Voices of Diversity host Rocki Howard speaks with guest Manjuri Sinha who is a keynote speaker and Global Head of Talent Acquisition for OLX group Inclusive leadership
Manjuri is the epitome of bold, brilliant, and badass. Her energy is boundless, her intelligence is endless and her willingness to call out conscious bias is badass. Manjuri gives us a master class in diversity as she talks to us today as a Voice of Global Citizen.
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Voices of Diversity host Rocki Howard speaks with guest Manjuri Sinha who is a keynote speaker and Global Head of Talent Acquisition for OLX group Inclusive leadership
Manjuri is the epitome of bold, brilliant, and badass. Her energy is boundless, her intelligence is endless and her willingness to call out conscious bias is badass. Manjuri gives us a master class in diversity as she talks to us today as a Voice of Global Citizen.
Resources
Connect with Us
Welcome to the Voices of Diversity podcast. I'm your host, Rocki. Howard, and the purpose of this podcast to humanize diversity, one story, one conversation at a time. I want our listeners to understand the significance and the impact that racism, bias and equity have on real people. I want our guests to have the opportunity to share the challenges that we the underrepresented face in the corporate world, that media is AI, and the overall world that we live in, through sharing, listening, understanding, and committing to take small actions towards change. Together, we can impact the diversity narrative, one story, one conversation at a time. And by changing the narrative, we can change the world.
Manjuri Sinha:I'm an extravert, no brownie points for guessing that. And I used to expect my team to be extroverted as well. And I would ask people that you don't you know, people are not speaking up, it seems. It's quiet, it's a quiet room. And then I got feedback and this anonymous survey once and I got feedback from some people in the team saying that, you know, wondering if you ask us for feedback, and give us posted and ask us to write on it. I think it's better. And that kind of got me thinking that or I don't even think about this part. And then I changed my my way of asking for feedback in a room and I would say posted go and put it there and then if somebody wants to share this Valencia so that's that's looking for a leader.
Rocki Howard:Voices of Diversity guest Manjuri Sinha is a keynote speaker and Global Head of Talent Acquisition forOLX Group, Manjuri is the epitome of bold, brilliant and badass. Her energy is boundless, her intelligence is endless. And her willingness to call out conscious bias is bad as men jury gives us a masterclass in diversity, as she talks to us today, as a voice of a global citizen. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, from wherever you are in the world. And welcome to the voices of diversity podcast. I'm your host, Rocki Howard, and I identify as she/her/black/Christian/GenX/wife/mom because I embrace all dimensions of my diversity. And I believe in multiple dimensions of diversity. And today you are in for a real treat. When Manjuri and I get together, there's just lots of energy and lots of information. So Manjuri I want to jump right into it. Can you introduce yourself to the audience and given the multiple dimensions of diversity? Tell us how you identify. Absolutely. Thank
Manjuri Sinha:you. Thank you, Rocky. And I think when we get together, it's all sparks and lightning. Fun, and I love it. Yeah, I'm Injury Center. And I identify as she her and a woman of color. Indian, a global citizen, because as I've lived in different countries, I'm not religious, so but I respect all religions. And that's, that's where my identity lies. And I do associate with something very strongly is my love for dogs. And it is a part of my identity as well. So yeah,
Rocki Howard:I love it. And that's really good. Because mentari and I were just talking before we went in, one of my dogs is right by them aside, so if he decides to start barking, you'll be okay with it. Good deal. You know, it is you, you have just had an incredible, incredible career, right? You are a keynote speaker. But of course during the day, you spend your time focused in the talent acquisition space. And what I have seen is you have grown in talent acquisition and become a global talent acquisition leader. So what I'd love for you to do before we get kind of dug in today is to tell people a bit about your journey to becoming a global talent acquisition leader.
Manjuri Sinha:Absolutely, um, it's it's it actually is a journey and a story of taking a leap of faith, as I like to call it. And during during the years it's been 17 years since I completed my MBA and then jumped into the field of HR with you know, HR, business partnering and then move to talent acquisitions, it was all HR HR everywhere and it is interesting because So, just to give you a little bit of a context, rockin in, in India coming from, you know, I come from a pretty well to do family so you know I already have some privileges and in that matter, but even there when we make our career choices, we have to think about the financial gains in the future. The other aspect as as a woman, I think it's very important to think about how soon can I be financially independent, that I can own my own, you know, rent my own apartment owners, maybe later date but rent my own apartment, have buy my own car and be superbly independent and not be dependent on on family, not be dependent on in the future, maybe on your spouse, etc, etc. So I think that's where the career decisions happened. If left to me, I would have loved to be something like a panda caretaker or a marine biologist or something, which is not what I do right now. However, in this field, if I if I can talk about it, I think the closest to being a panda caretaker isn't is to be in human resource management, right?
Rocki Howard:That's the truth for real.
Manjuri Sinha:So, so yeah, so after my, you know, that's where I decided to do my MBA after my graduation and political science. And that's where the journey started. So I started from a manufacturing setup, which was also interesting because the manufacturing setup Yes, it was, you know, really getting your hands dirty with all the nitty gritties of public relations of HR, industrial relations, IR etc. Trade Unions, and that's, that's what you want to learn. But being a manufacturing setup, it was all men. So much. So if I if I share this as a small snippet of a story is that we have to literally take a key to the ladies washroom to use the washroom which was half a kilometer away from our office, in that plant in the manufacturing plant. So pretty much I switched and moved to tech technology was booming in India and is booming still at that particular time. So I moved to tech, and it was pretty good. A lot of Learning with Technology worked in cities like Hyderabad and Cooney. And really the the it hubs of the of the country learned a lot, for sure. And then in 2014, actually took a leap of faith. And this is where that topic comes and move to move to Europe. I took a sabbatical, it was a risk because I was, you know, at that point of time being offered a promotion and Accenture. But I took a risk and said, Okay, I need to spend time with my husband, who was actually working in Europe, and I was, you know, doing back and forth, because I didn't want to quit my job, but really, you know, work very hard for that. And the leap of faith was I had no experience in Europe. So if I had to look for a job I was in for, you know, a lot of disappointment, etc. And it did happen. When we moved to Germany. Finally, I think the first word that I learned in Germany was feeling dark, which means Thank you, because that's the number of rejections that I got to applications. Wow,
Rocki Howard:it was a heck of a way to learn a second language.
Manjuri Sinha:Absolutely, absolutely. And that that taught me less than actually, most of the rejections that I got, I think 99% were because of not knowing the language and not having any core experience in business partnering in Europe, or Germany to say, so then I switched, how do you kind of get yourself acclimatize to the situation? Right. If you have to climb the Everest you have to get acclimatized to the oxygen.
Rocki Howard:Well, I love that quote. So.
Manjuri Sinha:So yeah, so to do that, what I did some studies, I saw what is you know, what is the area where you can really pick your head and and that's where talent acquisition came into play, which, which I had experience with. So I said, Okay, this would mean taking a step back in my career, but not at the same seniority, of course, but at least it would be maybe a headway into the market. So let me try before actually going back to Accenture and no, getting back to my job in India, as well. And that's where I did try and thanks to the Lando and the person who take who had taken you know, she took a chance on me as I like to say, that's one of my favorite episodes. And, and yeah, and that's the ladder that started with with solando. And I think five years amazing building up Germany's most successful startup. And of course now with a with a with a global organization, working in you know, leading a team globally delivering strategy and highest globally for technology and also being an influencer in the space and, and being able to work on topics that I'm passionate about. Okay, I think that's a that's the best biggest difference. Today when I take time out, and I'm working as a DNI leader as well, I don't have to ask for permission, because I think that's that's what I've gained through this journey. Whereas you remember this one time, I had to move from manufacturing to tech, because I didn't want to take that key. But here today, I can help and support and maybe, you know, work towards changing that experience as well for people. So that's pretty much my, my, my journey and where I've landed,
Rocki Howard:well, we appreciate how you show up in the world. And I appreciate how you are bold about influencing I appreciate how you're bold about being self. And it was because you had the courage to make that pivot that we all get to benefit today. So I'm so excited about that. And you know what, I think that there's something that you can teach us. Because I think when you think there's so many, both dimensions and definitions of diversity, to start with. Now, when you think about as a global leader, how you manage all of those, and how you drive for authentic diversity, when you're lead people in multiple regions of the globe, I think you are uniquely positioned to give some people who may be listening today some advice. So if we've got leaders today, who are leading people in multiple regions of the globe, and are sincerely wanting to drive diversity, but do it in a respectful and authentic way, what advice would you give them?
Manjuri Sinha:Yeah, I'm including everyone in in discussions in opinions that we have to be super practical. I think one of the first things is, as a leader, we tend to make a lot of decisions, either because it's convenient, or it's fast, or we deliver something super fast, as well as
Rocki Howard:convenient and fast because we have to deliver something.
Manjuri Sinha:At the end. Yeah. But but i think that's that's where a true inclusive leader comes into play is when you take the step back, and can also tell your stakeholder that give me half a day or even 24 hours, I'll come back to you. But let me take inputs from my team, or the concern requisite concern people in that team, maybe that project has a project team, etc. So that's one including people's opinions, you can disagree and commit as well, that's fine, but you at least have that opinion. On the table. You know that? Okay, this is what people believe in. That's one. Number two is being sensitive to world happenings. And I think this is something that I super, super conscious of during the COVID pandemic, right? Having a global team, what is happening in probably just an example, what is happening in India today with the last couple of days. What happened in Brazil a couple of months ago, I think Brazil is still still and then you're peaking. And so you're sensitive to those situations. If you see somebody following up with a team member from there, you can really interject and say, Hey, stop, let's not push let's not put a deadline, you can call out and have some sensitive conversations on we having an all hands we discussed with we will be discussing deadlines, timelines, KPIs, maybe not the right time to do so can we move it by another week. So this is being super sensitive to people from different backgrounds. And third is language, how you address your team. And that becomes very important. So if you have people coming from different sexual orientations, right? If you have even even if you have say women in the in the team, it's very important. Yes, colloquially, a lot of us. Maybe not native English speakers, we use the term guy, right. And it's not intentional this, there's nothing wrong with doing that sometimes, but you know, you are excluding some people. So that's, that's important. And the fourth fourth part is ask a question. If you have a doubt about someone and if you are not sure whether this is appropriate or not, in a private setting, maybe just ask that question, being super polite, and saying, Is it fine? Is it okay? If I address this in the meeting? Or is it fine if I did this and last but not the least, open to feedback to some anonymous surveys and ask your team how you can be further inclusive in your communication in your you know, distribution, etc. I can super, super rocky super, super short example there. This was a feedback from for me from my team previously in my previous organization. So I'm an extrovert No, no, no brownie points for guessing that. And I used to expect my team to be extroverted as well. And I would ask people, hey, you don't you know people are not speaking up, it seems. It's a quiet, it's a quiet room. And then I got feedback and did this. anonymous survey once and I got feedback from some people in the team saying that, you know, wondering if you ask us for feedback and give us posted and asked us to write on it, I think it's better. And you know, you can just leave the room and maybe we put it on on the board, and you come back and read it. This way everybody can participate. And that kind of got me thinking that oh, my God, I didn't even think about this path. And then I changed my my way of asking for feedback in a room and I would say, posters, go and put it there. And then if somebody wants to share, please go ahead and share. So that's, that's a thing for a leader.
Rocki Howard:I love that because there's a few nuggets that I want to pull out there. One is all of the advice that you gave us as you started, is it practical, and every leader is able to implement, it only requires them to do really one thing is make a decision to be an inclusive leader. And then the other thing that I think I really want to highlight there is, again, there's multiple dimensions of diversity, we tend to in the conversations today, we tend to focus on a couple we tend to focus on gender and sexual orientation and race. We don't often think about differences in styles and how people interact, and what their lived experiences been in, you just gave us a perfect example of the differences between how introverts and extroverts behave. And part of being an inclusive leader is including that thought process. Oh, my gosh, that was so so great. Here's, let's let's stay on that. And let's stay on being a little bit practical when you think about companies. So now we're going to take this up a level, how do you think companies should identify what diversity success looks like within their own organizations? And how do you think that they should measure their initiatives? Right? I know, this is a big conversation. But I'd love to hear some high level thoughts from you. I think I get asked this question all the time about, well, what does diversity mean? And what does diversity success mean? It just tell me what I'm supposed to do. And just give me the metrics. My point of view is always you have to do that work yourself. So I'm, I'm really interested in hearing what your thoughts are.
Manjuri Sinha:Yep, absolutely. Rock again, practical, simple. Maybe some things that may not require like a million dollar budget, right? That's, that's usually a lot of companies where they get stuck is, Oh, my God, I don't have DNI budget, or I need to prove something to get that budget.
Rocki Howard:It's a barrier
Manjuri Sinha:to entry. Absolutely, absolutely. The intent is there. But you need to prove to your CFOs that hey, I need this, I need this money. So to begin with, I think there are two aspects to what do you mentioned diversity measurement as well as inclusion, measurement of inclusion somehow what what is the culture like, right? So diversity, you can look at all the all the moments through the employee lifecycle? Of course, you know, you can look at the aspects of measurements on hiring. But that is not just eight. Because if you are a for example, if you're a tech organization, or we're talking about a tech organization or an organization like ours, 30 offices, different countries, we are naturally we will naturally have different nationalities, right? So if we publish that and say we are diverse, like, so what, right? So to figure out to figure out what is really key for you, what is the what is the purpose? And what do you want to prioritize, that becomes important, and that's where the measurement should come. So measurement should ideally look through the pipeline, when you talk about talking about talent acquisition, look at your pipeline, do you have, you know, drops? Women drop out from your process at the second stage, third stage more than men? Or is it at par? That is something that you can definitely measure, if you have a way of doing anonymous surveys, and figuring out more types of diversity is not just, you know, binary men and women, talking about people with disabilities, LGBTQ, or neurodiversity, we have those surveys, then you can also look at the anonymous data in a collective fashion and look at the measurement there, then you can obviously have your candidate experience measurement. This is something that I'm speaking with you right now, and we are putting this question in our experience service, as we speak, is literally asking the candidate on their perception of whether the hiring process and the interviewing process was inclusive or not. So that's a quantifiable figure from that, of course, you get comments, so you can work on that feedback. That's one when you look at the inclusion factors, and that's where the behaviors come into play, right. So this is you can drive this from every organization has engaged Service, just add one or two questions or talk about really Okay, my manager, we just discussed this earlier, right? As a manager, I would want to ask everybody's opinion. So this behavior, asked my team, whether I do exemplify this behavior or not. First of all, make your managers aware, yes, train them as well. And then check and validate if this is happening or not. And then of course, post corrective, this is not happening. Another very key touch point, you don't need a lot of money for that, check your appraisal processes, look at the number of promotions, look at the segregations of promotions, look at why certain people are stuck in the same level for more than two years, whatever your benchmarks and whatever job families they are, it could be different from engineering to, you know, feed on street, etc, as well. And look at your pay gap. Some countries like like in Germany, you have to have to look at your pay gap. But then, in even in countries where you don't have to, you should do that, as an organization, look at your pay gap, whether there's a pay gap between men and women, if you have other data as well look at pay gap between different representations in your organization. So these are different points where you can measure that, as an organization, it's on you to prioritize. Sometimes organizations say that, okay, for a year, we prioritize talent acquisition, and we prioritize the reward pit of it. And then we move to culture, because culture will take a bit of time to build. So that's when the organization but these measurements, like I mentioned, can be driven into your existing service revenue into your ETS driven into your candidate service. You don't need a humongous budget to do this. But if you show this data to your CFO, that's where you can get that budget for more programs and campaigns. So this is, these are some simple tips and tricks that I can share.
Rocki Howard:Oh, my gosh, well, you we we asked you a question. And you gave us a masterclass. Thank you so so much. Look, I want to get a little specific, you know, I believe as women and women of color, we have a unique view into the challenges. And when I say is women and women of color in leadership roles and senior leadership roles, right. And I feel like we have, especially in the TA space, we have a unique view into the challenges that are faced by people who are underrepresented. Right? And I don't think that most people wake up in the morning and go, Hmm, I'm intentionally going to cause these challenges. I'm going to intentionally be biased today. Right? Can you share some of the challenges that you see that women and specifically women of color in leadership positions face? And potentially how people through bias or lack of knowledge or education cause these challenges?
Manjuri Sinha:Yep. Maybe I'll share some like personal examples, rocker person not using names or anything but personal examples, I guess. You would be or I have examples where either I'm in the same room or in the same meeting with somebody who's reporting to me, but but the stakeholder direct questions that this person if I'm new in that organization, of course, you don't know the leveling, so I think it comes from, I have been in many settings where I'm either the only woman or the only woman of color in the room. Also, because of the fact that I work with technology as such, you know, you don't have as many women there. There is, it's not, it's, well, I wouldn't really say that it's not always just unconscious, it is conscious sometimes as well. And I can be super honest and bold about it. Because in the last six to seven years, I've heard some hiring managers actually saying that we shouldn't hire from a particular country. Also sometimes knowing that I am from that country, and you're telling me that we shouldn't hire from that country. But yeah, so it's not always unconscious. I think that's some, and that's
Unknown:call it out. Let's, let's be honest,
Manjuri Sinha:let's be super honest about it. Yes, it's also sometimes unconscious, and people don't realize that it's to do with the, maybe if I if I'm talking about you know, somebody, some It's me, okay, just take my example. And I'm in the room and somebody is assessing my profile, right? There is a perception that maybe universities in a country like Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, or even the United States are much better than the universities in India. And the perception would be that, you know, this person coming from India may not have the same kind of credentials, if I'm looking at that academic background. So that would be a super unconscious bias have a halo effect, that I see a particular University name and oh, my God, this person is from there. Then I've seen that shifting as well. that's a that's a funny aspect of CSS shifting. Anybody Through the resume. Oh, Accenture. So that's another Halo fit is like, well, I may I may have not done jack shit and Accenture. Right, but
Rocki Howard:I might have I you know, I might have been cleaning the toilets. But now everything else yeah, I know exactly.
Manjuri Sinha:Yeah, that's that's that's where the unconscious bias kind of slips in, when you would have setups This is hiring or assessing or generally judging. And then you would have setups when you talk about Okay, you, you know you're coming into a meeting room and you're talking about expertise, right? You're talking about talent markets, and you're sharing about in this talent market, this is the trend yada, yada, yada, you there is there's something that I've noticed early, I used to think that it's just me, and then over the years, and I realize it's not me, it's and it was more to do with the fact that when my male counterpart would say the same thing, he was not asked for, you know, kind of backing this up with data. But for me, it was always a case 10 out of 10 that somebody would say, Okay, can we find you can share it later? But can we have some data on it? And then I realized, why is this so and then I started sticking to it. And I have a mentor who actually said, Do not shy away from the fact that you are an expert on this. You can be modest, but do not back off from there. That is your field, you're an expert, you can go and check whether you will right or not later, you are an expert there and don't always It's okay. I mean, in business, of course, you're talking to reviews, you have to back yourself for data. But if this is a trend, I think that's where sometimes we as women, and I know I've done that, and I would just nod my head, Yeah, fine. I'll take a note, go back and come back with data. But I've stopped doing that unless and until it's it's super crucial. And I would say, look, from my experience and expertise, this is what I also put on the table. And then you know, if you ask me, then you're challenging it upfront. So these are things that I have myself seen, kind of counteracting the The other example that I have is taking notes. Sometimes, and initially as to figure this was, this was also kind of way back, I think, eight to nine years ago, all of us would be at the same level in the organization. And everybody is pretty fine and adept at taking notes. But somehow the woman in the room would be asked to take notes. And and you could also start taking notes. So no, don't do that. In fact, if you if you see this happening, either give feedback or when you enter the meeting already assign someone to take notes, so he can flip it, flip it back. So he has as a as a woman of color rocketry, your question, I think, yes, that's it is, it is obvious. And yes, it is there. The vulnerability is there, even in small in certain meeting meeting rooms, and it still happens, you know, bear with me, even when I'm speaking up or in sea level reviews or meetings, I do have to push myself and make that mental note that go ahead, talk interject, it's fine. And that's that's something which is important. For for us to remember.
Rocki Howard:It's very, very important. I can't believe we've already been talking as long as we have, I do want to make sure that I covered this, because you talked about the importance of mentoring. I know in your mentoring, the impact that obviously that advice had on you, I saw that you belong to something called the mentoring club. I wanted you to be able to tell us a little bit about the mentoring club and why mentoring is important to you.
Manjuri Sinha:Yeah, it's a great initiative started by two product leaders in Berlin actually patchin book and Jessica devalve. In Berlin, they started this during the pandemic, when a lot of people were you know, losing, losing losing jobs, and we're really looking out and we're in a in a situation so they started this it's a it is a it is a completely pro bono setup. They opened it up initially to the Berlin community, then to Germany and now to the world saying any of you can sign up as a mentor you can put up on you know, kind of which field Are you an expert in and then mentees can sign up and have a 30 minute session with you no obligations, you can run it on a course with your mentee, etc etc. So it's it's it's it's a great initiative. I met a lot of people through the first six, seven months, of course with COVID you know, scaling up and jobs coming back at scale down a little but I'm still in touch with all the all the mentees so it's a it's a great initiative. And mentoring is very important, I think because you realize a you're not the only one and in those setups, that's something that I realized when I was talking I could also pick up without sharing names pick up examples from one mentee situation with another mentee situation and share it with them. Also sharing this experience with them. Some of them said that they have applied to 70 positions. It positions I'm not getting anything in any response even right? And when I would share my story of the field and dunk the thank you story was a seriously that happened. I said yes, that happened. It's not it's not magic, you just don't, you know, like fingers. So what else can you do? And then we used to go into the resumes and see you have five other superpowers can you think about those superpowers and try to work on those if your own, you know, real resume is not working at the moment. So those are things which I'm not alone, someone else has done it, I can do this, you know, this. And if I fail, it's not wrong, and it's not going to take me back, it will give me a lesson. These are things that a mentor can really, really teach you. And I'm superbly thankful rocking for some mentors in my life. I think two people I'm happy to even name them is one is Anna Brandt, who was one of my leaders in cylinder first leaders, she really took a lot of chance on me she was the person who gave me a leadership role and to begin with. The second one was Soren winter he was, he's still somebody that I bug. Sometimes even when I have questions now, either about career or about my, you know, anything that I'm doing at work is as good as fine the steps I'm taking and he knows I'm going to bug him bothered him. And these are two people irrespective of my backgrounds, they have pulled me up that been there and given me space to fail. And recently, of course, another person, another great person from processes, Tom Tom Clancy that I work with, and others and he is the one who actually said that do not shy away from, you know, owning up that you're an expert in a particular field. So I think these are, these are the examples of people that have been there for you as an ally and nudged you ahead. I think these are very important people. So if I can do even a, even an iota of that for someone, I'll be definitely happy to.
Rocki Howard:Oh, my goodness, I appreciate that. We will make sure that the mentoring club is highlighted on our website will call it out in our resources page, so that other people want to participate, we can spread that love. Mentor do me a favor, close me out love, you know, our platform is to give a voice to those who are underrepresented. This is your time. What would you like to tell people about what it feels like to walk through the corporate world, as a female leader of color,
Manjuri Sinha:it feels like you're you're judged. Or I will say it with me, not you. It feels like I'm judged and watched. I'm assessed and measured at every step of the way. It feels like I have to I know that I have to work 40 to 50% harder than anyone else in that same environment to prove myself, it feels like I have to stand up. You can see how heavy I am. But I have to stand up on anything that can survive my weight and yell at the top of my voice that, hey, this is what I've done, this is what I can do, this is what I want to do. And if I don't do that, I will not to get an opportunity. And it still feels like that. So with all the opportunities, it is every step and every move up or even into something better has been a struggle and a fight. So it is still there until we can make it better. And I think all of us together have to do that I have my responsibility there as well. Till we can make it better tools till a woman can actually say that I don't need that chair or other stool or a table to stand up on. And I'm getting noticed, I think that's the point where we would be would know that we've done it, we've made a change.
Rocki Howard:We know that we made a change. I just adore you. I adore your energy. I adore your spark. And I think you are bold, brilliant and badass. Thank you so much for being a voice of diversity and joining us today.
Manjuri Sinha:Thank you so much. Rocki Thank you for giving me this voice is with super happy super excited.
Rocki Howard:Thank you for listening to today's episode. The mission of this podcast is to give a voice to diversity. I believe that the interactions between all voices, minority and majority can change the narrative of how the world communicates. And by changing that narrative, we can change the world. Join our mission to humanize diversity, one story one conversation at a time by sharing our episodes, especially with those who are privileged and in positions of power. Help the voices of diversity podcast be a catalyst for courageous conversations and most importantly, for change, I'm your host Rocki Howard