Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Before you even tell me I need this class and maybe I should already know that you will need this person. So what we first started off with this as strategic planning and talent pipelining. So we first understand, okay, what is the vision of the organization? What is the growth plan of the organization? So we sit very closely with the C level and a lot of organizations it's reactive. We're actually proactive in our approach. So we know what our delivery is going to be over the next year, because we know how the business is going to develop over the next year. It's not just a spreadsheet that's shared with us in here. Can you hire? It's like, Hey, this is the direction we're going to go. What do you think first?
Speaker 1 00:00:40 Hello. My name is Luke Eaton and welcome to seeds scaling so far podcast. In this episode, we've got a really interesting conversation lined up with you. Uh, this company pretty much doesn't need any introduction for most listeners. I've been a fun and a user for multiple years. Um, I can honestly say it's kept me alive a couple of times. Uh, I'm talking about hello, fresh. Um, Joe, let me show some highlights. Before we get into the conversation. Um, they were founded in 2011, uh, in one of yours, most vibrant tech hubs in Berlin. They've evolved to become the world's leading meal kit company in Q3 of 2021 alone. They delivered 227 million meals. Uh, the recruitment profile for this organization is enormous from software developers and dev ops engineers, right? The way through to pastor makers and potato farmers. Uh, they've got a team of 20,000 employees globally.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 So it's scale like that. They need a very, well-oiled very efficient talent acquisition engine, and that's exactly what they built. Um, I was lucky enough to speak to that global VP of talent. Yes, Matt and their global head of TA Carol began to learn a little bit about how they doubled their productivity with what they called TA 4.0, it's an absolute must. Listen, if you are looking to optimize the hiring process and your own organization and gearing up for really, really hyper growth, please give it a listen. And I hope you enjoy, thank you very much for going on to the scaling so far podcast really, really appreciate it. We're super excited to chat to hello, fresh. I ever since I heard that you said yes to the podcast. So thanks so much before we get into introductions. I suppose I should sound and color fresh. Uh, I will be a very malnourished man if it wasn't for hello, fresh. So thanks for keeping us the line. Really appreciate that. Um, but we, we've got your, we've got Carol, uh, Vega from hello. Fresh has talked to us about, uh, the talent journey, uh, so far. So how about we start with you? Like, can you tell us a little bit about yourself
Speaker 0 00:02:47 At show as so I've been with hello fresh for the last seven months. My role is the global vice president of talent. I'm very impressed with HelloFresh thus far and kind helping transform the TA function. But my background really is kind of focused on talent transformation over the last 10 years, uh, prior to that was heavily involved in project management as a scrum master and working for various different companies. So I'm finding that we're in a unique position right now with HelloFresh. Um, you know, you said that you would have been a malnourished person, you know, lost. I was just thinking about it and speaking to one of my colleagues, we delivered 1 billion meals last year. Um, so it's not just, you it'd be like a good couple 10, 20 million people would be very malnourished. Um, but yeah. Uh, so that's me and Carol.
Speaker 1 00:03:48 Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 I love thanks for having us, um, a little bit about my background. I actually come from psychology studies in Brazil. Never really wanted to go into the clinic. I always liked business. A fun fact about me is that I wanted to be the CEO of Coca Cola by the age of 28. Fine, but I'll get there. Um, but anyhow, I've been with HelloFresh a little bit longer, four years joining in a very different stage, um, smaller company, less markets. So it's been amazing just to see the company grows so much. My role is as global heads of talent acquisition for tech hiring. So I lead the team across Australia, north America, and Europe, and anything related to tech. Um, we're responsible for hiring and staffing those teams.
Speaker 1 00:04:38 Okay. Fansa is great. So I had two professionals book-ended on one side of the journey at the beginning of the journey and the current sort of, part of the journey. Um, I suppose just in case that is two or three people who live under a rock and don't know about how afresh, um, I'd really love to dig into the solve that, that, that scaling journey, but before we do late, Jaso maybe could you give us an idea of HelloFresh is current mission as it stands?
Speaker 0 00:05:04 Yeah. We want to help people live a healthier lifestyle and eat healthier. We want to become, we're a global food solutions company, right? So we've, I think last year we doubled in size. We're now like 20,000 employees, but 25,000 external partners, $6 billion in revenue. So we're actually quite big. A lot of people seem to think that we're quite a small organization. Uh, like if you think of hello, fresh, usually I think like a local brand, a lot of people think it's, you know, if you're in the UK, they'll think it's a UK company you're in Canada, they think it's a Canadian company. It's a U S but actually it's a, um, a German company, um, based kind of founded in Berlin and kind of growing across 17 different markets. Um, it's a really interesting company because sustainability is that the purpose of the company and the lifestyle.
Speaker 0 00:05:58 So, um, there's a lot of strong values that we have as a business that kind of are very empathetic and very ethical. Um, and that's why I think we're really succeeding because people are now realizing that actually there is a healthier way to live. It is we do waste a lot and we need to protect our, we need to protect the world, right? It's, you know, carbon emissions a all time high, um, and you know, offsetting carbon emissions, et cetera, is all well and good, but really if you can prevent it from happening in the bus place, that's probably the best thing to do. Right. And we waste so much on a general basis, like every day and I've got three kids, so I know how much food I waste. Um, and you know, when I started working palette for our first time to realize actually like this company is game-changing because, you know, simple things that we take for granted like a loaf of bread, it takes a lot to make a loaf of bread, you know, you know, from growing it to harvesting it, to making it, packaging it, putting in the, uh, supermarkets and then taking it home.
Speaker 0 00:07:02 That's like, you probably spent more money than the actual brand itself. So that's my take on, have a fresh and why? I think it's like growing significantly. I think purpose has become very important for people. COVID obviously helps a lot. I think every e-commerce business has gained a lot from COVID because the travel restrictions and people being a bit more conscious about their health and also just generally, it's quite hard to cook in the evenings. Right. You know, one of the first things I said to Carol was like, when I joined tele fresh, I'm really grateful because this has stopped me arguing with my wife, because I noted on the argue with my wife about what I'm going to have for dinner. So, you know, I've got so much choice now. So that's the nice thing. I think I had a French, like there's so many beneficial things around like the company and what it does.
Speaker 1 00:07:54 I think so many more consumers are making choices based on those, as you mentioned, purpose, rather than just how practical convenience something is, there has to have the relevant purpose. And of course, how we use our diet is probably one of the biggest part of our carbon footprint is our diet. So I can really see how you get such a large footprint for such a, an organization that seems so small. And you know, it just has a small footprint take out your phone. You know, it's such an easy way to, to interact with a business and I can kind of see why it seems like a smaller business than it actually is. Um, I'm Carolina, like maybe you can take us kind of back in time. You you've been with hello fresh since 2018. So how does that purpose contrast to when you first started? What did, what did that look like? And maybe we can kind of fill in the gaps in between.
Speaker 2 00:08:44 Yeah. So the purpose hasn't changed and when I joined it hasn't changed yet price. So we still want to change the way people eat and we still want to be sustainable in this has been a high topic for HelloFresh since I joined. And that's one of the greatest things that the company is not selling out on the soul is just sticking to what you believe. It's true. Of course, what changes is understanding better the market, expanding the markets and trying to make more personalized products for the customer. So when I started, it was basically dinner, right? Right. Now we are, we have dinner, we have add-ons, we have desserts. And ideally we would say go over your entire meals during the day. So we've expanded a lot more portfolio, our markets, our customer base, but we still stayed very much true to changing the way people eat, being sustainable, bringing fun to the kitchen, cooking doesn't need to be boring. Doesn't need to be stressful. It can be simple. It can be fun. So I think that has stayed quite the same, which I highly appreciate to be honest for the company. Of course grew tremendously. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:56 Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the piece I want to dig into the meaty bits for those recruiters, right? Um, like how, how has that growth impacted your talent planning? And I'm assuming that is tech enabled. So there must be heavily tech, uh, heavy tech pipeline, but you must have manufacturing distribution. It's almost like 3, 4, 5 different talent functions all in one company. So how, how was that? What were those challenges like? How you, how you sold it for those?
Speaker 2 00:10:25 Let's see, as I started, the productivity has been like 200 times, uh, 200% more. So we feel like productivity, like a hundred percent better on our KPIs and, um, a lot of other things. But I think the main difference that when we start and when you're a smaller company, a team of recruiters will do right. So you have a team through 60 recruiters, they mostly everything. And right now we're so much more specialized. I said, um, it's very different when you have 50 people to hind a year, a hundred, 201 K two K. So the different functions, new teams are born by. So teams that we didn't have before, cyber reliability, dev ops security, all these things have been built from scratch mobile teams. So when you think about this big realities of the people we're hiring TA needs to follow with that twice. So we need to be more specialized in TA. So I think the beauty is that we've managed to create new functions for the business, but your functions 48 as well. So that's the main thing that has changed is the level of professionalism and like playing on the big leagues right now.
Speaker 1 00:11:38 Yeah. So this was kind of specialized teams where your recruiters have kind of a deeper specialized knowledge in. So for instance, you cyber liability and dev ops, I mean, do they do hire a cruise and know that market in particular and say, right, they're going to be dev ops recruiters for HelloFresh, or is there a kind of a level of knowledge sharing and knowledge building within, within the business? How does, how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:12:03 It's both rise. So first of all, you want to hire a great recruiters. This skill set is more important. Ideally, the person is willing to learn and you have so much knowledge sharing between ourselves and TA with our hiring managers, with our hiring teams. So nowadays we can bring up to speed the recruiter that has never hired for tech to delivering a dev ops role within like two to four weeks. Right? So have a really strong onboarding program and knowledge sharing sessions. And ideally for you to become around with recruiter, you also work with a certain team and specialties for a time and then you change. So the team that join us when they leave HelloFresh, that they're way better recruiters, that they know how to recruit for different markets. But on top of that, it's not just about stock, that position partners and recruiter. It's also about telling engagement partners, talent markets, the employer, branding candidate, experience, talent, intelligence, talent marketing. Um, so you also create more specialties outside of just understanding how to hire for specific worlds.
Speaker 1 00:13:12 That's really interesting. And that is something that's a commonality. We see across a lot of sticky scaling businesses that we work with that need to specialize to engage with these multiple passive in demand in demand. People buy a huge dev ops, lean Phoenix project nerd. And when you said 200% productivity increase, I kind of got really excited. I'm like, what, what kind of tools there must have been changed in the way that you look at data, the way that you use tools, uh, to, to enable that kind of increase. Could you go a bit more into detail around, around that you use data visualization? Do you use ways of gang gang insight from the data that you have? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:13:53 We can both try to answer this, right? Because it's about change management as a whole. It's not like the changes that we've seen today are a amalgamation of different micro changes that we've made in RTA team. So the first is we evaluate what our maturity is off RTA teams, where do we stand as function? Whether it's recruiting the processes, the interview process, the tools we use, the reporting, everything. Then we deep dive into it from a customer centric perspective. As a customer, your, your focus is time to stop. Not time to hire, not time to fill. So it's like, how quickly can you get me my person to join the organization? Right? That's essentially what it is. But a lot of people forget. There's a lot of pre-planning that needs to go into it. So before you even tell me, I need this person, maybe I should already know that you will need this person.
Speaker 0 00:14:41 So what we first started off with is a strategic planning and talent pipelining. So we first understand, okay, what is the vision of the organization and what is the growth plan of the organization? So we sit very closely with the C level and a lot of organizations it's reactive. We're actually proactive in our approach. So we know what our delivery is going to be over the next few year, because we know how the business is going to develop over the next year. It's not just a spreadsheet that's shared with us in here. Can you hire? It's like, Hey, this is the direction we're going to go. And what, what do you think first is it, is it feasible? Does it make sense? Are there skills in the marketplace that we can actually attract or do we need to shift this way? And that way actually the decisions that are made today that are fresh I'm collaboration with the TA team.
Speaker 0 00:15:25 And if you think about it, if we're going to go down the route of building a product that requires specific languages go or something like that, the organization needs to work with us to understand if it's even feasible for us. So that's step one, step two was to break up the responsibilities. Traditionally, like Carol said, it was a 360 role for recruiter, but actually to build on a proper maturity model is like a supply chain, similar to how we create our products that has a supply chain. It's like a factory. Like you want specialists in each area of the process, from the be experience specialists, focus on the kind of candidate engagement, the touch points, the recruiter who can liaise with the managers and the candidates on the kind of packages you've got the sources and the of engagement partners and the, the employer branding specialist.
Speaker 0 00:16:15 So we broke up a lot of responsibilities. The other is motivation like motivation. And the TA team is at an all time high. We don't have a problem while the whole industry was struggling to hire recruiters. We didn't, we scaled our team by nearly three X and the space of like four months. So we've hired recruiters across the board and we hire potential because what we're planning on doing this year is something that I haven't seen before. You know, our coordinators. We don't want them to be a coordinate function. In two years, we're transforming them into Italian intelligence functions, but by creating multiple competencies in their existing world. So our coordinators today do coordination, talent, intelligence, and candidate experience projects to improve product sources, to sourcing talent engagement and employer branding and EVP projects. So that they're multi-skilled. So by the time we get to a stage where we can automate, we are in a position where these individuals have already got skillsets for the next level of their career. So there's a proper career path. And that leads to like a really high morale in the team that leads to high motivation, which naturally means that our productivity is going to increase. And so 200 to Carol's credit, her team delivered 250%. What that means is, you know, they let's say they targeted 250 roles. They hired 500, you know? And so in the short space of time, you can imagine, you know, we're talking about going from 30 hires a month to 90, to a hundred, right. And in the space,
Speaker 1 00:17:53 That's absolutely exceptional. And you know, if you, a lot of the businesses that we work with are in the sort of hyper scale, five X hyper scale, you know, a hundred percent year on year revenue growth, um, targets for the next four years and various sort of scurry numbers. Um, the fact that you can improve the organization of your talent function and see it as a more of a holistic piece of a wider growing business. I think it's absolutely key even workforce planning, right? If you know where the gaps are going to be, well, surely we should be hiring into those internally and then backfill in the more junior roles, reducing cost per hire and time to hire and so on. And as you say, we are with that reactive piece, if you can't do that, um, I'm, I'm super excited about it. I could talk about this for the next two hours,
Speaker 0 00:18:44 Just to kind of add to that point. It's so important. And it's been so much, it's so detrimental to our success that because we have been so good at doing this yesterday, I had a conversation with our CTO and our VP of product where they said, you're hiring too fast. Can you slow down? Um, or can we put some rules on hold? Because we haven't got, we didn't plan that we like the hiring is six months ahead. So I think we're in a position where people are joining HelloFresh because they excited about oppression. They know that it's purpose-driven company then rather join us, then go to any of the Fang companies. Cause there's more purpose, right? It's more sustainable. There is a better environment that he bosses better, et cetera. So I think back to the credit of our C-level and our leadership, um, has kind of stayed true for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:39 I think also you're talking about hypergrowth. You can distinguish the companies that are serious about it when the founders and the C level understands the high priority. And it also cascades down to the team drive. So there is not a single team of hello, fresh. It's not hiring. So everyone has a shared understanding of importance, right? So we come from being like a function that just the giver hires. So being very strategic. So we have discussions of workforce planning, staff planning with HR and with the executive team, what's the right balance between juniors and seniors. How much need there is, do we need, what's the level of what should be their job descriptions, their role and responsibilities. So we are involved on discussions, right? So we just don't receive information we're involved firsthand. And because of that, we can know, okay, if we hire this team right now and this type of talents in three years time, where are they going to be? And how can we plan for that already? Right. So we can plan long term, what kind of talent do we need now next year, the years follow and how the talent is
Speaker 0 00:20:46 Going. Yeah. And to, to the team's credit as well. Um, there was two, there's a changing perspective on the TA function. So previously it was, Hey, we've got a TA function right now. It's Hey, we've got 20,000 recruiters because employee advocacy is number one, like will help us tremendously. And that's, what's really been the kind of change management and the leadership where they're kind of, kind of really focused on, okay. We can utilize everyone. Recruitment is not TA function. Recruitment is everybody's responsibility to stay true to the organization, the EVP and make sure people actually get approved insight into what HelloFresh is like working book. You know, people are getting messages every single day, 50 messages a day, Hey, do you want a job, a software engineer, software engineer, nature, Berlin. Like we probably getting 10 messages a day from different people. But if you get a message from a friend who says, Hey, by the way, do you want to come over to have a fresh for cooking some meals? You can talk to the engineering team and understand what's going on as well. We might be more inclined.
Speaker 1 00:21:57 Absolutely. And you know, that was one of the pieces I was keen to dig into after the girls' stuff was, you've got yourself a very large, very positive consumer brand. Uh, and then you have the, this sort of smaller tech enabled PC business and that you can, you have a kind of technical employer brand. How do you link that up? How do you get engineers? You have, you know, 10 of those, all of those messages could be for fintechs to crypto companies, to our companies. There's easy for an engineer to say, oh, I see where the problem space is. I see what I'm going to do, but how do you integrate the kind of the commercial brand with the, the employer brand?
Speaker 0 00:22:35 Um, just take a stab at this. So, you know, you go work for Facebook and go work for six months and a little red light that's in the corner of the screen, probably not to try to fix, or you can come down a fresh and you can solve big, sustainable problems and challenges about how we can shrink the time of our supply chain, how we can offset carbon emissions, how we could look at like billions of data points on how people consume food and try to kind of create a unique path for that. And I think for us, anybody who sits in a room with us and understands our problem statements, they're already bought in a hundred percent of the time, because it's such a unique problem statement. There's so much opportunity to understand consumerism and consumerism has been around for, you know, since the beginning of time, right?
Speaker 0 00:23:31 We, we will consume stuff. So how people consume stuff, the trends analyzing it. And the kind of prediction of that is super interesting for anybody in engineering, because you're using most of the latest technology, AI data science, you're using engine engineering tools to kind of really take it to the next level. Most companies are doing this to some degree for their own benefit. Like you worked for an Instagram it's to make you consume more Instagram, right? You work for Facebook it's to make you stuck on Facebook so they can sell you more broad, whereas you for hello, fresh, we're doing it because we want to help people consume a healthier and less in terms of wastage. So it's for a better cause. And I think that if people are purpose driven, that's what those are. The type of people we want to hire people that actually want to change the world instead of just kind of feeding into, um, something that I personally, that's my personal opinion. I'm not like I'm not a big fan of social media. Right. Uh, I just think that as a father and someone who sees what consumerism does, especially in social media, like a mall, kind of almost against it to some degree, uh, I know it's benefits, but, and I think that's what a lot of people are now realizing over time that actually we need to take a step back and actually focus on, we have so much choice. We have so much choice. Why can't I choose where I work as well? Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:25:05 I think that's, uh, it, it seems so linked up with your wider employer brand, the fact that there's a kind of a conviction based to, to what you're doing, you have a purpose. And then people, humans with convictions that happen to be software developers are going to be attracted to that brand. So when so similar happened during COVID where the digital services for healthcare companies that exploded, you know, because the, there were a lot of developers saying, there's a problem. There's a global problem here. And I have personal friends who have moved from like cloud infrastructure companies to the NHS, and then we'd never done that if it wasn't for the purpose, right? The, the, the, the, that conviction that they are, um, that that's really interesting. And I suppose that the, both of you using both come from pretty interesting backgrounds, um, there seems to be really very reckless fear when it comes to sort of the way you create productivity and entire coalition, but it must've come from somewhere. So, um, I know, you know, um, yeah, so you were previously in Solando and, uh, uh, doing, uh, DNI pieces, uh, in, in, in Wipro digital and whatnot. Like, could you tell us a little bit about what you learned during that experiences, those experiences to kind of get you to where you are now?
Speaker 0 00:26:21 Yeah, sure. So Wipro was a interesting organization. We grew up from 130,000 employees to 170,000 employees. And now I think it's a 230,000 employees from four countries to 72 countries. So, you know, the organization was huge, um, to some degree compared to most, um, the hiring was scale and it was intense and it, because it was a consultancy, it meant that it was driven by, um, customers. So, you know, demand would come in and project would be one and we need to deliver yesterday. So the sense of urgency that I've got and the understanding of how we identify talent and pre identified talent has always come from the consulting background I had in terms of like identifying markets, identifying talent trends, identifying what potentially could come up and say, okay, well, we know that we're bidding for X, Y, and Z. So we should probably start building talent pipelines in power if we're going to do a cloud project with Santander or something.
Speaker 0 00:27:25 So the prediction models that we create and Wipro have really helped me now in like Solando and HelloFresh, right? So Wipro and most people don't know the 75% of the, the, the owner's equity was given to a charity. So $20 billion plus given to a charity. So every single house, every pound made 75 because of charity. And then you've got places like Zalando, which are the forefront of e-commerce fashion, kind of becoming the starting point for fashion, where they really kind of trying to innovate and work out. How can they take fashion shopping to the next level and become extremely sustainable at the same time. So, you know, secondhand clothing buying stuff. So there's been a trend in terms of like my work history and making sure I work for sustainable companies. And obviously I found a home now I had a fresh, which I think is probably the best place, but in terms of the objectives, each company is trying to achieve something that has helped me achieve my milestones.
Speaker 0 00:28:27 So for, for Wipro, it was about being super predictive about what we're going to hire for the Lando. It was about enticing and attracting people, making sure we have the right supply chain in recruitment, so we can hire fast and we can hire the right quality time. And now I had a fresh, we're doing both with predicting talent or as a hiring high quality, um, hiring for potential. And we're hiring a lot around diversity. So that's kind of helped me over the last, like six, seven years from my personal side of things. And a lot of what we're doing today is the 10th iteration of why would have done in the past. So, um, you know, some copying and pasting, and then we also have a lot of innovation we're doing, which we can talk briefly about, but, um, try to keep it close to our chest because you'll see more of it in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1 00:29:21 Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm taking as many notes as hopefully some of our founders and listeners and viewers are, um, and, uh, Carol you've come from ThoughtWorks massive brand for that product centric mindset. So could you tell me a little bit about your learnings, like on your journey from, from Virta?
Speaker 2 00:29:42 Yeah, of course. I think I was thinking about it. And the first thing that comes to mind is everything you do should be revolving around talents bias. It's about the person it's about their skills. So it's about the hiring managers about the clients. So it's all words. The biggest thing you'll learn is that you have a group of people doing something to help other people rise. So you try to look for the right talents and you focus on that skillset, of course is so huge in technology, right? So you learn very quickly what Google looks like. You learn very quickly what the highly skilled engineers to look like, what does it trends? And for example, it's all works with their technology Raider and multiple companies following it. So you're always ahead of the market. And that for me has been like a great learning, and I've always praised companies who are up to date and whatever they're doing in whatever function I always appreciated when you're head of the markets and how the fresh does it as well.
Speaker 2 00:30:51 I think on fresh is one of the companies I worked after. They're understood. Okay. The criteria here is as high as the work so I can work here. And it's also mass hiring. So this is something that I've learned a lot. Um, another thing that I've learned is just to really understand what the business wants, right? I think a lot of talent acquisition teams, they're more focused on using a process document, um, and what you should be doing, partnering with the business. So when you work at a consultancy and the client is paying for the talent, right? So you need to find the best on end. You need to find a solution to hire them fast, because if you don't have people staffed or not making mine, it's not a product company, right? You need people in the business in order to grow your own planet.
Speaker 2 00:31:41 If your talent is growing, its more skilled. Then if you have more of that, if you're launching your new region, so this fast space and hiring people quickly finding very creative solutions like I was doing hiring days and express recruitment back in like 2010, right? Everything across Brazil, opening new offices. So the sense of urgency combined with volume is something that I've learned very early on. We used a lot of hello, fresh. So one of the reasons why I joined hello fresh is that I knew it was a high bar and I knew it was a lot of volume to hire as well. Uh, and then the other piece similar to outside is the culture and various aspects. So as a whole pillar learn social justice and this has always been close to my heart diversity, respecting people, creating opportunities for everyone. So I've tried to work in companies that also share this smaller or big, um, and HelloFresh is also at the top of it. So one of our strategy pillars at the position is diversity, for example, and HelloFresh is a whole structure of making people feel welcome, creating programs for people to grow in their careers, to become leaders. Um, yeah, so I think this is like a lot of what I took from sours and previous companies.
Speaker 1 00:32:59 It's really interesting. This there's such brands that have quality of their core. Um, and you, you always take a lot from organizations like that and take them forward. Um, I want to kind of stick on the diversity piece because it is a, it's a key plank of our organization and mostly organizations that are out there talk about diversity. Uh, and then there's organizations that, you know, actual, you know, with those kinds of values in mind, you know, some organizations it's words on the website and other organizations, it really is a foundation of what they do and understand why diverse teams, um, you know, alphabet for everyone. So it's always good to get some practical tips around diversity inclusion, not just high level stuff, but how, you know, what, what does that pillar look like in practice? How, how do you go about building nurturing diverse groups and teams?
Speaker 0 00:33:55 So there's no secret to what would make, uh, how diversity works or what, what is required to make the diversity or diverse organization? You know, the first thing is that as an organization, you need to be inclusive, right? And to be inclusive, a lot of companies are, they're saying, Hey, we're amazing at diversity, uh, we do this. So we've got this initiative really and truly like underrepresented folks just want to know the truth. They want to know where you suck. What's not so good at your company and what you trying to fix. So I think one thing I like about what we're doing here is we're not trying to pretend where amazing company we've got problems to fix. That's why we want you to join us. We know that our diversity is not so great at certain levels and we need to fix that. That's why we want you to join us, to help us fix the mindset in our organization, because we got the purpose, we've got the vision, we've got the urgency, we've got the sustainability.
Speaker 0 00:34:51 What we need is more diverse thoughts. And you know, I think the industry as a whole is changing and diversity, hasn't been something new for HelloFresh. It's been at the pillar from day one. So I think that's, what's super important here is that if you're trying to attract people, you need to be authentic and honest about what you're trying to achieve. And I think for us, fortunately, we've attracted a lot of diverse, underrepresented folks. We haven't tried to make them, you know, the token, uh, employees, by putting them up on the website and the career page and everything else, we could easily do that. And we could say, yeah, we're really diverse. And then the reality is very different, but the truth is you come to our organization and it is just very diverse. You've got more, multiple, multiple different nationalities, uh, people that re recognize themselves it's different pronouns and et cetera, et cetera, like a, you know, I don't want to get into the, the, the demographics per se.
Speaker 0 00:35:48 My advice to any organization is first, make sure your leadership is open up, uh, is aligned with what they're about, uh, what they're willing to be open about where the mistakes are first, because if you couldn't go in a job description and you can write that we need help with diversity, we suck at diversity, but we're willing to listen. That's the first step. And I think listening is the first step to anything, right? Uh, there's a saying, I'll probably misquote this, a south African apartheid statement where it says nothing for us without us is for us. And it's like, you know, you can't build something, a diverse function without talking to under-representative groups and being honest with them. So I think that's number one. Uh, number two is making sure your processes are aligned. So for example, we are very conscious when we think about neurodiversity to not ask someone to come and sit in a room where maybe if they've got ADHD, like traffic behind them, and they're just getting distracted, right?
Speaker 0 00:36:56 There's also about being aware and consciousness. So huge amount of training that goes into what we're doing. We're just launching our licensed fire, which is about stopping hiring managers saying, Hey, you can't hire until you've trained on X, Y, and Z. And then you get a licensed hire, right? And that was an adoption or a friend of mine, Kevin Blair, who previously worked at IBM. He was a vice-president. He kind of told me about, and I loved the idea and I'm just sharing it. It's not an original thought, but you know, there's something that organizations need to do. Um, and then, then you've got around the transparency around what the role has expectations and the potential. You know, a lot of the time we look at job descriptions that we need to someone who fits that. But actually if you hire someone, if fits 80%, what is the return of investment?
Speaker 0 00:37:46 It's actually 120% because you're getting more, you're getting more and you're getting someone who's committed and you're getting the long-term effects of it, right? It's like, it's like going to the gym after one day, you're not going to get a six pack, but after a year, maybe you might, right. Same with employees with potential. You might not get everything you want initially, but you'll get a lot more in the long run. And I think that's something that organizations need to recognize when it comes to talent holistically, whether it's diverse talent, not, there's no such thing as non diverse talent. Anyway, everybody's unique in their own way. Everybody's got a story, everybody's got a background. And I think that's also something we have to factor.
Speaker 2 00:38:25 I think a lot of companies will focus a lot of this phone facing as, as I've said, but the most important thing is like staying true in time and being welcoming and respecting and offering people opportunities. I think that speaks a lot. Um, and you feel company inside. It's like that. It's just a matter of communicating it and being honest with the market five. So I think it's important just to let people be authentic, your work, respecting their background, respecting where they're coming from, embracing diversity. I think that's very important.
Speaker 0 00:38:57 There is a caveat though about positive bias, right? Because people say positive discrimination shouldn't allow positive bias. So there's a case study of Rwanda. I think it was Rwanda. The government they're putting in a rule that 50% of the MPS up to be a bypass. So, you know, male and female. And I think it was a short period of time afterwards that they found that over 50% had suddenly become female. And you know, in the governments, if you look at them worldwide, you look at somebody like us, it's not very diverse, but it's one of the most different democratic places in the world. Yeah. It's not very diverse. So there is some truth in creating like goals and metrics and saying, Hey, this is how much we need to achieve, but there has to be authentic in itself. So there are rules you can put in place.
Speaker 0 00:39:54 Like for example, the Rooney rule, the Rooney rule can be introduced to you. And to be processed to say that before we proceed with an offer, we need to make sure that we've interviewed at least a 40% of diverse profiles to make sure that we've got full picture. You know, not the first person I hired, but actually I interviewed five people and 40% of that comes from underrepresented groups. I've got holistic view. And actually I might find that this person is better. So that's something you can do. So I, it works with different organizations at different levels. It's not something I can say, go, do you have to assess it and deep dive into it and see if it works for you, but there are practical advices to how you can increase diversity as well.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 Yeah, I think that's the, that's the key for a lot of organizations is taking these high-level concepts and turn them into real practical solutions. And sometimes there's lack capabilities, if not the willpower to do that. Two of the points that you made there around, I think that a lot of the barriers to these things is an organization's attitude toward risk. Number one, having diverse time, number two, hiring for potential. And we, I absolutely understand the benefits as you've described. And I agree, uh, there's always an organization that looks at this as a risk reward ratio and says, well, I want someone who takes every box in our job description because that way it mitigates risk for this role. And in actual fact, if you can tick every box, it's, that's your reason to leave a job, right? Not your reason to get a new job.
Speaker 1 00:41:26 It's trying to make these stakeholders who have lots of time, lots of pressure, lots of high targets with themselves to, uh, to take a, take a risk on someone, maybe break these things down into must haves and nice to haves and figure out how many resources it's going to take to give them training rather than just want every single item. How do you, how do you deal with those conversations? You must have had those conversations if maybe have not in hell or fresh in the past. How do you convince these more senior stakeholders? This more, the, this kind of slightly softer way forward is the right way forward. Even if it seems on paper, it's a higher risk
Speaker 0 00:42:04 Problem area in front of them, right? So you say to them, well, whatever it was you like, would you go for the, like for like role in, in another company? Probably not. So then they're just being real with people and just saying, Hey, this is not going to work. Um, either that we make the doc job description and harder, right? And then we hire someone who's a fit, but actually they've got more responsibility. The reality is that most hiring managers, if you give them a piece of paper and you say to them, write down your perfect candidate, that person is probably doesn't exist. They probably themselves don't even fit 40% of that, right? Because they're just kind of listing down their problem statements and hoping someone fixes up. So having a team and having a leadership that understands that, you know, a team can solve a problem as opposed to an individual can solve a problem.
Speaker 0 00:42:56 And you can work together and training and learning and development can help that that's key. And I think that's part of our tenants, right? One of the, the DNAs that we have as an organization is learning never stops, meaning that we're, we're willing to take a risk and say, okay, this person, because think about we're 10 years old, we've taken risks every month, every day, right? We grew two X last year. There was no like comfortable days in that whole process. You know, we take every time it snows and our delivery drivers can't deliver their food. There's a risk of that. So we're taking risks every single day. And I think what we've become is we're not risk adverse. And so what you need to do as a TA function is you need to sell that story. So as a function, you need to build case studies that you can present to your leadership to say, by the way, you're a new leader and you may feel this way.
Speaker 0 00:43:55 However, we've gone through this discussion 10 times and look, this is this person's name, and this is what they're doing. This is this person's name. This is what they're doing. Trust us. We know what we're doing. So the proof is in the pudding, right? And I think that's the key here. Our TA functions over the next couple of years need to remember that there's still a service function to some degree and they can sell themselves and make their lives easier by recording what they've done. So just simple case studies on your achievement, it's like internal employee branding for TA.
Speaker 1 00:44:29 I think that's a really great point. You know, again, it's another example of taking these higher level needs and wants from the business and breaking it down to something very particular and very practical and useful for the business. Um, uh, we're getting kind of towards the end of our time, uh, saying, uh, but, uh, I'm keen from y'all's side scan idea of, um, well first one of, one of the things I'm desperate to get from the, both of you is what's your favorite hello, fresh meal. Mine's a burrito bowl, but I just wanted to get an idea from the two of you. Like what you must have had a lot of them. Um, what is the absolute in your opinion, best hello, fresh meal for our listeners.
Speaker 2 00:45:09 I have a bowl which is, um, avocado sweet potato tomatoes and Hubble me and a lot of like spices, like coriander. Anytime I see the recipe, I'll definitely order it. I love it so simple to do. And it's so different from anything I've ever done in my life. Never cooked anything like that in Brazil. So that's my top one recipe for two years already. That has been like my top recipe.
Speaker 0 00:45:35 I've got three, that's the problem. Um, you know, we get some, 2% discount on our boxes. So I get like kind of fresh every single day for the day for pretty much everything. So like the paying pennies for like a week's worth of shopping. So if you ever worry about supermarkets going up in price, join, hello, fresh, and you'll get a great discount. Um, I'd say mine is, there's a mushroom crumble, which is like mushroom creme fresh and like chicken and rice. And there's also a, um, Hulu meat tacos, which are really nice as well. They're amazing. The Christmas dinner is amazing. I don't know if anybody's had their Christmas dinner, but I had a Christmas dinner recently, the Turkey, everything. It was just blew my mind.
Speaker 1 00:46:23 Well, that's good to know. Um, and I think he kept that 70% discount on the heart. I think I see another plank of your employer brand, or maybe why you tripled in size may have gone to that. Fantastic. Well, I suppose a good time for any Yasmin Carol's final thoughts. Like we've, we've discussed a lot, we've gone into some sort of heavy stuff we've gone into some low-level detail overall, you know, thinking back on hello, fresh is journey, your personal journey. Is there any specific insight or specific thought of value that guides you overall, um, in let's say your personal brands? Like what, what, what value do you have that kind of leads you forward in your talent journey?
Speaker 0 00:47:16 Okay. So three rules that everybody knows about, I've always talked about them. You know, everything that I do, every decision I make has to be based on these three rules, human shaped experiences, iteration can be changed and automation, right? And I think there's no secret to time acquisition. I think my advice to anybody in TA is to think about it like software development, you have your versions version one, version two, version three, version four, version five. If you get lost in the delivery, that's where you're going to go wrong. If you just think, oh, I need to deliver a hundred hires. And if that's the, what your claim to famous, you're going to go wrong. What you need to do is look at okay, how am I developing as a person? How am I developing as a team? So for us, we've, we've mapped out where we are in different functions.
Speaker 0 00:48:03 TA one, PA two tier three points or tier 4.0 4.0 is what we're trying to transition to now, which is like multiple competencies in each TA team members role. So like the sourcer has employer branding, marketing. This coordinator has kinda experience TA 5.0 is how do we turn candidates into customers? 6.0 is hiring in 24 hours. 7.0 is what do we do with the 1 million applications that don't get selected to be put on the blockchain? Do we get rid of CDs altogether? So having that two, three year plan that doesn't revolve around delivery will help your team morale. It'll help your team innovate. They'll help creativity. They'll help people grow because they can think about and adjust and innovate in a way that their roles don't have to be kind of status quo roles. So a source or an art team is way different to a sourcer and another company's team, because we're not trying to do what other companies are doing.
Speaker 0 00:49:00 If we did that, then it would be boring. Um, so we were taking a lot of risks in what we're achieving, but we're doing with data, we're doing it with careful iterations. So it's not something like people will look at how you guys are doing something really risky. It's like, no, actually we're being quite careful. And we're, we're really doing it in a methodical way. And we're really making sure we've ticked the boxes where our 250% productive productivity. So we're already proactive. People are telling us to slow down. Yeah. I think what we're doing right now is fine. Otherwise we're doing nothing to do. We'd be sitting there twiddling our thumbs. So we, you know, we're at like a black, very, very blessed home. I think if I speak to 99% of recruitment leaders would love to be in my position right now.
Speaker 1 00:49:44 Yeah. You can see why, first of all, you should do a Ted talk on that, by the way, I would absolutely put some time aside to listen to that Ted talk. Um, I, that that's really, really exciting. And I think that's excellent advice. Um, particularly, um, you know, around that iterative piece, people forget that, you know, where we can improve the way our customers, our stakeholders build software, very interested in using their language, using our job principles and the principles and so on it, isn't just the high-level people function that sits in some corporate area of the business. It's it is very much integrated into the purpose of the business. And Carol wrote yourself, you know, is there a, is there a set of values that you've gleaned through your time in hello, fresh?
Speaker 0 00:50:28 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:50:29 I really love ajar methodologist. So you can read a lot of the books and apply like similar to what y'all started saying. Like we apply a lot of the principles belong principle from that giant manifesto really stuck with me for years now, like 10 years is as invaluable and people are always more important than documentation and processes. So I think a lot of TA functions get stuck on being an operational function because they're thinking about themselves. They're thinking about building a process that works for recruiters. They're not talking about thinking about other candidates. So I think when you shift the mindset of, you're not building an interview process, you're taking care of candidate experience and you're not filling roles. You're thinking about how you're properly staffing a business, how you're staffing themes teams to be productive, how you're making sure that the people that you're bringing to the business will help everyone grow people, join teams, and they stay because of the people they work with.
Speaker 2 00:51:34 So I think when you find a way to become a partner with the business interview solutions that work both for the people that work here already then need the team that are on the teams and build experiences for candidates. It's much easier to make any decision I started not thinking about, oh, I need to have 10 stages because I am insecure about hiring someone. What does the candidate on the other side wants? Right? So I think you need to put people first and then everything else to do around it. You do, based on that, you define your processes are defined your documentation, you see your gaps, you see why you need training. Um, I don't know for me, that has been like, that's what has made me grow my careers strategically thinking about CA in that sense, you know,
Speaker 0 00:52:26 I want to, I forgot to add one point. I think it relates to Carol's point. I just want to add there was a IBM manifestor from 1980s. You might've seen it going around, you know, where tools and computers cannot make people in decisions because the computer can't be made accountable. Right. And I think that's super important. I can approve. We are all obsessed with kind of automation. I am specifically, you know, I I'm one of those people, but, um, poof calmer pay Sutton skills. Right. And I think that's also really important. We have a tech radar by the way. So EA tech radar, anybody who wants to see what we do right now and what tools we used, they can go such for a HelloFresh TA tech radar. They can see all the tools, but doing a TA I'm using adopting trialing put on old. Um, so that's also suggested an add on, on the technology side, because I know that's important right now for a lot of people. Yeah. That transparency is, is really refreshing as well for a lot of TA functions
Speaker 1 00:53:24 Of, to keep the customer close to their chest. Well, I have, uh, I'm, I'm exhilarated absolutely. After, after that chats, I really am. And, uh, thank you so much for taking the time out and speaking to those, I've got lots to think about. Um, and hopefully a lot of our listeners have as well and good luck with TA four point or five point or 11.0 and beyond. I'm really excited to see, um, how, how we all develop. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:53:53 It's a pleasure.
