Equitable Hiring Practices with Edgility Consulting's Jonathan Howard
About This Episode
This episode is sponsored by Edgility Consulting.
This week, Carrie Fox sits down with Jonathan Howard, Associate Partner at Edgility Consulting, about the importance of building equitable hiring practices to create a truly inclusive workplace. "Our goal is to create the expectation and the conditions for collective responsibility for equity in our search process. So it's on us as facilitators of the process, but it's also on the committee and the organization."
Carrie and Jonathan dive into how to write thoughtful, inclusive job descriptions. They discuss removing coded language that may deter certain groups from applying. For example, describing the workplace as "competitive" and "fast-paced" can imply a male-dominated culture. Jonathan emphasizes carefully considering the words used in postings to make them as equitable as possible.
According to Jonathan, effective succession planning is crucial for identifying and developing a diverse pipeline of future leaders. He advises organizations to proactively assess internal candidates, nurture leadership potential, and fill skill gaps well in advance of transitions. "I would just really encourage folks to think about succession planning. If you're talking to me or if you're talking to Edgility about a key leadership role when the need is imminent, I would call it imminent, like you need somebody in the next six months or I could even argue a year, it's too late."
What’s clear is that building an equitable, inclusive workplace takes continuous, intentional effort across all talent management processes. But as Jonathan emphasizes, organizations genuinely committed to equity can achieve meaningful progress through thoughtful, disciplined hiring practices. His passion shines through as he shares hard-won best practices in equitable recruiting. Our thanks to Jonathan and Edgility Consulting for making this conversation a reality.
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Welcome to Mission Forward.
Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast, where each week we bring you a thought-provoking and perspective shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B Corporation. And today I have such a good conversation to share with you. On today's show, we have the very thoughtful and purpose-driven associate partner of Edgility Consulting, Jonathan Howard. Jonathan's here to talk with us about equitable hiring practices and this is a conversation you are really going to enjoy.
A bit first though, about today's guest. Jonathan defines himself as a recruiter at his core, though his background includes having been a teacher at Teach for America, a VP of recruitment at a charter school, and now a recruiter with Edgility Consulting. And part of his purpose, which you will learn more about today, is to connect with and find great people to fill critical roles that push organizations forward. And as you hear, he is particularly passionate about supporting people of color and people whose identity has been marginalized historically to move into and ultimately thrive in leadership positions and organizations that aspire to their values.
This is what I think so many of you, listening right now to this show, want too. But as I often hear, there are too many things that hold that thriving part back in organizations. So, listen in as we get into equitable hiring practices with Jonathan Howard and I suspect much of this will resonate deeply with you.
Jonathan, we've got a lot to get to, so let's get to it. Welcome to Mission Forward.
Jonathan Howard:
Thanks, Carrie. Thanks for having me. Really excited to speak with you today.
Carrie Fox:
And I'm excited to have you here. So, pick up on the story a little bit, tell me a little bit more about you and your story and what brought you to this recruiting work?
Jonathan Howard:
To make a long story short, I grew up in Phoenix, was raised by a single mom who was raising three boys. I should include, my mom was White and she was raising three Black boys, which I like to share because I think it's absolutely defined how I think about DEI and just about equity and how I engage with the world. My early-life identity really came from being an athlete. I played basketball, was a pretty good basketball player as a youngster. Ended up getting a basketball scholarship to ASU, a basketball career. Didn't quite go the way I wanted it to, like a lot of young kids hope, but I had a good mom and a good support structure in place that was really pushing me to make sure I was hitting the books and doing well academically. So, ended up graduating, was accepted into Teach for America, where as you mentioned, I taught special education in Harlem for two years.
After TFA I became a recruiter for a growing charter school organization where I taught. Spent about 10 years doing that, really developing as a recruiter and really just as a leader in that organization. That's where I really learned just how much I love recruiting, how much I love talking to people. Just really developed a passion for just really helping people find the right opportunities where they can have the most impact. And I also just love helping organizations achieve their missions and advance their equity work through helping them just find the right people and putting them in the right seats to drive the work. And I'm now, as you said, I'm an associate partner here at Edgility, where I've been over the last two years and I'm just loving every minute of it.
Carrie Fox:
That's awesome. What I love about your work and how you set that up is, some folks might listen to that and say, "Oh, you're a little bit of a matchmaker." But the way you go about your work is so much deeper than that. As you are bringing DEI and the values of Edgility, and your own personal values, into this work every day, what feels different about the way you do it at Edgility than maybe a lot of other recruiters take on this work?
Jonathan Howard:
We try to be really laser focused on making sure that we're building our equitable hiring practices and selection processes with our clients. So, we believe that having an objective selection process, along with being really intentional about building in space to allow us to challenge biases and assumptions that come up in the processes, really allow for folks that have historically experienced structural racism, discrimination, allow them to have a real equitable, fair shot at some of these leadership positions. And by the way, a lot of our clients are serving students, families, people from underserved communities, Black and Brown folks. And so it's really important to us, and to me personally, to make sure that we're doing everything we can to move the needle and seeing too that more people that look like the communities they serve, are serving in leadership positions in those organizations.
Carrie Fox:
You started with this incredible story about you and your upbringing and I'd love you to tell me some more stories. I'd love to hear a story or two about what equitable hiring practices looks like when it's done well and maybe if you have a story or two of what it looks like when it's not done so well.
Jonathan Howard:
I think, first of all, I'll just share how we think about hiring and walk you through our process.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah, good.
Jonathan Howard:
I've actually been influenced by this great book about recruiting, which I ask everyone on my team to read. It's called, Who. It's by these guys, this guy named Geoff Smart and Randy Street of this company called ghSMART. I recently was able to work closely with one of their partners on a big CEO search we just ran. So, it's really cool for me having, at the very early stages of my career, someone gave me this book and it's a really important tool that I've used to just build out my process and how we build equitable hiring processes. I've pretty much used that framework for hiring since I was introduced to the book earlier in my career.
Carrie Fox:
And I've seen it behind you. I know we're in a different spot today, but I have seen it. It caught my eye.
Jonathan Howard:
Yeah, it's always right there. We start with engaging key stakeholders, so hiring manager, board members, direct reports, staff, families when applicable. We do a lot of searches with schools. Really just to learn about the strengths, areas of growth of the organization and about what a person in the role of a search we're working on needs to accomplish in the role. We take all those learnings, put them together in a scorecard, which includes a role mission, measurable outcomes, what does this person need to accomplish and the most important competency someone needs to have in order to achieve those outcomes.
Once that's all set, job description's ready to go, we start the sourcing process, sourcing potential candidates we think have the experience we're looking for. Also, connectors as well. So a big part of our work, the piece that I love most really, is the recruitment work. The roles we're working on helping organizations fill. The people we want are looking for jobs, you have to go find them. So, this is where my experience as a basketball player who was being recruited by a bunch of schools really influences how I think. You got to go find folks. Folks don't come. The best basketball players in the country don't apply to Duke like Coach K, now coach Shire, goes and finds them, right? So, that's how we approach it.
Once we have somebody that is interested in a conversation, we take them through a number of conversations, and this is sort of maps to how Who lays it out, but we first have a cultivation call just to learn about their interests, check to see if a salary range works with them. We want to make sure we check on that from the start, so we don't get down the road and have that be misaligned at the end. And just really just try to make sure it makes sense. It's the right time, it's the right opportunity, it's the right location, if it's an in-person job, so on and so forth.
Next, this isn't part of the Who process, but I wanted to bring it up just because it's something we've been talking about internally. But typically we have folks, depending on the search, not for every search, but do a video interview, a one-way video interview, we send questions, candidates can record their answers in real time. We've gotten sort of mixed feedback. That's a place where bias is definitely, can creep into the process. You're watching a video, you're watching a person, you can see what they look like, sound like, et cetera. And so, we're having a conversation internally about whether or not we want to continue using that step. Clients like it because clients love being able to see the candidates early in the process, but ultimately, personally, I think the downsides of it, I think, probably outweigh the benefits.
After that step we do a structured phone interview where we focus on the candidate's experience. So, we are very focused on what folks have done for each relevant role to the opportunity. What were you hired to do, what did you accomplish, what did you achieve, what challenges you faced? The challenges question is a place where I'd like to really push people on, just because your resume, you're not often, no one's putting the challenges and hiccups they faced on their resume. And so, really trying to understand things that people had to overcome in order to achieve the outcomes they did in a role.
And then also just about learning about the team: who they worked with, what their experience was with those folks as well. We use all that information. We kind of use it as a running record. So, every conversation we have with a candidate, we're recording it in our scorecard document. We're rating folks on the different competencies that the hiring manager or search committee is looking for and then ultimately share a recommendation with the committee to allow them to ultimately make a decision on whether or not they'd like to move forward with somebody.
Carrie Fox:
So it sounds like you spend a lot of time talking with the candidates, right? Learning who they are and what they would bring to the organization. How much are you learning at the outset about the organization? Because if you're presenting someone, particularly someone, as you said, if you're thinking about someone who may become a minority inside this organization, how much work you're doing with the organization to say, is there going to be a culture add here?
Jonathan Howard:
Yeah. On the front-end of a search process, we call it our discovery process, but we are talking to staff, we're talking to other leaders, we're talking to board members, really any key stakeholder that can help give us insight into what's going well, what the organization needs to work on, one of those questions. Depending on who we're talking to and the group and who we think think is closest to this work, is where's the organization on their equity journey? What does DEI look like? What kind of training and development is being provided? And we learn a lot from those conversations. It just really helps us to understand where the organization is, because we want to be as honest as we can with candidates about where an organization is on this DEI journey and what that means for them so that they ultimately can make a good decision for them.
Carrie Fox:
Let's go back to the basics and some of this process. Are you helping to craft the job description?
Jonathan Howard:
Yeah, that discovery process, all those conversations, those lead to the job descriptions. So, the job description and the scorecard get created hand in hand. The job description is more of a marketing document. Job descriptions are, we try to be detailed, we're trying to list the core responsibilities in them as best we can and share information about the organization. But ultimately the scorecard is really the document that has the detail and gets into the nitty-gritty, so that whoever's doing the valuation in addition to us, whether it's a hiring manager or a committee, is really on the same page. And so the scorecard, it's not something that we would share with candidates necessarily, but some elements of the scorecard do end up on the JD.
Carrie Fox:
So, the fact that you're writing that, I suspect this may not always be applicable, but I've had this on my mind because I've been doing a lot of reading and learning about coded language and how the words we use matter and they portray, many times, our values. And so I'm thinking about this phrase that often shows up in job descriptions, "We are a competitive, fast-paced environment." And what maybe is being told behind a phrase like, "Competitive, fast-paced environment." I want to get your take on that phrase and if you're using that phrase, but how you are ever coaching clients on making sure they're clear in their language.
Jonathan Howard:
Yeah, that's a good one, "Competitive, fast pace environment." We just try to really be critical about the language we're using in job descriptions, making sure that it is as unbiased as possible, that it's not insinuating any sort of gender bias or anything like that. There's a million ways you can say different things that have different kinds of meetings. And so, we just really just try to be critical about the language we're using and keep them as equitable and inclusive. Inclusive, inclusive, as inclusive as possible.
Carrie Fox:
I'm going to prompt you to tell me another story. If you've got one, right? If there's a project you've been working on recently or if there's something over the course of your time at Edgility that you've been really proud of as you've seen an organization move along that equity journey. Folks who are listening are all along that journey. Some folks are still waiting early on in the process. Some folks are very far advanced and setting a tone for what equity looks like inside organizations. And so, for folks along that journey, I'm curious to hear a little more from you on what some of those best practices do look like.
Jonathan Howard:
The way it comes up for me, for the most part, is in the hiring process. As we were working with search committees, when we're doing a search, at some point before we actually start having the committee engage with candidates, we have them do what we call our equity and selection session. Really, to just norm and talk about and really just have a conversation. Sometimes it's just more important just to talk about stuff and get stuff on the table than the actual content. And so, we do that session to review some of the common biases that come up as we've experienced them. For example, affinity bias, people that went to the same school as us or something like that, or confirmation bias where you've made a decision early on and you only are acknowledging or seeking out information to confirm what you already thought. Like, "Oh, this person worked at this company, so they must be great." So, I'm only going to seek evidence or listen to evidence that confirms that.
Another one we see that's pretty common, especially in committees, is what's called the Bandwagon Effect. And so, one thing we ask, especially if there's a hiring manager involved or ED or CEO of an organization, we proactively ask that person to hold their thoughts when we're debriefing a candidate interview so that they don't bias other folks on the team. Of course, people are free to change their mind as they hear more and more perspectives, but sometimes it's easy sometimes to just want to go with the flow, right? "Oh, our leader already likes this person, so I'm just not going to speak up. I'm just going to go with it." And so, just trying to avoid that, having those conversations.
Our goal with all this is to create the expectation and the conditions for collective responsibility for equity in our search process. It's on us as facilitators of the process, but it's also on the committee in the organization. And so, we try to be really brave about surfacing any issues that come up. We're just, again, trying to create conditions for bias to be discussed and for the issues to be surfaced so we can address them. So ultimately it doesn't negatively impact any candidate going through the process.
Carrie Fox:
I imagine this is such an interesting time to be a recruiter and particularly the kind of recruiter that you all are as you're thinking about the kind of positions that you're working to fill. When I zoom out and think about the kind of conversations I see happening across workforce development and otherwise, issues of salary transparency, issues of, in many cases, the ship has sailed, but removing background checks, issues of removing a four-year degree requirement and being more open to different pathways to career. And so, I'm curious which of those or others you see as top of mind these days, that people really have their attention, whether it's one of those topics or another.
Jonathan Howard:
Salary transparency, I think, is you're seeing it more and more across the country. Laws actually put in place where you have to publish a salary range, which I think is great. And this is not my focus at Edgility, but we also do focus on compensation designs. We help organizations, which is compensation, strategy, design, a lot of times sizing compensation right. And so doing a whole, we call it an equity audit, where we're looking at salaries and raises and are you treating different groups, from a compensation perspective, differently than others? A lot of times the answer is yes. And so, there's a lot of organizations that are really just now starting to really dive into that work and really try to fix it. And so every organization is different, different budgets, different parameters, and so I think our team over there just does a really great job of helping organizations figure that out.
But on the search side, just really, like I said earlier, we want to be transparent upfront. "This is what the salary range is. Does that work for you?" It often helps us, if it's not, if the people that we are targeting are coming back and telling us, "Hey, that's not going to work," and we can take it back to our clients and let them know. And so, that could prompt another conversation about if we want to get the talent that we desire for this role, maybe we have to reconsider the salary. A lot of organizations come to Edgility because we have a really good track record of placing diverse candidates. Often organizations haven't done the work and they don't have the conditions internally to support that candidate to be successful. So, that's another issue that comes up.
Carrie Fox:
I'm going to ask you to finish this sentence, and we're coming to the end, so I've only got another question or two for you. But if you were to finish this sentence, "If you want to be ahead of your peers in inclusive hiring, you need to..." Fill in the blank.
Jonathan Howard:
You got to be genuinely committed to it. I think that means just doing it. A question I'll get, "How do you build diverse candidate pools? How do you find these candidates?" You just go find them. So, I think part of it's making sure your team's diverse so that their networks that they're tapping into are diverse. And so, sometimes you might need to look at your team and then just see what the reality is. And if you're not diverse, you're not going to attract diverse.
Carrie Fox:
And that's a really important point, Jonathan. Because I think it's this circle that some folks can't figure out, of, "Well, we're not diverse now, so where do we start? And how do we make that first hire? And how will that ultimately lead to a diverse team?" That, that takes time. But you mentioned earlier, you've got to do the internal work first.
Jonathan Howard:
Yeah, so that's where it starts. And then you got to just go find the folks. You don't just post a job somewhere and kind of hope for the best and hope people are going to come find you. You have to, if you have internal recruitment team or if you need to go externally and partner with somebody like us, like Edgility, really just if you're going to go external, just really being critical and asking questions about, "Hey, what is your track record? What percentage of your candidates who advance to a finalist round are candidates of color? What percentage are women or non-male?" Asking those kinds of questions, I think, are going to be important.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah, that's super. We mentioned earlier this phrase, "Competitive, fast-paced environment." I will raise my hand and say, "I used to use this phrase." And we learned, with some good guidance, that is very much coded language for male dominant workplace, that many women will see that and just naturally step away from it. There's another one I want to get your take on, and it's, "Culture fit."
Jonathan Howard:
We often will see, especially with folks who are coming into the hiring process later, maybe we've gotten to a finalist round and we're bringing other team members in to engage with candidates, that'll be one of the pushbacks or the comments like, "Hey, we don't think this person's a culture fit with us." What does that mean? And so, that's why when we're building out our processes, we're doing the equity and selection, anti-bias session, we're really trying to base things in evidence. So, if someone does say that, "Well, what do you mean? What specifically? What about their experience? What did you hear that leads you to believe that?"
I think it's an org by org thing. Every org has a different culture, but often you're right, people will use that to exclude people with this very vague, ambiguous thing that's not really clear. So, I would say back to the conversation about what orgs need to do, that's part of the work. If you don't have a clear defined culture, and again, every org is going to be different. There's going to be different aspects to it, but you really got to get clear on what that looks like, because that's ultimately going to help sell your organization and attract people to it.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Yeah. That's such an important reminder, and I'm going to just reinforce it here and make sure that it shows up in the show notes too, that you've really got to get clear as an organization. And what I'm hearing from you is clear on what you stand for. Clear on if you really believe in inclusivity, to do the work you need to do to prove it. It's easy to say those words, it's a lot harder to live those words. And I think that's what you and the Edgility team do so well. You are really coaches and guides along this process with your clients and the folks that you are helping to recruit, to make sure that you're making those matches and helping folks thrive. What's got you feeling inspired, hopeful, or wherever you want to go on that question as we wrap up today?
Jonathan Howard:
We've gotten so much positive feedback about our equity and selection, that's often cited as one of the things that our clients like the most or that they got the most out of during a process. Some have asked us to come back and do the session, lead that session with all of their hiring managers in their organization. This just tells me that there's a real desire out there among organizations to have hard conversations around bias and ultimately to build the structures that allow for more equitable and inclusive hiring.
Carrie Fox:
What an awesome pleasure to chat with you, Jonathan, today and to learn from you and to hear your backstory, how you're a basketball player and the recruitment process that you experienced, and how you would translate that to your work. This was a great conversation and I so appreciate you joining us. Any final thoughts before we go or anything you'd like to direct folks to as they're listening, if they want to learn more?
Jonathan Howard:
I would just really encourage folks to think about succession planning. So, if you're talking to me or if you're talking to Edgility about a key leadership role when the need is imminent, I always call imminent like you need somebody in the next six months, or I could even argue a year, it's too late. You really need to be talking to me and really thinking about this at least two years in advance. If you know, if you don't have a timeline, if you haven't had a conversation with your leaders about succession planning, you need to have it.
If you're a leader or a board member, you need to be thinking about preparing for potential leadership transitions ASAP. You should be conducting an internal needs assessment, you need to know where all your leaders are, if you have the time and capacity or a partner to help you with it. Ideally, everyone in your org, if someone leaves, who's their backup? Is that person ready? If not, what skill gaps do they need to fill? So, these are things that Edgility could absolutely support you with. These are things that I love supporting organizations with. So yeah, please come find us.
Carrie Fox:
Cool, and we'll leave it there. If you need a partner in the process, Edgility can be that partner. Well, Jonathan, thanks again. Great conversation today and look forward to continuing to follow your work.
Jonathan Howard:
Thank you, Carrie. Thanks for having me.
Carrie Fox:
Today's show is brought to you by Edgility Consulting, your compass for building equitable organizations where all staff thrive. Their talent management experts empower you to break free from traditional hiring, compensation and talent management norms that often perpetuate inequality and prevent you from hiring and retaining great staff. Put your values to work, act on equity. Visit edgilityconsulting.com. That's E-D-G-I-L-I-T-Y, edgilityconsulting.com, and talk to a consultant about upgrading your talent systems to attract and retain top talent and ensure equity at your organization today.
