Is "Culture Fit" Killing Diversity in Hiring with Theo Smith

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Speaker A: This week's guest is Theo Smith, one of the leading voices on neurodiversity, inclusion and workplace design. With more than 17 years experience across Recruitment, Talent Acquisition, Recruitment Marketing and HR Tech, Theo has spent years challenging the way organizations attract, assess and support talent. In this episode, we discuss why so many hiring processes unintentionally exclude great people, whether concepts like cultural fit are doing more harm than good, and how organizations can create workplaces that work better for everyone. We also explore AI neurodiversity and why the future of hiring might look a little bit different. Welcome back everybody to the Marketing Rules Podcast. It's my pleasure to welcome on board, uh, Theo Smith. Theo, um, I've joined for a while, I've been following a lot your kind of content on, on uh, LinkedIn and on the kind of socials. Um, but for anyone else out there who isn't aware of what you do, even though I know you're, you're a kind of top voice on LinkedIn, so I'm sure lots of people do know who you are. But for those who don't or don't know a little bit about your background and what exactly you do, maybe you could kind of fill us in, uh, on uh, on your extensive background.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Thanks having me on. So, 17 plus years in recruitment, uh, in recruitment marketing, in recruitment process outsourcing, in heading up recruitment for organizations directly and in working in HR tech and more recently in the last six years, um, specializing in neurodiversity and neuro inclusion. So I've written books about it, um, neurodiversity at Work, Upside Down, Inside Out, There we go. Um, and I've recently written another book, Design for Humans. And I talk on um, my podcast, uh, periodically and advise organizations, but do a lot of work around, um, keynote speeches now on the topic of neurodiversity in the workplace.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, uh, on the kind of writing of the books we've had several authors on here, uh, before. Um, was, ah, what was that process like? Was that always an idea that, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a couple of books in me that I feel that I can, I can get out. Was that an easy process? What was that, what was that like? I'm just disinterested.

Speaker B: No, it wasn't in, in me. I never uh, thought I would ever write a book. I struggle to write with a, uh, pen. Um, I get cramps, I don't hold a pen properly. Um, I'm dyslexic, ADHD and autistic, which provides m me all kinds of problems writing, um, and focusing on what I'm writing. Um, however I had started to write quite a lot of bits of content, blogs content on LinkedIn. And so I was, I got used to like explaining my thoughts in short form content. Uh, and then somebody said to me, um, Theo, you should write the book on neurodiversity. And it was Katrina Collier. Um, and she'd written a book with Kogan Page. And she said, I'll intro you and I. And before I knew it, I'd spoken to them, they'd agreed and I panicked. Um, so I thought, well, if I'm going to write a book, I need to go and find somebody who understands how to write books. And I found Professor Amanda Kirby, who'd already written at that point about seven books. She was an academic researcher, uh, general practitioner by trade. I thought that is my co author right there. Um, what I didn't bank on is that she still shares some similar challenges as me even though she's done all of those things. So we were an interesting couple, uh, together, like um, not doing the stuff that we should be doing in terms writing a book. So a lot of it came from recording content like this. Yeah, the really interesting bits of that content and then getting it down into the book and then writing things around it. So I used my expertise of writing short bits of content to just build on that layer upon layer upon layer until we had like 110,000 word book.

Speaker A: Amazing. Um, uh, obviously at the end we'll give, we can kind of go into that uh, a little bit more. And I know one thing I've kind of wanted to kind of kick things off with and I know this is some of this is covered in the book. So, um, Is you, uh, you talk a lot around, um, the kind of the workplace, Workplaces and the hiring process just aren't really designed kind of for real people. Uh, I know this is kind of a reoccurring thing theme that comes up a lot in your kind of content online, uh, a little bit in the books. You know, where did that come from? Where did this idea come from? Is it from experience? Is it from talking to so many people? Where did that kind of, that idea kind of come from originally? Yeah.

Speaker B: So I've worked with so many different organizations. So that experience of working with organizations through all the different aspects of what I've done, and because I've worked in 360 recruitment at the very beginning, because I've worked in executive search, because I've done the uh, recruitment marketing, the employer branding, I've managed social media teams managing social media content. And so the variety is pretty large. And so I've seen recruitment at all these different, um, stages. Uh, and I've seen that uh, in reality the way that we create content, the way that we build our systems and our processes or the systems and processes that we acquire often have huge gaps. And they still do. Uh, and the problem, there was a point where I wanted to look at, uh, um, assessment as an example. Um, because organizations tend to go out and they buy an assessment tool because they have problems with volume recruitment, let's say graduates, and they've got like tens of thousands of applicants, so they want to streamline that. So they buy an assessment tool and that assessment tool is going to help them with the volume, right? Get that volume down. But what it doesn't often help you with is those people who were struggling to get through in the first place. You turn that dial up, right? And you turn that dial up so more people who were struggling to get in can't get in. Um, just by nature of that single tool that you select. And what I would love to see, but we're not there at all, is the candidates are more empowered to have some selection around what it is. So we're, so that we democratize some of those, uh, choices, um, that are made by organizations and that they could be made by candidates so that a candidate could go, well, I know assessment, uh, technology often locks me out. So can I pick one that I, uh, know is more likely to have been built with neurodiversity or neuro inclusion or disability or whatever it may be in mind, or can I pick a completely different path and I'm able to demonstrate or explain that path or pick something else that uh, enables me to show my skills and my ability that we don't have that often. Some organizations will build it and say, here's your route around. But in the majority of cases where recruitment functions are too busy, um, recruiters are too busy and they just want to get the right candidate in as quickly as possible because that seems the best thing to do in terms of managing their workload. Um, so take that experience and then look at every facet and aspect of that life cycle of recruitment. And I guarantee you that is happening not just in assessment, but it's happening at every little subsection of that recruitment assessment process. And by the way, I feel like now is the opportunity that we can start to rectify some of those problems. Maybe not now, today, because recruitment functions are really struggling. Um, but definitely as we start to get our heads around AI technology innovation, the bridges that we can build between these different technologies, um, and the gaps that we can fill, I think there may be some opportunities, if not solved this as a complete problem to rectify where it's having the most detrimental negative impact on those candidates who struggle to get through.

Speaker A: So if I was to potentially play devil's advocate in that scenario, I mean being able to put in place different potential avenues and journeys and routes through the application, um, process sounds like something that possibly is only really available to bigger organizations. Um, and, but smaller organizations may think that sounds actually quite an expensive process to put in place. Um, and I'm sure you get this kind of this, sure you've had this question on numerous occasions. So is this just a, is this something that bigger businesses, they can afford it and it's a nice to have. But for the smaller businesses, is there a pushback there? Is there a way that they can handle this without it? Maybe with, and getting over that, that feeling that it sounds quite expensive.

Speaker B: I don't think it needs to be so, um, as if. So I actually think it's the other, potentially the other way around, which is the really large scale organizations with the huge elements of volume and all the other impacting factors and the reality that organizations are reducing workforces currently for a number of factors. I think for the bigger organizations actually this is becoming more difficult to do at that scale than smaller organizations. You can actually go, well, in fact we can put some of our own um, levers and mechanisms in place to provide um, an alternative optional solution and some of that maybe we build as our own independent piece of technology or innovation. Um, and maybe sometimes it is as simple as going at this point where somebody hits our Applicant Tracking System or a, uh, CRM or whatever it is at the point they hit that, we're able now to identify that we're losing some people, and we have been for a long time at that point, because there's too much content, um, there's too much fear around what's on the other side of it. And we've not been clear about it or we've been too specific in terms of our needs and requirements. And that locks so many people out. So at this point, what if we just like handheld people, we just like, gave people an option to come around, circumvent it, and we just saw what those numbers look like. And what I think, what often what organizations realize is the numbers are not as big as they think they might be because not everybody who faces barriers is going to need help at that point. So the point of applying onto the ATS will be a barrier to some, but not all. Some people will be in a point of where they feel fairly, um, confident in terms of their abilities, their career trajectory. They may be a bit earlier on, they may be a bit of experience for them. They may have some of those barriers, but at the minute, they're not going to present at that moment. So what we tend to find is it's a much smaller cohort group of people that may need that differentiated support and that differentiates. Differentiated support often isn't as costly as we think. And we know that because government data shows that access to work costs per person, uh, under 100 pounds. You know, they're not as much as we would expect. Um, we fear the big changes like putting in a lift or uh, but in reality, most of them are really small adaptations. And with the advent of AI Uh and becoming much more accessible, some of these tools, technologies, bots, whatever, just to solve that little problem here, ah, we potentially could build and test and trial out ourselves.

Speaker A: Um, you mentioned a couple of times losing people in the. In the process. Right. So at, uh, what point in the recruitment process do you think the people are being lost? You know, I mean, or what, uh, stages does that often kind of happen at? Right. Where do you see that kind of happening?

Speaker B: So it's every single part of the stage we will leak candidates that should be getting through for one reason or another. But the very beginning of that, the content that we produce is still problematic. Um, even though, um, AI um is used predominantly in terms of recruitment in the, um, creation or changes to job adverts. That's. I think that's one of the biggest areas currently where AI is being used, um, but still not that successfully. Um, because we are still creating content that is exclusionary by design, um, by nature of some of the terminology, some of what we're asking for, by nature of society, what's going on in the world, um, but also because organizations take the quickest approach to reducing the number of applicants. So again I'm still seeing, you know, especially in the public sector, lots of organizations that have six months probationary period for roles. I can't understand why they can't assess the ability to deliver that role within weeks, not six months. And so they're just, that's a very simple uh, example and often that's um, bureaucracy. Right? So some of those things are hard to change. So they add in these layers of barriers that are um, exclusionary, um, uh, like you must be able to work in a fast paced environment with no real description of what fast paced actually looks like. And for anybody who has struggled within an organization because there has been expectation to work at pace but not based on what you deliver based on people expect you to look busy. Um, and therefore uh, for a candidate seeing fast paced they're just thinking, well I've worked in those environments and people weren't interested in, in the quality of the work I was able to deliver. They were interested in how visible I, I was at ah, 7 o' clock in the evening, uh, and how quickly I responded via email. That is a different um, focus to fast paced. Um, that may not be what the organization means but that is the perception of many candidates coming through. And from that perspective, from that single term that they've put in, they're already turning off candidates who possibly have high intellect, um, but um, uh, don't like to be put under uh, that significant pressure of speed because they value the quality of work. So what an organization is saying, well we're valuing um, decreasing quality of work over speed and response. Ah and there are so many elements to the very early stage of how we design content, um, what we ask for, how we present that to the outside world that we're not recognizing. And one of the big potential missed opportunities from organizations, from recruitment functions, teams, businesses at the minute is that now we've got uh, the next generation of talent probably using AI disproportionately to how we used Google. So they now go in and go in. I want to work for a company, I want it to be a tech company, I want it to be within the Manchester area. I want it to cover off these things and I want it to be inclusive right. Uh, because I am um, autistic and ADHD or I have a child or uh, my sexual preferences are uh, or whatever, I don't know, you know, whatever it is that they want to share to ensure that they identify those organizations so that they're not wasting their time. And you know we may put some of this into Google, we may have put this in other places, we may not have shared some of those personal things or we may go on to private whatever but we don't really know to the extent of how candidates uh, are using this. But as uh, from an organizational perspective are we thinking about that in terms of how we present information and rather than how that is going to show up on Google search, how is that going to show up on AI? Um, and I think if we're, if organizations are not thinking about that in terms of the language they use in adverts and everything else, AI is going to, is going to read that far more quickly and start to identify well that company is always saying they're fast paced and it also says these other markers which based on the gazillions of other data points that I'm able to access, I'm going to make an assumption that this organization is fairly toxic. They make you work long hours and therefore anybody who puts it into the AI going I really don't work in that environment that organization is not going to come up. And again this is like the future lens. I don't know to the extent that this is going to impact on applications. At the moment applications are really high so organizations can probably not worry about this. I reckon those smaller, more agile organizations to get ahead of this and really start to think about how their information and content, especially around careers, employer branding marketing is playing into how people are now searching in AI is going to have a massive impact on the talent they're able to attract especially if they consider it with the inclusion lens.

Speaker A: Think in circles. Is your fractional marketing department purpose built for the recruitment industry with deep sector experience we consult with recruitment agencies, talent teams and HR rec tech companies to deliver uh, strategic marketing leadership with tangible results. Our proven approach enables you to attract top talent, drive client growth and build standout employer brands. As a flexible extension of your team we offer the insight and support you need to make smarter marketing decisions without the cost or complexity of hiring in house. Um, one of the points you made is around kind of terminology and one of the terms that you've kind of skipped around a little bit. You just talked about is cultural fit. Right? Um, it's one of these terms that I think is pretty abstract at the best of times. Um, but do you think is cultural fit one of those kind of terms that you think businesses are using basically to kind of hire the same people over and over again? Because they can nudge it down to. It's the company culture, it's cultural fit.

Speaker B: Fundamentally, hiring managers broadly lack the training to support, um, to make the right decisions. And that's what it comes down to. So when you leave them with limited resource, tools or expertise to make decisions, they are more likely to lean on questionable decisions. And culture fit is a, is a prime example of that. I would, I would argue that, um, in the majority, when someone uses culture fit, they've run out of reasons, uh, to give on, um, why that candidate is not the right candidate. And therefore culture is the thing that nobody can explain. It's the magic or whatever or the toxicity, uh, that you can't truly explain or dissect properly. And therefore how can you argue with somebody on a basis of something that can't be explained? And so I would say that that's where it's born from. We know that, um, research that's come out this year from City and Guilds, the Neurodiversity Index Report shows, um, something like two thirds of employees around neurodiversity and neuro inclusion, um, identify managers as kind of the point of failure in terms of their ability to succeed in jobs. There's so much data around this. Beyond that, individuals tend to fail and struggle because of a lack of support or understanding from management. So why do we think that that changes at the point of interview and assessment, when some managers might do it once a year or once a lifetime? Um, and even if they do it more, they might still be doing it badly all the time. Uh, and so I would say that's where culture is problematic and it's born out of things that used to get me excited because the idea of, you know, culture, of being together as a team and neurodiversity is like that, you know, like, yes, we're ADHD or yes, we're autistic or yes, we're in reality, we're human, we're complex, we're many things and we very rarely fit neatly into, um, one thing. I am Welsh. I was born in Wales. I'm proud to be Welsh. In actual fact, I've got about 8% Welsh blood in me. Um, the majority of my blood is Irish. I've got some Danish, a little Bit of Scottish and some English. And so in reality, my, you know, my cultural identity, uh, is not what I thought it was. Um, and I think that is, that's the reality of the situation within the workplace, that we don't uncover enough of that. We're far too complex to fit into this box of culture as an organization because it's fluid, it's changing, and with everything that's happening in the world, it is now changing at hyperspeed. So how can we identify it as a specific characteristic that we can assess on as part of our, uh, recruitment process?

Speaker A: Um, I want to touch on neurodiversity a little bit. Obviously, you talk a lot about this. You've written, uh, books on this. Um, where do you think we sit with understanding neurodiversity within business at the minute? Is it. Is it getting better? Is it generally improving? Is it just lip service? Is it where we were with terms like inclusion and diversity a couple of years ago when it was. Everybody was talking about it, and then it's kind of dropped off the radar. What's the kind of snapshot of neurodiversity within companies, uh, as of today?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, wow. So if I think about what's going on in the world, and I think about Black Lives Matter as an example, uh, and the massive shift to do some positive action from organizations and how all of a sudden in a few years that goes beyond falling off a cliff, it almost goes in the opposite direction in terms of, um, uh, yeah, the. The negativity that surrounds it for a wide variety of reasons. And I fear, you know, um, that any topic, uh, of this type that really challenges the status quo, um, that challenges what has been defined as acceptable and normal. Um, and we can look at, um, the experience of women in the workplace as an example. I mean, there's so many examples of where we've mistreated people, um, and then where we try now to find an excuse to go back, um, into the dark ages. So I would say where neurodiversity is at today is many organizations have a better understanding. Um, on a base level, uh, many people have stood up and started talking about the topic. So that's increased awareness. Um, we know that, uh, across social media. TikTok as an example, went, um, off the chart about three years ago. It doubled billions and billions and billions of views of the hashtag adhd. Now, some of that content was rubbish and misleading, but some of that content, maybe even some of the rubbish content, got families talking about the topic around the dinner table. And that changed lives. Absolutely. Without a doubt. So you know, for me, the, when you, when you bring a topic from being something that is on the sidelines that people don't understand, that people don't talk about to the mainframe of conversation, it does something. Um, and it's not all good, but it definitely brings the topic to the table. And where that is now gonna go, I, I can't tell you because we've got other factors. Globalization, the uh, breakdown of some societies, wars, AI, uh, all of these things will affect, on. On the direction of uh, of neurodiversity and neuro inclusion. What I'm pleased about is that the conversation is being had in many spaces and places that it wasn't being had before. And if we have these conversations, we're much more likely to resolve or find solutions to some of these problems. And we're much more likely to live in a world where we normalize some of these topics where. Absolutely. Ten years ago, like, it was a different world in reality and it still is in many spaces and places on the planet. So, you know, I focus from the perspective of I want to ensure that we do as much as we can for the next generation, my children, so that when they walk into the workplace, when they walk in, when their kids walk into the school environment, they will see a different world. How different, I don't know. But all my energy and focus is on that because I can't see today changing enough that I'm going to be happy and content that we've done enough. So I have to think about the impact on the next generation because that's the thing that gives me the momentum and drive to keep on going.

Speaker A: You know what? I think that's a great place to kind of try and kind of, uh, uh, wrap things up. But before I let you go, um, tell us a little bit more about the books, um, where can we get them, where are they available, etc. Yeah.

Speaker B: So neurodiversity at work. It won business Book of the Year awards. It was recognized as top three European learning books of impact. Um, and it was written about six years ago. We're looking at maybe, uh, updating the content now, but it's still very relevant. Uh, first of its type, it was to challenge the status quo in organizations because I was speaking to a lot of people and the conversation was fragmented. There were people over here, there were people over there, and they were all having these conversations, but it wasn't interconnected in terms of the workplace. And so Amanda and I wanted to Write the kind of the book that could direct that conversation. And since then, boom, M it's exploded. So there's so many more books on the topic. All different variety of elements of the workplace. People writing about ADHD and finance and you know, so really has grown significantly. Um, but you can still get that book all over the world, Amazon, in any good bookstore, Wartstones. And it is the kind of the go to book on the life cycle, the employee life cycle, um, I guess if Neurodiversity and work, uh, Design for Humans I wrote recently, that came out early this year. That was because I recognized that since the book I wanted to think about, um, a lot of the problems were still focused around um, people. And it was like the person is the issue. We need to rectify the person, get the person out. They're problematic. And I wanted to reframe it as Actually a lot of the problems that we have are design problems. Designs with the system, the processes, and we can change them. And if we look at what we thought were people problems and rethink them as design problems, rather than at the point of AI getting embedded within our organizations, accelerating um, negative aspects of the way that we work, we have an opportunity to design them in a positive way that reframes it as AI that can support individuals by um, rethinking the systems and processes that they work within. So, um, it was to challenge the status quo from that perspective, to give another lens to what the workplace can look like and inclusion can look like within an organization. And finally I've got a third book that's coming out with Hatchet, um, um, Jessica Kingsley, um, and that comes out early next year with Amanda myself specifically to help parents. Um, it's the survival guide for parents of ND kids. Um, and that's because one of the biggest areas that I recognize, people struggle across organizations from m, everyone I speak to, from CEOs to um, founders of tech companies, of recruitment companies. It's the parental aspect is one of the biggest barriers. So I thought the workplace was the, the one to do and we've done it. Um, but actually one of the biggest topics that keeps coming up in workplaces all the time is I really struggle to advocate for my child and still be able to deliver the work that I do. And that's one of the biggest conflicting um, challenges that I have. So Amanda and I wanted to look at that as a challenge.

Speaker A: Brilliant. Amazing. Well, we all look forward to that coming out next year. We'll obviously include all the details to yourself, uh, and links to the books in the show notes. So if anybody wants to know more about you, reach out, connect, uh, or order one of the books, um, on a very popular online kind of, uh, buying and shopping business kind of site, they can, um. But, uh, Theo, for now, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. Uh, we look to having you on again soon.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Thanks for having me on. Great to see you.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening. And don't forget, you can subscribe to the Marketing Rules Podcast on Apple, Spotify and all other major podcasting platforms. I've been your host, James Whitelock, and I hm, hope you can join me and more amazing guests next time. The Marketing Rules Podcast is a Thinking Circles production.