Why We Need to Build Trauma Informed Recruiting & Hiring Practices
Your employee experience begins as soon as you apply for a job at an organization.
Talent and HR leaders are well-versed in the importance of the candidate experience and how it is the gateway to overall employee experience and overall employer brand for future recruiting efforts.
Sometimes it’s helpful to think of recruiting as a first date- an introduction of both parties to see if it’s a match and if there can be an ongoing, productive, positive relationship.
In both dating and recruiting, we talk a lot about ‘ghosting,’ dishonesty, misrepresentation, and the general exhaustion the whole process causes for everyone involved.
Like many of the common challenges facing today’s workplaces, trauma informed approaches can be the key to creating better recruiting and hiring practices for both candidates and employers.
Trauma informed approaches center supportive, informed environments where everyone has the opportunity to be successful. It prioritizes eliminating workplace trauma and avoids re-traumatizing survivors. Trauma informed recruiting and hiring processes work with an understanding of the prevalence of trauma in our workforce and build systems and processes with this in mind.
Let’s take a look at how the Principles of Trauma Informed Cultures can be applied to create better candidate experiences and employer results when it comes to recruiting.
Safety
Safety is foundational to creating trauma informed spaces and processes. We look at safety as a three-legged stool — the three legs of physical safety, psychological safety, and financial safety. For recruiting and hiring, we will focus on the importance of fostering psychological safety throughout the process.
However, it is important to note that creating a physically safe environment for any interview or pre-employment screening is also non-negotiable. Do not ask candidates to engage in behaviors that could be interpreted as unsafe.
Creating Psychological Safety During the Recruiting Process
Searching for a job is a stressful experience, so creating psychological safety as part of your recruiting process can have significant impacts on the overall success of your quality of hire and candidate experience. To be fair- it can also be a tall order.
The best place to start is to ensure everyone participating in the recruiting and interviewing process has a strong understanding of what psychological safety is and how to work to create it. This can be accomplished by extending training to ensure psychological safety is top of mind while hiring.
Focus training on prioritizing curiosity over judgment in the interview process. Asking follow-up questions about a focus on learning after mistakes or missteps. Share your own experiences and learnings with failure if appropriate.
It is also important that everyone who is participating in recruiting and interviewing receives training on best practices and applicable laws to avoid missteps that can erode psychological safety and trust due to lack of knowledge.
Trust & Transparency
When approaching trust as part of the recruiting and hiring process, this is another place to begin with self-reflection for the internal team. Self-awareness in how you approach trust will help you better understand how you approach new people and subsequently candidates.
There are two primary ways people approach trust:
Automatic ‘trusters’ approach a new relationship with at least some level of trust, initially trusting the other party unless something happens to break that trust. Think of this as an inclination to give others the benefit of the doubt.
These individuals are less affected by actions to build trust. However, trust infractions trigger a more severe and long-lasting backlash.
For a candidate, you will defer to a position of trust.
Evidence-based ‘trusters’ approach a new relationship with distrust as the default.
Trust will take time to establish and be based on trust cues and alignment of words and actions. Once trust is established, only major infractions are likely to undermine the trust in a relationship in a significant way.
For a candidate, you may be wary of them and their answers because trust hasn’t been built. Structure your questions in an interview in a way that can help you get a glimpse of that alignment and begin to build trust.
It is important that we keep in mind that there is no wrong way to approach trust. In fact, avoiding judgement in this area is key because approaches to trust may be tied to prior traumatic experience. Equally important is avoiding the assumption that others trust in the same way we do. Again, awareness here is key to understanding how you approach a job candidate.
Creating Transparent Processes that Build Trust
Transparency is a powerful tool for building trusting relationships. It’s also a hallmark of a strong and trauma informed recruiting and hiring process. How can you build the right level of transparency into your searches from the start?
Communicate a Clear Process up Front
First, I’m a firm believer that you should never post a position without a clear plan on how the entire hiring process will transpire — how many interviews, who will be involved, any additional screening requirements, etc.
This is a best practice for a variety of reasons, but an obvious one is that without a defined internal process, you won’t be able to communicate clear expectations to candidates.
Many organizations have created sections of their job posting dedicated to describing what the candidate can expect up front. This is an awesome way to create trust and clarity up front from the moment a candidate is reviewing a posting.
Salary Transparency
Salary transparency is becoming a non-negotiable in recruiting, both because of legal requirements and shifting candidate expectations. Being clear and realistic in your salary range is a best practice for everyone- it avoids wasting time if there is a mismatch and also creates a strong level of trust from the get-go.
Also, as it relates to financial safety- most of us work to pay our bills. Salary transparency supports financial safety principles.
Strong, Meaningful Job Descriptions
We’ve all run across a word-salad job description that doesn’t explain what in the world the position does. These are not going to work in a trauma informed hiring process. Job descriptions are amazing tools to communicate the primary function of the role within the organization, the required skills, abilities, and education, and clear objectives.
The clearer the job description and the more focused on the core of the position, the better for hiring the best match for the role and organization.
Collaboration
Collaboration is a key aspect of all productive teams and workplaces. When we reflect on collaboration as a principle of trauma informed environments, we are most focused on power dynamics and how they inhibit effective collaboration. We also acknowledge that power imbalances are at the core of traumatic experiences and seek to address these imbalances to avoid re-traumatizing those most sensitive to this imbalance.
Recognize the Inherent Power Imbalance in Hiring & Recruiting
It should be obvious to most of us that the typical recruiting relationship has a heavy imbalance of power tipped to the employer. While this is not always the case, for example in very specialized roles or talent shortages, in most cases it applies at least to some extent. You are hiring for a job; you make that decision. If someone is engaged in interviewing, they probably would like to be offered that job- thus the imbalance.
You can’t remove this imbalance, so the important focus is awareness. Ensure that you and all those in the process understand and reflect on their position of power at this moment to ensure that no one is engaging in exploitative or even illegal behaviors.
Hiring managers and recruiters can also minimize the visibility and impact of their power in this situation by practicing empathetic leadership. Make sure and be open and vocal about your humanity and fallibility. Model acts of vulnerability to the team and set an example. Engage with warmth and curiosity.
Ensure you are listening more than you speak and when you do speak, start by asking questions to stimulate discussions. As soon as you make your opinion clear, you may lose out on important discussions and insights in interviews.
While it may be obvious that you should temper your disapproval or disappointment, the same is just as true for your approval- you may send the wrong message to a candidate unintentionally,
Humility and Responsiveness
Imperfection is unavoidable, in trauma informed cultures, the key is to recognize this with humility and respond in a meaningful way — both to repair potential harm and to help the organization learn and grow more inclusively. Your recruiting and hiring processes will not always go perfectly, and that’s okay.
What’s most important is that you are soliciting feedback from candidates (including those who aren’t hired) and having an eye to improving experiences and outcomes. Also, note feedback you receive via Glassdoor or Fishbowl and apply that to improving the candidate experience.
Continuous improvement is the key to incorporating humility and responsiveness as principles of a trauma informed hiring process.
Cultural, Historical, & Gender Issues
Gender, cultural, and historical (or generational) experiences influence the experience and perception of trauma. Societal expectations, power dynamics, and cultural norms associated with these factors can contribute to diverse types and intensities of trauma. Some examples include (but are not limited to):
Women often face higher rates of sexual assault and domestic violence, leading to trauma associated with those experiences.
Differing cultural perceptions and expectations on speaking about or addressing traumatic experiences
Racially motivated violence, such as hate crimes or police brutality.
Systemic racism, prejudice, and other acts of hate
Historical trauma resulting from the collective experiences of racism, such as intergenerational trauma passed down through generations including slavery, colonization, genocide, and forced displacement.
Trauma informed processes and organizations recognize these facts and incorporate this understanding into their approaches. This is vital for recruiting and hiring processes. Trauma Informed hiring practices should have robust and thoughtful DE&I support and insights. Importantly- partnering with internal or external DEI experts is key as you craft your processes.
Actions you should take include, but are not limited to,
Providing Bias & Awareness Training for those in the recruiting process
Standardized processes and interviews for all candidates applying for a role.
Sourcing candidates from broader talent pools
Make sure job postings and communications use gender-neutral, age-neutral language.
Ensure job requirements are real requirements- ask- Is a degree really required?
Solicit and listen to feedback.
Make sure any tools or screen products (including AI) do not create Bias.
Job seeking and recruiting are both challenging for those involved. Trauma informed principles help shape experiences and process that are better for everyone and create better results. Investing in these will create better candidate experiences, boost offer acceptance and retention and create a better overall brand. It also will be a perfect way to welcome new team members into a trauma informed workplace culture.