian.” Similar to the popular website known as “Human of New York,” “Humans of Experian” shares personal employee stories and aims to highlight the importance of bringing your whole self to work. Experian has been diligent and systematic in their thinking of how to integrate their DE&I strategy with that of internships, hiring, and onboarding.
• Experian has been able to successfully leverage their ERGs during the pandemic and this unprecedented period of social unrest to create positive experiences for their employees, which has ultimately impacted talent acquisition process.
• To address Experian’s need to increase their diverse talent pools, Experian first analyzed their diversity data and shared the results with the Talent Acquisition team to create awareness in their areas of opportunity. Today, they continue to use analytics to drive their conversations and use the practice of “sharing your screen” to ensure hiring managers are leaning into the process. Experian also created a new role, Global Employment Brand Director. This role, which sits within the Talent Acquisition team and was filled by an individual who has a background in social media, marketing, and communications, is responsible for creating an external employer brand strategy. As a result, hiring from social media platforms has nearly doubled.

• To deliver a diverse talent pool and build a Diversity Talent Framework that meets the needs of different businesses, Experian uses the D.A.R.E. model of Delivery, Accountability, Restructure, and Execute. Experian also recommends focusing on areas where there is less competition in the marketplace but helps to deliver a more diverse slate of candidates, leveraging the benefits of remote work, and defining what diversity looks like for each business.

Notes

• Who is Experian? Credit Services, Decision Analytics, Consumer Services, and Marketing Services.

• Approach to inclusion and diversity: Humans of New York > Humans of Experian. This brought to life how important D&I is at Experian. Then formed ERGs. Working hard to formulate DE&I strategy (and belonging), a high priority. Made great strides in gender diversity; next focus is underrepresented groups (disabled, veterans). Bring your whole self to work: systemic thinking in terms of how internships, onboarding, ERGs, etc. are encapsulated into that bigger piece.
• ERGs were primarily formed for traditionally underrepresented groups – Pride, Caribu (African American), Namaste (Indian), Aspire (Disability Caregiving & Mental Health ERG), Women in Experian, etc. Experian Clubs are Global, Regional, and Local. When the pandemic hit, as well as other issues within 2020, Experian was able to set leverage ERGs to create positive experiences, which ultimately impacted talent acquisition process.
• Deep dive into diversity data resulted in an obvious miss in terms of diversity. Made themselves very aware of the opportunity, but then needed to ask themselves Now What?
• Talent Acquisition Team: Center of Excellence Model, 20 Recruiters in NA, Recruiter focus on specific business united, recruiters are full cycle recruiters that do their own sourcing, NA delivers up to 1200 hires per year, recruiters have strong relationships with HRBPs.
• Employer Brand – FY21 Progress.
  • Over 2 years ago the HRLT that having the right brand and ensuring it tells the right story was instrumental in changing their talent strategies – needs to be aligned with the “power of you.” Put together a “pitch book” for all recruiters to ensure the story is aligned.
  • Hires from social media has nearly doubled. They key is really having a focused audience that you are targeting. Lena’s role as Global Employment Brand Director has been instrumental in these successes (this role sits within HR/ Talent Acquisition, with a background in Communications and Marketing with a focus on branding within the context of social media).
  • External Employer Brand Strategy: DE&I Employee Advocacy (drive opportunities for employees to share their stories. Aligned with TM to externally promote DE&I training ad and ongoing L&D), Employee Resource Groups (Connected with ERG leads to promote and amplify all activities and initiatives internally and externally. Optimize days of observance and associated hashtags for organic awareness), Diverse Talent Attraction (Increase and improve employer brand…), and Diverse Partnerships.
  • What is Experian Life? Notice a dramatic increase in talent pool through the use of video.
• How do we deliver a diverse talent pool? How do we build a Diversity Talent Framework that meets the needs of different businesses, BU Leads that is scalable, effective and efficient? DARE:
  • Delivery – deliver a diverse pipeline of candidates (branding, SeekOut, and location strategy)
  • Accountability – hold hiring managers accountable for moving candidates through hiring funnel
  • Restructure – change the process, remove bias. Add diverse slate of interviewers (focus on hiring candidates that are an org add versus hiring people we like)
  • Execute (use data driven reporting strategy to meet our diversity hiring goals)
  • Hotspots (Less competition in the marketplace, help us bring in different types of candidates): Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta… vs. Typical High Demand Areas: San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston
  • Benefits of remote work: pool expansion, great access to diverse candidate, no more excuses that talent is unavailable
  • “Share your screen:” the data will tell the story, and this helps managers align to the process.
  • “We need to define what diversity looks like for each business.” We then need to set goals for each of the business (tech, product, analytics) – need to also consider location, and consider what are we trying to deliver overall within that business
• How has remote work changed your thinking and what are you doing about it from a diversity standpoint?
  • Don’t post the office locations on the job posting anymore. Workforce should not be totally aligned to any one particular location. Huge transformation from a digital perspective.
  • Where are there pockets – pod strategy?
  • If everyone is remote, you need a leader who can manage and be successful within that.
  • In the past we were looking at low-cost labor market. But now we have had to consider all of the variables (cost, diversity, skillset) – ultimately ask ourselves, does it really matter? 1/3 of our employees were either fully remote or hybrid to begin with; and in the context of Covid most all are remote. When the office comes back into play, we are going to have to be flexible – most people do not want to go back into the office. This has really helped us with expanding our candidate and talent pool.
• Instant Poll: Does your organization hold hiring managers accountable for any diversity hiring metrics?
  • Yes – 18%
  • No – 47%
  • Considering Currently – 35%
• D+I Results FY20 – Highlights
  • We have implement SeekOut as a diversity sourcing pool. This equips recruiter to filer LI Profiles by Diversity and location. Starts with the conversation at the Intake Stage.
  • Wil Lewis was hired as our Chief D&I Officer. He brings a wealth of experience from Bank of America.
  • Strong focus on gender hiring – women formed 54% of NA region hires YTD FY2021. This is a strong performance given that women formed only 35% of our applications.
  • We had 56% non-white hires as of Jan 2021.
  • Out of 11 VP+ level hires by the NA TA team, 6 were diverse candidates.
  • 7/12 candidates for our Engineer Accelerator program are women.
  • In Costa Rica, we hired 3 women interns and ran multiple “coffee talks” to promote a more gender-balanced workplace.
• We are a very organic workplace. It is crucial that you define a realistic goal for the area you are recruiting for.
• Have you found a sweet spot for the workload of recruiters? On average, we are a little under 15, and generally try to keep it under 20. We are asking our recruiters to do a lot of things – relationship manager, pipelines, skill definition, etc.
• Find out about the position before it is opened… revamping req approval process to allow for strategic hiring