INNOVATE ON DEMAND - Predictive Hiring TODD I'm Todd Lyons. NATALIE I'm Natalie Crandall. VALERIA I'm Valeria Sosa. ETIENNE And I'm Étienne Laliberté. TODD And this is the Innovate on Demand podcast. How do you hire the right person for the job? In our federal public service, the conventional method demands that applicants use a rigid format, using specific keywords to map their education, skills and experience onto a defined list of essential and merit criteria. Canada's Free Agents went another way, assessing applicants against a set of behavioural characteristics, to great success. Our guest this episode says that whatever process we try to implement, in the end, it all comes down to first impressions. NATALIE Welcome, Étienne. Before joining the public service, you worked in the private sector for startup during the peak of the Internet bubble. That's a really interesting thing. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and what kind of innovation might have been going on at that time? ETIENNE Absolutely. Yeah, those were crazy days. It was 2000 when I joined the company. The company itself used to be a business that was in the CD ROM industry at the time. But internet was picking up steam and the company had shifted its activity towards building websites. But these were still relatively early days for the internet. And what this company was producing were websites that allow the owners to edit the content without any HTML knowledge. Nowadays, we take it for granted. We have platforms such as Blogger or WordPress, that everyone uses. So, we're familiar with the WYSIWYG tools, but back in 2000, my teams were coding the WYSIWYG tools that allowed people to edit. So it was a lot of work, but it was pioneering work. One of the most exciting projects that I worked on was actually my first project that I ever managed, it was a soccer portal back in 2000. It was the year of the Euro 2000. VALERIA As an Argentinian, you've piqued my interest. ETIENNE I figured. And the soccer portal itself was in two languages, English and Spanish. We had our team spread on four different continents. It was a really exciting time. And I remember in the month of July or August 2000, an article coming out in an internet magazine or publication of the of the day that did the ranking of the most visited websites that summer, and our portal was number 54 in the entire world, which for June 2000 was crazy. And then there were other types of innovation projects that were starting to pop up. One that was also -- that we were all very eager to work on -- was a deal with the Phoenix Suns, the basketball team. Someone had the idea at the time to-- VALERIA Sorry, you said the word "Phoenix" and I tweaked a bit. [laughs] Sorry. Continue. ETIENNE The idea of the team owners was to provide handheld devices to the crowd in the arena so they could interact during the game with surveys on the screens, or maybe even order food from their seats. There were big partners. I think Lucent technology was involved. They were providing the devices. Our company was developing the app for the interface for the service. NATALIE I bet you called it an application back then. ETIENNE Oh, actually, I can't remember what we called it. But actually, what I like about that story is that nowadays, when we think about the idea of giving a handheld device to 20,000 people in an arena now so that they can interact, and then people hand back their device at the end of the game -- it makes no sense. But there was something about the idea that was visionary. And that was the understanding that we're coming close to the day where everyone will have a small computer in their hands. And they will be able to interact in real time and order food that will come to their seat, wherever they are. NATALIE And turns out the future is here. ETIENNE So those were fun days. Yeah. VALERIA Can I ask you, what were you trained in? ETIENNE Project management. Master's degree in project management. NATALIE So that was in 2000. You actually joined the federal public service in 2003. So what would that transition have looked like for you, as far as innovation goes? ETIENNE At the same time it was very smooth in the sense that there was not much challenge. At the same time, I was a bit dumbfounded by what I saw in the public service. My first job in public service was for the Translation Bureau. They had a unit called Techno Linguistic Services, which was basically leveraging technology to improve translation. And they were basically developing website. They had developed a little system through a database that allowed simultaneously publishing French and English content to the government website. Originally, it was well thought, actually. So because of my web development background, I got there thinking that this would be a fun challenge. But what I discovered is that the teams were about a third of the size of the team that used to manage. The budgets [were small]. The largest project I ever managed over there was 125th of the size of my largest project in the private sector. And the technology was, for the most part, about five years behind what private sector was using. So, that so that was the transition. Though, again, if I [use] an innovation lens, there were some cool projects happening at the time over there. One that I remember got me really curious and excited, was... at the time, the Auditor General had just audited Job Bank, the job website that ESDC was managing or HRSDC at the time. I can't remember. And the quality of the translation of the job posters was absolutely terrible. Terrible! It was an embarrassment. So our unit was tasked with improving the quality of the translation. And the assumption going in was that technology is going to resolve all the problems. So I had very qualified people on my team, all techno linguists, [who] were very skilled at automatic translation software. So we crafted an experiment to [test] a few hypotheses, and what we quickly discovered is just by running the original job description [through a spelling and grammar checker] in a word [processor] like Microsoft Word, [we] improved the quality of translation by about 65%. So just fixing the mistakes and the grammar and spelling, solved 65% VALERIA Oh, you mean quality control! ETIENNE And we didn't need to buy or develop any technology. Just Word could do it. The default dictionary could do it. Then another thing we looked into was all we applied the rules of plain language to the original text. And again, we tested the nine or 10, basic plain language rules, and measured the impact that each rule had on the quality of translation. And there were two rules -- the first two -- that also created a 20% improvement in the quality of translation. And those rules were use short sentences, and use an active voice. So, subject, verb compliment. Don't say that "the apple was eaten by Todd", say "Todd ate the apple" and the translation will be much better quality. So again, we didn't develop anything and yet there was an instant improvement have about 85% of quality of translation. And, every additional rule that we implemented resulted in a one or 2% improvement. So there was really interesting work going on. NATALIE Very interesting. It sounds like you have a long standing relationship with data and testing. Shortly after you joined the public service, you stepped into the HR world. This is very much where my personal area of interest lies. So I'm very curious to know if there was any innovation going on in that sphere. back in those days. ETIENNE I stepped into HR by accident. I was working for an ADM at the Public Service Human Resource Management Agency of Canada. NATALIE That is what OCHRO was, I believe. ETIENNE OCHRO, yeah, but at the time, it was a newly created separate agency. And they were working on the Public Service Modernization Act, and that ADM was tasked with implementing the Public Service Employment Act. And my role on the team was to build capacity for managers to do staffing under the new legislation. So I did that for almost a year, which was an amazing experience. And two weeks, literally, after the implementation of the PSEA I landed on the west coast in Vancouver, actually doing staffing. So now living with the consequences of my actions. So working at Fisheries and Oceans, [in] their law enforcement branch. Initially, the mandate was very specific. It was to resolve a long standing staffing issue that had been present for about seven years. But my mandate quickly increased beyond that. And before I knew it, I was looking at all the aspects of people management -- employee engagement, performance, management, recruitment, [you] name it. And I did that for five years. And it was an amazing experience. Now to the question: was that innovative? Well, the Public Service Employment Act, I thought, was a fantastic little piece of legislation. I think it's a really well written piece. The people who worked on this were smart people. And I remember until 2009 or 2010, I was amazed by how the people who wrote the act were able to anticipate years in advance problems that might happen. And the Act really took care of these problems before they happened. So there were some great ideas happening there. As far as my practical application of the Public Service Employment Act, or across government, I cannot say there was anything innovative happening. The one benefit that I had was I had never done staffing before, and therefore I had no preconceived ideas of how it should be done. The one thing I knew is I wanted to treat employees the way I would like to be treated as an applicant on a job process. And that influenced much of the things that I did. Basically what I did when I approached staffing and people management, I simplified everything that I could. I got rid of processing requirements that were not needed. For example, when people would apply on my process, no resume was required. And I made it explicit on the poster: don't send in a resume, don't send a cover letter. The Act didn't mandate it. There was no policy requirement for that, so I didn't need it. So I simplified all the posts where I could. And then the rest was just having a very user-centric approach to everything and always putting myself in the shoes of the candidates, the applicants, and try to look at what was happening from their perspective. So, being very responsive to communication. No question left unanswered for more than 24 hours. It was about getting rid of this idea of the "black box" that generates mistrust in the system, and what's going on. So being as transparent as possible. Every piece of information that I could anticipate that I knew I would share openly with the people. And I did that in all the aspects of my job. And this will be a topic for another podcast one day, but the Public Service Employee Survey really showed that it made a huge difference on employee morale. But, that being said, I wouldn't say that there was anything really innovative about what I was doing. VALERIA Can I ask you a question? So -- no CV, no cover letter? So would they just ask a series of questions and they would just respond? ETIENNE It was basically: describe in your own words how you meet merit. VALERIA Were these people coming in from the outside, or were they were already internal? ETIENNE I managed different types of processes. Most of my energy was focused on internal staffing for fishery officers. I had a very clearly defined line of work. And basically, what this turned into was that employees were able to develop a portfolio that they maintain over time. So they didn't have to restart applications from scratch, every time. They would just keep building the same portfolio over time, which the first time you build it, is very demanding. It's a big investment. We're talking two, three days of work, perhaps. But after that, it's maybe 15 minutes of work in a week. You finish a project, you add a line in your portfolio, and you're ready for the next process that comes along. The employees really appreciated that. NATALIE I do, too. I want that. So you spent a big part of the last year researching best practices and wrapping up a lot of this work that you've done in HR, to something different. What are some of the lessons learned in innovative practices and staffing recruitment? What did you discover? ETIENNE I was working for a separate agency that is completely reviewing their 20-year-old staffing system. And I was hired to join the small team, eight people. Really, really qualified people. Smart people. I was the only outsider on the team -- the only person who was not from that agency. My supervisor had the wisdom or the luck to to assign me [the task of] looking outside the organization [to] identify the best practices, lessons learned, [and] innovative practices in the area of staffing and recruitment. So, I did that for the better part of last summer, 2018. I interviewed about 100 people mostly from the federal public service, but including not only the core administration, but Crown Corporations and separate employers. I also ventured beyond that. I met with a few people from provincial governments, municipal administration, and [the] private sector. They were semi-structured interviews. Basically, I outlined what I was looking for, I but gave the interviewee complete freedom in taking the conversation of where they wanted. And I came back and tried to make sense of the result, and then uncovered the patterns that were emerging. And again, not a lot of innovation going on in the HR world. But what I came across instead, were a handful of what I call "positive deviants" -- a few bold thinkers that are taking a new approach to old problems. And in looking at the demographic of this little group of bold thinkers -- out of a over 100 people that [I'd] interview, no more than 10 would fit in that category. And actually, some of those 10 work together in little clusters. And then when they split up after three years of working and they go in different organizations, they colonize these other organizations. But many of them had worked together previously. So [when I asked] them about their background, it was also a bit striking to notice that half of them didn't come from an HR background. They were business consultants... organization development specialists... I remember one was a recruiter, so not your typical HR person. But you can see how her background as a recruiter really shaped how she was as an HR executive. And basically, she was strongly focused on the needs of the applicants, the candidates, the new employees. That was her mindset, which differs slightly from what we see in HR. So that was a common pattern. And while I was asked to uncover the best practices and lessons learned, I finished my written report by warning people against focusing too much on the best practices. I think best practices can have a negative impact. People tend to advocate thinking, "Oh, we're just going to copy that practice without putting thought into it." And in fact, the best practice might have worked for an organization because it made sense in that context. And maybe it was a blend of a few different best practices that made the whole work. I also warn people against fads, big shiny objects, and jumping to solutions -- finding quick solutions, quick fixes. I personally was more interested in the thinking that went into [creating] those best practices, then the best practice itself. Perhaps I can give one example. One of the big problems that HR folks working in staffing have to deal with is whether to pool or not to pool. And [creating a] pool is often [thought of as] the solution to most problems.. HR loves pools, but when you talk to applicants, applicants hate pools, and managers are not sold to the idea either. They don't actually care whether the person they're hiring comes from a pool or not. All they care is about having qualified people really fast. So, I contrasted the practices of two organizations, two federal Crown Corporations, and they both looked at the problems of the pool, and observed the same things, yet came to different solutions. In one organization, the director of HR looked at the numbers and he said, Look, I know that out of any pool that I have about 30% of the people in the pool get appointed. That means a 70% of the people in the pool, never get a call. So odds are, statistically, if you are in a pool, you will not get a job. It's just ridiculous. It makes no sense when you think of it. And then he looked beyond that because he realized that 70% of people that will never get a call now lose faith in HR. It erodes the trust with management, and it hurts the employers brand. So he looked at the numbers and you figured, let's say that I'm creating a pool of 100 people -- 30 people will get a job 70 will not. And to get to that pool of 100 people I know from our past numbers that I have administered at least 300 interviews. And to get 300 people in interviews, I probably look at 3000 resumes. He said, If I compile all the effort, the time, energy and dollars that go into this, it makes no business sense. All this work to hire 30 people and [it] alienates 70, it makes no business sense. Instead, as director of HR, I can come up with 12 different ways of hiring the 30 people you need without alienating anyone. So, that organization moved away from pools. Then another organization took a different approach. They're everywhere in Canada. They have offices in the smallest communities, and what they did is that they started creating a lot of pools because that organization has a good capacity when it comes to analytics, especially web analytics. And they're at a point when they can even tell, if I advertise a job on Linked-In, in this geographic market, I can reasonably expect to have 100 applicants in a seven day period, as 50% of the applicants will probably be qualified for the work. Therefore, if I I'm only anticipating 50 jobs in this market is this area. In the next two, three months, I should only post the job pulsar for seven days on Linked-In in that market. And I will probably just get enough people in the pool to meet my needs for the next two, three months. So what happens is that everyone in the pool gets a phone call, everyone gets a job offer. If they people turned down a job after a few times, then they are told we're going to remove you from the pool. But don't worry, we'll run another question in the future. There's always a need for for these type of job. And so they took a completely different different approach. But both employers observed the same problem at the origin is that pools the way they are done right now they don't work, everyone hates them. One decided to move away from it. The other is decided to embrace it in a different in a different way and meeting some some conditions. Now when I share that practice with people, typically the reaction I get is that either people dislike the idea, or didn't want to put the all the effort that goes into making poor words. So ensuring that everyone will get a job offer and you leveraging the analytics, it's too much work. So they're actually not interested in changing the way think they do things. So many of the HR process are designed for HR's own convenience, in fact, rather than to serve the managers. VALERIA I could not agree with you more. In that first group that moved away from the pool method, do you know what direction they went in? ETIENNE Yes, they went towards headhunting. Targeted recruitment. NATALIE It's very interesting, I stumbled across some of your results in your findings from this on YouTube, which actually surprised me. And then didn't surprise me because I've known you for some time. But so within that project, you really, that that's a really new and different way of sharing this information across the public service. So can you tell us a little bit about that? How did you come to to do that? And how did you get it to stick? How did you land that, really. ETIENNE So for those who don't know me, I like to think that I'm probably one of the first bloggers in the public service. I started blogging about my work back in 2005. And by 2006, seven, I was in an active blogger publishing weekly. And so it was something that I was familiar with. So when I was mandated with this project, for that separate employer to look into best practices and lessons learned in staffing and recruitment, I knew from the [beginning] that I would have to produce a report by the end of my work. But I also know that almost no one today reads reported. So the thought of spending a month or two writing a report that no one will read, didn't sit well with me. I knew that in order for the findings to stick, I need to package them in a very, very dense way. Quick, something that you can listen to, in a couple of minutes -- actually listen to or watch rather than read, like a podcast. And initially, this was my idea. However, there's another person that I know a free agent that has a podcast that has such high production value, that I thought I'm never going to be able to compete with Todd Lyons. TODD I'm blushing. ETIENNE But I saw an opportunity to carve my own niche as well. And it was actually in discussion on the Friday afternoon with another free agent that I realized, well, video blog is just one medium away from the podcasts. And actually, the video blog has a few added advantage. For example, I can resort to multiple way to convey a message, visual, auditory live, people see my body language. So from that moment on, I was pretty set on creating the video blog, I just had to work out the format. But I knew that I was probably looking at two minute vignettes. Take one idea and expand on it very, very specifically. Very targeted. So initially, I when I shared the ideas with my supervisors, they were on board, but they knew we will have to clear a few things with communication and others and manage expectations. So we did that. And then something unexpected happen. I was working on the first series of being so I had recorded about seven and I had my launch strategy plan that planned out. So I was the plan was that in early December 2018, I was going to launch an or publish an initial seven minutes on a Monday morning. And then for the following two weeks, every day, twice a day, I would publish another vignette. And then I was applied. And when I and I told my supervisor, this is coming, this is December 1, I'll be launching and the very morning that I was supposed to launch at 630 I got an email from my supervisor telling me don't publish anything. Senior management wants to review every video. And that was after three months of giving the heads up that I was... VALERIA They wanted to make sure you were wearing clothes. [laughs] ETIENNE So I obviously respected the request. But there was something a little particular about the email in the sense that it was "senior management." It was kind of vague. So when I ran into my supervisor that day at the office I just asked, who exactly needs to see this? Can I get in touch with them personally? And I will actually [contact] him offline. I will not go through the formal channels. So the supervisor told me who I had to run the idea by and it was Dave Conabree. If you're on Twitter, Dave Conabree is very active on Twitter every day. He shares his a reading at lunchtime; always [an] interesting person to follow. And Dave Conabree is a forward thinking person and he has zero patience for bureaucracy. It's part of the pleasure of working for him is that it's one of his missions in his life is to get rid of stupid bureaucracy. So when I found out that Dave had to veto or approve the idea, I just tweeted him. And I said, Dave, I've recorded seven videos. I'm planning this video blog. I'm aiming to launch next Monday, so I was delaying my launch plans by my week. Have a look at the first few. I don't name the organization. I don't mean any employer that I interview. I'm doing this as a Free Agent. I'll be using my personal email as a Free Agent to publish it. My Talent Managers within Free Agents has already approved the idea. Neil Bouwer, who's kind of the champion of the Free Agent program is already talking to people that this video blog is coming out so no need to worry there. And by the end of that evening, I think eight o'clock that night, I get the tweet back from Dave Conabree. It says: it says, Étienne, I looked at the first three videos. I love it. I have no objection. Glad to have you on the team. It was that simple. VALERIA Much better than a briefing note. ETIENNE Much better than briefing note, but the lesson learned there is that video blogs have existed since 2005, I think, so the video blog is nothing new. But it was perhaps the first one in public service. It was a novel idea in that sense. And it there's no demonstrated value yet, because it's the first. And I think to some extent, I had to convince people that yes, there is a value in conveying a message in this format. The video blog has got almost 9000 views by now. NATALIE And it was also tweeted by the head of the Public Service Commission as something really interesting that all people involved in staffing should be looking at. That is definitely a barometer for success. ETIENNE This video blog was produced nights and weekends. I bought $200 of equipment to do it in my living room, because I knew that it's the only way it's going to get done. Part of the motivation for doing it is that I am after a certain type of reaction. I hope to make an impact. And I knew the feeling that I was after. But until you start getting the emails back in the feedback, you don't know if your intuition is correct or not. So I launched the video blog on a Monday morning around eight o'clock. I had worked 22 hours straight on editing the vignettes. I had never published anything on YouTube before, so everything was a learning experience. Everything took twice the amount of time that I had anticipated. So by eight o'clock Monday morning, December 17, I sent an email out: the video blog is now available. And 12 hours later, by eight o'clock that evening, Patrick Borbey sends me an email saying: Étienne, I'm onto the ninth episode by now. So he had already watched almost half of it on the first day and-- VALERIA He was binge watching! ETIENNE He was binge watching. Yeah, I could picture him in his living room. NATALIE Most people binge watch Game of Thrones. ETIENNE But the feedback coming from the President of the Public Service Commission was very encouraging. And I said, Well, if I'm getting his attention, and if he wants to support the initiative and talk about it, I'm on the right track, so I kept pushing for it. That being said, I had a really high expectations of how many views in might get. The result is way, way, way below my initial expectations. I sent that to almost every person who works in staffing and recruitment in public service. And looking at the numbers, I can tell you that less than 300 people in the entire public service have watched the entire series. Less than 300. And the most viewed video has been seen about 1,300 times, which is the first one. And then, when I look at the stats I see with every video, there's fewer people that look at the videos, except for two videos, or three actually, which is a bit indicative of where the interest is gained back. And those two years I got slightly more views than they should were about whether to pool or not -- the topic I was discussing earlier. And the other was advertised versus non advertised, which to me is an indication that people are thinking within the constraints of the system, rather [than] thinking about bold solutions beyond those constraints. NATALIE It's very interesting. It all leads into something which we like to affectionately call Moneyball, which I believe is your current work right now. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? ETIENNE Yes, Project Moneyball. Project Moneyball came about while I was doing those 100 interviews last year. There was a question that I systematically asked to every interviewee. I asked them, What is on your radar right now? What are you paying attention to that if you don't start doing very soon, five years from now you will no longer be competitive as an employer? And three people -- three of the bold thinkers, actually -- mentioned quality of hire, how to define it, and how to measure it. And its natural successor, predictive hiring. And because the idea was mentioned by these three bold thinkers and no one else, it struck a chord with me. I I paid attention to it. And in the end, it only got one sentence in my video blog and one line in the written report, but it was always in the back of my mind. And then one day, I was reading the book, Work Rules by Laszlo Bock, who was the lead recruiter at Google. He still is, I think, and when I stumbled across chapter five of the book, I was blown away. I said, This is what I want to do. And chapter five talks about predictive hiring, and all the things Google has tried over the years to improve their hiring methods. And there's a mention in the chapter about Moneyball, the book and the movie. I had seen Moneyball, so I went back to it. And now I was re-watching the movie with a different lens. And it struck me how every scene where you see the baseball scouts talking about which baseball player they should be hiring, reminded me of how staffing is done in the public service. And in the sense that it's just gut feeling -- based on nothing. And what predictive hiring wants to do is look at data, look at empirical evidence to base hiring decisions. And actually look at past trends and what the evidence says about the relationship between qualifications or skills, and what makes great performance, to better focus the energy and a hire more people that do the type of things that lead to great performance. So, for example, in Moneyball, one of the things that they look at is, despite the fact that batting average is easy to measure, and has been tracked for decades, maybe 100 years, batting average is no indicator -- no predictor of a win for a team. The best predictor of a win for a team is players who walk to base. And that's how the Oakland A's were initially able to assemble a team of players who were just really skilled at walking to base. That doesn't mean that they are good ballplayers. That doesn't mean that they hit home runs. It doesn't mean that they run fast. But ultimately, they walk to base and that creates points for the team and points create wins and wins create championships. And that will be one of the first challenges with Moneyball for the public service: it will be how to define what's a win in the public service, for the organization, for the business unit, for the team, [and] for the individual. That will be the first challenge. I wouldn't even know where to start with that. For some types of jobs, for some lines of businesses, there might be indicators [or] metrics that are are useful to determine. For example, if you look at someone who's working in a call centre, there's an easy way to determine if they're effective at what they do. You look at the number of calls they take, and the satisfaction of the callers. Those two metrics are pretty objective. That really represents good service. So now the only question you need to answer is what are the skills that lead to these two things. There's a lot of literature in industrial psychology publications about that. Google has shared much of their findings. They haven't shared the entire recipe, but they have at least shared some of the ingredients. Then there's been a bit of research done in the public service as well about that, looking at the future skills of work, and those that transcend jobs and time. So I already have something to start working from, but now it's about building a project around it. And the entire project will be composed of small experiments, most likely. VALERIA Okay, so you're still at the beginning stages. ETIENNE I'm at the very beginning. So it's the unknown. It's [part] of the beauty of the project. I think this is as close as I'll ever work to true innovation. The challenge is that I have almost nothing to base the work on. The beauty is that any discovery I make is something more that we know now than we knew before. So there's almost no way to fail at it. The worst is that I test a number of hypotheses and none of the hypotheses are demonstrated. But that alone would be a finding in itself. VALERIA Yeah. Okay, so I have quite a few questions here. So I recently saw this video from Google, talking about how they're trying to remove bias from their recruitment process. And I was actually disappointed, because it looked like the direction that they were going [in] was more of the public service direction for recruiting. It was that more detached system, really staying within that objective personality-less,, humourless way to interview candidates. And I could see their reasoning for the bias portion: how it works. But being in the public service for so long, and seeing the recruitment process of the public service, all I kept on going to is that, Oh, my God, that's such a shame. Because there's all these negative aspects to that process, because you're removing the the ability to assess somebody as a human being. When I think back when I was working in the private sector with small businesses, I worked for a period doing recruitment and training and things like that. And I remember at one point, thinking to myself, I know within a minute whether I'm going to hire somebody. I'm talking to them, and I know right away, or I know that I'm not going to hire them. And it takes a lot for that to change. Is that me being biased? Or is that part of being able to assess somebody's work ethic, personality, [and] soft skills. There was one thing that we used to talk about a lot, which was always hire for personality and train for skill. Because if you have the right attitude, and the right personality, you can pretty much train them to do anything, and they will be a success. So leading to Beyond 2020... are you familiar with that? So, the new public service renewal initiative. They're looking at mindsets and behaviours and how to change mindsets and behaviours in the public service. So I guess, I'm asking you, what role do you see that playing in what you're doing? ETIENNE So the one mindset and behaviour that we need to change in in staffing in the public service is to remove gut feeling decisions, and resort to evidence. And if I can contrast the two examples that you gave: your experience in the private sector, and knowing that within the first minute, whether you're going to hire this person or not, versus what Google is doing is actually one of the most documented cases of bias. It is demonstrated that hiring decisions are made in the first four minutes, and the rest of the 56 minutes of the one hour interview are spent convincing yourself to confirm the decision you've already made. VALERIA I never regretted any of my decisions, though. Just FYI. ETIENNE But this is precisely why Google is taking a different approach. They are depersonalizing the [process]. They're formalizing the way information is captured. Hiring managers are not even interviewing the people that they're they're selecting. And that's also the way I used to do it on the west coast. At Fisheries, the hiring manager was not part of the assessment. VALERIA Are we saying that's a good thing? ETIENNE I think for collecting the information, evidence, I think it's a good thing. And then you leave the manager make his own decision with the information you present. But the information that is collected is collected in an objective way. There's no bias. If I if I decide that you would be a good employee or not, has no bearing on me, because I'm not going to be supervising you. So I'm really focused on what I need to identify, uncover from the interview, the merit criteria, and then I will produce a recommendation to the manager, but the manager retains the final authority over the hire. NATALIE That's really interesting, I think what you just said, Val, about never having regretted a hire that you made [is interesting]. But the question I would ask you is how would you know? VALERIA When they suck! [laughs] NATALIE Because you have no way of knowing the people you didn't hire, how they might have performed? And I think that's a little bit about what predictive hiring is, is finding out the the the false negatives and the false positives around that. So what are those characteristics that you base your gut feeling on? Or what are those criteria that you base that gut feeling on? And if you can actually turn that into evidence based [decision making], then maybe that's a game changer and helps you change that mindset of that behaviour. Not you personally, [but in general], I should say. VALERIA But as long as we have a metric for that lens. Do you know what I mean? Because right now, what we've been using up until now removes that lens completely. ETIENNE And again, there's one little step that we need to do with predictive hiring that is a bit counter-intuitive or goes against what the way we've done stuffing traditionally, is you need to start with the end in mind. You need to be clear about what makes great performance. Once you identify that then you work your way back. It's not the other way around. It's not looking for some qualifications without knowing if whether they lead to performance or not. VALERIA I think that's part of the problem, because we haven't been able to quantify, and we haven't been able to really define what a productive and effective mindset is that makes an employee successful. So we just ignore that assessment portion. ETIENNE There's a vignette that I produce on the video blog. I think it's number 19, one of the last ones. But it's about using data and changing mindsets, and bringing that evidence based decision making into the staffing and recruitment and HR as a whole. It's a big shift we must do. Yeah. VALERIA Wonderful, interesting. What useful lessons would you have to share with the public service "intrapreneurs" or innovators, in all your learnings and all your experiences? ETIENNE For "intrapreneurs", one thing that I can think of is try to spot the opportunities. Train yourself to spot the opportunities. And, what makes a great opportunities for an innovative idea to implement must address a real business problem. Some people have a wonderful ideas, but they don't really address a problem that is pressing for the hiring managers. So that probably be the first thing to do. In selling an innovative idea to a manager or an organization, it's not always easy, obviously. And if I put myself in the shoes of a manager is a very simple explanation why they're not going to be sold on the idea immediately, especially if they need to take much of the risk that would come along with a failure without getting much of the benefits. So you need to find a balance between the two. It's actually how I negotiated my video blog. Ultimately, I took all the burden on myself. If I fail, if it has met with with a with a backlash, it's all on me. You, my supervisor, my managers are not named anywhere. You're not part of this. However, if I succeed, I get all the credit -- 100% of it. So the main mitigating measure was, was designed purposefully in that sense. But I can't imagine it myself going to manager saying, I got this great idea. I need your money to do this project. If it fails, it's all on you. And if it succeeds, I'm going to take the glory. No managers will sign up for that. So this is something that you need to balance and every situation will be will be unique. Another thought for "intrapreneurs": looking at the literature from entrepreneurship and startups is one of the things that make an entrepreneur successful is their willingness to kill their darlings. They start with a great idea. They prototype it. They start testing it and release the product on the market. And then there are a few early adopters, and they provide feedback and if they like it and the product catches on in popularity, the second wave of customers that come in might have different expectations for what would be a good product. And the entrepreneur must make a decision. Do I change my original idea to meet a bigger demand in the market and be a successful business? Or do I stick to my original idea at all costs, and just focus on that little niche market that I identified earlier? And I observed some initiative, some great ideas in the public service, and I can see a similar challenge: the reluctance sometimes to evolve the idea when it should. But perhaps it's part of the reason why we're not so good at scaling, is because we don't evolve the original ideas to meet larger demand. Another thought that I have for intrapreneurs: there's a gap between a [whether] product or a service is needed and where we are certain enough that it will be risk free, or that it will succeed. And it boils down to risk. With predictive hiring, we don't need it immediately. I have a limited thoughts or ideas about how I'm going to approach this because it's unproven. But I know for sure that if we don't start working on it now, in five years [or] 10 years from now, it will be too late. In five years [or] 10 years we will be able to just copy what others have done. But we need to start working on it right now. How can we reconcile the timing of when the idea is needed and the certainty about its success? And lastly, there's some literature that talks about why some companies have developed a culture of innovation. Why do they have a track record of releasing innovative products? And the literature points to a number of factors. But one of those factors is that the organizations where the emphasis is put on the individual rather than the organization tend to be more innovative, versus organizations where the institution trumps the individuality of its members. And perhaps I'm looking at the public service, but it's clear, in my opinion that we don't value the individuality of the people or the small teams, or the smaller business units. VALERIA Less Kool-Aid. ETIENNE So perhaps it's one thing that we can start improving, giving people a bit more freedom to show their individuality, bring their ideas to the table, even if it goes a bit against the grain of what else is happening in the organization. The good news is that, in my opinion, the when it comes to innovation in the public service, the bar is so low. In a way, it's discouraging. But you can also turn this into an empowering idea. The bar is really low, which means that even though the smallest ideas can make an impact. VALERIA I just want to probe that a little bit. Why do you say the bar so low? ETIENNE I have a basis of comparison. [laughs] Going back to where we began at the start of this podcast, in the private sector, they have a slightly different approach. That being said, there are some really smart people in the public service. I'm not talking about that. [There are] some some really bright ideas, but it's about the incentives to do something with these ideas and in weighing the risk. VALERIA Thank you. Thank you very much Étienne. Thank you for joining us today. This has been very enlightening. Any final thoughts beyond your your wonderful, insightful advice? ETIENNE Risk it all. TODD Short and sweet. I love it. VALERIA Done! All right. Thank you. TODD You've been listening to Innovate On Demand, brought to you by the Canada School of Public Service. Our music is by grapes. I'm Todd Lyons, Producer of this series. Thank you for listening.