Innovative Ways to Open up Your Talent Pipeline

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | October 02, 2021

The pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb has nixed a requirement that employees have a four-year degree in order to be promoted above a certain level. “There was an unintended glass ceiling we were creating for ourselves,” said Erin Pierpoint, the company’s head of talent strategy for diversity and early-career recruiting. What they were hearing from employees was “I can't get promoted, I didn't go to a four-year school, but I'm here and I'm successful. Why can't I?”

You no longer need a four-year degree to get hired by companies like Apple, Google, or Netflix. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for example, said his company emphasizes experience and initiative over formal education. Removing the degree barrier means millions of people would have access to jobs once cordoned off for the educationally privileged. PolitiFact estimates that about 68% of adults in the U.S. over the age of 25 do not have a bachelor’s degree.

Suzanne Rosenthal, VP of talent acquisition for campus and early-career recruiting at ViacomCBS, said they too are looking beyond traditional college educations. She pointed out that “especially in creative and production content, in most of our full-time jobs, that's not even a requirement any longer.” Their internship program now reflects that change and seeks out talent that isn’t on the bachelor’s track.

Pierpoint and Rosenthal spoke on a panel of five leaders in talent-acquisition and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), titled “Improving the Talent Pipeline, From End to End,” during From Day One’s September virtual conference on new ideas and tactics for diversity hiring. The group addressed how employers can pinpoint the sometimes-hidden obstacles that get in the way of potential job candidates and play an active role in developing talent from the earliest stages of their careers. Gregory Hammons, a product-marketing manager and product-inclusion lead at Google, moderated the discussion. Among the insights:

“Broadening the Aperture”

Panelists agreed that much of the work of removing barriers takes place with early or even pre-career talent. Like Bristol-Myers Squibb and ViacomCBS, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which represents talent in entertainment, sports and other fields, is rooting out its own inhibiting habits in the realm of talent development. David York, CAA’s global head of recruiting, said the firm has expanded its focus on recruiting from a wider range of schools, specifically historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). He calls this “broadening the aperture.” Rosenthal’s team at ViacomCBS is making an extra effort to focus on people of color, veterans, and the neurodiverse.

Talking about the talent pipeline, top row from left: moderator Gregory Hammons of Google, Suzanne Rosenthal of ViacomCBS, and Tarawhona Bellevue of NAF. Bottom row, from left, David York of CAA, Erin Pierpoint of Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Rocki Howard of SmartRecruiters (Image by From Day One)

Other barriers the group identified are inconsistent hiring practices, lack of company or industry connections on the part of job candidates, and lack of inclusive culture within organizations. Removing those barriers begins with an internal appraisal, said Rocki Howard, chief diversity officer at recruiting-software company SmartRecruiters, which offers a free assessment that helps companies answer the question, “How well positioned am I to hire diverse talent?” The assessment asks companies to consider the makeup of interview panels, whether their job postings are accessible, and whether communities like the neurodiverse are supported in the hiring process.

Showing Recruits the Kinds of Careers They Can Have

In many cases, improving the talent pipeline requires showing pre-development talent the jobs they could have. Helping young candidates see themselves in new industries is something Tarawhona Bellevue does at the nonprofit organization NAF, which works with high schools to ensure students are career- and future-ready. “We want to make sure that they have early exposure to these professions and to these opportunities,” said Bellevue, NAF’s VP of inclusion, diversity, equity and access strategy. “And one of the ways is for them to be able to see how it shows up in their life on a regular basis.” Rosenthal and York said they see this firsthand: Many studying subjects like philosophy, English, and business–in other words, subjects that are not performing-arts based–may not think media-and-entertainment organizations have a place for them.

This is something CAA is working on, York said. “It can seem very daunting and very impossible, if you don't know someone, to get into entertainment. And so we purposely target people that maybe had no interest in entertainment to start with, or didn't think that they could get into entertainment, then we bring them in for a weekend to really help them understand here's what it's all about.”

Improving the pipeline also requires showing young talent the skills they need. NAF's Bellevue works with employer partners like KPMG and Raytheon to identify the skills that job candidates need to work at those companies, now and later. In NAF’s internship prep course, they develop students’ soft skills, build on hard skills, and help them understand the future job market. For SmartRecruiters, another piece is ensuring fair and equitable hiring processes. “There's nothing worse than recruiting great talent and putting them into a biased pipeline,” said Howard.

Creating a Talent Pool That Doesn’t Exist Yet

The panelists agreed that putting in the work to develop skills with early and pre-career talent is one of the most beneficial and long-lasting ways to keep the pipeline full of diverse talent.

Advised Pierpoint: “Consider that the talent pool you’re looking for may not yet exist, and the responsibility will be on you to create and nurture talent now and in the future." Said Rosenthal: “I firmly believe that building talent is a huge part of the equation, not only buying talent, which is the easy thing to do. A lot of people don't want to necessarily invest.”

Howard emphasized that this issue calls for a whole-company approach. “Understand that diversity isn't owned by a chief diversity officer or CEO, it’s owned by every single person in the organization,” she said. “And so I think we need to learn how to activate that organizational support from the front receptionist all the way up to the CEO suite.”

The talent mavens were optimistic about the generation coming up, judging them as forward-thinking and eager. “I have a lot of hope for the future,” said Pierpoint. “I mean, talk about bright minds, inclusive thinking. These are our future leaders, and it gives me a lot of hope.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a writer, editor, and content strategist based in Richmond, Va.

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Learning to Talk Openly About the Challenges That Women Face at Work and in Life

When the Trump administration announced on April 23 that The Department of Health and Human Services would be terminating contracts with all four research centers working on the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest research study of its kind, the backlash was so immediate and vocal that the administration reversed course the very next day. Women’s healthcare feels constantly under attack, but is crucial to more than 50% of our population. Whether they’re dealing with motherhood, miscarriages, reproductive choice, menopause, and more, women still face overwhelming cultural pressure to stay silent about their challenges. In her new book “Normalize It: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives,” psychologist and author Jessica Zucker, PhD, brings an unflinching new look at what needs to be said more openly at a time of backlash—and how employers can respond. 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