Clovers – Inside The Merger With TalVista With Doug Leonard And Scot Sessions

William Tincup: [00:00:00] This is William Tincup and you’re listening to the Recruiting Daily Podcast. Today we have Doug and Scott on from Clovers and Tel Vista, respectively. Now clovers, and we’ll be talking about something that, you know, I think practitioners need to hear more about is when companies go through a merger or acquisition, et cetera, kind of what.

What is that? What are the mechanics of those things, but also kind of the outputs, like why is it important to, for practitioners? So why don’t we jump into [00:01:00] introductions. Uh, Doug, you go first and Scott.

Doug Leonard: Sure. Hey, thanks. Uh, thanks for having me. And um, Scott on William. My name is Doug Leonard. I’m the c e o and one of the co-founders of Clover.

Um, prior to clovers, I’ve been in talent management, talent acquisition for many years. Uh, most notably at two companies. One HireVue, where I met Scott many years ago. And then I also worked at Cornerstone on Demand with Adam Miller. I was the 200th employee at Cornerstone, uh, back in the. And just got to experience, uh, you know, the, the growth of, uh, quasi startup at the time to a publicly traded company that e eventually exited for something, you know, numbers in the billions.

Um, so incredible ride. And you know, about two and a half years ago, [00:02:00] Adam said, Hey, we got this great idea. Uh, we’d love for you to run the company. And that is, uh, that’s where Clover started about, I think our anniversary’s coming up in, in a week, two weeks. Um, and that’s, that’s where it all began. So it’s been an incredible journey and here I am now.

Hey

William Tincup: Scott, why don’t you introduce yourself and we’ll get back to, uh, something I wanna ask. Uh, uh, Doug, go. Awesome. Thanks

Scot Sessions: William. Great to be here with you. Up until recently, I was the c e o and co-founder of Tel Vista. In fact, T Vistas, uh, would be having its five year anniversary here in April. Uh, I too spent time at HireView, like Doug.

I was actually. Number 21 at HireVue. And just to share a little of my passion, I’m about all about people and the products that I love to work on impact people’s lives directly. T Vista, HireVue. I even did a [00:03:00] [email protected] helping people to connect to their past. And so, um, excited to be here and talking with you.

And, uh, share a little bit more about why Doug and I came

Doug Leonard: together.

William Tincup: So let’s do kind of the original mission statements or current mission statements of Clovers and Tel Vista so that folks have some context. When, uh, Doug, you were, you were telling the story about, okay, we have this great idea. Let’s, let’s go out and do it.

What was that? And what, you know, obviously, you know, pivots, uh, things change over, over, over time, and you start thinking about different ways that solve the same problem or new, new problems. So when you first started Clover. What was that? What we were trying to

Doug Leonard: Yeah. I love that story because it really, it really hasn’t changed.

Uh, clovers started right about the beginning of, um, the, the coronavirus and we recognize that there was going to be a pretty tremendous shift [00:04:00] in the way people do interviews, obviously with HireVue and others. There’s been virtual interviews for a long time. Right. Um, we thought that adoption would accelerate tremendously, uh, with, with, uh, coronavirus obviously and changing behaviors.

And it did. Right. Um, I think the statistic at the time was. You know, 50% or 30% of people five years ago were doing, uh, interviews, uh, on, on video platforms like Zoom or Teams. And we estimated that it was gonna go way up and it did. Uh, I, you know, we talked to hundreds or thousands of companies now a year, and everybody has some component of virtual interviewing.

So that was the first thing. Second thing was the technology had advanced with Microsoft teams and Zoom the two major players, uh, to the point where they opened up their video, their, their video stack to, uh, third [00:05:00] parties, right? So now you have this great piece of technology, uh, that everybody was using.

Everybody was getting comfortable. And then they opened it up to companies like us and the, the two leaders of truly, um, you know, not just name dropping, but Eric Yuan, the c e o of, uh, zoom saw this coming. He actually invested, uh, zoom invested in us as well because he knew that they wanted to make that product, uh, be able to create more value for their clients by opening it up to third party.

So that’s part, part. Part two, there is like, let’s recall, like significant, uh, social unrest, not just in the United States, but in the world. And, and there was a real drive to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And we wanted to help with that. Um, I, I know that there’s, there’s [00:06:00] actual, uh, analysis.

There’s actual. That shows there’s true ROI when you have a, a diverse team. That there’s actually more innovation, that there’s better problem solving, and we recognize that as important drivers for clovers from a one. Um, so I think that, um, having the ability to, to raise capital for those two things that I just mentioned, which we did, you know, we were really successful in raising that capital.

Because people wanted to solve that problem and still want to solve that problem. And then lastly, look William, and I’m sure you’re different and maybe Scott, but I’ve worked in talent management for what, 20 something years and I’ve been a manager and a leader and a C O and A C S O. And I had one training on doing a great interview and like literally,

William Tincup: Time.[00:07:00]

That’s more than I have. I’ll be interested to see what’s coming.

Doug Leonard: Right. How much training? Yeah. So when you, when you try to look for something to be disruptive, right? You wanna find those gaps. And that gap was people are really not great at interviewing. So now we have new tools, we have new research, we have new goals, and wow, we could actually help people choose candidates.

In a way that is not AI driven, inhumanly driven, but we want to empower the human to make the best decisions for candidates and let the candidates show up, right? Give them the air to, uh, make sure that they’re really talking about who they are, so we can find those skills and those attributes to drive.

So that’s a lot. Uh, but that was the original thesis that we took to, um, the, the vc, you know, the, the different VCs and, and William, like, we would have a meeting with one of our investors at, at six o’clock at [00:08:00] night on a Monday and Tuesday morning we would have, here’s our offer. And so I, I, it resonated really well.

Um, and those, those three big objectives were the reasons why we started Clover.

William Tincup: And, uh, Scott, five years ago ish, you started Tel Vista. What was the original thesis and, uh, where did you, you know, before the, uh, merger acquisition, where’d

Scot Sessions: you get to? Yeah. Thank you. You know, big shout out to my co-founder Elaine Oler, who William you know and is a good friend of yours as well.

We came together and saw a deficit in the recruiting space as it related to a true. Uh, diversity, equity and inclusion recruiting platform. And so we founded Tel Vista and our main objective was to help candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, with our tagline of seeing beyond the obvious. And William, I, I honestly, I [00:09:00] chuckle each time I say that because it sounds like we hired a fifth grader to write that tagline.

Um, but when it boils down to. That’s exactly what we saw a lack of in the space that people were making. Snap, snap judge judgments, you know? You know, a recruiter’s favorite term is, well, I just made a gut, a gut call. Well, that gut call is often incorrect because it’s driven by their own preferences and bias, and so, Elaine and I actually coined the term, uh, the term conscious inclusion, which is to say, mitigate bias without the negative connotation that, Hey, William, you have bias.

We’re here to fix that. Nobody wants to be told that. Right? But when we approach you and say, Hey, we’ve got this initiative around conscious inclusion now we saw people piling on, so in [00:10:00] 2018, as we know the. Horrible incident with George Floyd. Um, it, it was a time that was ripe for the opportunity to bring a platform to market and, you know, four and a half years later, uh, with.

50, 60 companies, fortune 50 companies, uh, utilizing our platform and seeing amazing results as it relates to attraction and screening and selection, um, to improve more women, more people of color in STEM roles, which are typically white male dominated. Right? And so that was our impetus and those were the results that we

William Tincup: saw.

So you made the decision. Both y’all have have known each other for a while, so I’m sure this wasn’t that hard in terms of, of getting to know each other, et cetera. But you’ve, you’ve brought kind of, uh, you know, [00:11:00] chocolate and peanut butter together. So, uh, so Doug, why don’t you to take us through that and, and again, what you can talk about cuz you made the announcement last week.

Yeah. So it’s out there in the news. So some people probably have already kind of picked up on it, but they might not know, uh, you know, Typically they’re kind of flat press releases. Uh, so give us some context. Yeah.

Doug Leonard: So it’s interesting. Um, but yes, you’re right. I knew Scott for years. We worked at HireVue together, and I, I wanna say that Scott first brought it up to me in like, like two, probably four years ago, actually four years ago at hr.

Um, and I don’t know if, you know, it was like a, a, a driver, a big motivation for him at the time, but it was like, Hey man, we’ve seen your stuff. I think we’d be amazing together. And we were so early in our development. I mean, I don’t, William, at that point, we probably had like fairly [00:12:00] any code actually written and I just thought, yeah, it’s too soon.

But I see, I see the potential for. And Sure off, uh, you know, we, we went our separate ways. He continued to build his business and we built our business from scratch. And then actually started to get some momentum, some sale, you know, some clients. Um, and more importantly, our product became usable and robust.

And then, Of value for our clients, and then we get, so we get some stickiness and some goodness there. Right? And then the ye the year later at, uh, HR Tech, he brought it up again and, and I had actually, I had a couple of other people bring it up to me again, other investors that said, Hey, you know, I think there would be a good union there.

And when you look at what a good union means, like really. The people is the first thing really. And, [00:13:00] and our investors said the same thing. Well, how’s Scott? You know, how are you two gonna work, work together? I’m like, well, good news. We already do. We already have, we already have. Um, and by the way, you know, he’s, he is one of the good ones.

Um, so we took that conversation and we just started like really looking at it and, and I remember doing a demo on the floor in Vegas. You know, uh, for him, uh, at HR Tech, and he’s like, yeah, this would be perfect. And I’m like, yeah, he did the demo for me. And I’m like, yeah, this would be perfect. Right? So going all the different layers of a merger slash acquisition, it is, you know, I think it is the people.

And then you’d start looking at the value creation that the combined entities can do. And then you look at it from an operational and a financial. Uh, and all of those boxes got checked and, you know, we just continued the conversation and, and obviously executed the, the [00:14:00] acquisition merger.

William Tincup: So how long does, and Scott, I want your take on this as well.

How long does, uh, something like that, not yours in particular, we don’t have to do that, but how long does something like this take, like.

Doug Leonard: Go

Scot Sessions: ahead. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll jump in on that. I, I, I would add to what Doug said. Um, Elaine and I, we bootstrapped, uh, Tel Vista. We, we did not go out for, uh, institutional investments and we chose that route, but we were at a point that, hey, we either need to raise money or.

We need to find a good fit. And because Doug and Hy and I had been talking along the years, we started to get very deep in the details. And so, uh, a deal like this, I mean, it can range from a, a couple of years down to three to four months, right? We are on, we’re on the shorter side of that. Uh, and [00:15:00] because.

We had a preexisting relationship, right? We didn’t have to court a lot to figure out one, do we like one another and can we work together? That was a given great respect for the work that, uh, Doug has done at Cornerstone and and HireVue, and so that was hurdle check. Now how do we fit together product wise?

Um, and it, it wasn’t a matter of, hey, whatever company is out there, it was really important for us to find a company that had the same focus and attention on d e I and B right items as we did, and complimentary products. And that’s where the strength comes in. I, I love your analogy of, of chocolate and peanut butter back.

I, I remember those commercials, William, back in the day of, you got your chocolate and my peanut butter. You got your peanut butter on my chocolate. Um, it, it truly is a perfect union and so compliments one another [00:16:00] that our mutual clients are gonna. Wowed at what we’re able to bring to them.

William Tincup: So, Doug, take us into the, take us into the products.

Thanks, uh, Scott, cuz I first of all, thank you for bringing back those commercials into my Bahrain, cuz now I’m gonna be thinking about ’em all day long. But, uh, the product itself, cuz you have, uh, this is a vent diagram, right? So Clovers has customers, um, Del Vista has customers and you have some customers together.

So now we get to kind of go back. The solution into the folks that, that, for all of those different groups, right, and prospects that don’t, aren’t work client, uh, clients of either we get to go out and go out to a new audience as well. What is, what’s the product? And you know, this, this acquisition just happened folks, so, so, so we’re probably gonna be talking both in present and future tents, but what, what’s the product look like, um, you know, for the rest of the year?

What do you think you, you’re going to market?

Doug Leonard: Yeah. So, and I think this is another [00:17:00] great indication of the, and oh my gosh, I’m gonna use a word that you’re gonna cringe William, but synergies, if our cameras are on, you’d be like, don’t use that. But, uh, there were instant synergies, uh, William, and the indicator of that.

Is that once we, we, Scott and I, you know, um, filed our, our intent to, to merge, we worked on go-to-market like a S A P. Wow. Because wow. Scott and I were like, yeah, well even if the thing falls apart, we’ll do a partnership. Right, right. So we put together a product over the course of probably a week called Clover’s Belong.

And it, it, yeah, I’d like to think it’s because we’re super brilliant and we came up with, uh, really great stuff, but it, it was like, it was self-evident that we could provide a closed interview loop really quickly with very little lift in, [00:18:00] in integrations. You know, a lot of companies struggle for years on integrations and getting to market.

So what we did was we created this thing called clover’s. And clover’s belong, starts with Scott’s job description. Scott has a, a wonderful tool, a, a job description optimizer. That could be a service or it could be, here’s the software, you guys could do it yourself. So we took that as step number one in our process in this product, CLOs belong.

And then once you have an optimized job description, and I hope Scott will talk more about what that really means. Once you have the optimized job description, then what do companies need? Okay, it’s great. Companies go and they, they optimize their job descriptions. Sometimes they get published and used and sometimes they don’t.

But the next question should be, alright, what questions are you gonna ask in the interview that match that job description? And we do that. Right. So you go [00:19:00] from pelvis to having job description optimization, then you go to clover’s. And by the way, Scott also has that solution where he can create questions.

Our, the clover’s questions, uh, it’s a pretty robust, robust solution. So we included that in Clover’s Belong. So step one, create the job descriptions. Step two, create the questions. The question is to ask at the right time. And then step three, and, and William, I am sure you’ve seen this a hundred. Uh, where companies buy, like give me the list of questions that we should ask for a particular, uh, job, right?

And then where do the questions go? They get it to the hiring manager in a PDF or in a spreadsheet. And you have no idea if those hiring managers are using those questions, right? But here’s the cool thing with clovers, they get render. In the interview, since we have this partnership with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, if you’re doing a virtual interview, those questions get rendered right on the screen for the hiring manager.

So now the hiring manager [00:20:00] has all of the prep of that particular candidate. They have a list of questions to ask viewed right on the screen. And then of course, since we record and transcribe every interview, a lot of people in the business now can review. What the hiring manager said. And so, and I love Scott’s, uh, Scott said before, like, most people hire based on gut feel.

Now someone in HR could say, okay, your gut feeling was you don’t wanna hire, uh, gene here. Um, now you can go right to the recording and right to the transcript and say, well, show me in the interview where that gut feel went sideways. And then all of a sudden you’re having conversations about skills and competencies that were thought.

Thoughtful from the job description to the question to the hiring manager using the questions. And now we could generate insights on that interview in clovers, which is a product that we already have where [00:21:00] they could look and look. We’ll serve up some insights for you, but we’ll point you in the right direction when you’re doing your collaboration and your ultimate selection of those candidates.

And here’s another one, William, that really pushes towards the. Objective that Scott had, and one of the important objectives that Clover’s had right from the beginning. You don’t, like a de and i officer in a company is not going to be in all the interviews, right? They’re gonna see the results like six months later.

But now someone that’s in DE and I can sit and go through the transcript and provide coaching right in the transcript. Just, you know, like that tagging. So if some, if the hiring manager says something, we actually have this example, we’ve seen this example. The hiring manager sees the candidate on the screen, sees a picture of the candidate’s family, and starts to go down the path of, oh, what a lovely family you have.

What did you do [00:22:00] this weekend? And they talk for 10 minutes about. The family. Oh yeah. The And I officer could say, oh, that’s a flag. And put a note in there and say, Hey, you might wanna avoid this conversation in the future and give actual coaching. And that goes back to one of the things I said earlier, which is, look, I’ve had one class in my whole life about doing a great interview, and now it could be a constant feedback loop on two things, selecting the right candidate for the right reasons, and number two is coaching for DE and I and B, which is something that.

We all badly need, right? It is, and it’s such a powerful tool for those de i uh, teams that they don’t have to be in every single interview, but they can, they can feel now confident that they have, look, they’re serving up all the right questions, serving up all the right job descriptions, and now they can coach and collaborate and drive de and I.

So that is clover’s belong and I’ll do a shame. I have to do a shameless. [00:23:00] You know, we, we do, obviously we have a marketing machine here, uh, William and we have, uh, are just a great team and usually you send out x amount of emails. You get what a 2% or 3% hit. When we sent out to the emails on clover’s Belong, we had a 28% hit, which to me just tells me, okay, great, good.

We have good marketing, but it also means like, oh, people really care about this. We sold our first unit before the deal was closed, and since then we’ve sold more. Like it’s, to me, like as a marketing sales guy, like that is something that is awesome. And Scott will attest, like, you know, we, my calendar’s full of meetings coming up and it, and it’s, yeah, because people really, people still care about de i, even though there’s like a lot of layoffs and stuff.

William Tincup: It’s also, uh, you know, for Scott, it’s, it’s also something that’s never ending. Like, just, just because you, you’re trained totally once, you know, we’re, we’re still [00:24:00] learning the things that we don’t know. So like it’s, it, this goes on and on and on, and in a, in a good way. Sometimes that can be kind, sound bad, like, okay, there’s a, it’s never ending.

It’s like, no, it, our learning is never ending. But, you know, Scott, what I love about this product is there’s an air. Transparency, you know, recruiters, hiring managers, hr, everyone can look at the same things, see the same things, and also kind of bring those questions, bring those questions up. And it’s also preparation.

Like I remember when, uh, brass rang a hundred years ago, brass ring was doing a product update and they took the interview questions out of the application or they just turned it off. And, uh, it was the number one thing that people. Like, they like, Hey, where’s the interview questions? You know, and they, they weren’t even that good.

I mean, this again was a hundred years ago, but there was something that people could have a piece of paper again, they’d printed out in an in-person interview, they’d have the interview questions, and if they used them or didn’t, or all the, [00:25:00] all the biases came in, you know, that was what it was, but they missed that piece of technology.

Um, so Scott, what, what do you, you know, with the, with this product, what do you.

Scot Sessions: Yeah, I, I wanna go off of, uh, the, the training point for just a moment. There. There is tons and tons of de and I training on the market today, and companies are spending millions of dollars only to find that 30, 60, 90 days later that those that went through the training are like, Did I have that training?

What? I, I don’t even remember that training because they’re not provided the tools to reinforce and continue. Um, William, I don’t know if you wear a smartwatch. A lot of people do. Uh, I don’t know. Maybe you have a family calendar that you share with your, your family, and then a work calendar. We are so inundated with information today that we cannot be expected to remember every little thing and.

With [00:26:00] clover’s belong. Now de and i directors and heads can say, I have put a a tool together for you. I’ve trained you, I’ve made you aware. And this tool is going to reinforce and they can have confidence that the recruiters in hiring manager managers are going to write a great job post that is inclusive.

Let, let me give just one example. Uh, one of our clients who has been with us. Two and a half years now. They started out with attracting, uh, un single digit women into STEM roles after and continuously after. They are now achieving a 30 to 40% increase in women and people of color because they’re writing more inclusive job posts.

Now it’s not. The words that they’re using, it’s the [00:27:00] research that’s backing that up. Several years ago, that was research conducted out of Duke University. It is public, it’s available. Anybody can look at it. It was led by Dr. Aaron K at Duke, where they identified words that would cause candidates to not apply.

Well, we continued. We continued on with that research to expand for people of color, people with disabilities. In fact, we re, we overhauled that research last year to revalidate the 2011, and soon we’ll be releasing veteran termed research as well. Into the tool. So combine all of that to now you’re attracting great, qualified and diverse talent in the top of the funnel.

Blend that with, now we’re pulling questions out of this that are inclusive because we’re running those through, uh, the T Vistas optimizer as well. And now those individuals, whether trained or not, they don’t wanna take the time to prepare. [00:28:00] And that’s why they start down the path of, tell me about your family.

Tell me about your school. Now they can go question by question. With an objective interview outcome that meets with the job description and post outlined to ensure that they’re identifying the best candidates versus, oh, you went to Harvard. I went to Harvard. Harvard. Let’s forget all the other questions, and we’ll, an hour later determine, Hey, we’re gonna hire you.

And 90 days later they go, this person wasn’t a fit at all. We totally screwed up. So that’s where it comes back to close. From post to interview to then coaching to ensure that the best qualified talent that is likely diverse maybe is, is put into that opportunity.

William Tincup: So the question, the last question is for both of you.

So we’ll go, go through your Ian end of WA end of year. So you know, a little roughly 11 months away, [00:29:00] what’s the goal for the product and the impact for practitioners and can. Doug, we’ll start with you and Scott, you’re, you’ll answer the same question, but Sure. So probably have different things.

Doug Leonard: Go ahead.

Yeah, so the goal for the product, like we’re like, like I mentioned, we’re so excited for clover’s belong because it’s resonating like a S A P, but here’s the, here’s the good. Scott’s got way more, so we are looking, and I told the team when we did clover’s belong, like how do we find the low hanging fruit?

And we, we think we found it with the job description and the whole thing that I just described to you, Scott. Done something that most tech companies don’t do, which is he built Tel Vista with academic research that is comprehensive and notice I didn’t say algorithm and op driven or whatever. Having the opportunity to [00:30:00] leverage that research in the coming 11 months in all different ways, including.

Okay, let’s, let’s go ahead and run the, the, the, the, the words and the phrases that the hiring manager actually used in the interviews, cuz we have rich data, clovers has the recording and the transcription. So run through, run that transcription through, through Tel Vista. Um, And just start to look at some of the things that he has with Resume redaction.

Like, and, and again, I love when this happens. We, we don’t have to be big, giant thought leaders here. I had a client say to me after looking at the Clover’s Belong demo, she said, man, that that’d be great if you could do something like a resume redactor. I’m like, yeah, funny. You should ask. So yeah. So including the rest of Scott’s great word, especially that research, which is super unique to us.

You know, when we look. And, and William, you probably would know better than I. [00:31:00] There’s no other companies that are doing this. There’s companies that are doing pieces of it, but to put it all together into a comprehensive solution that really moves the needle, uh, that is the goal. That’s the goal, is like to really leverage that research, leverage and, and be, um, be thought leaders in the space because we have a lot of the.

So continuing with, with, with Scott’s mission and really, and I’m, I’m really proud to say continuing, not started, continuing the mission for us on De I and B, um, is what we will continue to do this year in, in the very short term, it is really clovers belong. Um, and, and by the way, we’re not shutting down anything with Tel Vista.

Like Tel Vista has got a beautiful list of clients that we’re excited to talk to and show the, the full, the full, um, full suite with, with clovers and Tel Vista, and of course, vice versa. Taking clovers, um, and exposing Tel [00:32:00] Vistas to our, our clover’s clients is, is the objective. But just working towards and, and leveraging Dr.

Aaron, uh, Research is going to be critical. And where else can we do it? William? Does it have to be just in recruiting or can it be any critical HR conversation? Which is, which is definitely coming. Oh

William Tincup: my goodness. That’s great. Scott. Uh, what would you add? I know there was a lot there,

Doug Leonard: but what would you man, sorry, Scott, did I do too many words?

Scot Sessions: You did awesome. I look. It’s, it’s gonna be more of what we’re doing today, William. We hear from practitioners all the time. My tech stack is too big. I have too many tools. Well, in our union, we have three pieces. Well, the, the, the complete de and I package rather than three different vendors. It’s one vendor for job posts, for [00:33:00] Resume redaction.

William, do you know that T Vista last year processed nearly a hundred thousand resumes for redaction for our clients, and so we often hear resumes are dead. Well, you know what they’re. People are using ’em. It’s an an easy entry point, but people need to be more consciously aware and focusing on their skills, abilities, and experience, rather than the school, their name, their location.

And so having one place where you can go for a true diversity recruiting and hiring tool versus, oh, my a t s added that really, are they putting effort behind it? Is it, is it backed by research or was it just a means for them to get your next renewal? That is an add-on that’s not supported or uh, developed on a regular basis.

We do diversity recruiting day in, day out. That is our [00:34:00] focus. We’re not an ats. We don’t wanna be an ats. We wanna help you hire qualified talent that. Maybe diverse as well without excluding those qualified

Doug Leonard: individuals.

William Tincup: Love it Drops, Mike walks off stage, both of you. Um, I think this is really fun just to, for practitioners both if, if they’re familiar with either of you or both of you, um, just to hear kind of how this thing played out and what you, your dreams and aspirations, uh, for the end of the year are.

So thank you both of you. I know you’re crazy busy, so just thank you for coming on the. Thanks, William.

Doug Leonard: Pleasure. Yeah, man, our pleasure. It’s always great to talk to you, William. Anytime.

William Tincup: Well, thanks and thanks for everyone listening to the podcast Talk next time. Yay. So, I was gonna ask this question, but it is, it is a, a kind of a persnickety question.

It’s, uh, what’s the difference between preference and bias? Uh, [00:35:00] Scott, I know you’ve been asked this before. Yeah, but it’s so, so I asked this to another guest. She’s a practitioner, so she handled it okay, I guess. But I said so, well, you know, I’ve been asked this, so I’m gonna ask you this. What’s the difference between the two?

And she goes, pre preferences, the way you justify bias. What? Holy shit. Wow.

Doug Leonard: I

Scot Sessions: see them. I, I think that’s a great, uh, response. I see them as interchangeable. Yeah. Over our lifetimes, we develop our preferences. Right. Some are new. Yep. Some are 30 years old. Oh, yeah. Those develop into our biases that are deep seated.

Oh, yeah. And so it has to start somewhere as a little kid, vanilla or chocolate.

Doug Leonard: Right.

Scot Sessions: I, I’m, I’m a vanilla ice cream and, and so are my kids. My wife is chocolate. And so now we. Are [00:36:00] biased for or against one another’s selection and ice cream. And so really they’re interchangeable. Um, and a lot of people don’t realize that, but they start

Doug Leonard: when, because one

William Tincup: sounds negative and one sounds positive.

Right? Exactly. You have a preference for northeastern schools. Okay. But that’s right, they don’t, if you say bias in that same sentence, uh, that’s a negative. That’s a, it comes off as negative. So yeah, there’s probably some good stuff to talk about there from like a thought leadership perspective, cuz I don’t think that gen most practitioners understand that.

You know, I, I almost brought up in the south, it is not uncommon at all to put your church on your resume, not. At all, and it’s usually kind of comes up in volunteer work or some of the experiences that you might have. And again, you know, it’s, it’s cool if you’re aligned, right? But, but what if you’re not, what if the hiring manager is, is not religious or, or.[00:37:00]

Catholic or whatever the, whatever’s something different. Well, all of a, all of a sudden it’s like right there on a resume and you know, something that you can’t ignore. And even if you try to ignore it, you can’t ignore

Doug Leonard: it. So, which can serve

Scot Sessions: to be exclusionary or inclusionary.

Doug Leonard: Right, right, right, right,

William Tincup: right, right.

I’d hire a Catholic tomorrow. I mean, just because I grew up Catholic, cradle Catholic. I go to church every Sunday. If somebody told me they were Catholic, I’d be like, all right, cool.

Doug Leonard: I’m Catholic. Hey, see I got a, a funny story. This is actually cool. So one of my friends who is applying or was applying for a VP job at a very large company, he did like his resume, but he put in the beginning his bio and he put his beautiful children in on the bio.

He put his vacation home at the lake on the bio and the kids are cute blondes little girls. And I’m like, why are you doing? He goes, well, cause I want people to want people to know [00:38:00] you’re successful in that and you’re looking for other connections. And I’m like, you gotta take that out. Like to me, I would, I would delete that.

Like I wouldn’t hire you for that. Right. Like you’re putting that as your first thing. Picture of your, your Gloria success at the lake house. I

Scot Sessions: instead let your numbers speak for themselves of, at this place I grew sales by 150%. That is what demonstrates not. And I said to

Doug Leonard: him, why’d you do it? And he’s like, because I want to create a connection.

Oh, you wanna create a connection with other dudes,

William Tincup: successful people that are just like you.

Doug Leonard: Yes. Yeah. And I’m like, this is it. This is argument. Exactly. We’ve all been conditioned, not just the hiring managers, but the candidates with Henry.

William Tincup: Uh, I had an argument with him over the, over the weekend. He’s 17 years old, and I said, you have no idea how privileged you are.

It’s so steeped inside of you. You have no idea. I’m not privileged. I’m like, oh, okay. Well, let’s go through the list. And I just, [00:39:00] you attend a private school and always have, you’ve never worked a job. Like I’m just literally going through these things. He’s like, well, that’s not really privileged. I’m like, eh.

Yeah, it’s

Doug Leonard: totally

Scot Sessions: privileged. Well, conversely, Doug, the I, I’ve spoken with black people Yeah. On both sides of this argument of, well, I’m going to say this because I think that will help me. Right. But other black people are like, I

Doug Leonard: do not wanna be judged. That’s right. On

Scot Sessions: my race or That’s right. Ethnicity.

I want my experience. And

Doug Leonard: so, yeah, they won’t check the

William Tincup: box. I, I had friends of mine down in Alabama when I was there that won’t check, they wouldn’t check the box. So when it came to, uh, race, they just put, they just put, they just wouldn’t leave it open cuz it’s usually optional and they just leave it open.

They’re just like, no, I wanna be judged. Based on, you know, the merits of my work. Not, not because of those other things. I think that makes it harder on some level for hiring managers and for recruiters [00:40:00] if they want to, if they’re, if they’re targeting, like we would need more female engineers. And, and you get to the gender part and they just don’t fill it out.

It’s like we’re actually trying to Right. You know, so it’s, it is kind of, I mean it’s interesting cuz, cuz you could see both sides of that argument, uh, clearly. Well, y’all wonderful merger, acquisition, all good stuff. Glad the product’s already set and you’re already kind of out in the market doing stuff with it.

So let me know how I. Thank you.

Doug Leonard: Well, and thanks Jeff. I saw Sure, yeah. I, I saw William, that you’re traveling and I shared that with Jackie, and I think we are gonna hit some of the same shows. Okay, good, good, good, good, good, good. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll sit, we’ll see you there. Yeah. And connect and see what we can do.

Oh, absolutely. I’m doing a show.

Scot Sessions: Are you going to Vegas for Unleash to Mark’s, uh, event this

William Tincup: year? I don’t know. That one’s not on my calendar cuz I don’t have a speaking deal on it. But I’m doing Sherm Sher’s getting an HR tech in a big way. [00:41:00] Like they’ve got a, they’ve got a labs, they’ve got a startup competition, they’ve got a venture fund and now they’ve started a tech conference.

And so they’ve basically looked at HR Tech and said, okay, we, with our 400,000 members, we can do that. So their first one is in March, and sic and I are both doing it, and we’re both both doing, uh, the startup competition, but we’re also, uh, doing the, uh, doing speeches at that show. So, I’m kind of leaning into, I’ve kind of avoided SHRM for a while.

I mean, I did a bunch of SHRM events speaking wise, and that could just got kind of burned out, uh, because they didn’t really focus on tech and now they’re actually Johnny and that whole crew, they’re going into tech in a big way. So, Probably this year I’ll probably try to forge more of a deeper, they’re syndicating one of my podcasts into their community, so I’ll probably try to go deeper into that

Doug Leonard: community.

Yeah, that’s awesome. Are you, we [00:42:00] agree, by the way, I wanna do that too. And we, our resources are going towards some SHRM events this year. Willing for the first time? Yeah.

William Tincup: Yeah. They’re just now leaning into it. I mean, for years I went through Sherm, you know, the certifications and all that stuff, and, uh, And, and I’d go, we literally went around the States National, did all their conferences, but they, even when I did the certification, there was no, nothing specific on tech, nothing like the body of knowledge, you know, is, uh, compliance and all this other stuff, which was great.

Good to learn. But nothing on tech. But I would go teach, you know, user adoption and implementation contracts and all this stuff around tech, which was cool, but they didn’t have anything institutionally that would actually be supportive of it. And man, they’ve got, they’ve hired, I think they’ve got six or seven people that are just doing the tech part of, of Sherm.

So

Scot Sessions: are, are they, are they putting. [00:43:00] To really attract talent professionals rather than just HR generalists, which that’s right. Typically is what

Doug Leonard: Sherm is made

William Tincup: up of. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. No, they, they, they see the HR generalist role still as important, but it’s a technology you have to understand technology for, to be a, a successful HR generalist, you used to, uh, the thesis was you had to be good at compliance.

You had to understand employment. Well enough right now they’ve changed and said, yeah, you still need to know that that’s a spoke. But everything is technology enabled. So like I had heard Johnny on a podcast say that the HR generalists, the people that are coming outta school, the people that are just starting their careers in hr, they have to understand technology.

Like I’ve never heard, I’ve never heard Sherm say that before. And it’s like, okay, well a decade too late, but we’re here now. So, uh, so I’m gonna do their stuff as much as I can, just [00:44:00] because, you know, they’ve got 400,000 members. It’s like, okay, well, you know, it’s kind of hard to find density somewhere.

Like, people ask me, you know, where’s a great recruiting conference? I’m like, uh, there’s a couple. Yeah, yeah. Eerie Talent 42 Source Con. And then, and then it drops. Like it’s, it really, HCI used to have a strategic talent acquisition show that was actually really good. Uh, and they acquired Right. And now none of they, they don’t, none of their, they’re all virtual, which is insane to me cuz they had good, I mean they had high level people in the audience.

Yep. Well y’all, congratulations on everything. Uh, and I’ll, I’ll get this into production. We’ll get it, we will get it all posted. But thank y’all so much for your.

Scot Sessions: Hey William. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help you. Okay, buddy? Will do. Uh, it’s a street. Alright, so really appreciate

William Tincup: you a hundred percent.

Doug, you were gonna say something? [00:45:00] No, just thank you. Okay, y’all get on, get, get eight minutes back, seven minutes back into your schedule.

Doug Leonard: Love it. You too. Bye

William Tincup: bye. Bye.