Coinme – Ways to Promote Equality in the Workplace with Jewel von Kempf

Music: This is Recruiting Daily’s Recruiting Live Podcast, where we look at the strategies behind the world’s best talent acquisition teams. We talk recruiting, sourcing, and talent acquisition. Each week we take one overcomplicated topic and break it down so that your three year old can understand it. Make sense? Are you ready to take your game to the next level? You’re at the right spot. You’re now entering the mind of a hustler. Here’s your host, William Tincup

William Tincup:
Ladies gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you are listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. Today we have Jewel von Kempf from Coinme, and our discussion today, our topic today is ways to promote equality in the workplace. Easy topic. I’m sure we’ll solve everything within 30 minutes. Kidding aside, Jewel, would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and Coinme.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah. First, thank you William for having me. I’m looking forward to this conversation with you. I’m the Head of People at Coinme. I’ve been at Coinme for a little bit over a year, prior to that, I worked at a couple other startups in the human resources area, supporting people, building teams, really enjoy the work and the cultures of startups. At Coinme, we operate the world’s largest, fully licensed crypto currency cash network with thousands of locations across 49 of our great states here, through partnerships with Coinstar and MoneyGram. So one of our key goals outside of our mission, which is building better financial futures, is to create a digital currency that is accessible to all people, so not just those technically savvy people like yourself, but [crosstalk 00:01:22]

William Tincup:
Wow. I wouldn’t put myself in that category, but I am wondering, what is the 50th state that’s lagging behind? It’s got to be Texas, because I live in Texas, so it’s got to be us. So…

Jewel von Kempf:
No. Not Texas, New York is one of them, and-

William Tincup:
What?

Jewel von Kempf:
Yup. It has to do more with the regulations and the compliances that we have to meet as a digital currency company in order to be active in those states. Coinme takes security and compliance regulations very seriously as do most digital currency companies. So-

William Tincup:
Well, it sounds like Wall Street doesn’t want this to happen. That’s what this sounds like. But we will leave that topic for another day. We will discuss something easier.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yes, of course.

William Tincup:
Like equality. So again, if we had this discussion three years ago, boy, it would’ve been a different… It’d been a whole lot of different kind of narratives that we would’ve played. But because of the hell we’ve been through for the last two years, hopefully we’re nearing the end of that particular hell, we can have some interesting discussions around equality. So let’s just start with how we should do it. Why don’t we start with the kind of utopian, how should we promote equality in the workplace?

Jewel von Kempf:
Wow. How should we do it?

William Tincup:
How should we? I’m going to give you a magic wand, Jewel, here you go. Done. I might get it back by the way. At the end of the show, I got to get the magic wand back. But between here and then you have a magic wand, if you were to fix this, how would you like to do it?

Jewel von Kempf:
Lovely. That’s a lot of responsibility. For me, it would start with just honest and open conversations, that each company should be having with themselves, as well as our legislature should be having at each state level and national level. And I know we do have those conversations at the national level and some states also, Washington state does have equality legislation sessions, where they talk about well, equality in the workplace and that includes women. But for workplaces, I think it starts with a conversation where everyone is just transparent and honest.

Jewel von Kempf:
Are we paying our women equally in the workplace? Are we recognizing them equally in the workplace? Are we giving them opportunities equally? Are we hiring? What are our hiring practices like? And the same as when we evaluate ourselves against biases, any kind of bias in the workplace, it starts with us just being honest and transparent with ourselves, and our shortcomings and our triumphs, our wins.

William Tincup:
So let’s start with kind of the four cornerstones that you laid out, pay, recognition, promotions, internal mobility, and hiring. And let’s just kind of play with those for just a second. So in those four, you listed pay first, which I’m actually glad you did that. Because I think that’s probably top of mind for a lot of folks, especially folks that are either disenfranchised for whatever reason or that have been on the receiving end of the pay inequity side of things, right? So let’s get pay right? And again, in a perfect world, how do we get pay equity right?

Jewel von Kempf:
Oh my goodness, William. There are so many-

William Tincup:
You got an hour? You got an extra hour?

Jewel von Kempf:
Oh my gracious. There are so many different approaches to this. Some states, I believe it’s Michigan for one, it has it where if you work in a specific job, so say you’re a software engineer. One, you have to get paid the exact same as every other software engineer. So some states have approached it where regardless of if your experience level and your job title match and your pay matches. And other companies, companies like Coinme run quite a lot of data across our pay, well, our salaries that we’re offering our employees. We look at it quite regularly to make sure that we are paying our employees equitably. Now, one of the biggest challenges I think when it comes to women and in the workplace is that they don’t traditionally advocate for themselves when accepting a job. So women-

William Tincup:
Let’s stop there for just a second.

Jewel von Kempf:
Sure.

William Tincup:
Why does negotiation skills have anything to do with the job one performs?

Jewel von Kempf:
That is a very good question. And that’s what some of these states are trying to eliminate when they’re setting up these standards, and also what you’ll see a lot of companies trying to eliminate as well. It shouldn’t, negotiation skills shouldn’t have a place in-

William Tincup:
Unless the job is negotiating. Like, okay, fair enough. You’re good, you’re in the debate club. You have a JD and you’re good at negotiating. Fantastic. Good for you. If that’s the job, if you’re a director of DemandGen in marketing, what does that have anything to do with the job you perform? It drives me crazy, because Harvard did this study 15 years ago, and again, looking at the pay equity gap, and it came down to women are pragmatic. I’ll boil it up, and of course it’s much deeper, much more profound, but basically women are much more problematic and pragmatic when it comes to negotiating.

William Tincup:
And men were just fucking, excuse my French, were just crazy. They were just outlandish. So when you ask men in this particular study, they’d say, “Yeah, I want the keys to the jet, I want to corporate membership to this golf club or golf course, I want a car, I want an expense account.” They’re just riffling off stuff that really they don’t want, but they’re just going to keep asking for stuff. And the results were, I mean, perplexing on one level because it’s like, so men are rewarded for not being tethered to reality, whereas women were asking for pragmatic, again, pragmatic things, “I need some flex time here, I need to make sure that… These are the things I need to be successful at work.”

William Tincup:
Whereas men were just not thinking about work at all. They were thinking about, “I want to go to the NCA championships, I want to go to the Final Four, I want to go running with the bulls, I want to go do this other stuff that has nothing to do with work.” And they’re being rewarded for that. And when I read that, I’m like, well just, A, I mean, fairness aside, it’s clearly not fair. Okay. Stated and covered. But it also rewards men for poor behavior. Unfairness aside, you’re just reinforcing poor behavior. Anyhow, go ahead, I interrupted.

Jewel von Kempf:
No, I exactly see where you’re coming from. I think a lot of that too is also how we’re brought up as females versus males, and that plays into how we enter the workforce, and how we go after what we think we can go after. And then of course, as you probably interview enough people in the tech industry, you can see it’s a very competitive industry, right? And startups aren’t going to pay the same as like Microsoft, for example. So someone coming from Microsoft may feel like they can negotiate more at a startup that’s going to pay a little bit lower in the benchmarking data, but also provide you with options potentially worth more. And the wage gap has… Gosh, I don’t know how to say this. I think as of 2021, the global gap was like, I don’t know, 31.4% or something like that. It was a world economic forum study I remember reading and I thought to myself, “Oh that’s such a big gap, but also like, that’s such an improvement.” Which seems like a terrible thing to say.

William Tincup:
Oh yeah. No, for a moment you’re like, “Oh good, we’ve come a long way.” And into the very next moment, you’re like, “It’s 31%, that’s a third.”

Jewel von Kempf:
Yes, right? Just wild. I’m like, “Oh, we’ve got a lot to go.” I mean-

William Tincup:
Well, so pay is a mixture of internal comp data, external comp data, and in making things equitable, and again, a large salary coming out of a large corporation, getting a smaller salary but getting equity, I mean again, you can make that equal if you try, you can make that equal. But I think, and we’ll move on to the next one here. Next is, the idea that negotiation comes into the conversation at all is ludicrous to me. The job is what it is. You’ve got data internally, externally, you’ve got plenty of data that says the job’s $180,000 job, period. Why is there a negotiation? This is what drives me crazy with staffing firms in particular, RPOs in particular. It’s like, there is no range. The job is what it is. Or you’ve created another inequity elsewhere in your organization. So yeah, you could hire Jimmy for 220, but now you’ve just created a $40,000 inequity with somebody or other people in your firm.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yep. That certainly can happen. I know that when we offer our roles, we do currently still provide ranges. However, those ranges are equitable across the organization, and we won’t go outside of those ranges. But it’s a challenge, I will say we do lose candidates over it. I will admit most of them are men. But we do sometimes lose candidates because we hold to our ranges that we set.

William Tincup:
Well, first of all, I absolutely applaud you for doing that, and if you lose people, that’s their loss. And I think that the first question that you ask a candidate, “Do you want to live in a world that’s equitable? If you do, fantastic. Let’s talk a little bit about how we came to a comp number.” Like there’s no, it’s shrouded in mystery. It shouldn’t be. Let’s just kind of peel that back and show you how we got to this number, the people internal, external, here’s what it is. If you want to live in a world that’s equitable, then join us. If you don’t, okay, your loss.

Jewel von Kempf:
You nailed it right there. Companies being able to talk about their compensation and how they came to that compensation, what their practice and their theory is behind it during the interview process is really a big key to making and creating that equitable platform for everybody.

William Tincup:
Yeah. It’s not mysticism or voodoo. That’s the thing about comp, it’s been shrouded for years, in that there’s this black box and that’s just not the way it was, is, nor should be. So let’s stick to the other course that you outlined in recognition. So how should we recognize equality in the workplace?

Jewel von Kempf:
That is a great… I think one of the things that we’ve done as a company this year specifically, is that we did let people know kind of what our statistics were as far as a company and-

William Tincup:
Like an annual report type of transparency deal?

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah. We didn’t make it complicated. It was quite casual, where we shared that we have 31% females at our company. We would like to have more and-

William Tincup:
Maybe representative of the population of the whole. Yep. Got it.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah. I mean, technically like female STEM graduates only make up slightly over 35% total, but what that tells me-

William Tincup:
Which is a different problem in a different podcast.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah.

William Tincup:
Yes. Okay.

Jewel von Kempf:
But that tells me that there… That doesn’t tell me that there’s no pipeline for females in tech. That just means we might have to make a bigger effort. And so recognition across the company is good so we know where we are. And then ensuring that we’re all trained on how to recognize our own biases, so we can lift each other up, especially our female coworkers. I was in a meeting with a bunch of engineers almost a year ago, and we were having a planning session and someone said something and we were getting kind of excited.

Jewel von Kempf:
It was a great conversation, and someone else spoke over that person and the conversation continued. And another participant in this meeting just kind of interrupted and said, “Hey, let’s go back to what person A said.” And person A was a woman, and just called it out. Like, “Hey, I don’t want us to overlook that this is the key point of the conversation that person A started.” So being an ally and recognizing each other, especially our female or underserved or minorities in our companies is really important in that recognition. So recognition isn’t just giving kudos, it’s actually recognizing people, seeing them, hearing them.

William Tincup:
And again, it’s not lost in the conversation with folks that, listen, just because you screamed the loudest, men, doesn’t mean that it’s the most important thing or whatever. And so I think slowing thing down and making sure that, “Hey, did everyone get a fair shot? Did everyone talk about the things that they wanted to say? Did everyone encounter the things that were talked about today?” I have to tell you a story, or a quick story. I did an event last week that I programmed, and it was a training event. And one of the trainers, a girl, she reached out to me, and thanked me. And she goes, “Thank you for lifting me up and having me a part of the event.” And on one level, I was proud because, okay, cool, that’s a compliment. And then immediately, I was like, “Why would she feel like she needs to send that email in 2022?”

William Tincup:
I immediately got depressed. I mean, it was cool because it was a compliment, so of course I was graceful and I took the compliment, but I immediately thought to myself, “We’re here in 2022? Really? We’re at this spot?” It hurt my soul. Let’s move to promoting, internal mobility, opportunities. How we look at opportunities and how we’d look at equality and how do we position opportunities for folks and give more folks opportunities that maybe they wouldn’t have had an opportunity to have before?

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah, exactly. Goodness. Again, I think this can kind of tie into each company a little bit. There are certainly some things that we can make sure that we’re doing on an equitable basis, and that is making sure that all employees have access to the continued education and not just those that ask for it. So-

William Tincup:
Right, getting back to negotiation skills. So-

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah, women are less likely currently still, and I don’t have a statistic to back this up, just personal experience, are less likely to ask for additional support in the workplace or additional training. So really making sure that we provide those equitable opportunities to training and development. Managers [inaudible 00:18:22]

William Tincup:
Do you have a… Sorry to interrupt, Jewel. Do you have a take on why you think women don’t ask for more training? Because I do.

Jewel von Kempf:
Oh really? I mean, I think it’s really based on how we raise our women. And I mean, we’re raised to not ask for things. We’re raised to be self-sufficient and do more-

William Tincup:
I’m going to go darker.

Jewel von Kempf:
Oh go ahead. Sure. Go darker.

William Tincup:
I’m going to go darker. I think it’s perceptually they don’t want to be perceived as weak, as needing more compared to male counterparts. And so they don’t ask for more.

Jewel von Kempf:
That could be. Years ago when I was younger William, I was a wildland firefighter, and I have to say I did not ask for any support. I did everything myself. If someone needed to do an extra job, I did it, because I was concerned about being seen as the weaker sex in a group of all men.

William Tincup:
That’s right. My wife has said this exact same thing. She’s a landscape architect. She’s told me the exact same thing, because she was working in a male dominated industry with engineers and architects. And she said, “Listen, I would do twice the job and not ask and not complain because I just didn’t want to hear it.” Not even just dealing with the perception, I just didn’t want to hear it. And I’m like, “Damn. First of all, A, that’s not right, morally or ethically or any other way that you want to justify, that’s just terrible.” But yeah, I went dark. Sorry about that. But yeah.

Jewel von Kempf:
No. I mean, it makes sense. And I mean, again, I think I saw this years ago, so pre-COVID, so let’s say 2019, and I’m sure it hasn’t changed too much since then, but 28% of females were in manager positions in companies. So not a lot of examples for women in any field, and so making sure that we’re supporting those development opportunities equitably in our companies is really important. And I mean, I take it kind of, for me personally, a step further in making sure that women in my company as well as other affinity groups are connected to each other and participating and knowing that they can participate in things outside of work, like Women in Tech or… Other ways for them to connect with other people in their industry so that they feel that camaraderie that you don’t always get when you’re a minority in a situation.

William Tincup:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, and again, with women in leadership, one of the things that to look at, it’s again representative of population as a whole, the standard should be, that at least half of our leaders should be female, period and end of story. Because that’s what population is. We have 331 million people in America, half of which at least, actually it’s a little technically over half of which are female. Why is that different? Other than historical bias. And I say historical, and I’m using air quotes because it’s current bias as well. I was at a… It’s kind of funny, because I was at an analyst meeting, for Kronos group years ago, and they got everyone out the room other than the analysts. And so it was a leadership team and it was analysts.

William Tincup:
And so they got PR, they got everybody else out of the room. And wonderful company, if you’ve never worked with Kronos group, real wonderful company in Boston. And they opened it up for a high candorous conversation with the executive team. And so no one asked a question, and I’m just kind of sitting there doodling, off in my own little world. And Aaron, their CEO looked at me, he goes, “William, I know you’re opinionated, so what’s on your mind? What question do you have?” And I said, “Oh okay, cool. Why am I looking at eight white guys?”

Jewel von Kempf:
That’s a great question.

William Tincup:
And he looked at me and he goes, “You know what? I’m not going to make any excuses. I’m not going to give you the backstory. I’m not going to tell you anything. I’m not going to waste your time, because here’s the deal. What I will promise you is that in a year from now when we’re back here at the win and we’re having this meeting, it’ll be different.” And I’m like, “Okay, all right. Cool. Great.” And all the women in the room looked at me like… They all stared at me like, “You’re crazy, why’d you ask that question? What are you doing?” I’m like, “He asked me my opinion, gave my opinion.” But what was fascinating about it, is he calls me on Saturday, I’m at soccer practice with one of my kids, and I looked at my phone, I see his name, I’m like, “He must have butt dialed me.”

William Tincup:
I was like, “Hey, what’s going on?” He said, “What I couldn’t tell you in front of everyone else, but I’ll tell you now is that, I had a women leadership development program, and by the time they get to director and VP, other companies in Boston would poach them, because I had built such a great program that people use it as a firm system.” And he goes, “Here’s how I’m going to game this system. I’m going to times it by 10, so they can’t steal everyone. And that’s how I know that I can effect people of color, disadvantaged, minorities, women, et cetera. This is how I could make you that promise.” I’m like, “Cool, alright.” And he goes, “I didn’t want a mansplain. I didn’t want to get up there and say that in front of a bunch of women because they wouldn’t care. They’d just want to see the outcome, which is what they should judge me on.”

William Tincup:
And I’m like, “All right, well cool. I can’t wait for the next year.” And the next year it was different. It wasn’t perfect, but it was different. And so just a great, wonderful story. And literally, I mean, why am I looking at eight white guys? So let’s deal with the last one which is hiring. And you’d already touched on biases, a little bit earlier in hiring, well biases all over the place but just in hiring. How are you all tackling biases and kind of talking more about it with candidates and with each other and hiring managers, et cetera? I was trying to explain to my sons the other day that sometimes people say bias and they mean preference, and sometimes they people say preference and they mean bias.

William Tincup:
So you’ve got to kind of start to unpack, what is this? Okay? What is this really? And, oh, by the way, we’re littered with biases. All kinds of crazy… Both my son are 12 and 16 year olds so they’re young, both boys. And I said, “Listen, I don’t like classical music. It bores the shit the out of me. If I want to go to bed, I put on classical music, because it just bores the hell out of me.” Now both my sons are looking at me, and I said, “Now see that is both a preference, but in a recruiting conversation that could quickly become a bias.”

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah. And either way it could be in an affinity bias for someone where it’s like, “Oh, I love classical music. You’re going to be my best friend here.” Or it could be the opposite. And so it’s a conversation we have with our recruiters. We have trainings and really it’s just the reiteration, continuing to have conversations and creating a process that is structured so that each candidate is being asked the same questions and going through the same process. I mean, it’s certainly really, in my opinion, more fun to just have a fluid conversation with someone in an interview. But that is where we get into trouble-

William Tincup:
It’s exactly where we get into trouble.

Jewel von Kempf:
… with our own biases. I was once interviewed for a role, and the person asked me a question that had to do with South Park. And I’d actually seen the episode, so I answered it. And that was what the entire rest of this interview was about, was South Park. And I got the job, but I was like, “I didn’t speak about my qualifications once.” So-

William Tincup:
And there’s a way to do both. If you want to do structured interviews and you feel like that’s going to be the magic bullet, fair. Done. Do the structured interviews, everybody gets asked the same question. The candidate gets to ask you questions and then you can then go… And again, especially if it’s videotaped and other people can watch it so that other people can see some of the same things that you get to see. Great. Go through all your structured stuff. Let them ask all of their questions that they want to ask and then go, “Hey, you mentioned something earlier, and I want to go back to it if you don’t mind.” And unpack it. And again, if it’s recorded in any way and shared, then it becomes collaboration, and also a teachable moment if it’s something that maybe you shouldn’t do. And so I think that there’s a way to kind of get to both. There’s a lot of discourse right now about structured interviews being kind of the silver bullet. I’m like, “Hmm. Eh.”

Jewel von Kempf:
I feel like there’s… I think they are really great cover your ass kind of scenario-

William Tincup:
Yes. Exactly.

Jewel von Kempf:
I mean, if we’re being just kind of honest about that. But when it comes to checking your own biases kind of at the door, they can be helpful to have those questions there and then when you’re reviewing the answers. But that doesn’t mean that you still can’t take the time as you should in an interview to get to know someone. Plus, if you’re doing it correct you’re asking some behavioral questions as well. And as much as the question can be structured, the answers are going to vary per person.

William Tincup:
Oh. And their questions are going to be varied. The candidate questions to you are going to be just as varied.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yes. And you know what I do find William, a lot of candidates asking is about our diversity practices-

William Tincup:
100%.

Jewel von Kempf:
… and our demographics. And I love it.

William Tincup:
I do too.

Jewel von Kempf:
And I think it’s fantastic. And we get asked that question, I mean, I get it at least 50% of the time now. And one of the things we make sure that we do is try to have as diverse of an interview panel as we can, which is-

William Tincup:
Well, that’s just good, solid recruiting right there, because basically candidates want to see themselves in an interview process, somewhere in the process they want to see someone like them in one shape or form or another. But I think one of the things that you’re unlocking with as it relates to kind of your diversity strategy or your social justice strategy is, Indeed and LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter are all doing some of the same things with job postings. And the way that candidates are looking at those things, if comp isn’t transparent, then it’s not being ranked as high. So Indeed’s actually moving to, if you don’t put salary into your job description, they’re going to estimate salary for you. How do you like them apples?

Jewel von Kempf:
We’re creating our recruitment strategy. We’re kind of fine tuning it for this year. And that’s one of the things that we’re pushing for with my team. And it’s not just because of the algorithms on LinkedIn and Indeed, but if you think about it multiple ways, yes, for a startup, it could mean someone self-selects out. They don’t want to apply for your job, and you haven’t had that opportunity to explain the total comp. Right?

William Tincup:
That’s right.

Jewel von Kempf:
But it also means that those people applying already have a clear understanding of what the role offers and sure sees a company that is transparent in their practices, and so that can be quite beneficial.

William Tincup:
And what we’re seeing with RecruitingDaily is candidates aren’t even applying… If they don’t see a salary, they don’t apply. They don’t see a salary band or range, they don’t apply. So it also impacts the talent that just never applied, just never even went forward because they’re like, “Eh.” And the second and third things are strategies on your careers page or in the job descriptions that relate to diversity and inclusion and social justice. Again, candidates… And people want to put this on generations, but I actually think that it’s a generationally agnostic.

William Tincup:
It might have started with millennials, but I actually think we’re to a point now where even if I applied to a job, I’m gen X, if I were to apply to a job, I’d want to know the salary, I’d want to know their DEI strategy and I’d want to know their social justice strategy before I even apply. I just want to know. Where you at? And it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s okay if it’s not perfect.

Jewel von Kempf:
It should. And one of the practices we do at Coinme, and I know a couple other companies that do it, I wish there were more, is that if we interview someone and they don’t ask for our band, and they give us a range that is lower. If they say, “Hey, I’m really looking for a job that pays me this.” We will tell them our band, one it holds us accountable. It keeps us from later thinking like, “Oh my gosh, we can’t get this person for so much cheaper.” And-

William Tincup:
That’s exactly, we got… It went back into the budget. We had a savings. You created inequity, is what you did.

Jewel von Kempf:
Exactly. And then if we can’t hire that person, if that person ends up not being the right fit for us, we help them. Especially in the digital world, we pass their information onto other people in the digital world, because we want to see more diversity in our industry specifically, well in any STEM industry. And so we support our candidates in advocating for themselves even after we’ve passed on from them. I’d like to think-

William Tincup:
I love that. I wish more industries did that. I wish more HR and recruiting people thought of it like that. That just a great diverse candidate comes in, not a great fit for us, what can we do to lift them up? Using a phrase that you used earlier. What can we do to lift them up? If not here, elsewhere.

Jewel von Kempf:
Yeah. Because that allyship and that recognition that we have, doesn’t just apply to our company. It applies to our community. We can’t be acting one way within our company and a separate way outside. We should be consistent is my opinion. And so it’s how we operate.

William Tincup:
Drops mic and walks off stage. Jewel, thank you so much. You’re doing great work and thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom.

Jewel von Kempf:
Oh thank you for having me. This is the delight.

William Tincup:
And thanks for everyone listening to the RecruitingDaily Podcast. Until next time.