May is always a joyful month as it’s my birthday on the 24th! May 2021 is special as several celebrations will happen.
 

🎂 The Allyance is turning 1! Since I founded The Allyance, I have :

• hired 11 engineers 
• coached 18 engineers such as Robert, Marion & Ranajoy
• delivered trainings on Diversity Sourcing and Unconscious Biases
• completed 3 Diversity audits 
• created thought-provoking content for The Allyance’s blog with Léa
• convinced 329 people to read this newsletter every month

ETHNIC DIVERSITY

💘 The Chief Diversity Officer role is on a roll! Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit’s CEO, decided to hire the first Racial Equity Director,  La Toya Haynes. I love this move and I will carefully follow the work she will initiate with her team. 
American companies had to re-evaluate their HR practices and corporate cultures following the #BlackLivesMatter movement Even if countries have their own cultures and challenges, we can look at other companies’ ideas to get inspired! 

➕ Bonus : Because being non-racist is not enough, Intuit has introduced an open-source guide aimed at the adoption of an anti-racist language in the workplace.

Quote : “We have a set of goals that hold [me] and the whole company accountable. And they’re around employees, customers, communities, and shareholders.”

RECRUITMENT

💯 On a global basis, because of the pandemic, we all had to change the way interviews were led within our organizations. On behalf of Triplebyte, Laura Handeland shares insights after the company organized 28 000 remote video interviews with software engineers. The key learnings are reminders related to facial expression, eye contact, aural feedback and making sure to introduce the office culture! This article is one of the most detailed about hiring remotely.

Quote : “When you’re interviewing via video call, it’s easy to forget what you look like, and even easier to get distracted.”

MANAGEMENT

🧠 When addressing DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), every member for an organization needs to be ready to face contradiction, disagreement or opposition. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Becky Frankiewicz wrote an amazing piece about how different points of views are a precious source of creativity and value. This is one of the most interesting articles I have read recently.

Quote : “If you want to live in an inclusive world that harnesses the power of psychological diversity, then you have to learn to accept, tolerate, and perhaps even embrace those who don’t share your values.”

GENDER DIVERSITY

➡️ Ursula van der Leyen is the first woman President of the European Commission. She delivered one of the most powerful speeches I’ve heard about women’s rights. 

In case you missed it, she attended an official meeting in Ankara, Turkey, on April 6. During this meeting, she was left without a seat while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Charles Michel, President of the European Council, sat down facing each other, leaving her stranded on a sofa. No one gave her a chair. This unequal treatment of Ursula van der Leyen is not a mere anecdote but rather a reminder of how women are treated around the world, even when they are powerful women.

20 days later, Ursula van der Leyen gave a captivating speech (from 13’10 on this video). Her words are chosen carefully : it’s a masterpiece and the full transcript is here!

Quote : “Our democracies are stronger when women are involved as equals. Not because women are better. But because we are different. We have a different view of the world and see other risks and opportunities. To see the world in full we need women and men. This is the only way we will be able to make the right decisions. And it is the only way we will be able to achieve maximum success.”

THE FRENCH CORNER

📜 Dans son blog sur le site Courrier Expat, Sophie Collet, qui vit à Bombay, partage un billet sur un sujet qui revient souvent dans l'actualité en France, à savoir, l’anonymisation des CVs. Le rapport de février 2021 du ministère indien de la Justice sociale rappelle qu’ “il est nécessaire que les jurys d’entretien n’aient pas connaissance du milieu social et religieux des candidats afin d’assurer une évaluation et une notation objectives et purement basées sur la performance.” 

L’exemple indien m’apparaît comme essentiel car une volonté de réduire les discriminations sur la base d’une caste est exprimée. En France, nous devrions mettre en place des initiatives similaires pour empêcher les discriminations sur la base du lieu de résidence, les origines et des parcours académiques. En effet, les résultats de la campagne de testing menée par le gouvernement en 2019 mettent en lumière que les candidatures ayant un nom à connaissance étrangère ont 20% de chances en moins de recevoir une réponse suite à une offre d'emploi et 30% de chances en moins d'être contactées après une candidature spontanée. 

Quote : “Les noms de famille indiens sont la plupart du temps associés à une caste précise, donnant lieu à de nombreuses discriminations, notamment dans le monde du travail. Un rapport remis au ministère de la Justice sociale recommande donc d’anonymiser les candidatures aux emplois de la fonction publique.”

WHAT'S UP?

I am over the moon to share that Morgane Dalbergue is joining The Allyance as a Sourcing & Recruitment Expert.

Morgane and I have been working together in the past. We both have in common the desire to change the way hiring is done and to move forward the understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.That’s why we wrote about how to make recruiters and sourcers work together in 2019. 

🚀 Morgane is going to be instrumental as we will take The Allyance to the next level.