Making a Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive World (ft. Cami Kaos)

Episode Transcript:

Michelle Frechette:
Welcome to our next episode of the Underrepresented in Tech podcast. Usually, I start by saying, “Hi Allie,” but Allie’s not here today. Instead, I’m going to say hi. Hi Cami.

Cami Kaos:
Hi Michelle.

Michelle Frechette:
How are you?

Cami Kaos:
I am not Allie.

Michelle Frechette:
You are not.

Cami Kaos:
But I’m doing well. I miss Allie.

Michelle Frechette:
I’m so excited you’re here. Allie is moving this week, so she is in the process of packing up, changing apartments. And I couldn’t think of a better person to fill her shoes this week than to ask Cami Kaos from Automattic to come and be my guest on the Underrepresented in Tech podcast. How are you?

Cami Kaos:
I’m great. Thank you so much. Well, I’m great. I’ll tell your viewers what I told you. I am functioning within adequate guidelines right now, which when you’re answering public question kind of tends to segue just, “Oh no, I’m great, I’m great, I’m fine.” But hi, Michelle. I’m happy to be here and I’m happy to be talking to you.

Michelle Frechette:
I know. I love that. Anytime I message you, I’m like, “Hey, I have something I’d like you to work with me on,” you’re like, “Yes, I’m in, what can I do?” And I’m like-

Cami Kaos:
What is it? Don’t care.

Michelle Frechette:
I love working with you on just anything, so I’m so excited when you were like, “Yeah, sure. I’ll do that.” So we’re super excited to have you here this week. One of the reasons I was excited to talk to you is because you have changed positions at work. So tell us a little about where you were, where you are now, and what you do.

Cami Kaos:
Cool. As Michelle said, I’m Cami Kaos. That’s my name, that’s how you say it. Previously, for the last eight years, I was a community contributor in the WordPress project and I was part of the team overseeing WordCamps and meetups and helping organizers and speakers, volunteers, attendees, be their best present selves at the events and have those events be the best events they could be. During the pandemic, things shifted significantly, and it turns out I don’t like in person events, or I don’t like online events very much. I love in-person events, and it was kind of a struggle for me to continue so I started looking around to see if there was something else I could be doing that would still help WordPress and help the world be a better place. And I wound up staying with Automattic.

Cami Kaos:
I was a sponsored contributor to the WordPress community, and I stayed with Automattic as my employer, and I moved to their talent division where I’m working on talent acquisition operations. So I’m not directly acquiring any of the talent myself, I’m making the operations go around so that all of our hardworking recruiters and specialists and hiring managers can get the work done to hire people. But within that, I am also specifically overseeing DEI for talent. So I am making sure that we have everything that we can have available to us, within reason, and that we are doing everything with the tools that we can to make Automattic a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive space.

Michelle Frechette:
And that is what DEI stands for.

Cami Kaos:
It is. So that’s why I like to get it out there. Right out there.

Michelle Frechette:
I like how you snuck it right in there. I love it. Because I was thinking, oh, and what does DEI… Oh, she got it already, she told me.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
That’s awesome.

Cami Kaos:
What is this episode about Michelle?

Michelle Frechette:
It’s about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. So when you lead a team or you’re part of the leadership team of recruiting and talent acquisition, what are some of the tips that you can give somebody as far as how do you make sure that DEI is part of what you do when you are acquiring new talent?

Cami Kaos:
The first thing I would say is that it cannot be an afterthought or an assumption. When you take a company and it’s a small company, let’s take a five person company, and you hire four of your friends because you are working on this project together, it is likely that you have just created a homogenous group of people. Now they might not all look the same and they might not all think the same, but they all had something in common to tie them together, and it is likely that will be a homogenous group, those five. So for the sake of argument, I’m going to say those five homogenous individuals are straight, white, male developers based in the United States.

Michelle Frechette:
That sounds like a familiar story. That is a familiar story.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a straight, white, male developer based in the United States, I happen to know plenty of them, lovely people. that being said, should they be building the future of the internet for everyone? Should they be doing anything for everyone? No, because that’s one perspective. And as they start to look for more roles that they need to fill, they’re immediately going to start propagating those applicants that they’re most comfortable with, that they know, that are within their group. And so it grows, but it doesn’t grow more diverse. It grows in size and not in diversity. So when you start hiring, you have to acknowledge, oh, I only know what I know, and you have to seek out how you can best bring in people from other disciplines, from other parts of the world, with different skin colors, different genders, different orientations, et cetera, et cetera, differently… I hate phrase differently abled, but you need disabled people just as well as you need standard abled people.

Cami Kaos:
We overlook that the world isn’t populated by the kind of person who’s building a project or a product. And so when you start to branch out, you have to first acknowledge diversity does not exist in a vacuum. As a single human individual, I am not diverse, I am exactly like myself. And so if I started a company and I brought on four of my closest friends, it would probably be a bunch of underrepresented women in technology. And then within our company, we would cease to be underrepresented. We would still be underrepresented in technology as a whole, right? So then you start looking at, do you actively seek out a person who you know is different from you and say, “Hey, do you want this job? Is this something that you’re interested in? Is this something that you have thought about?” Or you reach out to someone who you see has solved a problem elsewhere, and you’re like, “Wow, I really liked the way you solved that problem, I never would’ve thought of it.”

Cami Kaos:
So if you’re a five person company and you’re recruiting on a super tiny scale, it’s a lot of personal touchstones, because you’re still wanting to have that sense of familiarity with your company. When you grow and you’re a 2000 person company, chances are you’re still going to be relatively homogenous, and that’s sad, and that is counterproductive, and it’s something that we need to get away from. And you have to do that even more intentionally, you have to do that by actively recruiting people in leadership that do not represent the people you already have. So usually that means recruiting women or BIPOC individuals into positions of leadership or into technical roles, because that’s where we see a lot of that lacking.

Cami Kaos:
So you use tools. And I am not going to recommend any single tool, but I’m going to tell you that there are so many D, E, and I, diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring tools on the market that you cannot open your door without seeing one, your virtual internet door. All you do is type in DEI tools for hiring. But it comes rolled into some things, and LinkedIn is something that I want to talk about. LinkedIn can give you great sources if you look for the right groups, if you look for the right folks to recruit, if you share your message broadly and have other people share it, that’s going to be a really great way. But that’s all very nebulous, so I wanted to give you a couple of things, practical things, that you can start right away if you’re looking to hire more diverse individuals for your company if you’d like.

Michelle Frechette:
I would love that.

Cami Kaos:
Okay. So one of the things that we highly recommend, we being me, I don’t know why I suddenly became the queen, the Royal we. One of the things I would highly recommend, and this has been recommended to me by DEI experts more than once, and I’ve seen it work out is when you first open a role that you’re going to be…

Michelle Frechette:
I think I’ve lost you.

Cami Kaos:
[inaudible 00:08:59] sourcing for this role, so it’s going to be a total of 16 hours. For those first four hours, you do not look at anybody who looks like people that are standard within your company. So you would specifically say, “I’d like to see if we can hire a woman for this role. I’d like to see if we can hire a black person for this role. I’d like to see if we can hire an indigenous person for this role.” Whatever it is that you’re like, we have none of this and we need that perspective, you start to look on LinkedIn or whatever your other sourcing platforms are, and you only look at people who fall into that niche of humanity. You don’t even consider anyone else. Later, you start to consider other things and you start to look at them, but for the first four hours they get nothing. And it’s a really, really valuable way to make sure that you are looking at people that you wouldn’t normally include.

Cami Kaos:
Another way that you can be more inclusive and bring in a more diverse pool for hiring is by saying, “Hey, we need to be more diverse and inclusive.” You can actually call it out. I find, as a woman, even if I am an expert at something, I often don’t think I’m qualified for whatever. Like you asked me today to talk about DE&I in hiring, and I was like, “I’m going to say yes, because it’s Michelle, but what am I going to talk about? I don’t know anything about DE&I.”

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, you did.

Cami Kaos:
What’s going on brain? And I was like, “I mean, I guess, I’m an okay person to talk to.” I have to pump myself off to be like, I’m totally qualified. I’m relatively new to this. I’ve been doing it unofficially for years within the WordPress community, and now I just actually get to do it for work work, and it’s a little different. But reach out and say, “Hey, we’re looking for people who fall into these groups. We’re looking for more women leaders. We’re looking for more BIPOC leaders. We’re looking for people with different skill sets. We’re looking for people who haven’t necessarily gotten a master’s degree in something. We don’t need you to have a doctorate in internet theory.”

Cami Kaos:
Because there are studies, but a white man will apply for a job… So say a job has five primary things that a man would need to do. A white man typically would apply for it if he tick even one of those boxes, whereas anyone from an underrepresented group is likely to look at that, and if they don’t take all five boxes, they’re like, “No, I’m not qualified.” So we don’t have to invite a straight, white, programming man to apply for a job. If he wants to apply for that job, he will. But we do need to invite people from underrepresented groups and say, “Hey, no, we see you.” And seeing them is just the start obviously, but if you don’t see people, you can’t engage with them. And then one other thing that I just forgot. [inaudible 00:12:15] my brain, and it looked like you were going to ask a question, so you go.

Michelle Frechette:
Well, let me ask this question, maybe it’ll make you think of it too. So when you want to invite somebody to apply for position, how do you do that without also applying that there are shoe in or that they’re automatically going to be awarded a position. I think of that all the time, even when I invite somebody to apply to speak at one of our events, then just because I’m inviting you to apply to speak, doesn’t mean that we’re going to love your topic. That’s doesn’t mean that you’re automatically selected. So how do you make that invitation without applying an automatic hire?

Cami Kaos:
So I’m not a recruiter, so I’m not going to go into too much of the specifics of it, but that is essentially what recruiters are trained to do. I would always just be super careful with your language. I’ve had the same invite speakers to apply issue before in the past. You invite someone to apply and they assume that they are going to be speaking. And so you talk about what you see in them that could be useful for the role, you talk about what your company culture is like, and you invite them very specifically, I would invite you to imply, “We would love you to apply,” and never use anything past the word apply because it’s too leading. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
And I think-

Cami Kaos:
And it didn’t make me think of the other thing.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, go ahead.

Cami Kaos:
No, no, go ahead please.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, okay. So one of the other things that we talk about a lot is tokenization. It’s very easy for people to feel tokenized if like they look and see that you’re a company of five white, straight, cis-

Cami Kaos:
White, straight, cis-

Michelle Frechette:
Men, yeah.

Cami Kaos:
Programming men.

Michelle Frechette:
Yes, exactly. And it’s like, oh, I’m a woman, or, oh, I’m a BIPOC. I’m your token application, I’m your token hire. And I think language has a lot to do with it, but how do you make sure that somebody feels comfortable enough to apply, that they’re not being tokenized and that you really do value any perspective that they can bring to the job?

Cami Kaos:
That’s when you start to look at inclusion and equity. And a another letter that we haven’t talked about today, which is the letter B, belonging. You can have all your hiring processes, all your recruiting processes to reach out to people, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to feel comfortable. And so, again, some of it’s about intention, and it’s about saying, “Hey, we know that we’re not doing a great job at diversity right now. This is what we are looking to build, you might be a part of it.” I am one of those women, I’ve been a part of the startup community in Portland, Oregon for a long time and the open source community. Not so much these past few years, but my history before I started heavily getting involved in WordPress was that. And I was one of the women who would go to tech events, so that if another woman showed up, she wouldn’t be alone. And I cannot count the number of events that I sat at as the only woman.

Cami Kaos:
And sometimes I wasn’t even wanted there. I mean, let’s be blunt, sometimes you’re not wanted. But I wanted to make sure that if someone else was brave enough to show up that we would be there, and that’s how you start to build belonging, you show up. And if you are a straight, white, cis, programming man, and you want to build diversity without tokenism, you have to do more work than someone else might have to do it. You can’t just be like, “Okay, well, let’s find a woman to do it for us. Let’s find a black person to do this for us. We’ll make it easier, they know what they’re talking about.” That’s actually the exact wrong thing to do, because then you’re putting the emotional labor of diversity on the people who are already suffering from a lack of diversity in the workplace in the first place. So it’s kind of a vicious circle. You have to… Go ahead.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah. I was going to say, I gave a talk recently at WordCamp Montclair where I talked about the fact that we talk about making room at the table. And the very last thing I said is, “But surprise, the table is fictitious. We can make it as big as we need to.” It’s not like you have to get rid of somebody to bring somebody else to the table. Not withstanding budget issues, and I mean I get all of that. But realistically, you can bring people in and not have them have to start at the bottom if they’re overqualified for that. They can start at the top, you don’t have to squish all together. It’s a fictitious table, just make it bigger.

Cami Kaos:
You bring up another really good point, is when we look at hiring for people, sometimes people don’t apply for the right role in the first place.

Michelle Frechette:
Very true.

Cami Kaos:
And having a system to track really great candidates who come in, but aren’t perfect for the role that they have applied for, or weren’t the right fit, or just there was some other absolutely stellar candidate that came out for the same role that just ticked every box, both literally and… don’t talk to me on Mondays. What was I thinking?

Michelle Frechette:
I know, me too.

Cami Kaos:
But having a system in place to hold those individuals in reserve or be able to just reach out to them and have an open conversation. I did remember the other thing I wanted to say. It’s not from a recruiting standpoint, but it’s more about what you’re doing when you’re hiring people. I know I’m not alone in this, in going, “Okay, this is what makes me feel different about myself.” I look at a website and I look at who works there and I go and see how many women are there and what their roles are. And I have black friends who do that every time they apply for a company or even think about applying for a company, they go and they count. They just look at faces. We, as an industry, aren’t going to be releasing a bunch of private information about people, so those photographs are kind of the closest you can get sometimes. And if you want to make people feel comfortable or if you want to show what really is happening internally in the company, that’s a really good way to do it.

Cami Kaos:
But then also on the bringing folks in, you can have programs, you could have a returnship program, where you go and look… Predominantly, I’m talking about moms who stopped working, went and did the whole mom thing. I’m a great example of this. I didn’t work for eight years as I was raising my daughter and then came back and was like, “I don’t even know what skills I used to have, let alone if I still have them.” So building a returnship program for people who’ve been out of work to up level their skills and help them find an entry point into your company is going to reap great rewards for you.

Cami Kaos:
Another thing that you can look at is mentorship for applicants and for candidates. If you bring someone in as a candidate and they identify as an underrepresented group, does your company have an ERG, an employee resource group that works specifically with that kind of person? So we’ve got women’s ERGs, we’ve got [inaudible 00:19:20], which is the black ERG. We’ve got our LGBTQIA ERG, we’ve got ERGs coming out of our ears. And if you can leverage those to make people who are applying feel welcome and comfortable, not only do they have a better experience, but oftentimes some of the things that might hold them up in a process of hiring is something that you can talk them through and it’s no longer a problem, and so something that might have been a weakness can be turned into a strength.

Michelle Frechette:
That’s a really good point. I think that’s super important. When I joined GiveWP four and a half years ago, I was the only woman on the team at that point in time. Then, I was charged to hire somebody. Guess what? I hired a woman.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah, you did.

Michelle Frechette:
There were two of us. And within another month, we’d hired a third woman, and all three of us are still with that primary company. Because you do, you have this opportunity to have mentors and kindredness within the company, and that gives you an opportunity. It gives you somebody to talk to if things aren’t going well, it gives you somebody to rejoice with when things are going well, because it’s somebody that you feel you have an affinity with automatically.

Cami Kaos:
And I want to just boost what you just said and add to it that, that is informal in so many companies, and if you can make it more formal and say, “No part of your job is being an ambassador for others who come into this space and showing them what we want to be and how we function and how they can be safe and how if it doesn’t feel right, they can say something,” make it formal and make it a part of your company’s DNA, rather than just a thing that there’s three cool people in the company that you can go to. Make it so that the whole company understands and has to respect that.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, I think that’s great. We had an unofficial little, like every time we would hire a new woman, we’d start our own little private Slack group, like group chat. And finally I said, why don’t we have an actual channel where we’re not having to continually remake new group chats. And so we did, we started, The Women of Give and it was… We didn’t have any non-binary people at the time, we would’ve included them of course, but there were three of us, and then there were four of us, there were five of us, that kind of thing, and we kept that going, which was a fun, little place to just share bad hair Monday or whatever we felt like doing. And it felt like it was so estrogen filled, it didn’t matter.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
You know, kind of thing, so…

Cami Kaos:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
One of the things that when you talk about recruiting especially, I have heard people say, like I say to somebody, “You don’t have any diversity in your company.” “Well, the application is there, they’re just not applying.” Okay, so the first thing is never refer to a group of underrepresented people as they, because that is just othering and it’s terrible use of language. But that aside, just having an application out there is not enough if you really truly want diversity and inclusion within your company. So that’s why we have-

Cami Kaos:
Let’s talk about that.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, yeah, so what’s your 2 cents on that?

Cami Kaos:
One of my least favorite things ever in the history of the world is when someone says, “I can’t help who applies.” I’ve heard this from so many WordCamps. I can’t even start. And if you feel like you’re being called out, please, you’re not, it’s not you alone. Literally, hundreds of WordCamp organizers have told me, “I cannot help who applies.” And yes, you can. Tap, tap, tap, you can help who applies, and here’s how.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Cami Kaos:
We’ve got programs within the WordPress community that help people from underrepresented groups level up their skills if they don’t feel like their skills are already at the level that they need to be. If their skills are at the level that they need to be, we’ve got programs that will help you find places to speak. Michelle can tell you all about those. We’ve got programs that’ll help you find places to work, but it’s still on the organizers and the people doing the hiring to say, “Hey, this needs to be an inclusive space.” And that means checking your language for inclusivity. There are bots on the internet that’ll do this for you. When you write up a job description, chances are you’re writing it with a person in mind, and we’re taught to write that way for business, we’re taught to go who’s your ideal reader for this blog post, who’s your ideal candidate for this role, and really zero in on them in your mind.

Cami Kaos:
And if you close your eyes and you’re thinking about someone who looks like you, you need to be writing a different description. And so, use one of the tools online to help you review that, make sure that your language isn’t discriminatory, make sure that you’re not asking any discriminatory questions. If you’re asking demographic questions and you feel someone might be uncomfortable with that, [inaudible 00:24:24] super transparent about why you’re asking. If you say, “I want to know your gender,” it has a completely different feeling than I would like to know your pronouns. Pronouns and gender are not the same thing, but most of the time-

Michelle Frechette:
They are not.

Cami Kaos:
They’re nowhere near the same thing, but most of the time when people ask for one or the other, they just want to know if you’re a man or a woman. And we need to add in between, we need to get to the place as a society that we can say, are you a man or are you a woman or are you nonbinary? Or we need to get past the point where it matters. But the fact of the matter is is that women and nonbinary people are so hideously underrepresented that we’re nowhere near the place that it doesn’t matter.

Cami Kaos:
And so just think about the language you’re using, think about what you’re asking. If you’re not sure why you’re asking a question, don’t ask it. If you don’t actually need someone who has a degree, don’t say you need someone who has a degree. You need to ask for what you actually want to see in the role, for what you actually… Not what you want, what you need to see in the role, because the more qualifications you set on a specific role, the more you are blocking people out and you could be losing a really, truly, amazing human that would just fundamentally change your entire company for the better, but you said you wanted someone with a college degree or you said you needed someone with 10 years of experience.

Michelle Frechette:
I was doing some research last year, so I do look… I don’t want people to think I’m looking for a job, because I’m very happy where I am, but I do look at applications across tech industry for Underrepresented in Tech just to kind of gather what’s out there. And I came across the company last year that they asked for a photo, they asked for your date of birth, and both of those things can cause discrimination in hiring, right? Now, they were not a US company, so they were not breaking-

Cami Kaos:
I was going to say, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, but yeah, not a US company.

Michelle Frechette:
It is illegal in the United States, but it’s not illegal around the world. But it does set yourself up for charges against discrimination, because if I submit and I’m a woman, especially if I’m an overweight woman or if I’m a black person or whatever it is, I could say, “Oh, I didn’t get hired because they saw my picture.” Or like my date of birth ends in 1968, people will be like, “Oh, damn, she’s too old for that position,” right? So there’s awesome opportunities. And I actually asked the company why they did that, and they go, “Oh, we need that for the hiring paperwork.” I said, “Then ask for it when you hire them.”

Cami Kaos:
Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
Don’t ask for it when they apply, ask for it once they’ve been offered the position.

Cami Kaos:
Exactly, you don’t need all of that. You are wiggling into one of my favorite topics within diversity, equity, and inclusion though, which is intersectionalism. And I feel like your viewers know what intersectionalism, but just-

Michelle Frechette:
But go ahead and say it anyway.

Cami Kaos:
Your listeners, your listeners. No single person is one thing in and of themselves. And so when we talk about intersectionalism, I’m going to use feminism as an example, because something that’s really talked about, we’re not talking about just being women. We’re talking about bringing all of our identities to the table. And so being an intersectional feminist to someone who supports women, regardless of their gender, regardless of their pronouns, regardless of their birth status, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their caste, regard anything else. It’s just uplifting women and people who identify as women and often as non-binary individuals.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Cami Kaos:
And what Michelle was talking about, she said, “I’m a woman, I’m overweight, and my birth year ends in 68.” She’s not worried about one of those things, she’s worried about all three of those things. All three of those things are enough to set people off. And I have the exact same thing when I apply for something I’m like, ugh… I mean, not the exact thing. I have my own little groups and pockets obviously, but it’s scary to be othered in one way, but most people are othered in so many ways.

Michelle Frechette:
Multiple ways, yeah.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah-

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Cami Kaos:
So that’s something that’s also important to keep in mind. You cannot hold someone’s identity within a box.

Michelle Frechette:
One of the interesting things that came up with somebody else I was speaking to this year was this person has a PTSD around a hiring practice where they were completely discriminated against and basically terrorized in the situation. And now they are absolutely terrified of having interviews, face to face speaking interviews. And I think there must be positions where that’s really just not necessary, where you can get a body of work, you can get everything you need through email, through direct messaging without actually having to terrify somebody to be on screen or in person interview. And so I think there should be ways. Absolutely there are times when that’s not possible. There are positions for which that’s not possible. But there might be a position within your company where somebody who is such an introvert or has had a past traumatic experience is terrified to apply just because they don’t want to have to put themselves through that, consider whether that’s even really necessary. I’m just going to put that out there too.

Cami Kaos:
You’re diving into one of the other topics that is something I don’t know enough about, but that I’m really learning a lot about right now, which is specifically around neurodiversity in hiring. We terrorize, we terrorize the neurodiverse. I’m speaking as a neurodiverse individual myself, we terrorize the neurodiverse. And as a neurodiverse person, you often grow up thinking, well, that’s just the way it is. That’s how it’s got to be, I’m terrified of that, but I’m going to have to figure how to do it. Now, sometimes you are going to have to figure out how to do it depending on what you’re seeking in life, what role you’re looking for. But really, how often is talking to someone face to face and being polished a part of someone’s job. If your job is going to be doing support via text and writing, why do you have to be personable on camera? Why do you have to be personable in person?

Cami Kaos:
As I said, this is an area of study that I do not know enough about. Currently looking for a speaker to do some work with us, to not just help me learn more, but help others within my company learn more as well. But this goes to how you present things, right? So when you write up that job description that you want someone to fill, that’s the right time to start also thinking about what the interview process is going to be like. Now, while you can’t necessarily change what it’s going to be like, I can say that there’s something that a lot of people don’t do that would be really helpful if we started making it a larger part of the hiring process. And that is just spelling out the expectations incredibly clearly. I will use such a huge, easy comparison between applying to speak and applying to get a job, so I’m going to use that.

Cami Kaos:
When I apply to speak at an event and I’m accepted, or even if I’m going to apply to speak, let’s just take the application. When you look at the application, a great application, a great call for papers is going to tell you exactly what they want to know. We want to know your name, we want to know your biography, we want to know what your expertise is, we want to know if you’ve spoken before, we want to know what your talk is going to be about, and they might write back with questions. And if you get that speaking gig, they’re going to give you all the information that you need to be successful as a speaker, because it’s important for them as well. So they’re going to tell you where you need to be and when, they’re going to tell you if there’s going to be rehearsal. If we could normalize doing that for jobs as well, “So, okay, this is the application process. You send us an application, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to review i. And then we’re going to get back to you and let you know if we would like to have an interview. If you get to the interview, this is what the interview format is going to be like. And these are the five questions that we’re going to ask you.”

Cami Kaos:
Now, some people are like, “You can’t tell them what questions you’re going to ask, they can make stuff up.” People can make stuff on the spot, it doesn’t matter. If you tell people what questions you’re going to ask, if they’re a person who does not feel comfortable answering questions on the spot, they will have time to look at their own experiences. It’s not going to make more people lie to you. You can do the same thing if you’re a company hires with trial projects or through a contract work, lay out for them exactly what it is, and to the best of your ability, what benchmarks you’re looking for within the project work and let them know when they apply what the entire hiring process is going to look like, because if they’re not comfortable with it, they haven’t wasted hours and hours and hours of their life applying for a job that is never going to work for them.

Cami Kaos:
And if they are okay with it, but it’s going to take a little bit of… I have to pump myself up before. I mean, I’ve known Michelle for years and I still had to be like, “It’s okay. It’s just a podcast. It’s all fine. We’re just going to have a conversation.” And I still messaged her beforehand and be like, “Is there anything I need to know?” And even if she had told me what I needed to know, I’d still ask her anyway because it’s just how I am. But people don’t have the… I can ask her, you can’t necessarily ask the person who is potentially hiring you. “Can you lay everything out for me in detail because I’m an anxious individual and I will do better if I know?” You should be able to tell them that, but you can’t. And so, yeah, if you take that step of confusion out for people, I think it is incredibly beneficial, but it’s not something that people do frequently enough.

Michelle Frechette:
I love that idea though. And I’m going to put it out there for everybody else, make it as clear as possible. Also, not to go down the rabbit hole of this, but I think it’s great if you can put salary range out there too, so that people know whether-

Cami Kaos:
I agree.

Michelle Frechette:
Whether or not they have the ability to work for you based on the salary that you can offer them. There’s nothing worse than going through hours and hours of prep, and two to three to however many in person or on screen applications, only to discover that it’s half the salary that you’re making now. I mean, when I worked in education, I had that experience more than once and it was just so disheartening.

Cami Kaos:
And I can say that if I understand that there are some companies who don’t feel comfortable doing that for reasons, and if you don’t feel comfortable putting that right out on the ad, make sure that you make a note that says that you can discuss what the salary is going to be and discuss it privately with them before they get too far into it. Or just say, “Please send us your salary expectations.” I don’t want to have to do that, I just want to know how much you’re willing to pay me. In an ideal world, that would be how it works. But if you can’t do that, make sure you leave room for the conversation because there is nothing worse than… Michelle, well, there’s a lot of things worse than, but it is very troubling when you’ve gone through an entire process-

Michelle Frechette:
It’s a bad experience, yes.

Cami Kaos:
Right, and then find out that they’re valuing you at half of what you’re currently being paid.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, exactly. This has been amazing. I would love to have you back another time to discuss half the things that we didn’t even get to today, so we’ll definitely put that in the agenda for another day.

Cami Kaos:
I’d love that.

Michelle Frechette:
But I do want to value your time today and wrap things up. Is there any last word or last bit of advice or Cami word of wisdom that you’d like to share with us before we sign off for this event?

Cami Kaos:
My big Cami request is stop making underrepresented people do the emotional labor to make the world a better place.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely, I’m with you 100%.

Cami Kaos:
Yeah. If you have a position of power, leverage that power to do good for people who don’t have that power themselves please.

Michelle Frechette:
Inclusion is everybody’s responsibility. Especially-

Cami Kaos:
Absolutely.

Michelle Frechette:
Especially those with privilege.

Cami Kaos:
Especially the privileged, yeah.

Michelle Frechette:
Yeah. Well, we will be back next week with Allie Nimmons again. But I do want to thank you so much Cami for being my guest today and allowing me to pick your brain on all the good stuff.

Cami Kaos:
Thank you so much for having, Michelle. It’s always delightful.

Michelle Frechette:
We’ll see everybody later.