The man, the myth, the legend, Tim Sackett joins CATK
The last of our Summer Interview Series with the Man, the Master, the Tim Sackett. In his second visit to CATK, Tim helps Julie and Torin round out the CATK Summer Interview Series with a frank conversation on the state of DEIB in Talent Acquisition. How do we stop othering "diversity recruiting"? Have we lost our DEIB intensity in this post(ish) pandemic world? The WSJ CEO tells career seekers to get their asses back to the office or enjoy a good work life balance with remote job. Ummmmm....okay??
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0:00:01.0 Torin: We've been about this work, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, shared through the voices of a White woman and a Black man. We bring lived experiences. We have pursued D&I progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and The King to cover news, tips from colleagues and host incredible guests. Listeners, count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for rocking with us. Check it. Julie, kick off the show.
[applause]
0:00:35.8 Julie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and The King.
0:00:41.6 Torin: Hey, so listen, I believe the last time we recorded, J, I was in my mom's house. And you remember I was talking about the picture over my shoulder of the White Jesus.
0:00:52.3 Julie: Yes, White Jesus.
0:00:53.0 Torin: Remember that?
0:00:53.5 Julie: Mm-hmm.
0:00:56.2 Torin: So last day in my father's house. And so as of this recording, I'm in my father's house and they have all of these memorabilias, and there's one memorabilia... You have to Google this. There's one memorabilia of the N. K. Fairbank company.
0:01:16.0 Julie: Okay.
0:01:16.7 Torin: Now, you have to Google it. I'm not gonna spoil it for all of the good listeners out there. But on this particular image, it's an image of a little White girl, pretty, talking to a little Black girl, pretty, saying why doesn't your mother use, I think it's called fairy dust soap, if I'm not mistaken. But the message in the story, in the advertisement is this soap will make you clean because the White person is clean in the ad... You have to see some of the other...
0:01:56.5 Julie: Oh, fuck!
0:02:00.1 Torin: Advertisements. Yeah, this N. K. Fairbank was a person, he was an actual individual. I think it was like 1870 or something like that, to 1923. So just really, really interested in how we ended and went into our summer break with me being at my mom's and the conversation, and we talked about the White Jesus. To me now being at my father's and looking at old advertisement. And I love the collection of the old advertisements because they are reminders that keep me rooted and why we are doing this work. Did you enjoy your summer?
0:02:37.3 Julie: I did, I did. I always enjoy just a few weeks of quiet non-recording time, get all re-energized and everything. But by the third week, I'm like, uh, I miss Torin. I miss talking. I miss my new mic, which you could...
0:02:55.0 Torin: Did you say that out loud? Do you say it out loud in your sleep? Does Chad hear you say I miss Torin, or some shit like that, and then you're like... Then you wake up and you're like, "Damn it! I did it again".
0:03:05.0 Julie: Not again. Not again.
0:03:08.1 Torin: "I did it again. I did it". And Chad is sitting there just... You know how you lay in the bed and he's got his elbow off the bed on the night stand and he's looking like, "I wonder what was she really just dreaming about?" Is it one of those I miss Torin, or is it just I miss him putting on his head set and we record and talk about diversity and inclusion stuff? Either way, you're safe, you're good with me.
0:03:29.9 Julie: [chuckle] I guess it's really different, then he wakes up in the middle of the night calling out for Cheeseman. I mean, it is.
0:03:33.1 Torin: Cheeseman, got it. It's a pod thing. It's a pod thing.
0:03:40.5 Julie: It's a pod thing.
0:03:42.2 Torin: I wonder if our guests misses the people that he records with, and he's got an interesting crew of folks that he records with. So I wonder if in fact, A, he misses them enough to call out either of their names and B, which name he calls the most. We will definitely have to ask him about that.
0:04:02.1 Julie: Yes, yes.
0:04:02.8 Torin: I think it's important. I think it's important.
0:04:02.9 Julie: Or we should put him on the spot.
0:04:05.6 Torin: Real quick. Before we get into it, there was a headline over at NPR, and I don't wanna talk a whole lot today because I really want to spend the majority, the largest of the show talking to our guests, but I do wanna mention just a couple of headlines. And let me just say this to our listeners, there are some things that Julie and I talk about behind the scenes, off camera, and I know sometimes you might listen to the show and think that Julie and I are always focused on race, or we're always focused on gender, and it's only because they tend to be the articles that gain the most attention. We sometimes have to dig deep for articles that may talk about ageism or the disability angle, or maybe a political, religious, socio-economic angle as it relates to diversity, inclusion and representation in the workplace. So I don't want you to think that Julie and I are lazy when we are picking these articles, but sometimes they are just too bright and hard for us to ignore.
0:05:26.5 Torin: So this one article over on NPR, I think it's titled A New Work Anxiety. Will I be penalized for working from home? And in that article, there's a quote from one of the Wall Street CEOs, and it says, "If you want a job, stay remote all the time." This is coming from Rich Handler. He's the CEO of an investment banking company, Jefferies. He said, If you want a job, stay remote all the time. "If you want a career, engage with the rest of us in the office. No judgment on which you pick, but don't be surprised or disappointed by certain outcomes".
0:06:09.7 Julie: Yeah. This is literally what I live with every day. One, I've said it before, I've ran a fully remote for 10 years, I've promoted people, I've built a successful business. It's not impossible. Okay. And so when CEOs say things like "No judgment," the judgment is absolutely there.
0:06:30.7 Torin: Absolutely.
0:06:31.8 Julie: The judgment is there on mothers, the judgment is there on caregivers, the judgment is there on people with disabilities, people who live with mental illness.
0:06:39.5 Torin: Keep going.
0:06:41.4 Julie: Stop fucking saying things like that. If you... Don't caveat it, just say, "You know what, if you're not gonna show your ass up in the office, we really don't want you. You're not gonna grow, you're not gonna change, you're not gonna grow here, and you know what, there is nothing wrong with saying, I'm at a point in my career where I need to make this amount of money, have this work-life balance, and that's all I need. That's okay, there are rooms for those players everywhere, and you're critical to our infrastructure, but if you've got someone who's young and hungry, who's a parent who has a disability, who's a caregiver who lives with mental illness, you are driving them straight out of your door into someone else's". And I think this is just to continue, part of the backlash from the pandemic where the man, as I always call him, starts to shift the power back towards the employer and back away from the employee.
0:07:37.6 Torin: Yeah, and you know, this kind of dovetails on a story that I saw while we were on break a couple of weeks ago around quiet quitting. And there's been a lot of conversation around that quiet quitting piece. One person that I know is going to be coming to the pod has had a lot to say. Zachary Nunn from Living Corporate, put up an incredible tweet earlier this week around that quiet quitting piece, and this right here is a direct connection to why some people are supporting that phrase, that moniker of quiet quitting. I don't buy into it, but Zach framed it in a really, really interesting way, go out and look at Zachary Nunn's Twitter feed so that you can find that. Something else that I wanted to quickly bring to people's attention on a more serious note, this one was over on HR Dive, and the title of it says "Mail bag. How do you fill out the EEO-1 form for a non-binary worker? How do you fill out the EEO-1 form for a non-binary worker?" And yet again, J, I learned something, like I didn't know because I don't look at EEO-1 forms, I'm not really into compliance. We had an incredible conversation with Julie, not Julie. Judy.
0:09:03.0 Julie: Judy?
0:09:03.8 Torin: Oh! What's Judy's last name?
0:09:04.3 Julie: Judy Julius.
0:09:05.5 Torin: Judy Julius, thank you. That's where I was at. I had an incredible conversation with Judy Julius, who opened my eyes, our eyes to data, data collection and the storytelling that happens, but this came up around the non-binary worker, and I thought that this was yet another reason for us to be intimately focused on how are we pursuing inclusion and representation in our organizations.
0:09:30.1 Julie: Yeah, and I actually thought this was something that the EEOC was... And the OFCCP were working on. I thought they were adding a non-binary or other option to the form. That may be in the works, maybe I heard that at a dinner somewhere, but hopefully that's something that they are recognizing that they have the power to change. Although, running a new form through OMB can be a pretty harrowing experience for any government employee, I think it's well worth the time.
0:10:01.1 Torin: Yep, yep, yep. You know, and there's this statement called crabs in the barrel. Now, when the crabs in the barrel statement is normally uttered, Julie, actually, it's uttered wrong. It's almost like calling a person who is Black an Uncle Tom. Saying that to a Black person is not really the proper use of Uncle Tom, I don't know if you knew that, but when they say that, they are saying it in a way that they are suggesting that the person is going against their people, but honestly, Uncle Tom was very much so in support of his people. So this crabs in the barrel statement is typically used the wrong way. However, the LA Times dropped this story that said, "Black workers... Black warehouse workers say their Latino co-workers and bosses abused them." This actually is California's largest race bias case, where Latino workers are accused of abusing Black colleagues. Like I am baffled that a group of people that have been used as foot stools, almost the example of why we need immigration and all of the other things. I mean just categorized negatively, how they find the time to say, "Well, you know what, fuck it. We're gonna talk about and we're gonna mess with these people over here." I just absolutely don't understand why groups of people don't recognize that this is part of the plan to keep us at one another versus working together.
0:11:55.1 Julie: Yeah, I mean it's always the thing, right? And part of it, not that any of it's okay, but we even teach, when we do trainings for disability, fear, and stigma, is that as a person with mental illness, there are different stigmas around me in my own community, and as a person who's blind, have their own stigmas and all those things, and there's that othering. And it doesn't matter if you're a part of another other, then people find a way to abuse each other in the othering process, which is a problem that we have as humans. And a lot of times when we think of Spanish-speaking people, Spanish and Latin people as very homogenous, and they're very big and very unique social block, and we have to take the time to understand what those biases are, and where that's coming from and start to your point, Torin, helping everyone understand that we don't have to keep fighting over the same tiny ass piece of the puzzle or the prize that we've been allotted, and we've gotta get stronger together, we've got to boost each other up, and we're certainly not gonna do that by what's happening in LA right now.
0:13:19.8 Torin: Alright, so look, we are going to... We're gonna get to that word "Other" because our guests used it quite a bit in a post that I'm going to refer to, it was part of the reason why they were asked to be a guest because that word "Other" surfaced in the LinkedIn Pulse from July. So let's do a quick ad break, if you will. Do we still call it a ad break? Is that what good podcast people call it, or do they just find a better smoother way to go to a commercial?
0:13:51.5 Julie: Yeah, I think we need to find a better smoother way to do it. I'll leave that to you. [chuckle]
0:13:54.7 Torin: A better smooth away to...
0:13:57.9 Julie: A better smoother way.
0:13:58.0 Torin: Do it. You got it. Alright, in a flash, you might be eligible for up to 20,000 off your student debt and someone on Bloomberg asked "Does wearing a wire violate the bro code?" No, maybe. I suppose it does matter who's wearing the wire, but Texas is taken steps that could cost Black Rock UBS and eight other firms business with the state after finding them to be hostile to the energy industry. Now listen, I dropped that just to soften you up, because the good folks in one Texas district are reviewing another list of books, and one of the books is about the grandson of a slave who learned to read when he was 98 years old. And it is currently under review. Mind you, the school that is performing the review is named after him. General Mills makes it easier for supporters to re-direct earnings to schools in needs to address inequities in the classroom. So far, Box Tops has raised nearly one billion dollars for US schools. Shout out to General Mills. And I'm not sure if you, J, saw this, but Apple announced its first in-person watch event since covid, and it will happen at its headquarters in California.
0:15:24.2 Torin: They said that they are trying to open the flood gates of capital into this very important growth cohort, not Apple, but it was the co-founder, Kenny Blanco in an interview with LA, trying to get more capital in the Latina, Latin, Latinx cohort. Talking about kitchen nightmares, former employees at Amy's Kitchen plant in San Jose alleged supervisors and managers engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior, and that the food companies, HR did not, did not, did not sufficiently act on employee complaints. And since we're talking about kitchens, Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens are also garnering a bit of unwanted heat. And finally, over on Bloomberg, they said women shouldn't do any more housework this year. I think my wife probably was read that shit for the last 10 years, it says "We need equal house work day to bring the attention to gender inequities at home. And signing off, Serena dropped her announcement earlier in the month. If you missed her letter, grab copy of vogue for the read. She said, "I never think of it as a wait, I believe that God never gives you more than what you can handle. And for me, I'm not carrying it alone, I embrace it". Shout out to Serena.
0:17:01.4 Julie: Alright. So nice to be back here in a flash, and we've had an amazing month of interviews that you and I have curated with Dr. Jennifer Frazier, Sissy Bruno, Christa Santos. Just incredible interviews. Judy Julius was one of my favorites because I'm a compliance kick at heart. Can't help it. This week, to wrap up our summer interview series, we have none more... I'm gonna say that, hold on. [chuckle]
0:17:31.6 Torin: You can't see me 'cause... We can't see me 'cause I'm rocking a little bit, 'cause I know we bought to get to it, and I know we're gonna have a good time, I know that the conversation is gonna be riveting. Well, I don't wanna cut you off, go ahead.
0:17:43.1 Julie: Oh, okay. We have, I believe, our second guest ever from Crazy and The King, one of our favorite people in this industry, not just to learn from, but also break bread and share a cocktail with, occasionally a cigar. Back to the show, we welcome Mr. Tim Sackett.
0:18:07.8 Tim Sackett: Hey guys.
[vocalization]
0:18:08.0 Torin: Oh, so no, listen, I got...
0:18:10.8 Tim Sackett: I got three things... No. Torin, you're with me, you're gonna put a banner up here.
0:18:14.2 Torin: Okay, okay. Okay, okay.
0:18:14.4 Tim Sackett: I have three things. The point is, Black Jesus is a great brand. Someone needs to like hear that, 'cause you say White Jesus, Black Jesus is a great brand. Who do I call out the most on my podcast, HR famous. This is a conversation my wife and I have because her girlfriends are always like, "Aren't you jealous? Because he talks about... " Because I have Jessica Lea, Madeline, I have two other women that work with me on a day-to-day basis that are very close, so I'm constantly talking about these conversations. But Chris Don, KD is the one that all her girlfriends are like, "Aren't you jealous that he has this great relationship with KD", 'cause I talk about him more than anything. Last thing, you guys were talking about remote workers and quiet quitters and blah, blah, blah. Are remote workers the CrossFit people of employees? Because that's all they fucking talk about, is fucking remote work, like dude, shut the fuck up and go and just do the work, like the remote... Oh my, I get so sick of hearing from a remote workers talking about remote work.
0:19:14.3 Torin: So, that's interesting.
0:19:16.5 Julie: In this case though, that wasn't a remote worker talking about remote work, that was a CEO talking about how we don't want you ass, or your remote were ass.
0:19:23.0 Tim Sackett: No, no, no, I understand that, but I'm saying, but that's... To me, that's the funny part of remote workers is that to all the talk about remote work.
[chuckle]
0:19:31.5 Torin: Is remote work. Is remote work.
0:19:33.1 Julie: We really like to look at that.
0:19:35.6 Torin: And I really appreciate the spirit in which you entered into the conversation. And let me tell you, you are right, you do have a number of incredible voices on your podcast, you all talk about some great, great topics, you navigate and move through the industry and ways that others may not necessarily get the opportunity to move, and as a result of all of that, you do some things differently, like you drop a writing piece every single day. I think I told you, how did you do that? Or I sort of tell a cheap to ask you, how do you do that? I struggle to put together 500 words once, and you do 500 words every single day, but it was a result of a blog post that you did in July.
0:20:22.5 Torin: Not the reason why you are here, but the reason why you're here. Because when I saw it, I was like, "You know what? I wanna talk about that." And even though it'll be several weeks from the day in which you dropped it, I said, "It's still, it will still be a relevant, very much so real...
0:20:43.1 Tim Sackett: Oh, for sure.
0:20:43.6 Torin: Time conversation. So let me set the stage for all of our listeners who may not have saw your blog post. It was in early July, and it was on LinkedIn. It's a place where you put conversations like that. These are the types of conversations that we would have on LinkedIn. And in the blog post, it was a video post, as a matter of fact, video log, or vlog. And what you said was, "It's upsetting that more advances haven't been made, and that I have some thoughts around that." And then you went on to share some of your thoughts, which we will get into in the conversation. But you were talking about advancements have been made in D&I, but you're upset that we have not made better progress around D&I. And you said, "Right or wrong, we need to discuss it more," which is what led to the conversation. So Julie and I are extremely appreciative of one, the post, and your willingness to have the conversation out loud. Because the piece that caused me the real, real issue, was when you said... And I'm not telling you how I felt about it, I'm just telling you, this is what caused me an issue, and this is where I wanna start. You said, "What is other recruiting?" That was the pressing question for you. "If we have diversity recruiting, then...
0:22:07.4 Tim Sackett: What's the other?
0:22:10.1 Torin: What is everything else?" And that was the first time you used other, and then you used it a couple of additional times in the conversation. Why does that pain you, cause you pause, that othering, if you will?
0:22:24.0 Tim Sackett: Well, and I didn't wanna use other, what I wanted... Look, 'cause what I think what people would actually say is, "If you have diversity recruiting, what do we call the rest of recruiting?" And I think they would say, "Oh, that's normal recruiting." "Well, wait a minute, what?" Like, "What do you mean? What do you mean by normal then, right?" And so for me it was, "Why do we have these two kinds of recruiting?" And that's just one of those pieces, because I think for me, part of the labeling becomes a less event, right? So, hey, if I'm a diversity recruit, or I'm a gender recruit, or I'm a whatever recruit, that becomes less, unless we make it something higher than, right?
0:23:07.8 Tim Sackett: So if you think about, let's say, like one of the big banks, like a... And I'm not gonna... Just one of the big bankings out there, if they did some special thing where they interviewed and screened 10,000 kids to get like 50 positions. And you became the ABC Scholar recipient, diversity recruit, or whatever. And I say never, recruit. That becomes a positive, because that's... It's associated with going through all these steps and hoops to get there. Where I think we have diversity recruiting, because somehow the "other normal recruiting failed" to actually bring in a representative sample of people into our organizations and getting them hired, whether that's people of color, or whether that is female, or gender, or whatever it might be. To me, that, I'm wondering is that labeling holding us back...
0:24:05.1 Torin: So we do...
0:24:05.3 Tim Sackett: In actually making a move?
0:24:07.9 Torin: So I'm not gonna use the banking industry, I'm gonna use the military. And I appreciate your banking industry reference, but we have the Navy, and then we have SEAL Team six. So we have the Navy, we have Navy SEAL and we have SEAL Team six. And there may be SEAL Team five, and four, and three, but what we know, is SEAL Team six. We know that those... That group of people are part of the most elite group inside of the Navy. Would you agree?
0:24:39.4 Tim Sackett: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, doubt.
0:24:41.8 Torin: So when it comes to recruiting and people being a part of the Navy and the Navy SEALs, and maybe even that team that gets called up for that incredibly special assignment, I actually look at it a little bit differently, Tim. I actually look at it and say, "I wish that diversity recruiting was a part of everyone's arsenal. I wish that everyone was as committed and skilled to this form of recruiting, because they are part of the Navy. They are part of our special force, if you will", or, I'm sorry, military force. But that we will use our special forces when we are focused on those extremely tight, tough, nuanced positions. And it may be because we don't have enough representation, or it may be because we have this special project approaching, or it may be this collaboration deal that we need to do, and we need a special set of skills.
0:25:51.8 Torin: But like my man, Liam Neeson, is it Liam Neeson?
0:25:54.8 Tim Sackett: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
0:25:57.4 Torin: From Taken. "I got a special set of skills." You remember I said that when I spoke at your event in Michigan. Yes, indeed. So that's the way that I see it. So while I understood your pause in question, and it made me smile, I actually, I was like, "You know what? Fuck it. Diversity, recruitment, we... No, we ain't going after the less than, we're going after the most elite."
0:26:20.0 Tim Sackett: No, no, no, but that's not... But we know the reality of corporate America, and we know what's really happening, and that's the problem, right? Is that they're not taking your idea of what diversity recruiting is, they're taking the idea of, "Ah, we're being forced to do this "normal". You guys can't see my air quotes, normal recruiting isn't doing this for us, and so now we have to create this separate recruiting, and we're gonna jam it down hiring managers' throats. Again, that's just my experience of corporate America, and I deal with a lot of enterprise organizations and the TA leaders in developing their strategies in terms of, not specifically around diversity recruiting, but just how do we recruit better? And the intent of my post, and the reason I did a... Here's a reason I did a vlog too is, I write every day. I love writing. You miss... I think when you write... A lot of times, people misinterpret what I write. And then the haters come out or the trolls come out, and they go freak out. When you do the video, there's less misinterpretation of that, right? Which also puts probably more risk on me of putting it out there, but at the same time, you can't sit there and go, "Well, you wrote this, but you meant this." No, I said this. No, I could have... I guess I said this, but this is what I meant, whatever.
0:27:40.3 Tim Sackett: I still think that we do a crappy job at solving this problem around diversity recruiting in corporate America, and I'll stand behind that, because I think when we take a look at the numbers, we're not moving the numbers to where we should from all the attention that we have on it. And I would say... I could even argue that even with the resources we have on it. Now, the other side of it is, is I think we have a lot of corporations, let's take a look at the Fortune 500, that have totally misappropriated all of these resources in a way that doesn't help us actually get to the levels that we would wanna get to, which is how do we get great software engineers that are female and people of color, or how do we get to whatever that... Whatever segment it is that we feel like we're underrepresented in. How do we get to that part? Well, you have to invest at the grassroots level. You have to get preschool, in elementary school, in high school. Like, if you're Google and you spent a billion dollars in diversity recruiting over the last five years, and they probably spent actually more than that, but let's just say a billion. They could have built world-class, from pre-K through college graduation, education systems specifically designed for females and people of color and underrepresented communities in all of these areas. And they could have had the best.
0:29:01.5 Tim Sackett: They could have reached the level that you're speaking of, right? They could have reached that Special Forces level of diversity, where you're going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're going after these kids?", because they're the best of the best, because we built the best of the best. But they haven't made that investment. Instead, their investment is... Fucking Taco Tuesday or, whatever. I mean, it's stupid stuff that I don't think really makes a difference. And that's frustrating, being in talent acquisition, seeing all of this... Again, all the technology that's being jammed down the heads of HR, and the heads of TA throw around, "Oh, this will solve diversity recruiting." None of it solves diversity recruiting. It might solve recruiting problems. And if you're great at recruiting, and you're doing the right things, and you're measuring your funnels, and you're making sure you have representation in your funnels, then you're going to do good diversity recruiting. But none of those things actually solve the issue. The issue is we're not investing the money where it should be invested, and that to me is... That's the most frustrating piece of that.
0:30:05.4 Julie: Yeah. I mean, I think we could probably spend an entire season talking about how companies fail to invest in their own workforce and the development of that workforce while they wait for a government handout, while they wait for government incentive to do diversity hiring, to employ underrepresented communities. It's like, that... And our short-term thinking, from a capitalist perspective, from one EPS to the next EPS every single quarter, what can we get out of it from a shareholder perspective is a vast weakness in our system. And I could not agree with you more there, and that's really where the money should be going as a long-term fix. From a short-term perspective, what can we do now? How do we start to change the narrative? Because I understand what Torin's saying, I understand what you're saying, and I probably land somewhere in the middle, which is unique for me.
[chuckle]
0:31:04.4 Julie: And that it is seen as normal recruiting. It should be seen as specialty, spectacular recruiting. And how do we start to change the narrative among White employees, among White supervisors, among...
0:31:21.0 Torin: Yep, and this is where I get to sit back and cross my legs and just listen. Keep going.
0:31:27.0 Julie: And White talent acquisition leaders, White women are especially guilty, I'm just gonna say it out loud, 'cause we do it, oof promoting that bias continuously, through our language, through our behavior. And it's okay to admit that bias is there. But as leaders in these companies, we should be at least modeling best practices and best behavior, but we can't even get past that, like, diversity hire label as leaders yet.
0:31:58.0 Tim Sackett: Yeah, so one of the things... This is a behavioral problem that we can solve, or we can't solve. We can help create better behaviors through data, if we would actually use the data we have, and that's... We have a... Like, we have great data and talent acquisition, but we have shitty information, and that's the one of the problems, right? So we have all the data, but we don't use it for the right ways, which is... If I know, and let's just... The easier way to do this, because it's almost a 50-50 representation, is gender. If I know the top of my funnel is... I even have probably misspoke that on this podcast, because I could say gender's 50-50 and it's not any more, right? So let's... But for argument's sake, let's just say we have males and females in our funnel. They're coming through at a 50-50 clip. Somewhere along the line, when we get to hires, it's no longer 50-50.
0:32:48.5 Tim Sackett: So you go, "Well, wait a minute, why is that?" Well, if you're truly measuring each part of your funnel and where it's happening, I can show you exactly specifically where either you have an assessment issue, or you have a screening issue, or you have a hiring manager who has bias, or whatever that might be. And you can do that for every position in your entire company, every location. The data is there now. You know where the bias is. You know where people are falling out. You're refusing to have the courage to have the conversation to call those people out on that bias that they have. Even if it's unconscious bias, they still need to be made aware of, and it needs to be corrected.
0:33:26.8 Tim Sackett: And I see this constantly when we turn the data on and all of a sudden you'll go and that TA leader, you'll go and it's right there on the screen. It's like it just comes out like a big giant frickin zit on the end of your nose and you're like, "There it is. That's the problem." And I'm like, "Should we walk down to that person's office and have the conversation or... " And here's the problem; is that what... And all three of us know this is, the moment you tell somebody that they're racist or that they're sexist or that they're whatever ist, they shut down immediately and now, you become the problem. And that's one of the issues we face, and that's why nobody addresses this in corporate America, especially the bigger companies.
0:34:10.4 Tim Sackett: The bigger the company you are, the worse that conversation is. If I have a really small company, I have 50 people, I have a 100 people, I can go down and say, "Hey, Johnny, God damn it, man, you did it again. We gave you three great women, and one dude that couldn't even tie his fucking shoes." And he's chose the guy that couldn't tie fucking shoes, because you can't stand women and we're gonna... We have to solve this problem. If I have a company of a 100,000 and I'm trying to be upward mobile within that company and I'm trying to do all this stuff, the last thing I'm going to do is go out and call another leader about some issue they have, whatever bias that might be, because that becomes problematic for me in my upward mobility in my career. And that becomes one of the major issues we have.
0:35:00.4 Torin: You just brought up something that we don't necessarily talk about enough. We talk about the fear of addressing some of these complex conversations in the moment or perhaps a bit later, depending on the five gates of speech. But what you just said was that, a number of people hesitate to address the conversation, because they are protecting their own professional trajectory. I've got a question for you.
0:35:36.2 Tim Sackett: Yeah.
0:35:39.8 Torin: Do you think that that right there is a hefty percentage of why we have not made progress in terms of DEIB, whether it be in the recruiting side or corporate communications or in philanthropic giving or board governance? Is it really more flat out? Is it really more of a fear of someone losing or not achieving something? Because if in fact it is, then I think that we should be saying that a lot more than what we've been saying.
0:36:17.1 Tim Sackett: Torin, and I'll share a story 'cause I think it's very personal for me and how I kind of came to that conclusion for myself. I have a son who's gay, and he came out... I knew his entire life, but he came out when he was in college. And I was that dad that would go with the buddies down to the sports bar. Somebody would crack a gay joke, I would crack a gay joke. We would make some crack, "Oh, stop being gay." Whatever it was. And I thought it was funny as shit. I could see the humor in whatever that was, until my son came out and it became personal to me that saying something was gay was meaning it was less than, right? Which again, this is all... I'm not sharing anything with you guys. This is common knowledge, but... So now I have those same friends and I have one buddy that knows my son is gay and he will still do the jokes.
0:37:17.1 Tim Sackett: And I have yet to go either end the relationship or tell him to stop, because it's a friendship that I've had for years and years and years and years. And I know he has a great heart and I know he cares and I know he's... But he does this thing that's hurtful. Now, put that into a professional setting of I have a relationship with you, Torin and I'm your HR peer and you have a bias, and now I got to go and have this conversation with you that I'm nervous will actually impact our relationship. And so instead of actually having that conversation, I don't. I talk about it, probably the other people might even talk about it to your leader, who also will never have that conversation with you, because again, it's a very awkward, uncomfortable conversation to have. And so, we all just kind of tiptoe around the biases that we know each other has without actually having a real conversation about.
0:38:20.3 Torin: I can't thank you enough for not only acknowledging that in terms of its presence in our corporate corridor, but the transparency in sharing your own personal story. And Julie and I, we find ourselves from week to week wrestling with that vulnerability, wrestling with whether or not we need to be empathetic, more intentional, finding time and space for us to say, "You know what, I messed up or I learned something or thanks for sharing that. Hold me accountable." Julie and I do it every single week and I have a guest to do it and to do it in real time. Unprompted is a special event, and I don't care who's listening out there and who's saying that "Torin, you're giving this White man too much credit." We're going to have a conversation around cancel culture and some of those other things. Julie and I, we are going to... As we go into year number five, we're going to turn it up a little bit more. And so, I just appreciate you for being vulnerable and transparent in that moment. Julie, final question for Tim, so we can take the show into her voice and some of the other things that we have to do. But thank you, Tim. I appreciate that.
0:39:35.4 Julie: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So other side, near the end of the pandemic, have we lost our focus on DEIB organizationally? Yes or no.
0:39:50.4 Tim Sackett: Yes.
0:39:51.1 Julie: Why?
0:39:53.3 Tim Sackett: I think because, when we're in crisis hiring mode, we forget about all of the other things and we just... We wanna get asses in seats. We just wanna get anybody that will take the job, and we lose complete track of, "Well, wait a minute, are we just doing more of what we always used to do because it's comfortable", right? And we're allowing that White manager who's most comfortable hiring in another White male, to just go hire more White males, instead of saying, "Wait a minute, let's see a really kind of diverse slate of candidates". And so that's just on the hiring side. But if we're so fast to give up on it on the hiring side, it's just it's pervasive across the entire organization. So for me, the crisis of the pandemic, and then coming out of that pandemic, the hiring crisis... And that's not going away. Demographically we're in trouble. We don't have enough humans in the world, especially in the US, for the jobs we have. And our executives refuse to keep that focus on DEIB when they're in crisis mode.
0:41:00.9 Julie: So yes, those openings are not going away. July, 11.2 million job vacancies in the United States alone. And goes back to the original point of being reactive instead of proactive, which I think is an enormous problem that we have as a country. Let's just say that way. You wanna learn more about Tim Sackett, you wanna sign up for his awesome daily newsletter. Again, timsackett.org. You can check out his podcast, with some amazing voices in our industry, HR Famous. And thank you for coming.
0:41:38.3 Tim Sackett: Yeah.
0:41:39.0 Torin: Hey, real quick. Real quick. Your Twitter handle. Just drop your Twitter handle real quick.
0:41:42.6 Tim Sackett: I'm Tim Sackett across everything. So, Instagram, it's timsackett.com, not org. I should buy the org part, but anyways, you'll get there one way or the other, so.
0:41:54.2 Julie: Timsackett.com. Tim Sackett on every social. Frequent guest. Not his last time. Thank you for joining Crazy and The King.
0:42:00.9 Tim Sackett: Thanks for having me.
0:42:03.0 Torin: This week, our Her Voice segment is where we amplify women that are making moves. We'll start off with Nicole Sanchez. Nicole is hanging up her hat in the DEIB space. She has worked tirelessly for over a decade in the space, and she says in a tweet, "I've never quietly quit, so why start now? I'm leaving DEI in tech, wrapping some things up between now and December. As I approach 50, I will be gentler with myself and no less committed to justice." We'll watch to see what comes next. Nicole Sanchez.
0:42:38.6 Julie: Now we have Randy Bryant, a DEI strategist, consultant, speaker and author. Randy B has a book out titled, Truthing, which is a collection of essays where Randy speaks her truth about being a Black woman in America.
0:42:52.9 Torin: Pinterest hired Stacey Malone, former senior director of Meta's global customer and business marketing team. And I think she was the VP of Global Business Marketing. I don't know, that's a little confusing, and I should only be mad at me since I wrote it.
0:43:11.3 Julie: And then this week, we also celebrate Spain's equality minister, Irene Montero. Last week the country's Congress passed legislation declaring that consent for sexual activity must be affirmative. Silence or lack of objection is not enough. And Montero was the driving force behind this push. The legislation stems from a horrific tragedy in 2016 when five men raped an 18-year-old at Pamplona's Running of the Bulls festival. During the men's trial, their attorney argued that a video of the victim in which her eyes were closed and she was immobile was proof of consent. Last year, Montero and team helped craft landmark legislation protecting the transgender community in Spain. Keep up the amazing work.
0:43:58.7 Torin: She has been quite busy. And last but not least, this week, Incredible Health, led by co-founder and CEO, Iman Abuzeid. She helped grow the company into a rare unicorn, a business valued at more than a billion dollars. Ms. Iman says, "I'm aware that others are looking at me as a role model. Even though that's a little bit intimidating, I hope my story provides inspiration and motivation to female CEOs and minority CEOs to pursue their visions and ambitions." We give a hearty, hearty, hearty round of applause for all of the women in this week's Her Voice segment. And let's close with Disability Twitter, J. The first one this week is... Well, first of all, Disability Twitter is where we pick tweets that have the hashtag Disability Twitter. And we do that because we want to continue to place emphasis and awareness on a community that is often absent of the radar. J?
0:45:00.3 Julie: Yeah, and first we have Eric J. Harvey, PhD. You can follow him at blind scholar, who dropped a tweet back in July regarding being blind, and descriptors that are being used to help describe what you would see if you were using your eyes. And specifically back to an Atlantic article around the description of Vice President Kamala Harris. Fantastic thread, has some fantastic points as a blind scholar, go follow him today.
0:45:30.3 Torin: And this next one is coming from Nadine N on Twitter. I won't try to pronounce her Twitter handle, but she's @nadinen, and the tweet was actually in reference to long COVID. She says in her tweet, "I know we dismiss weed because of its bad reputation, but people with chronic pain and inflammation really do benefit from medical marijuana. Nobody wants to pop Advil or Tylenol all day, and the impact on your liver is definitely not the same". Hashtag Disability Twitter. Hashtag chronic illness.
0:46:06.5 Julie: Yeah. And ending on a critical and positive note, we have Cornuit Singh Singal, who tweets @cornuitsingal22. And it says, "Accessibility is a human right. Accessibility is social justice. Accessibility is real inclusion. It is not a privilege. It is not a gift. Also, it is not a special need."
0:46:29.3 Torin: Absolutely. We thank Tim again for being a part of the show. Go out to his LinkedIn feed. You can find him at Tim Sackett, as he said. Get him on LinkedIn. It's about a month ago, it was a Friday Friday post, where there's right now about 14 comments. And this was the part that was disappointing me. We didn't get to talk about this in the show. But there were only 14 comments. I really wanted to see more than 100 comments. I was hoping that we would get to this and a lot of people would have chimed in around the state of diversity and inclusion and how it's sitting inside of your organization. J and I are happy to be back. We are going to run through Q4 with a vengeance. And we close reminding each and every one of you to share the pod with your digital tribe, to find your voice, be a better human, create better culture, better teams in better workplaces. For now, J and I are ghost.
0:47:24.0 Julie: See ya.