Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer. Today we’re talking to Bas van de Haterd. He’s a speaker, author and advisor on assessment recruiting, and the influence of technology on work and society. We’ll talk about the different approaches to candidates and employees that he sees between Europe and the United States and a lot more all on this addition of PeopleTech. Bas, it’s great to see you. There’s a lot going on in the world today. When you look across the ocean between the Netherlands and the United States or North America, what do you see that’s common or what’s different, especially when it comes to talent acquisition?
Bas:
Mark, there’s so much different. The more I learn about America, the crazier I think your country is to be honest. If you look at some employment laws, which are on the one hand by far smarter than ours and on the other hand, really not. So if you look at, for example, your discrimination laws, that you need an 80% from different ethnicities. In the Netherlands, if you ask somebody for ethnicity, you are screwed. There is no… You don’t get fined more. On the other hand, if you look at actual labor market discrimination, the number of people in the Netherlands who’ve been convicted for this is one. And the only reason this guy got convicted was because he gave an interview with the local newspaper saying, I’m not saying the woman is useless, but trucking is a man’s job. So of course I rejected her on the fact that she’s a woman.
Bas:
And that’s the only time somebody ever got convicted for any form of labor market discrimination in hiring in the Netherlands, because we have all these laws. They’re just completely non-enforceable. And you have laws which are from a talent acquisition perspective, sometimes a bit strange because you’re looking at ethnicity and not taking quality into effect there yet enforceable. So it’s really interesting that we have much better laws. They’re just not enforceable. Yet you have technically speaking lesser laws on labor market discrimination, yet enforceable. But the way you treat people is also very different. Because a fixed contract here is a contract and it’s really hard to fire somebody. While in the US, it’s really so much easier to fire somebody. So you’re spending a lot less time on getting quality of hirer rights.
Mark:
Do you think there’s a great difference in the way diversity and inclusion is handled in Europe versus in the United States?
Bas:
Without a doubt. And to give you an example, we still talk about it like probably you did in the 1980s. You are at least 20, maybe 30 or 40 years ahead of us. At least in America, there’s a debate going on. At least you’re accepting historic racial injustices, and there’s now a movement trying to fix it. The interesting thing is if you look at, and this was a meta study done by Northwestern, the three most labor market discriminating countries in the world, in the Western world are France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. And everybody says, but Sweden and the Netherlands, you’re so inclusive and you are so egalitarian. Yeah. And because we believe we are, our unconscious bias is 20 times as much. You can’t talk about it. Every time it comes up, people are like, that’s just, it’s basically the 1980s, 1990s in the US for as far as public debate is going. So, yeah, the discussion here is still very low key. While in America, I see a lot more movement on this.
Mark:
You’re known for your work and assessments and being an expert on assessments. Do assessments have a role in fighting that kind of issue?
Bas:
Absolutely. I think assessments are the key to solving the issue because it turns out, Mark, that everywhere where they are implemented well, and this is the important part where we implement them well, quality of higher and diversity go up. Because my God, talent doesn’t stick to racial, ethnic, or sexual orientation lines. And everywhere that I’ve seen an assessment tool being used in the right way, which basically means is let’s figure out the traits which somebody needs for this job. Let’s measure those traits in a scientifically valid manner and let’s start hiring based on those tests. You see diversity going up on each and every measure. I’ve seen here in the Netherlands, KPMG, early graduate recruiting going from 33% to over 40% women, because all of a sudden it turns out these women have the same leadership capabilities, just the middle aged white men like us didn’t think they have it when they were starting with interviews.
Bas:
I’ve seen it in Grand Thornton, the accountant organization in the UK, where they did away with all educational requirements for their internships. And they just started doing aptitude testing. And you know what, even your math grade in high school doesn’t tell me if you are good at math, because if you need three jobs to sustain your family, your grades will be lower because you don’t have the time to do the homework. And they started doing this aptitude testing. All of a sudden, they started getting in candidates which according to the tests were really good from, as their head of recruitment told me, neighborhoods or partners wouldn’t park their BMWs.
Bas:
And these people, and they’ve been doing this now for seven or eight years. And she told me these people are, which we hired and we would’ve never given even a chance when we were looking at grades and educational attainment, they’ve clocked more billable hours. And they stay longer at the company. They’re the most profitable employees we have. Hires previously wouldn’t stand a chance when the resume and education was important. And we were training them anyway. We had internships. We had trainee programs to get people up to assistant accountant. So that was nothing new. We just spending it on the privileged people who didn’t need a job next to their studies and were able to have a really high GPA.
Mark:
Right.
Bas:
So, yeah, without a doubt. And I’ve honest to God, if you look at, for example, racial injustice in the Netherlands. We have the biggest discrimination against Muslims. Basically, a Muslim name will give you a 30% chance of getting selected compared to a name like Bas, which is a typical dictionary. One for a chance using these tests, we saw them with the exact same chance.
Mark:
So you were talking before about how in the world of DEI, the United States is further ahead than the Netherlands. Does that same formula fold up when it comes to assessments in general? Which place or which group of people are using assessments the most appropriately/
Bas:
To be honest, it’s really difficult. We don’t see a massive uptake of assessments in the Netherlands. Only in certain areas. We have two types of high volume jobs, basically, retail staff and contact center work where assessments are really common because there’s one assessment provider who focused on that. And the ROI was just so ridiculously high that right now it’s hard not to use it because then your manager will ask you why? And do we still have that many bad hires? Why do we still have this attrition? If all our competitors lowered it by a factor of five sometimes using these tools. I’ve seen them go down from 100% attrition a year to 20% just by selecting the right people.
Bas:
On the other hand, the Dutch used to have assessments for the very last candidate. So basically we’ve already made our decision, but now we need to make sure somebody else externally signs off on our decision so we can’t be blamed for hiring this person. That was the way the Dutch used the assessments. So taking them to the first step of the selection process is very difficult. In the US, you see more early testing because of your labor laws that gives you a better position in court. Basically, in America HR is about keeping you out of court. In the Netherlands HR is about making your people flourish because you never go to court. Only if you fire are somebody for, and even then it’s a great big mess. The most common court cases I think on the Dutch labor market are systems engineers who watch too much porn. That’s basically it.
Mark:
That’s interesting to say in the states HR’s job is to keep you out of court. Why are they, so why are the approaches so different?
Bas:
First of all, this is what I hear from, among other podcasts and articles I read that that’s the basic line for HR. But in America, first of all, you sue a lot more. I got fired twice and we never even considered going to court. We were just, we sat down at the table and just negotiated until we find an agreement that we were both comfortable with. Simply because going to court is expensive, time consuming, takes up too much negative energy. We will do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. Only if one or both parties are genuine dicks will go to court.
Bas:
While in America, the first thing which happens is I’ll sue your ass. So you simply have that culture more. You also have the laws that make it possible. Like I said, we have only one person ever being convicted of labor market discrimination, ever in the entire history of the Netherlands. And we’re an older country than you are. In America, I’ve actually noticed from a few of my friends who started their businesses in the US. They say, we have at least three lawsuits for not hiring somebody based on ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever at any given time. Because people just sue because your laws allow it to.
Mark:
Right.
Bas:
And then it becomes HR thing. HR’s position to keep you out of court. While in the Netherlands, we usually just have a legal department, which everybody hates, who basically just says, GDPR, yeah, we’ll get away with that. Or no, we won’t get away with that. We need to do it like this.
Mark:
Last question. There’s a lot going on right now in talent acquisition, and in every nook and cranny of talent acquisition. What are the things that you’re most interested in? What are the things that are going on that you think are going to be the most impactful?
Bas:
Of course, assessments I think are going to be very impactful because, Mark, think about first of all, getting into those untapped parts of talent, untapped pools of people which are really talented would have the aptitude, just never had the chance to show it. And also if a big difference, probably again, between our countries is we have a lot of people in burnout. We have a really good mental laws about mental illness, which basically gives you the chance to be sick. We have really good sick leave laws. You can’t be fired if you’re sick, you can’t ask anybody if they’ve ever been sick, stuff like that. An employer doesn’t even know what’s going on with the employee. You are not allowed to ask. But we have a lot of people in burnout. And the only reason you are in burnout is because you’re in the wrong place.
Bas:
Nobody gets burnout from working too hard to get burnout from doing the wrong job. Either above your talent, or with the wrong talent, or in a company which just doesn’t suit you. And if we were able to make better fit between what’s required of you and what you are actually doing and capable of, that would so dramatically increase employee happiness and decrease burnout. It’s just so, and I’m actually seeing some research coming in on this now from assessment providers who say like, we can reduce your burnout rate from between 30% and 60% simply because we’ll look at what somebody’s most natural qualities and we’ll see if they fit in the job.
Bas:
So I see amazing opportunities on that front. And of course, the entire data revolution AI. I don’t believe recruiters will ever be replaced. I do believe that recruiters will be augmented with really smart technology, which is going to take away some aspects. For example, assessing if somebody has a certain trait, certain character traits, certain qualifications, because we know that humans are actually really crap at that. Only a trained psychologist is able to assess somebody’s characteristics. And Google actually did a research on this on their own staff. And nobody within Google was able to select somebody with a 50% or higher rate on talent.
Bas:
Nobody was right. It was better just flipping a coin to see who you should hire than have one person assess the other person. That’s why they have the rule of four because apparently four people thinking they say that actually stands for something. And they actually took the hiring manager out of that equation because the hiring manager has a tendency to see talent which isn’t there because he feels the pain of not having a seat filled.
Mark:
Right.
Bas:
So what if we just measure if somebody fits so that I’m seeing awesome developments there and I think that’s for me the most interesting part.
Mark:
Bas, thank you for being here today.
Bas:
Thank you for having me.
Mark:
My guest today has been Bas van de Haterd, and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology report. We’re republication of RecruitingDaily. We’re also a part of Evergreen podcasts. To see all of their programs visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR Technology, visit the HCM Technology report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR Tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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