Working In The Arts

Unbiased Hiring Practices Have Been Around For A Long Time (Just Not Around Here)

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Drew McManus has been discussing diversity in programming for the last week or so on Adaptistration.  With those thoughts bopping around my cranium, it was probably only natural that a post on Center for the Future of Museums blog caught my eye on my Twitter feed.

They are looking for museums to participate in the first cohort to test a process for removing bias in hiring.

Participants will work with GapJumpers to tailor a challenge-based hiring experience to their own staffing needs. We are accepting applications for the first cohort of participants through Friday, April 21, 2017. The project will run from May 1 through September 1, 2017. Participating museums will share their experiences with the field through blog posts and testimonials.

How does it work?

Together with the individual museum, GapJumpers will craft a Blind Skills Audition, part of their proprietary process that replaces the resume with examples of their job skills. Instead of submitting resumes, applicants submit their responses to a specific challenge assignment. The individual challenges are designed by GapJumpers with the input of the museum using natural language processing software. Applicants submit their answers in a digital format and are assessed by GapJumpers according to a rubric developed in partnership with the museum’s hiring manager. The hiring manager only receives an applicant pool comprised of persons who have met the standards of the assessment for review.

If this sounds interesting, read the post and contact the author Nicole Ivy.

One of the things Ivy mentions is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s use of identity blind auditions in 1952. You may wonder why these type of hiring practices aren’t more prevalent in the arts after 60+ years

I recently learned that back in mid-10th century China, the Song Dynasty instituted a policy of anonymizing imperial examinations. By the early 11th century, they decided removing the names wasn’t enough and started having the examinations recopied by clerks because the quality of the test taker’s calligraphy could reveal something about their social standing. Nearly 400,000 people took the triennial examination by the end of the Song Dynasty so that is pretty serious commitment to making the tests fair.  (During some dynasties, you could buy status at lower levels, but not at the imperial level.)

The imperial examinations for government service were held long before the Song Dynasty and ended in the late 19th century. They weren’t always inclusive and free from corruption, but a lot of effort was invested into making them so over long periods of time.

With the example of a centuries long practice like that, it is somewhat puzzling that a more equitable, unbiased hiring process hasn’t emerged.  I am not necessarily talking about a complete adaptation of practices from China as much as even a similar process that developed separately and independently.

Perhaps the distinguishing factor we have to face up to is the lack of will to create a hiring process that has sought to minimize opportunities for bias.

I think it is worth paying attention to the tools and processes the Center for the Future of Museums develops. From the description it doesn’t appear to be anything wholly exclusive to museums that can’t be adapted to other disciplines.

Toward De-gamification of Job Interviews

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This week Barry Hessenius wrote about the process of interviewing someone for a job.  One of his points was not to use other people’s interview questions/generic questions you pull off the Internet. Just like borrowing another organization’s bylaws to create your own, those questions don’t suit the specific needs of your organization.

The other point he spent a lot of time on was trying to be clever or tricky with the questions you ask rather asking questions about things you need to know.

 To the extent we are trying to “game” the process with clever questions, the candidates will likewise try to game the process with answers they think fit our line of questioning.  We don’t want the interview to be a contest of gaming each other.  We want it to be a frank, candid interchange between us; honest, transparent and fair to all.

Our obsession with everybody in the entire field needing to be a leader; our preoccupation with educational benchmarks in the form of degrees, which we equate with automatically being able to do the best job); and our laser like focus on where an applicant worked before – all color our thinking when we determine what we should ask of our finalists.

The two things he says you need to know are 1) whether the person can do the job well regardless of where they worked before. You are interviewing them for  future performance, not the past. 2) Are they a good organizational fit.

I have been going back and forth in my mind about whether there aren’t more than these two things you need to know. I haven’t decided yet, but I do agree that his plea for simple, directness makes sense.

He also seems to strongly lean toward taking responsibility for the whole process yourself rather than engaging a consultant for the same reason you don’t use other people’s questions–their priorities are not aligned with yours.

He advocated for a process that is a discussion rather than a one sided Q&A. That brought up a memory of an interview I was invited to observe and provide feedback on. One of the opening questions was “What do you understand the job of X to entail?”

What I liked about this question is that it addressed whether the candidate had done research on the job and organization. In this particular case, the person being interviewed expressed questions they had about certain aspects. (I read about X program, I was wondering if that means you do…”) This seemed to lead to a more conversational dynamic.

The interviewers did have specific questions that they were keeping track of, but by the time they started to run through them, they were able to acknowledge that at least a half dozen had already been covered already. I appreciated that approach because I have seen interviews where interviewers apologize for the obligation to ask questions that have already been answered.

I was also thinking, even if “What do you understand the job of X to entail,” strikes people as falling in the “trying to be clever..” category, it can still be useful for determining if you wrote a good job description. It could be smart to ask a couple people from the community who aren’t intimately aware of what your vacant position does to review the job description and even do research on the organization as best they can. Then ask them what they understand the job to entail.

If a person who lives in your community and participates in some of your activities can’t answer that in a manner that hits on all the things you want a candidate to notice about your organization, it is probably prudent to make some rewrites.

If your test candidates as a group seem to orient on the parts of the position that are low priority, again you may want to either rewrite or review what if website and promotional materials are inadvertently drawing focus away from those things that are really important.

Given that many arts and culture non-profits may not have the budget to have a human resources person on staff, running a couple questions and a job description by outside members of the community to gain these sort of perspectives may not be a bad idea.

Especially if they ask, “can one person do all things things?” or “wow, a job with this much responsibility must pay $80,000” when you are paying $40,000.

All The Boring Moments Of The Creative Process

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I have been paying attention to what people do as part of their creative process lately. So I was happy to read George Saunders’ piece in The Guardian from last month, “What writers really do when they write.”

I think there is often a tendency for people to attribute artists with amazing insight and skill that they don’t feel they possess  themselves.  In the past I have written about how even artists themselves seem to overlook all the effort that goes into creating new content and credit flashes of genius for the success of works.

What I liked about Saunders’ article was that is emphasized that both multiple mundane revisions and aesthetic judgement often contribute to the final product, with the emphasis on mundane and multiple revision. (my emphasis)

Stan acquires a small hobo, places him under a plastic railroad bridge, near that fake campfire, then notices he’s arranged his hobo into a certain posture – the hobo seems to be gazing back at the town. Why is he looking over there? At that little blue Victorian house? Stan notes a plastic woman in the window, then turns her a little, so she’s gazing out. Over at the railroad bridge, actually. Huh. Suddenly, Stan has made a love story. Oh, why can’t they be together? If only “Little Jack” would just go home. To his wife. To Linda.

What did Stan (the artist) just do? Well, first, surveying his little domain, he noticed which way his hobo was looking. Then he chose to change that little universe, by turning the plastic woman. Now, Stan didn’t exactly decide to turn her. It might be more accurate to say that it occurred to him to do so; in a split-second, with no accompanying language, except maybe a very quiet internal “Yes.”

He just liked it better that way, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, and before he’d had the time or inclination to articulate them.

An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing one’s intention and then executing it does not make good art. Artists know this.

And also this anecdote:

When I write, “Bob was an asshole,” and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista,” then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” and then pause and add, “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas,” – I didn’t make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.

But it is more compassionate. Bob has gone from “pure asshole” to “grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person, to whom, normally, he would have been nice”. Bob has changed. He started out a cartoon, on which we could heap scorn, but now he is closer to “me, on a different day”.

Making multiple incremental improvements until something feels right or is less lame are both valid paths in the creative process, along with dozens of others. There isn’t any lightning strike of inspiration that produces a finished product after one iteration. Thinking that is what should happen results in a lot of staring into the sky waiting for that lightning bolt and afraid it will never come.

The creative process is different for everyone. Sometimes the process is different for the same person at different times. Sometimes staring at the sky works.

It is important for people who don’t think they are creative to understand that there isn’t something special going on in terms of some ineffable magic that some people can tap into and they can’t.  Mostly it is boring process.  You don’t always create something others think is great by adjusting plastic figurines and making a character less of an asshole.

What seems magical about the process is expressed by the sentence I bolded above. Working outside the realm of strict logic can be an uncomfortable prospect. But that feeling is pretty normal, even for people who have been doing it a long time.

People Like You Read A Blog Post Like This

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Even though it often feels like promoting arts and culture as a non-profit entity requires inventing entirely new methods wholecloth because our emphasis and motivations are not driven by a profit motive, I am encouraged when I see commonalities in research findings and advice. We are, after all, dealing with the same set of human beings.

Seth Godin recently had a post about getting people to shift to a new product. While his example revolves around getting someone to switch brands of motorcycle, I saw a few familiar lessons peeking out between the Harleys and BMWs.

If you are marketing to people who will have to switch to engage with you, do it with intention. Your pitch of, “this is very very good” is insufficient. Your pitch of, “you need something in this category” makes no sense, because I’m already buying in that category. Instead, you must spend the time, the effort and the money to teach me new information that allows me to make a new decision. Not that I was wrong before, but that I was under-informed.

This caught my attention for two reasons. First, it reinforces that providing a high quality performance is not enough if people already feel they are having quality experiences with their current choices. (Which could be everything from other experiences to entertainment delivery platforms.)

Second, it reiterates the importance of having sufficient information about the unfamiliar that I wrote about on Monday and last month.

And then there is this from Godin:

Ignore the tribal links at your peril. Without a doubt, “people like us do things like this,” is the most powerful marketing mantra available. Make it true, then share the news.

While this idea is most often emphasized in relation to getting millennial involved in what you are doing, (the study I cited on Monday being a prime example), participating in activities and associating with things that reinforce your self image is a fundamental element of our society, regardless of age.

(And I am really curious, how many people didn’t pass over this post because of the title? That would really prove a point despite being so blatantly click-baity)