114: Steps to building an inclusive recruitment process, with Rohan Shah, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Ruben Sinclair

Shownotes: People recruit people from the industry, but also people who look like them, behave like them, are from a similar background, use a similar language... Would you agree? If this is the reality, the question is how important is inclusive recruitment for the PR industry or businesses in general? And what does 'inclusive' recruitment actually mean? What can organisations do to break the cycle of systemic exclusion and homophiliy? Move from being performative to truley transformative??Rohan Shah, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Ruben Sinclair, and I had an interesting conversation about all things inclusive recruitment and more. We also spoke about 👇🏾👉🏾 The role of technology/Data in creating fairer and more inclusive recruitment processes👉🏾 Inclusive job adverts, structured job interviews, pre-determined questions and clear evaluation critera 👉🏾 Ensuring candidates are evaluated on the basis of skill sets and competencies rather than personal information👉🏾 Back to work, future of work👉🏾 The Elephant in the room for the recruitment industry - that leaders don't really get involved with the recruitment process👉🏾 His belief that to have a truly inclusive recruitment process, a company's employee value proposition (EVP) should allow for radical flexibility. What does radical flexibility mean? "I think it's easy enough to have people acknowledge the importance of, strategic and inclusive approach to recruitment, but it can seem very difficult to actually get people to actually, genuinely adopt it. I think that's more so because when they realise the work, the time, but also the cost associated with it. You can slowly see this barrier going up between sort of saying it's important and actually doing something about it. Do people understand the importance? Yes, Are they always adopting it on the whole, I don't think they are, and if they do adopt it, do they generally get a specialist in to help them? I don't think that's always the case."Rohan ShahHead to the podcast to listen 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾Episode TranscriptSudha: Good morning, Rohan. Wonderful to meet you again after a couple of weeksRohan: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Sudha. Sudha: So let's start with a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. Rohan: Sure. Okay. So I'm Rohan, I'm responsible along with my business partner for the overall growth and direction of Reuben Sinclair, which is your traditional recruitment consultancy. But also RS Engage, which is very much a HR and talent management consultancy on the recruitment agency side. We have a vision to introduce exceptional PR, marketing sales and digital professionals to businesses around the world, whilst also changing that sort of traditional recruitment practice.And on the RS engage side we have specialist HR consultants go out and advise small to medium enterprises on their HR practices, but also put in place specific practical work for them, but also help a number of global clients transform their talent acquisition and sort of retention strategies with a particular focus on inclusive and accessible recruitment.Sudha: That's interesting. So how did you get into recruitment?...

Om Podcasten

The Elephant in the Room Podcast is a curated safe space to have uncomfortable conversations about the pervasive inequalities in society and our workplaces. The idea of the podcast was born from my sense of conflict about identity, self and the concept of privilege and fuelled by my own need to understand how my overlapping identities and experiences had impacted and would continue to impact my life chances. Two years ago I decided to ‘opt out’ to find my own purpose and focus on passion projects including learning about the systemic biases that are endemic in business and society. The Podcast is my very own listening project, a step towards being more intentional in my learning. The Elephant in the Room Podcast is for people who want to be a part of the change, for those who want to step up & speak out, for those who want to learn more about biases, barriers and best practice, for business leaders and for individuals, anyone who is interested in a fairer, more inclusive and compassionate society and workplace. Each week I will interview inspiring speakers from across the world on issues that are taboo and deserve to be mainstream including(but not limited to) systemic and institutionalised racism, discrimination based on further eight protected characteristics, poverty, mental health, climate change. The podcast will also talk about cognitive inclusion, culture, purpose, ethics and the importance of empathy, cultural intelligence and how conversations on identity and disadvantage would be incomplete without considering intersectionality. With the podcast I hope to share stories of people with lived experiences, stories that may have never been told, stories that galvanise us to take action for change and keep the conversations alive by raising the decibel on issues of inequity, inequality in our search for a fairer and more inclusive world.