Creating Inclusive Workspaces with Amy Weidner

"Companies have to have zero tolerance for racism. Zero tolerance for sexism. Zero tolerance for homophobia." - Amy Weidner

Amy is a DE&I Program Manager at Twitter with an extensive experience in recruitment. In this episode, Lina and Amy discuss privilege sharing, culture fit vs. culture add, and how we can improve our workspaces.

Find Amy on:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amweidner/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/amyweid

Mentioned articles and resources:

• Avoiding the Culture Trap: https://designingforscale.com/avoiding-the-culture-trap/
• Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men
• Lina's Inclusion Matters article series: https://qualitybits.tech/writing/inclusion/
• Rooney Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
• Akala on Black on Black violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soim1n4nFaQ&ab_channel=TheGuardian 

Book recommendations:

•  "Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race" by Renni Eddo-Lodge

Links to books are to Amazon and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

Follow Quality Bits host Lina Zubyte on:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/buggylina
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linazubyte/
- Website: https://qualitybits.tech/

Follow Quality Bits on your favorite listening platform and Twitter: https://twitter.com/qualitybitstech to stay updated with future content.

Thank you for listening! 

Transcript

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Lina Zubyte (00:08):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Quality Bits, a podcast about building high-quality products and teams. I'm your host, Lina Zubyte. Today I've got quite a gem for you. I'm talking to Amy Weidner, who is diversity, equity and inclusion program manager at Twitter. She has worked with hiring and recruitment for quite a long time and gathered a lot of experience. In this episode, we talk about differences between culture fit and culture add, as well as how sometimes we confuse confidence with competence when we're hiring. We even touched on topics like hiring quotas or how to dismantle racism and share more privilege. It's loaded with lots of amazing thoughts and hope you enjoy it.

(01:13):
Hi Amy. Welcome to Quality Bits. It's a pleasure to have you here today.

Amy Weidner (01:18):
Hi Lina. I am absolutely delighted to be here.

Lina Zubyte (01:23):
So glad to hear that. Could you please tell a little bit about yourself?

Amy Weidner (01:29):
Sure. So my background is I've been a recruiter for the last almost 10 years. As you can tell, I am originally from Ireland a little town called Bantry in West Cork, and I moved to London in 2013. Started my role there as a recruiter and agency. Spent about seven years in London and then more recently moved to Berlin where I had the privilege of meeting you and working with you. And now I currently live in Dublin and I'm working for Twitter here in Dublin. Was a recruiter. I'm now a program manager for diversity and inclusion. A bit about my background. I guess I'm known for being a bit of a whistleblower recruiter, so I post quite often on LinkedIn often about the truths in the hiring process from my perspective as a recruiter, whether it's to do its salary negotiation, answering specific types of questions within the interview and how to answer things in a certain way.

(02:25):
And I'm also extremely passionate about diversity, allyship and dismantling racism, which I post quite a lot about as well. I try to elevate people from diverse backgrounds as much as possible and I'm really passionate about pushing this message, especially into white spaces because this is where it's needed the most. And then outside of that, I'm known for having a very busy life and a lot of hobbies. So I'm also a singer. I sing at weddings. I've done like five weddings this summer and I love music. I just started a course in Ableton and learning how to produce and mixed music. And I also love being active, so whether it's spinning or CrossFit or anything to do with movement and wellbeing, I'm very, very passionate about that as well. That's a nutshell.

Lina Zubyte (03:09):
We actually met for the first time when we went to a spin class together, so you introduced me to that. So thank you for that. I love this shared hobby of ours. So when we met, you were working in hiring and recruitment. That field for me sometimes lacked heart, if I could say it that way. And you were one of those recruiters with a heart. You're always so empathetic and passionate about diversity. And not only that, but as well inclusion, which is a big part of diversity. If you want to be diverse, we also should make sure that we're inclusive. So let's talk a little bit about hiring now. What are some misconceptions in hiring that you have seen?

Amy Weidner (03:59):
First of all, thank you for saying all those lovely things. So kind of you. And I'm really happy that that was the impression that I gave you when we first met. And I would say so there's a lot of kind of misconceptions in general in hiring. I've been thinking about this a lot recently. One thing I see coming up a lot is this kind of culture fit concept. And that is essentially in a lot of cases it's affinity bias. And I think affinity bias is the single biggest problem with hiring. So bias or any type of unconscious bias, it's where our brain takes cognitive shortcuts to help make decisions so the human brain can process. I think it's like 11 million pieces of information every second, but our conscious mind can only handle 40 to 50 bits of information a second. So our brain turns things into shortcuts.

(04:52):
So when we see someone from a certain background, we might instantly put them in a box and it's very normal to do that, but you have to be aware of that. An affinity bias, which is always dressed up or often dressed up as culture fit, is an unconscious bias that causes people to gravitate towards others who appear to be like them. So whether it's similar interests or backgrounds or appearances. And this example that I've heard so often when I've been hiring for certain managers, oh yeah, you know what? I could see myself having a pint with this person, or I could see myself playing golf with them, or I could imagine myself down at the pub with them, all these different things. And I've done it when I first started recruiting and I was in London and I would meet an Irish person, I would be like, oh my God, this is so exciting.

(05:36):
And I got way over the top excited. And then I had to ask myself, am I championing them more because they're Irish? I need to take a step back and look at what I'm actually assessing for and do they fit that criteria? And it takes a lot of effort to improve hiring practices and improve biases. And there are small things you can do that would make a huge impact. So if companies are serious about it, they have to invest in it. So you can't either expect marginalized people in your companies to drive these initiatives. There's lots of things you can do when it comes to, you can do blind CVs, you can obviously train your interviewers, anyone on the panel on unconscious bias and get people to actually take it really seriously. But it's everyone's job to lean into this. And you can also get external partners who are experts in this area, or you could get someone who's an expert in anti-racism or diversity and it covers a lot of these same areas, but you have to obviously pay them then for their work as well, which often doesn't happen. But yeah, the whole company, everyone has to be bought into this idea.

Lina Zubyte (06:39):
I really like that we should not just hire for a culture fit and maybe we shouldn't hire for culture fit at all. But for culture add. How would you describe this definition? What's the difference between culture fit and culture add?

Amy Weidner (06:54):
Yeah, that's a great question. And I saw this recently on a LinkedIn poll. I shared something and someone responded with culture add. I think when you look at a diverse team and when you really have an authentically diverse team, you have people from all walks of life, different backgrounds, different religions, different ethnicities, different genders, you can really kind of see the advantage of what they bring to the table. So if you have a diverse team, I saw something the other day and I shared it on my Instagram. It was this black guy with quite dark skin and he was trying to use one of those sensory taps and it didn't work. And then he put this white piece of paper over his hand and then it worked. And it just something like that that would really make you think this is exactly why we have to have representation in whoever is building these products, whoever is creating a certain type of software, because that adds so much not just to the team and the environment, but actually to the users at the end of the product or whoever is using this. So it's important from all aspects, but it's just inclusion is not just making people kind of feel welcome within the organization and feel like they can bring their whole selves to work, but it's also celebrating their differences and celebrating their different backgrounds and learning how to kind of navigate that cuz it doesn't cost anything to learn that.

Lina Zubyte (08:19):
Yeah, I really like this definition and that diverse teams make very good quality products, at least I believe so. I recently read an article about avoiding the culture trap. So the biggest trap is that we hire for culture fit and as you said, we could see that person as someone we would get along with. I remember the story how someone was very proudly saying that their manager always takes a person out for a drink to see if they fit the team or not. And I was cringing inside and now I understand more why Because they were hiring people that were like them. And if we build very good products, which do need to hire different people, sometimes we learn it the hard way. I feel like some of the examples as you shared, there was one also for even Apple watches, I think when they were building it, they were not working properly on darker skin tones, so they never tested it. Why didn't they test? Well? Because their team was very similar looking, so they just did not think of that. When it comes to these building very diverse teams, what do you think about something like hiring quotas? Some companies have 50% non-male hires and 50% male for example. But often it seems like more like, okay, let's hire for that just to be compliant or that we are somehow a good place to work at. So what's your opinion on the quotas?

Amy Weidner (09:54):
In an ideal world, we wouldn't need quotas, but we right now have to have them. I truly believe that quotas are needed to actually take action in terms of hiring people from diverse backgrounds, any type of affirmative action, in my opinion sometimes it can lead tokenism, but it is a hundred percent needed. And I truly believe that if we're not deliberate and we don't put these measures in place to give diverse candidates a seat at the table that nothing will change. Because what has been happening is that it's been like, oh, this is how we've always done it, this is how we've always hired. And then you have, what is that statistic? It's like there's more CEOs in the world that are named Paul, then there is women CEOs. So it's like, it's just one of those things where we haven't been moving the dial quickly enough.

(10:45):
And if we do want to move the dial, and especially in the last two years, there's been a lot of conversations about diversity, there's been a lot of conversations about how do we make change, how do we dismantle racism? And you have to make people feel uncomfortable and you have to take deliberate steps and you have to ruffle up a few feathers along the way and it's very awkward and uncomfortable. And I've been in situations where I've had to have very awkward and uncomfortable conversations because people see it as so the stereotypical homogenous person, let's say a straight white man, which we see in a lot of leadership roles, a lot of CEO roles, et cetera. When you try and have a conversation, typically with someone in this space, it's almost like you're trying to take something away from them. And there's this whole concept of white fragility where it's like, oh, white privilege doesn't exist and where we wanna hire the best person for the team.

(11:41):
But why is it that the best person is always the straight white man? Why is it that the CEOs, the leadership team, you have the hotel industry or the hospitality industry where it's so diverse, but everyone in the leadership roles and the owners and the leadership team, it's primarily white, straight white men or white women. So it's actually about putting measures in place so that we are standing by these because saying, oh, it's the right thing to do it, it's just not enough. And there's been a load of research that suggests that having diverse teams makes a company more profitable, makes people feel happier in their working environment and people are more likely to stay in an environment which is diverse and inclusive. So there's a lot of business reasons behind why we should be doing it as well.

Lina Zubyte (12:29):
Yeah, this reminds me of an article in Harvard Business Review, an old one which says, why are there so many incompetent leaders that are men? If we look at the leadership level, as you said, it's mostly white, middle-aged men and a lot of them also not the best leaders. So is that some kind of coincidence? And this article basically goes into detail that a lot of times we are mixing up confidence with competence. We may be thinking, okay, this person knows what they're talking about so they may be able to do the job. And this comes more often in as well white men because that's the default in the society we live in. That is the message we get from media everywhere all around us.

Amy Weidner (13:18):
It's also important not to man hate. At the end of the day, this is what these particular type of people or whatever, whoever it is in these types of leadership roles, this is what they've been fed as well. So it's not always their fault that they're in these positions. It's like they've been told by society that they can do whatever they want, but we have to acknowledge that and we have to understand that it is how we view ourselves. And confidence is a massive thing. And I've done hundreds of interviews with people and I see it all the time. And I see there's also taking intersectionality into account where if you're a gay black woman, you're marginalized by three times, you're probably more likely to have less confidence. You are more marginalized by society. And it's really understanding that this is a real thing and that people who are marginalized by three or by four, whatever it is, are maybe going to have less confidence than someone that shows up as the pinnacle of society are.

(14:13):
So society tells them. So it's really the key is education around that. The key is understanding that that is a real thing and how can I then use my kind of processes and how can I make an impact by understanding that? So it's very complicated, but it's also, we need these men as well to lean into the conversation. We need to include them in the conversation because men listen to men, white people listen to white people. And that's why I'm always trying to push this conversation into my white circles because you need allyship and that's so important.

Lina Zubyte (14:47):
Yeah, allyship is extremely important. I'm so glad that you mentioned this part as well. I sometimes tend to say that men are also victims of all the society and they may be even the biggest victims because they grow up to believe certain things and we do as well and we may see them as villains, but not they're not. They just grew up in the same conditions in the society. And allyship and landing privilege here is playing an extremely important role. It makes me think of also the Inclusion Matters article series that I wrote. And there was the second part and the second part gained a little bit of controversy because in that part I was talking about common problems that you may face with inclusion. For example, being a woman in tech after it's published, it turned out that some people thought it was shocking, even though for me it was like a common day example that I was writing about. And one of the commentators was a man who said, I have two daughters, and I never thought that you would face something like that. So he just didn't know he would be a great ally, but he didn't know that this experience happens and us sharing and educating everyone, I think it makes the whole society better and that man may now understand better what it is to be a woman in tech.

Amy Weidner (16:14):
In the current climate of social media, echo chambers and polarization. And if you like a certain person on Instagram, your algorithm is just going to go in that direction. So we're all slightly brainwashed into, and it's this, what is a confirmation bias where I might believe that the sky is green and if I go and Google that, then I'm googling things that are in the direction of what I already believe in. So it's confirming my own belief. And that happens so often. All of our algorithms are kind of positioned to send us things that we already believe. So it's this constant kind of reinforcement and it's actually kind of picking apart your belief system, but we need allies. And some people ask me, why are you so passionate about racism and dismantling racism? And as a white person, yeah, I can't relate at all to what it feels like to be a person of color navigating the world, but I believe, and I know that allyship is just as important as anything else in dismantling this because white people created racism.

(17:19):
It's not black people that created racism. And it's like the patriarchy was built on generations of men in positions of power and abuse of power, and we need this allyship. So we need to also have some compassion and some empathy and understanding towards men in these positions. Because we, it's so easy to just cut them out and be like, oh, men are so difficult to deal with about talk to about this subject. And it's about inviting people to sit at the table and meeting them at the level that they're at. Because if they're not exposed to it, and it's not really any excuse, but it is the human condition, it's like if you're not exposed to it, how are you supposed to know? And not everyone has that curious mind. So it's a really complicated thing to navigate, but it's just a slow and steady kind of process. But it does help.

Lina Zubyte (18:09):
All this exposure Talk made me think of the Rooney Rule. So in 2003, NFL got a rule, they would see that there was a very low number of minorities in head coaching positions. So they created a policy which required every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one or more diverse candidates before making a new hire. So this rule basically means that you just interview someone who is from so-called minorities, but you don't have to hire them because a lot of teams, they would go to this argument that maybe it's not the best hire. So it's just that we couldn't find someone who is from certain group of people. So that's why we hired this white man. In their case, this role actually increased their hiring enormously of more diverse coaches. So I feel like just having something. That giving an opportunity for diverse candidates as well as to apply to wait for them to apply, to encourage them to apply, can actually help us create these more diverse teams.

Amy Weidner (19:23):
100%. And we actually do use the Rooney rule at Twitter in the US and I learned about the really rule before and I think it's brilliant. And I think that the percentage of black coaches increased from I think 6% to 22-23%. So it was a really significant number. And that's the whole thing is we need diversity on the leadership teams. We need diversity in senior positions, positions of power, we need representation. That's the bottom line. And having, we mentioned before about the affirmative action, the Rooney Rule is essentially affirmative action and it really creates real change. So I think it's a brilliant approach and I hope that we can adopt some of these practices in Europe as well.

Lina Zubyte (20:10):
So you've mentioned as well an interesting point that racism is basically a white person's invention and problem. And I feel like in certain situations we may put a lot of effort and weight on the people who are marginalized to solve the problem that we caused ourselves. How could we create more inclusive workspaces where everyone carries similar weight and the oppress wouldn't feel that they have to do all the homework for everyone else who actually are a part of this system?

Amy Weidner (20:46):
That's such a brilliant question. And in the last couple of years, especially, this conversation has come up a lot and that is a big kind of issue, is that you have a lot of white people basically saying, oh, just saying to black people are people of color saying, what? Just tell me what I can do. And it's like, go and do your own homework. Stop expecting people who are already dealing with daily trauma, daily microaggressions, seeing all sorts of things linked to people that look like them being whatever is happening in the world. I won't even use trigger words, but essentially just seeing all the stuff that's happening in the world and then expecting to educate people who aren't really exposed to that on the trauma of day-to-day racism. So it's kind of like people need to go and do their own education. And I said, I was having a conversation recently with my friend about this.

(21:40):
I said, if every white person just read one book, just one book about racism, and there are so many amazing good books out there, I feel like so much would change. Because you would just understand first of all the definition of it, cuz you hear it misused all the time. You hear it about reverse racism, you hear, oh, I don't mean to be racist about Irish people. I'm like, well, I show up in the world as white, so actually it's not racist, it's just discriminatory or whatever. But it's using the right terminology, getting the wording, getting the definition. And again, we spoke about before inclusion is everyone belonging and everyone being celebrated for their differences. So it's a fine line but I would say companies need to have zero tolerance for racism, zero tolerance for sexism, for homophobia, and just really setting the tone for that.

(22:29):
And it starts from the top down and it has to start from the top down. And it's with leadership making it very clear whether it's the intro into the company or in their town halls using different examples. Or I heard a situation recently where the CEO who did weekly all hands he switched off his weekly all hands one week where he brought in an unconscious bias coach. And for me that's actually taking it really seriously and having zero tolerance for racism, sexism, et cetera. It's completely, that's the only way it will actually become part of the culture. I also think having employee resource groups are really good. So at Twitter we have blackbirds, we have Twitter able for anyone with a disability there's countless ERGs and I've had those in other companies and it's also these ERGs welcome allies. So I'm part of quite a few groups even though the topic or the ERG might not directly impact me, but I'm want to be an ally.

(23:30):
So I'm very much showing up in those spaces and showing kind of support, being mindful not to ask marginalized people to give free labor around doing talks or doing podcasts or doing this and doing that. For example, one of my friends recently joined a company and within a week he got asked to do this podcast for Black History Month and he was just like, listen, I'm just in the door five seconds, so can you just gimme a breather? And it's just being mindful of things like that and celebrating days beyond International Women's Day and reading the room in terms of your employees learning things about Ramadan and educating colleagues about why Ramadan exists. And if someone is fasting, don't quiz them about it. Don't ask them about like, oh, when's the last time you ate? And oh my god, how long do you do this for?

(24:17):
I've heard all of it and I'm just like, we need to be way more conscious and cognizant of people and their day-to-day experience. And it's learning about microaggressions and educating people on what a microaggression looks like, what it is. Because as we said before, when people don't know or they haven't been exposed to it, it's not going to show up, they're not going to know and that people don't know what they don't know. So there are so many things we can do to create an inclusive workspace as you mentioned before, going for a pint with someone focusing all the activities around going for beer pong and this and that and the other. And it's like, what about if you have people on the team that don't drink for religious purposes or whatever, or maybe they just don't wanna drink, which is completely fair enough. It's just trying to really understand who is your demographic and how can you include them and keep them in your mind when you're coming up with these different decisions.

(25:09):
And it's also thinking about retention. Retention is a topic that is not spoken about enough, especially from people marginalized backgrounds. And I think that also needs to be a consideration if there's a more inclusive environment. If people who are meeting their targets and meeting their quotas regardless of their background, there needs to be a clear defined process for a promotion, not just because there's someone on your team that you like and you get on with, you wanna promote them. That happens so often and that is such a common way where marginalized people are being left behind. So it's also looking into those types of practices as well.

Lina Zubyte (25:52):
I recently heard someone talking about how success looks different for everyone. So even if we may have the same role, maybe I have different goals for my career and we should not just put the person in the frame and say, Hey, this is what success looks like to you. We should ask them and build some kind of more customized growth plans for them.

Amy Weidner (26:16):
Yeah, that's such a good point. And that is just not happening. So right, success does look different to everyone else and everyone individually and just having the conversations and trying to understand what kind of motivates people, what gets people excited about what they do at work and really playing to those strengths.

Lina Zubyte (26:36):
It also reminds me of some podcasts I heard years ago, which said that you can look at diversity in two ways. You can look at diversity and say, Hey, you are different. That's weird, you're weird, go away. But you also could look at diversity from the perspective that, hey, you are different. That's interesting. Tell me more. And I feel like all those experiences and different traditions, different upbringings, different even success goals and ideas, that is very interesting. And if we put this together with the idea of fixed mindset and growth mindset, I would say that building inclusive teams and diverse teams, it is a lot about growth mindset and people showing the growth mindset.

Amy Weidner (27:20):
Yes, I love that 100%.

Lina Zubyte (27:24):
So how can we be better allies? You mentioned multiple things, but is there something else you would like to mention that we could lend our privilege somehow? So I really like the also idea that privilege is not zero or one. A lot of people may think, okay, I'm either privileged or I'm not privileged. As you mentioned, it could also be a topic of intersectionality. So maybe I'm a white woman working in tech, right? But it's a very different experience that a black gay woman would have working in tech. So we face lots of challenges here. So even if I may feel that maybe I am marginalized in certain groups, but I do have a lot of privilege. So how can we lend our privilege?

Amy Weidner (28:11):
That is a great question. And I think just to start with, multiple truths can exist at the same time. So for me, yes, I am marginalized by one because I'm a woman and there has been things that have happened to me in my career or whatever, like sexist comments, whatever things that you face as a woman. But at the same time, I feel like I have had so much privilege in my life, in my career because of having an Irish accent or because I'm white or because a lot of different things and I'll come onto that shortly. But being an ally in my view starts with unlearning. So history has been completely whitewashed, especially in Europe and the UK we have been taught that white people are the pinnacle of society, whether it's conscious or unconscious. The west sees white as the default in everything.

(29:02):
And I mean we turned Jesus into an Anglo-Saxon man from a Middle Eastern man and we turned Cleopatra white. I mean she was an Egyptian woman. So all of those subtle messages that make up our consciousness around race, they really, really impact us and they really kind of are solidly in our belief system. And the media has a huge part to play in this too. So someone who I follow closely is Akala and he talks about this concept of let's say black on black crime, which doesn't actually exist, but it was a term greater by the media to perpetuate this fear around black people. So it's really picking apart your own belief system and looking at people who are different from you and asking yourself, why do I feel the way that I do about certain people? And when you pick this belief apart, you'll realize there's very little substance behind why you feel the way you do about said race or said person.

(29:54):
And there's an expression that I love and don't judge me on my first thought, judge me on my second thought. And that's about see someone in your head, you're like, oh, that's an X person, they must be Y. And it's actually like, well why do I think that actually that's probably really wrong that I think that. And it's just unlearning and relearning history from a different perspective and how it translates through to today. And also again, like I mentioned before, learning about microaggression and the workplace is the main thing and being open to being wrong about something. So we're all really scared of cancel culture in today's world. I've said loads of things in the past that I cringe at now and it's okay and it was all part of my journey and it's just being open that I was wrong about things and that's okay and I'll learn from that.

(30:38):
And it's natural to get defensive, but it's just to be aware of this and move forward and don't expect black people to explain racism to you or educate you in any of these matters. Similarly with someone with a disability or someone from a queer background, like it's learning about these things yourself. If you want to go to someone or you want to make an impact, go and do the work yourself first. There's amazing books out there we can link in the bio afterwards, but there's just so much mind blowing information, especially over the last couple of years. Another thing is sharing your privilege. I don't like to say lending cuz it suggests you expect something in return but it's assessing your situation. For me it's working in a large tech giant, I can have a big impact on people and I can advocate for people.

(31:24):
And it's kind of knowing your privilege and that the privilege that others don't have in sharing it. So for me, back in 2020, after the whole George Floyd thing happened, I asked myself, how can I move the dial and dismantling racism even if it is 0.0001%, it will possibly create a butterfly effect for anyone who I can maybe share my privilege with and just to pay it forward. So then I decided how can I utilize my own skillset? And I set up a network where I would host free workshops and anything around kind of career or salary negotiation for women from marginalized backgrounds. And I was running those for a while and I'm still going to be doing something around that. It's a bit of a work in progress, but at the end of the day it's about impact. And we all have something, I cannot express this enough, we all have something within our remit where we can actually make an impact.

(32:21):
As a recruiter, it's really pressing your hiring managers. Like I had one hiring manager in London who would only hire from Russell Universities and this is a really common one. And when I asked him about it, he didn't even know why he did this. He said, I've always done it like this. And I really pushed that with him and I, cuz hiring from these red brick universities is just an old-fashioned classist way of doing things and questioning your colleagues, questioning yourself, the people around you, hiring from a certain background. It happens so much in the UK, it's totally classist, it's imperialist. But why don't we question these practices and we kind of need to stop accepting things how they are. And I remember working in London as an Irish person and I didn't even know anything about middle class, upper class. I just landed into London.

(33:10):
But no one could tell my background because of my accent. I slotted into every different space. It was just almost celebrated. And for me that was a huge privilege because I realized after a while in being a recruiter in the UK, the way someone spoke was the single most discriminatory thing that I saw as a recruiter. So you hear people saying, oh, they don't speak the queens so they're not going to be polished enough to put in front of a client. And we all have these different ways of dressing up classism to make it acceptable or racism to make it acceptable. And that's what it is and it needs to be called what it is. And we have to just change the way we think about this.

Lina Zubyte (33:49):
Wow, I really love your correction to say instead of lending privilege, sharing privilege, I got goosebumps because I would always say lend privilege. And I never thought that it could have a different meaning as well that some that we would expect something back. And it's all about actually sharing because you have enough and you can share whatever you have and not lose it. This has been such an eye-opening, amazing conversation and I feel like it's a great place for us to come full circle. If you had to give one piece of advice for building high-quality products and teams, what would be it?

Amy Weidner (34:32):
Ooh, that's a very, very good question. Maybe one key thing that I would say would be really impactful is defining the criteria that you need for your business. So what are those things that you need from future employees to make your business a success? And just like don't overcomplicate it. So pick maybe three, four traits that you want every candidate that comes through the door to have. And like I would say, and what I have done in the past which has been really effective, is measuring candidates partly on what they have done to date. So their experience to date. And the other part is that you're measuring their attitude or their aptitude as well towards tasks, towards their work. For example, you wanna hire someone with intellectual curiosity. Are they a lifelong learner? What is their, how coachable are they? What is their aptitude to take on a new task or to navigate uncertainty? And if it was my business, I would say yes, I wanna hire lifelong learners, someone who continuously develops, evolves. Cuz that's not only going to benefit you and your business and the individual themselves, it's going to benefit everyone around them because they're always going to be learning from these individuals. And I think having those traits and having a real standardized process that you live and breathe and it keeps it fair, it keeps it uniform and this will create diverse, high performing, high quality teams.

Lina Zubyte (36:08):
Thank you so much, Amy. It has been wonderful talking to you.

Amy Weidner (36:12):
Thank you Lina, I absolutely loved it.

Lina Zubyte (36:15):
Thank you for listening. This was quite a lot of great gems. I'm going to put many interesting resources in the notes, so check it out. If you like this podcast, don't forget to subscribe as well as tell your friends about it. And until the next episode, do not forget to continue caring about building those high-quality products and teams. See you next time.