Episode 161 · 9 January 2025 · 48:20
Nora Burns, AKA The Undercover Candidate, Unfiltered Full Interview - Special Episode
Nora Burns, AKA The Undercover Candidate, Unfiltered Full Interview - Special Episode
0:000:00
Tip: click any timestamp below to jump there and keep playing.
Enjoying the show? Subscribe for free
Chapters & timestamps
Click any timestamp to jump the player to that moment.
Intro — Welcome to the Unfiltered Series
Nora's Story — How The Undercover Candidate Began
interview#undercover-candidate#nora-burns#candidate-experience
Whiskey Girl, the COVID Cliché with Four Legs
interview#whiskey-girl#covid#pets
The Most Misunderstood Aspect of Workplace Culture
What The Undercover Project Actually Is
interview#undercover-project#mystery-shopping#employee-experience
The Most Eye-Opening Discoveries from 250 Interviews
Where the Disconnect Comes From — and Why Managers Aren't Trained
The Illegal Questions Nora Was Asked (and Why They're Dangerous)
The Undercover Employee — Frontline Work, Exposed
interview#undercover-employee#frontline-work#employee-experience
Why Onboarding Is Just... Bad
Developing Leadership Courage (or Lack Thereof)
Why Recruitment Shapes the Entire Employment Relationship
How Nora Audits Organizations — and What She Finds
The Third-Round Ghosting Story (It Happens to Directors Too)
interview#ghosting#job-search#recruitment
How AI Could Make Hiring Bias Worse
What We Should Have Asked but Didn't
interview#questions#interview#podcast
Nora's 2024 Book Releases
interview#book-release#nora-burns#2024
Where to Find Nora
What's Next in the Unfiltered Series
Show notes
The Undercover Candidate: 250 Fake Job Interviews & the Truth About Hiring — with Nora Burns (Unfiltered)
Special Episode — Unfiltered Series: Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) bring you the full, raw, unedited conversation with Nora Burns — aka The Undercover Candidate — the workplace culture researcher who went undercover in over 250 job interviews at Fortune 500 companies to expose what hiring really looks like from the candidate's side.
January is prime recruiting season, and this episode is a masterclass in what employers get wrong — and how to fix it. From illegal interview questions to the "third-round ghosting" epidemic, Nora shares the uncomfortable truths about recruitment, onboarding, and why your values on the wall mean nothing if your hiring process contradicts them.
Top 3 Takeaways
Recruitment is the starting point of the employment relationship. Get it right, and the results ripple through your entire culture. Get it wrong, and you're setting the tone for mistrust and disengagement before day one.
Poor hiring practices cost you more than candidates. Ghosting, neglecting communication, and undervaluing the candidate experience doesn't just hurt your reputation with job seekers — it can cost you future customers. People talk.
AI won't fix biased hiring — it will amplify it. Garbage in, garbage out. If we feed AI our biased and inaccurate historical hiring data, we'll just get faster, more efficient bias.
More From Nora Burns
- Connect with Nora on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/noraburns
- Pre-purchase Nora's book: theleadershipexperts.com/shop
What's Next in the Unfiltered Series
Join us next week for an unfiltered conversation with Bruce Daisley, where we'll explore resilience and rethinking work-life balance.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies, and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWelcome back everyone, happy Thursday! Today we are continuing with our Unfiltered series. Remember, that's where we give you the full, raw, unedited interview with some of the most interesting and thought-provoking guests we've ever had on the show. This is episode 4 of 6 in the series, and it's packed full of previously unheard revelations about the often dodgy and dark world of recruitment.
Leanne ElliottAnd it couldn't come at a better time, time really, could it? January is a prime recruiting season, and we know so many of us are either looking for a new job or thinking about making a career move.
Al ElliottSorry, so many of us? Are you looking for a new job?
Leanne ElliottJust in general, us in the community.
Al ElliottOh, right, okay, cool.
Leanne ElliottUm, so yeah, but if it does sound like you, today's episode episode is going to be really valuable, actually. Our guest is Nora Burns, a trailblazer who's redefining recruitment. Nora is better known as the Undercover Candidate and the— and first joined us on episode 74, where she shared her groundbreaking undercover research exposing the truth about hiring practices. If you are considering a career move or you're hiring new talent this January, you'll want to hear what Nora has to say.
Al ElliottSo we are bringing you her full unfiltered conversation. No edits, no filters, just Nora at her boldest. And if you missed our earlier Unfiltered episodes with Rory Sutherland and Professor John Amici and also Professor Sir Kerry Cooper, then check your podcast feed or head over to YouTube. And hey, if you're a big Rory fan, don't forget that part 2 is a secret episode that's on YouTube only. And if you do go there, then then the rule is you have to go in the comments and say, hi, I came from the audio episode.
Leanne ElliottBut for now, let's join Nora. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, or maybe a wine if you're listening a bit later in the day, and settle in for an interview that really could change the way you think about recruitment and hiring. And if you're new here, um, maybe before you do that, just press pause and then hit subscribe so you don't miss the other in this series. Just a thought. Anyway, Nora, over to you. But for our listeners, Nora, can you tell us who you are, what you do, and what you're famous for?
Nora BurnsI am Nora Burns. I am based in Denver, Colorado, in the United States, and my area of expertise is workplace culture, very specifically how your hiring process and your onboarding process really sets the stage for your workplace culture. I am known for being the undercover candidate and the undercover employee. So what that means is I've been on over 250 job interviews, not as myself, not because I'm unemployable, but for research purposes. And also worked on the front lines of 5 Fortune 500 companies here in the US where they did not know that I'm a former HR executive in the Fortune 200, but rather they saw me as another in a long line of polyester uniform-wearing employees. Ringing up orders, stocking shelves, driving the truck, cleaning the bathrooms. People are disgusting. So that is, that is really what I'm known for in my space, is that unique and proprietary research.
Leanne ElliottI'm so intrigued and interested to hear all about it. But before we do, I need to point out something I think pretty important. I don't think it'll be a surprise to our listeners that we have quite a few things in common. We're enthusiastic about workplace culture. I think we can both agree that we love great leaders, and we both have awesome accents. I think that goes without saying. But I've done my research, and I know you mentioned it earlier, but there's something even more important to me that we have in common, and I think that is our shared passion for rescuing puppies.
Nora BurnsOh, yes!
Leanne ElliottI want you to tell me about your little dog. Is she called Whiskey Girl?
Nora BurnsWhiskey Girl. Whiskey Girl came to me As my COVID cliché a bit, in March of 2020, as the world started to shut down, I watched my calendar from going from the busiest I have ever been with 50+ keynotes already booked to a calendar that was empty inside of 72 hours. And I thought, for my own mental health, I need to do something. I need like a silver lining and I need it now. And so I thought, what can I do that I can't normally do? Because I'm on the road a lot. And so it interferes with some ways that I can volunteer and help. And I realized that I could foster puppies because I wasn't going to be on the road every week. And so I signed up with 2 organizations and went with the one that I thought did the best background check on me for reasons related to my research. And they delivered, or I went and picked up 2 golden doodles at the end of March, on March 21st, to come and hang out at our house for what I thought was going to be a couple weeks and join my labradoodle, who's also a rescue, and I, Bella. And I had no intention of adopting a pup, absolutely none. But Whiskey Girl bonded with Bella, so Whiskey Girl became Bella's dog. And thankfully Bella taught her how to dog before she left. And then Whiskey Girl helped to raise 8 other dogs that came through as fosters during the core of COVID And so she has all of these friends around the greater Denver area that come to visit periodically that were her foster siblings for some time. So we've seen quite a few pups come through here of all different sizes and ages, and it was. Great way to invest time during COVID I did stumble across her Instagram profile.
Leanne ElliottSo I, yeah, I will follow, follow along. We should probably talk about workplace culture. That's why we're here. Now we've covered, now we've covered the puppies. I want to start with asking you what you think is the most misunderstood aspect of workplace culture.
Nora BurnsI think the most misunderstood aspect of workplace culture is that it doesn't matter what the sign says on the wall of the break room. It matters what employees say when the manager leaves that room. That's your real workplace culture. And so, we can't dictate it from the top. We can encourage it, we can develop it, we can put resources and strategy behind it, but we can't simply put up a poster or a plaque and think that that's what it is.
Leanne ElliottWhy do you think that is the go-to for leaders to put their values on the wall and call it a day?
Nora BurnsI think so often we feel, excuse me, there's this just growing disconnect that's happened over time. And I've spent a lot of time in that boardroom as an executive and doing those executive retreats and having this, this big picture of the organization as a whole and how it all comes together and having that great vision and getting super excited about it. And I'm guilty as well of the fact that when I was in that role, not necessarily going back to the frontline and making sure that that made sense, that that was in alignment with how their jobs were, about how we supported them with their jobs. And we just think our big picture thinkers sometimes just think that that's just going to motivate somebody and get them in alignment when the reality is it's the little things that happen every single day that set up what our true workplace culture is.
Leanne ElliottI want to ask you about your research. I know you founded the Undercover Project and your book is launching in 2024. I want you to tell us about that. It does include some research insights that you gathered from, as you said, the undercover candidate and the undercover employee. I mean, it's an extraordinary undertaking. Like you said, you know, 250+ interviews.
Nora BurnsWhat—
Leanne Elliottfor, I guess, for our listeners who haven't heard of it, maybe can you just start by telling us what Is the Undercover Project.
Nora BurnsYeah. Also, why the hell did you do that? That's what most people really want to know. Like, what? It's— the Undercover Candidate Project started because I was consulting on hiring processes and redefining and reimagining hiring for client organizations. And I can really picture myself in the conference room where this hit me, that I was helping this organization redesign their hiring process. When I had not been on the other side of the hiring table in more than a decade, and all of my life, everything about who I am as a human is about the fact that you look at the world through a variety of perspectives, and you need to look through different lenses to appreciate how someone else sees the world. And here I was as a consultant in this space, and I hadn't I hadn't done a 360 essentially of this process in over a decade. So I thought, oh, you know, I'll just do a handful of interviews in a neighboring city that I can easily drive to, but I won't be. Be easily recognized in should the HR executive walk through the lobby while I'm sitting there to interview for a receptionist position. So it started with a handful of interviews thinking maybe I just need to experience what the other side of this is to become better at my job. And I was really horrified by what I experienced, just lazy interviews, bad questions, some bordering on, if not unethical, at least unethical, could be illegal if you made a hiring decision based on the information here in the United States. And I was like, this is bad. And then I love, I love data. And I realized I needed more data. This was such a subset of being in this one, one suburb of Denver. And so I met with my business coach and with some HR pros and some ethicists and put together the project plan and committed to doing at least 100 interviews in different cities across the United States so that it wasn't a bias of one particular style of leadership in one city. And it just grew and soared from there. So, and now I actually do it as an offering for clients where we audit their hiring process by sending candidates through and looking for all of the things that I observed and identified as potential flaws and leakage of risk assessment information, or just dangerous hiring practices that'll get you to the wrong hire. And now we do it as an audit for other organizations as well.
Leanne ElliottWhat were some of the most eye-opening discoveries that, that you found across those 250 interviews?
Nora BurnsThey almost need to be categorized by like risk assessment questions asked, unpreparedness. I think the things that surprised me the most is that we're pretty lazy about our hiring. And that sounds pretty Harsh. And I can't think of another better word for it when hiring manager after hiring manager is reading my resume or application while walking down the hallway with me, trying to figure out where they're going to interview me. Like, the bulk of the interview and the, the most important part of the interview is actually the hour that happens in preparing for it so that you have a really spectacular experience, both you as the hiring manager and the candidate. Without that preparation, the interview is not going to go well, and you're not going to get the best candidate. So it was the lack of preparedness, walking in, being left waiting in waiting rooms for 10, 15, 20, 35 minutes, and thinking you got to think about your candidate as if you're meeting with the CEO, right? You need to be on time, ready, prepared. They are so important to your overall organization, and if we're treating them poorly, Then it's not going to get better. And it's like a first date, right? If you show up late and sloppy and rude on a first date, you're not getting a second one. It's not unlike that, just the questions are different.
Leanne ElliottWhere does that disconnect come from? Because, you know, the cost of a bad hire is pretty expensive. The recruitment process in general, in terms of time and resources, is pretty expensive. It is a massive decision that hiring managers are making, yet the level of preparation seems to be lacking. As you say, lazy. I agree. It's the same in the UK. It's lazy overall. What is that disconnect for leaders?
Nora BurnsI think there's 2 big things. One is, as important as it is that we— and if you ask a group of managers and hiring managers and leaders about the importance of hiring, They will all agree it's radically important. And then you ask, how much time do they spend on that? It's 15 minutes of preparation for an interview. And that's just a huge disconnect. And part of it is, I think they don't know where the tools are and the resources are to become really much better at it. And a lot of organizations don't train their managers on hiring. They assume— danger, danger— that because they have been managers at previous jobs, that they have already learned those skills. And it's a default mechanism. We assume people have the skills even though we've proven time and time again that it doesn't exist in the market. The other is people assume that they're good at hiring because they have been hired. Like, oh, I've participated in an interview. I know what interviewing is. And so they then ask the same questions that they were asked when they were in the hiring process. The problem is, if I'm asking questions that I was asked when I first joined the workforce, I, I was 17. That was more than a few moons ago. And things have changed quite a bit. We shouldn't be asking people what they do for fun and what their spouse would think about this job and if they have kids and things like that that aren't relevant to the job. But we're asking the same questions that we were asked. So, of course I can hire. I've been hired. We wouldn't do that for a vast majority of responsibilities in our world, but somehow we feel okay doing it with hiring.
Leanne ElliottIf the recruitment process starts out pretty weak and we're just replicating that when we're in the the position to hire, then that best practice doesn't, doesn't progress in any way, does it? I mean, in terms of— you said, you know, there's unethical things you can do, questionable things you can do, ask a candidate. But as you said, there are also things that legally you shouldn't be doing. What's the most shocking thing that perhaps you've seen consistently with your experience that employers are actually illegal?
Nora BurnsUm, I was asked an inordinate amount of times if I had kids. And what's interesting, and again, I show up as I am, right? I did this research as a 40 and 50-year-old woman. And so part of that is some of the bias that goes in there. I've asked men my age, nobody's been asked. I've asked it in the middle of a keynote where the room is filled with men and say, who here has been asked during a job interview if they have kids? The only people who will raise their hand are women. It is sometimes asked as a, I'm just trying to make you feel comfortable. I'm trying to, you know, break the ice. Hey, you know, I'm trying to get to know you kind of a thing. It doesn't mean that it's any less dangerous to ask because it's a— here in the United States, we've got protection on family status. And there's a huge discriminatory and biased effect because women are being asked the question and men aren't. And really what some of these organizations are asking is, how many sick days are you going to take? How, you know, how many soccer games do we need to schedule around and those types of things? So I was really surprised that in today's day and age, people are still inquiring as to if I have kids. And again, sometimes completely innocent. They're trying to find some commonality to talk about. It's still dangerous and still not appropriate.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. We're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that Encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Nora BurnsIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottI mean, playing devil's avocado that we like to do on the podcast, if I'm a business owner, I have— I own my own business, it's pretty small, I have a team less than 20, I don't think I can afford to hire somebody that's going to go on maternity leave for the next 12 months. Do I not have the right to assess that risk as a business owner?
Nora BurnsNo. The short answer is no. The other thing is, um, it is— we have, we have protections here in the United States. There's protections about that. There's legal protections having to do with, with that and asking about pregnancy and if you plan to have kids. Those are all things you make a decision about that, um, on your hiring process that you can get sued for and find yourself in front of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about. And more importantly, it sends a message to the employer, to the employee that you don't care about their whole selves, right? Like in terms of if we want to make sure that you can give your full life to us 24/7, 365, that's not what the workplace is willing to do anymore. And so, it goes into that kind of cultural element as well. And the thing is, you have no idea if I'm going to have kids or not. If I'm, if I'm in my 30s as a woman, I decided not to have kids by that time. But I'm not going to mention that because it's not relevant to the job. And you might have a guy who's going to have 7 kids. And he wants to spend an inordinate amount of time with his kids. And he doesn't want to work even full time. So there's nothing that, that you can really make based on our gender because those, those norms are shifting. Um, but yeah, it doesn't, it's really none of your business. What matters is the fact that I can do the job, that I have the skills and abilities to do the job, and that I am presenting myself as a person who will continue to do the job.
Leanne ElliottIt must have been such an interesting time going on, on those interviews, but you've also done The Undercover Employee. Tell us about that.
Nora BurnsThe Undercover Employee happened because when I started talking with organizations at conferences and events about undercover candidate, someone would inevitably ask, did you take any of those jobs? I'd say no, because I'm willing to do a lot for workplace culture research, but a felony is not among them. And all of the undercover candidate positions were applied for under fake resumes, fake names. Nothing on there is true other than the fact that I am in fact over the age of 18. So those were not positions I could have taken. But then I started to ask myself, like, what would happen if I interviewed under my real name? Because as much as I tell managers, do not Google potential candidates, I know they do, but don't do that. Do not Google your potential candidates. You can't unring the bell. You might get the wrong person, all kinds of things there. And I thought, well, let's see what happens. So I went and applied at a Fortune 500 company. For a frontline position, and I was confident I wasn't going to get it because in the middle of the interview, they asked me a question about my schedule and I just didn't have a good out. And I said, you know, I have this other job. And they're like, well, what other job? There's nothing on this resume that suggests you got another job right now. Well, I do some training around workplace culture and sexual harassment and building respect in the workplace. Right? Like, there's no way they should have hired me after I said that. It made no sense that I would be applying for a frontline position making minimum wage for that. And yet, they had already fallen in love with me as a candidate. I could see the moment when it happened. And it was about 5 minutes before we got to this point of the discussion. And they just waved it aside, that huge red flag, and offered me the job. So, I got home and I called that business coach and some HR pros and some ethicists and said, okay, what's this one going to look like? And we put some rules around what I would and would not do. My commitment was the fact that I would work at least a year in different roles, that I would work at least 3 different organizations. All of them would be Fortune 500 companies, so I wouldn't have as big of an impact in leaving, and that I would never leave unless a different member of my orientation class left first. So I, and I would always have the goal of being employee of the month, right? So I had to work my tuchus off in addition to taking all the notes and paying attention to what's happening from workplace culture inside out. And so that's how it all kicked off. So I never named the names of the organizations where I worked, which disappoints some people. But it's not about blame or shame. It's about what are the trends across these organizations? And if, if 5 different organizations are doing this, who all have the resources to do better, And that's probably an area for development of a lot of other organizations as well, like employee onboarding and letting the team know when somebody's showing up. Every time they were surprised, they're like, what do you mean a new hire's starting today?
Leanne ElliottIt's so interesting to me, particularly as a researcher myself as well. I just, oh, it must have been so good. I mean, what were the, what were the trends? What were the patterns that you saw? You mentioned onboarding. Was there anything else?
Nora BurnsOnboarding is just Yeah, onboarding is just bad. It's just bad. And the thing is, we have organizations that are doing a lot of work on designing really solid employee onboarding experiences. And here are all the steps and here's what you need to do. And then we've got frontline managers who are skipping those steps because they don't have enough time to go through them all and get that employee on the register or doing the housekeeping or stocking the shelves or delivering the merchandise. Their their bandwidth is not there, so we have to move our hiring further up along that we're ahead of it so that we actually have the time to put into play what headquarters has has come up with. One of the biggest trends from from a management standpoint is throwing corporate under the bus, like whenever they didn't want to deliver hard news or. The manager had a challenge with something happening on the front line, I heard time and time again, well, corporate says we have to, or headquarters says we have to. And instead of owning up and having a discussion about the whys of what something is that's going on in the workplace, and sometimes they just made it up. Like, they wanted a behavior to change, so they'd be like, well, corporate. And I was like, there's no way corporate had an opinion on that. I've worked corporate. They don't even know that that's happening. So, I think that there isn't a lot of managerial courage developed within some of our frontline supervisors and managers. And I think that's a real gap for us to be able to fill, to have people have real conversations human to human with the employees that are working with them. And so, that, that I think is one of the biggest trends that I recognized. I mean, there's areas on risk assessment where we've got major leakage in confidential information. We really are, at least with the organizations I worked with, were very willing to give out our employee information to other employees, which was a little disturbing to me. Like all employee cell phone numbers and emergency contacts are all listed on a long list in the employee break room, which meant other employees without my permission had my cell phone number. And I got inappropriate text messages coming through to that cell phone number as a result. Very shocking is the fact that I was sexually harassed at every job. And as the person who has been doing sexual harassment prevention training and do investigations for organizations when there is a complaint and coaching of bad behaving employees, I was surprised at how prevalent it is. Even with all of that background and knowledge that I have going in, No one harasses the head of HR, but put that same person behind the counter wearing the polyester uniform, every single job. We've got to do better than that. That was shocking to me.
Leanne ElliottIt is frightening when you look at the data around harassment. And we've talked about the podcast before, I've been, I've been sexually harassed at work. And most of the women that I meet and speak to have been in some form. I mean, in terms of that, those experiences that you've had overall, how has that then influenced your views when it comes to leadership and culture?
Nora BurnsBefore, I felt like we weren't developing leaders strong enough. Like, we weren't putting enough effort into it. We were assuming people were coming into our organizations with a lot of skills developed that they simply don't have. And I've spent a lot of years in the leadership development areas of corporations, and we've got to amp it up a lot more than what it's been done. We all too often assume people have information that they don't, they have skills that they don't, and then we wonder why the VP or the EVP says something really horrific. Well, we haven't been having those conversations for the last 30 years of their career, so why would they? Why wouldn't they continue to move forward in that way. I think that we need to invest more in having managers understand the human connection of the work that they're doing with their employees. The fact that this is a human-to-human connection and not moving pieces on a chessboard. And to rebuild that in a new way. We need leaders. We need to continue to hire and develop leaders who are continuous learners. When I first came into corporate, I remember that being such an important element that continuous learning and development was almost always listed as a key competency for a position. And I'm not seeing it listed and prioritized in the same way. And I think we lost some traction along the way as a result. And I think it's part of why we've lost the connection between the boardroom and the break room. It has become more and more disconnected over time. Because we just simply don't listen, don't understand, and we're not developing the employees and the leaders to really understand the whole approach to the organization instead of just what we put on the break room wall.
Leanne ElliottI want to ask you more about recruitment because of all the experts I've spoken to, there aren't many who will prioritize recruitment in shaping workplace culture, but reading more about you and your work, you absolutely do. I mean, why? How does— I guess, 2-part question— how does recruitment shape workplace culture? And again, why is it overlooked?
Nora BurnsI believe, as a foundational element of who I am and all of the work that I've done and all of my expertise, that you cannot have a strong workplace culture unless or until you have a strong recruitment and hiring platform, because it all traces back to how we find people, where we find people, and how we treat them when they're coming in the door. Your relationship, any relationship that you have, doesn't start 60, 90 days in, right? Everything that you know about the people that you meet goes based on that first contact. And you'll talk with friends about, oh my gosh, remember how when we first met when we were at that coffee shop? Or remember how we met at that conference? And, you know, all of this ties back to remember how we met. Well, how we met is the hiring process. How we met in the employment relationship is how I was recruited. And we all too often forget that it's an employment relationship. We remember the employment part. There's taxes, there's paperwork, there's benefits. And we forget the relationship part, which is the core part, the core part of why people come and why they leave. And we've— so in order to develop what we are as a team, what we are as a culture, what we are as a group, We need to trace it back to how we met. We met in the hiring process. So if I as a candidate am coming to your organization to do an interview and you leave me waiting in the waiting room for 20, 30, 40 minutes instead of meeting with me on time, and then nobody apologizes— nobody ever apologizes for leaving you waiting— and then their first interview is an interrogation and not a conversation, that has now set in my mind The story of what our relationship is going to be like, and it's going to carry forward from there. When I show up on the first day of employment, you hand me a dirty uniform while telling me how important it is to have a clean uniform. True story. That tells me that I can't really trust you, and that's part of the basis of our relationship moving forward. You can't fix that at 30, 60, 90 days easily. It is the framework of the relationship has been set, and if it started out wonky, it's gonna be wonky. And getting me to the values of trust and integrity and importance of of communication—if it didn't happen in the hiring process, why the hell would I think it's going to happen in the rest of the relationship? So we we don't think of it as a relationship, and we really need to. I mean, different rules, different please. Please, if you're listening to this and you're a hiring manager, do not misunderstand that to think that you should now ask questions that you would ask on a first date at an interview. Please don't do that. Different kind of relationship, different rules, but it's a relationship. And it all comes back to how you met and how you first started to communicate. That's the basis of how you're going to work together forever.
Leanne ElliottIt's a lot of the same principles, isn't it? When we talk about data or we talk about customer experience a lot, we even talk about employee experience. We rarely talk about candidate experience, although it is an actual thing. is something that us HR and people and culture folk do know about and work towards. What are some of the strategies perhaps that you've implemented or advice you've given to leaders in terms of enhancing that candidate experience?
Nora BurnsWhen we go through, first, we look at what their current experience is. When I work with organizations, we look at what's currently happening, and we can pretty easily identify some quick elements to fix on that. But I look at 5 core elements of their business, and one of the most important ones, and the one I'll talk about here, is is our communication strategy. Like, even fixing our communication strategy in our hiring process will go a long way. And that means we acknowledge when that resume comes in or the application comes in. Most of the people listening who are in those organizations that have, you know, 50+ employees have applicant tracking systems. They're receiving applications in a format where it's easy to program a response that says, thank you so much. Your information has been received. We'll be back with you inside the next— make a commitment here, right? Is it 3 days, 5 days, 7 days? What is your commitment to getting back to that candidate and making sure that that communication is clear with them? And then follow through on what your commitment is for that communication. If you're hiring for frontline positions, if you're hiring for fast food, if you're hiring for frontline manufacturing in a very manufacturing-driven area, geographic area, if you're in competition for a lot of those frontline work, I'm going to give you 24 to 48 hours to get back to that candidate. We need to speed that up because right now, they've got lots of choices and you're competing with a lot. And if you show that you're going to communicate with them and communicate with them quickly, that actually is going to give you a cutting edge. But making sure that they know what the expectation is when they submit that resume. And then, oh my gosh, you would think this is low-hanging fruit. You would think that everybody's doing this. But if you have spoken with a candidate, you have called them to get clarification on their resume or application, you have asked them to come in, you've asked them to do a phone interview or a Zoom interview, you owe them a damn phone call to get back to them and tell them where they stand. It's core communication, follow-through, making sure that you close that loop. Because those people know other people who would be strong candidates for you, and they're going to spread the word that you did or did not get back to them. Stop ghosting candidates. It's amazing to me. I was on a 3rd-round interview. 3rd round. And it was down to me and 2 other candidates, and they all of a sudden just went off the radar, like gone. No follow-up, no follow-through. I'd given them not only phone time, but I'd flown to them to do the interview. P.S., from an ethics standpoint, I had some rules about that. I always paid for my own travel. I funded all of the resource research. I did not take so much as a cup of coffee. from someone when I was doing the interviews. But we do this, and I hear this from job candidates regularly, like, oh, they called me, I had a phone interview, and then nothing. And we are doing major damage to our employment brand when we do that. And we're costing ourselves future candidates and often future customers. If you're talking about recruiting for a franchise restaurant, you've now not only cost yourself A candidate and future candidates, you've cost yourself customers because they're your frontline employee is also your customer. And so, you're doing damage on 2 different sides of your business with one lack of phone call, with one missed phone call. So, yeah. Oh my gosh. I know. I'm such— this is why the book, this is why I have to write the book and finish the book, get the darn book out because I could talk about this one question For 2 hours.
Leanne ElliottIt's, it's so interesting to me. Like you say, it seems so, like you say, low-hanging fruit, particularly if we've had a conversation with them. And what shocks me is I'll speak to people, it happens across levels. It's not just your frontline workers, it'll be people in, you know, high senior level positions that are ghosted as well. It's, yeah. Oh, it's almost unbelievable.
Nora BurnsThe third, the third interview round that I was on was for a director position. And in director of operations, which is P.S. You shouldn't have hired me for that job anyhow. But the fact that you would just drop the candidate and not get back to them is a little horrifying. The other thing is, even if you found your candidate, as this just happened to somebody that I was I was speaking with, she was a candidate for a position. I try so hard to edit. So that I don't disclose and accidentally throw somebody under the bus and shame somebody. So she was a candidate for a decently high-level position in an association and had done an interview on Zoom, had done a video response to some questions, was scheduled for another interview, and then received an email 2 days before that interview that just said, we've selected another candidate. Thank you. Good luck. Right. And I thought, oh, you kind of owed her a phone call. Thank you for the email and not completely ghosting, but you kind of owed her a phone call. But the other thing that happened is this organization hired in haste. They got very excited about a candidate. They canceled all of their other interviews. There's always a background check that has to happen or should happen. We could do a whole podcast just on background checks. And that candidate might still back out. And now you've already alienated Your second, third, and fourth candidates. I felt so bad for her. And she has landed in exactly the right place. And that wasn't the right employer for her because she wanted stronger communication in her employer. But the reality is she'll never recommend anybody to that association. And that's a small market. I mean, everybody in associations knows everybody in associations. And it's going to do damage to their hiring for a very long time.
Leanne ElliottI guess, how do you see the landscape shifting in recruitment? And maybe how do you want to see it shifting in, in the land of recruitment, particularly given, you know, the insights you've gained from The Undercover Project?
Nora BurnsWhat I fear will happen is that AI will get way too involved in our hiring protocol, and we will become less connected instead of more connected. That's my fear with where we are currently in 2023, looking into 2024. What I hope happens is that more and more organizations understand that it is an employment relationship, that treating employees as widgets, as having disregard for their time, their expertise, their brilliance, And that will cost us in the long run. I know it will. I know that not connecting to candidates effectively, not onboarding effectively, has a long-term impact on our overall P&L. It's just too long of an impact for us to see the immediate, right, in order to take as much action as really needs to be taken. It requires a strategic leader to realize that they need to invest in the very front of that employment relationship at the very beginning, at the candidate relationship and the candidate experience in order to make sure that they make 4th quarter goals. And I like working with those strategic leaders. I think in the long term it pays off, and I think we've seen it in really successful organizations who have demonstrated it. But yeah, my fear, my fear, and what I would see happening in the crystal ball of hiring is we get a little bit lazier and use a little bit more AI, and it doesn't work in connecting us to the human that's doing the job.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's— I was talking to another psychologist, and they were telling me they've been— their organization been doing research, um, and actually start to find that AI is biased. It carried the same bias in terms of gender, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of sexuality. It's— yeah, so it's selecting candidates in and out based on previous biases.
Nora BurnsYeah, it's, it's a garbage in, garbage out situation, right? So when we give it biased and, and inaccurate information, it's going to make decisions based on that. And we already have so much bias built into our hiring processes that to add another layer of that where it's unseen, I think, is really damaging. One of the things I recommend for hiring managers and organizations is to do heavily redacted resumes and applications. The person who's making the decision, I don't want to have name. I don't even want to have the name. Make up a name. Bob 1, Bob 2, Anna 1, Anna 2, whatever. On the first pass, on the first pass, I don't want to know where you went to college. I don't want to know. I definitely don't want to know what year you graduated college. I want anything that could bias me in my selection process to not be part of that first round of reviewing resumes and applications. Because I can tell you, having done some A/B testing as the undercover candidate, we've got some strong bias by industry of which applications move forward. That The traditionally male name, the traditionally female name, you know, the person who puts 25 years of experience versus the person who puts 5 years of experience. There's some pretty strong bias in that. And if we can remove that, we're going to have better hiring. And of course, we're going to find out when they're sitting across from us. We learn a whole lot of information about skin color and gender information and all of that. We don't need it at the start of the funnel, and it will make our hiring processes stronger in the long run.
Leanne ElliottIs there anything I should have asked you, Nora, about this whole world that I haven't?
Nora BurnsOh, I mean, seriously, we— you and I in particular could talk about this for weeks. There's so many different elements of it that come to fruition. I think the key is that people understand that it's a relationship. That employment relationship remains a relationship. And that means that first impressions matter. But in that, your, your first point of contact with a candidate, how you treat them in that process, how you onboard them, shapes their entire viewpoint of your world, of your workplace culture. And fixing that once it's been damaged. So much harder than simply doing it right the first time. So, if we can invest in that candidate experience and make it stronger and less biased and make sure that candidates understand the humanness element is connected, oh my gosh, we can do so much.
Leanne ElliottHear, hear. Let's change the world together, Nora. We can do it one hiring manager at a time.
Nora BurnsOne employer at a time.
Leanne ElliottTell me. So tell me about your book. Tell me about your exciting news for 2024.
Nora BurnsI'm very excited about this book. It has been a long time coming, and I, I had it in my head for so long, and getting it to that commitment of being on the paper has been a treacherous path indeed. But I'm doing 2 things this coming year. So we're going to start with the launch of a mini book collection in first quarter, where it's a collection of 3 mini books. There's a company that does this, M-I-N-I-B-U-K, mini book, collection of 3 mini books from the perspective of the hiring manager, from the C-suite, and from the candidate's perspective. Same scenario reframed in 3 different approaches to that scenario and what they need to know about it. And that leads into the book coming out later in the year that will more encapsulate the experiences of the undercover candidate and the undercover employee. And my goal is that it's not only informative and that you'll learn a lot from it and you'll have a lot of resources to take from it. And of course, there's a webpage attached and all of that, but also that you will find it insightful and interesting read, that it's not reading like a textbook, but it reads with some of these stories and anecdotes within it. I do appreciate the humor of some of the things that I did. I do do a little stand-up on the side, so I always find the humor in it. And I'm excited though to share more of this research with the world.
Leanne ElliottI can't wait. It's gonna be such an interesting read. I really can't wait to dive in. Nora, thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, find out more about you, where should they go?
Nora BurnsLinkedIn is always a great way to connect me with me. It's my primary social platform. And you'll find me there under Nora Burns. I have a black and white photo of me wearing purple glasses. So, make it a little bit easier to find until I change that profile photo. Now that I said that, you can also find me at theleadershipexperts.com. There is an S on that, theleadershipexperts.com. That's our primary website. And you can, from there, go into all kinds of different elements about our business.
Leanne ElliottAmazing. Nora, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been a true joy chatting with you today.
Nora BurnsThank you. I am thrilled to connect with you. I'm a huge fan of this podcast. Podcast, and I'm, I'm honored that you would have me on.
Al ElliottNora is so cool. Absolutely love her. We've done 2 episodes with her. I think you interviewed her, Leanne, wasn't— didn't you? And she's just such a cool, cool woman. We've— I, I think you, you can agree that's one of the best interviews we've ever done. Um, I've never actually spoken to her, I don't think, but I feel like I know because I've edited all the episodes with her. She always brings that sort of eye-opening insights to the table. And during one of the busiest recruiting seasons of the year, her advice, as Leanne said before, is more relevant than ever.
Leanne ElliottAbsolutely. Whether you are a job seeker, a recruiter, or a business leader, there is so much value in taking a step back and really examining the way hiring is done. If you would like to explore more of Nora's work, we've linked all the details to what she does in the show notes.
Al ElliottAnd this Unfiltered series doesn't stop here. Oh no, no, no, no. Next Tuesday, we'll bring you another unedited episode with the incredible guest Bruce Daisley. I'm sorry, sorry Bruce, I added a D at the end of your name there. Bruce Daisley. Bruce is changing the way we think about resilience at work. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe and you're following us on LinkedIn. Also, we're leaving all of our contact details in the show notes. You can actually get in touch with us. You'll see Leanne's email in there. So if you've got some something on your mind, get in touch with Leanne. If you've got a problem perhaps for the weekly workplace surgery, which is going to be returning in a couple of weeks, then send that over.
Leanne ElliottAnd if you've got a complaint, send it to Al. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, we'll see you next time.
Al ElliottBye-bye.