Advancing Disability Inclusion in Recruitment

Discover how to transform your hiring process with insights from Donna Bungard, the Senior Marketing Accessibility Program Manager at Indeed. In this episode, Donna sheds light on her role in promoting disability inclusion and accessibility within Indeed's brand and partnerships. Learn how Indeed's global commitment to a skills-first hiring approach is helping job seekers overcome barriers and why mainstreaming accessibility is crucial, especially from Donna's perspective as a neurodivergent individual. 

We also tackle the critical issue of improving inclusion through job descriptions. Find out why it's essential to revisit job requirements and how focusing on practical skills and experience can break down barriers for people with disabilities. Donna discusses the impact of removing unnecessary degree prerequisites and the value of apprenticeships. Plus, get insight into Indeed's partnership with Billion Strong and how it aims to provide support and resources for individuals with disabilities, creating a more inclusive job search experience. 

Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion on fostering inclusive opportunities for everyone.

Chapters

• 0:01 Building Inclusive Recruitment Solutions With Indeed
• 16:08 Improving Inclusion Through Job Descriptions

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:01

Hello and welcome to AXSChat. I'm delighted that we're joined today by Donna Bungard from Indeed, the recruitment agency. I think you've probably heard of them. They do a lot in the job space and, of course, we're here with a regular team Antonio Santos and "Hurricane Debbie Rue because there is a hurricane going through America right now, and it's not just Deborah's energy, she's also got COVID. So if she ends up having a coughing fit, she'll go off air. So, without further ado, I'd like to welcome Donna.

Neil Milliken: 0:37

Thank you, great to have you with us. Tell us a bit about your role as the Senior Marketing Accessibility Program Manager at Indeed.

Donna Bungard: 0:47

Thank you so much. Hi all, I'm Donna. I'm a Caucasian woman with long dark hair, glasses and bright red lipstick and, yes, I'm the Senior Marketing Accessibility Program Manager over at Indeed. That means I get to work with a lot of different teams throughout marketing. Indeed is a large company and we put out a lot of material, and my role is to really help build disability inclusion and accessibility into the DNA of our very brand and to help work externally with organizations to amplify voices of people with disability. As well as work on the technical side of things, and because I am a person who follows her curiosity, I never really play in my own sandbox only. I get to ask a lot of questions and offer support to other teams throughout Indeed, whether it be an L&D team, a real estate team or what have you. So it's a very collaborative environment to be in and I get to stretch from time to time, which is lovely as well.

Neil Milliken: 2:03

I think we all love to stretch um. I think that's the nature of people, in accessibility, that we, we start on one thing and we, like quickly being mission driven, want to stretch it to the next thing. So tell us a bit more about Indeed. It's a well-known brand, indeed it is, but where did it originate from and how large are you? Now? I know you're in the UK, I know you're in the US, but where did it all start?

Donna Bungard: 2:40

And where are you now? Our headquarters headquarters is in Austin, Texas. However, we also have a headquarters in Dublin as well. The company has been around for quite a while. We're more than 10,000 people and because we are largely distributed, we have representation in various places around the world, whether it be Singapore, Germany, France, Italy I'm going to miss many countries here. We're all over and we're really fortunate to be a part of that group and be a part of the recruit family as well, which is headquartered in Japan. So, really, international organization that tries to bring together a lot of different groups. We are a job matching platform, so we bring that collaboration externally, trying to or working to, help people get jobs. That's what the sign behind me says, and with that we're really just matching people and their incredible skills to employers who need those skills in-house. And that's really our focus is that skills-first hiring approach, because we're committed to helping job seekers facing barriers get jobs.

Neil Milliken: 4:08

Okay, I think Antonio's got a question.

Antonio Santos : 4:11

Welcome Donna, and following

Antonio Santos : 4:15

that that you've just said, can you go to how you are currently building solutions that make the recruitment process accessible, because we know that people with disabilities look for jobs online. They have different experiences across the web, so I would like to know how you are operating at that level.

Donna Bungard: 4:39

Keeping in mind that I am in marketing, so I don't directly influence products and again, 10,000 people. I'm not the only subject matter in-house. We have other teams who could speak a little bit more to the technical side of it. What I can say is, for the most part, we're just building, or striving to build, the most inclusive products out there. To build the most inclusive products out there, we use, you know, WCAG, 2.1, AA as our North Star, as does all sorts of organizations, and if you're really curious about that, we have a page I think it's indeedcom slash ESG, slash accessibility which will dive deeper into that public commitment we have made to be inclusive.

Donna Bungard: 5:30

Personally, I am a very big fan of mainstreaming everything. Everyone is different and disability doesn't mean deficiency. I identify as neurodivergent. We'll someday figure out which flavor that is. I have my suspicions, but as of right now we'll just call me mysteriously neurodivergent, but with that in a way that is no way related to my neurodivergence. I'm just not good at certain things and I think that's just the most human statement we can all say is we all have strengths and skills and we all have weaknesses. You don't want me doing your financial planning for the next seven years. I'm not that person. I know people who have skills in that space and I am beautifully in awe of them. That's not me, that's not about my neurodivergence, that's not about what I do or don't you know, it's just not my skillset. And therefore, instead of focusing on disability of all the things we don't have and we don't bring, let's just again focus on the skills we are bringing with us to an organization, to a role and to society, to help us all all in you know grow together.

Debra Ruh: 6:56

Donna, welcome to the program, and hopefully my voice will behave the whole time, but because I am about 10 days into this little COVID dance and as Hurricane Debbie well, it's really a tropical storm, debbie comes down on the east coast of Florida. It just makes it more exciting. Thank you for changing my name, neil, but I want you to talk a little bit about. First of all, I want you to talk about how you partnered with Billion Strong, and I want to give a major shout out to the Indeed brand for doing it. This was a partnership because and I don't want to speak for you, but I'm just saying for the audience that we want to work with brands that are trying to make a difference for our community, but we also want to be very sensitive to how they actually are going to be able to accomplish the goals that they're setting for themselves, to make sure we're fully included, and so I applaud indeed for being focused on accessibility, because it's just such an important point, and I know you've already addressed that a little bit. But I want you to talk about the. I want to talk about the job board in the UK, but before we do that, I wanted to sort of set the stage a little bit for the audience about the complexity of what we're talking about here, because we say to brands and all three of you on this call represent major global brands, and so, and of course you, you on this call, represent major global brands and so, and of course, you have your own work and stuff you're doing, but we, as the community of people with disabilities, are always going to these brands saying we're sorry, you better include us, we're sick of it, blah, blah, blah, Right, no matter what you do, the brand Atos has had this fun little dance, but it is sometimes not good enough. Or we're mad at you for something you did we think you did or right, and we're going to just rip your heads off. And so it is because it has caused a pretty major problem between the community of people with disabilities and the brands, I believe. And here in the United States, of course, we're going to sue the heck out of you and, by the way, I love our legal system. So, but still, I'm aware that there's got to be some balance, and so I first, before you talk about what you were doing, what you're doing in the UK, I was wondering if you wouldn't want to explore a little bit of what in the world we're going to do from here, and it's a big ask.

Debra Ruh: 9:26

It's a big question, but the reality is the way the community of people with disabilities have tried to be included, since we've been working on this in the United States since 1990. It doesn't really seem to be working. It seems to be instead, that we're almost causing frictions with brands and scaring brands away from us, and so the way that we get jobs has changed so much over the years. So how in the world does Indeed even start helping society across the board understand? How do we get jobs? Now? Because we don't understand. Are we competing with AI for our jobs? Are we? Is there just a big black hole of resumes? It's all about keywords. I perceive people don't even know how to get jobs anymore, donna, and so I just wonder how does a brand like Indeed deal with all of that as well, as I am really curious and thankful that Indeed cares about a diverse workforce, and why is that important for Indeed as well? I apologize for such really big questions, but those are the questions I ponder.

Donna Bungard: 10:37

And they're wonderful ones. Thank you, debra. Looking at your name, I keep wanting to say Debbie. Debbie, we've known each other for a while now, like over a couple years now, and I still never have had the urge before this.

Debra Ruh: 10:50

I was Debbie in high school. I was Debbie all through high school and, as Neil put in the comment, I am from Florida. I live in Virginia now, so I am going to own it. I'm excited that we have a tropical depression named Debbie. Sorry so you can call me Debbie. My sisters do alright.

Donna Bungard: 11:06

Well, that was a little bit to unpack, so let's just take this a little bit in bites here. In regards to brands needing to be more inclusive in general, I think the biggest barrier is not knowing how, and I think there's a lot of people working really hard at a lot of organizations but if they don't get it a hundred percent right, they reach such criticism that it makes the process of getting things launched challenging and I think that that is a barrier and this is just my perspective, but I think that's a barrier for a lot of groups and a lot of organizations. We're very fortunate at Indeed because, you know, I have the advantage of my role. I grew up as part of the disability community In my home. I was the only one who didn't have a profound presentation of disability audio, visual, mobility, emotional. We had a wide breadth of experiences to draw upon in addition to my own neurodivergent experience, in addition to my own neurodivergent experience. So I'm tuned into a lot of the barriers people face getting jobs because, truth be told, I remember going to the food bank with my mother. I remember the barriers, I remember the frustration and I'm at a unique position that, because I was a child and a teen, I didn't have the responsibilities, I could just grow an understanding of these. So for me and my role, there's a benefit of that lived experience, adding a bit of dynamic to the way I approach it. However, it's not just me. We have a very active employee resource group. It's actually an internal business resource group, because our resource groups don't only help each other and create community which they do but we also are able to influence business goals, business needs, business drivers. Well, drivers might be, depending on how you interpret this, a little bit outside of my scope of influence, but nonetheless we influence the business and how they move forward with certain things. And because of that, you end up with a chorus of lived experiences that are as diverse as a kaleidoscope's lights shining that beautiful rainbow upon our world.

Donna Bungard: 14:01

Here at Indeed, and because of that, because of the power of our voices, because we do have subject matter experts in various parts of the organization, because of this mix of subject matter expertise, lived experience and then dedication to making this work real and tangible and actual, we're able to do things that I don't see a lot of other brands being capable of doing. Not because they don't have wonderful people, it's just. It's the perfect mix in my experience and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Indeed's the only one out there. There's groups like L'Oreal has been doing incredible work from what I've seen. I've seen other organizations out there. Microsoft has obviously done so much in this space and so on and so forth. There's a lot of other good ones out there, but I'm saying in my experience, this has been by far the most holistic approach that I've seen and I personally feel that that has been to our great benefit. So that's part of your question If we were to take actually, I'm going to take a sip of water too. So next let's see the next part of your question about indeed caring. Yes, as I said, it's because of that holistic approach we're able to take, that we're able to push some of this information externally and we're able to do that.

Donna Bungard: 15:39

Now in the U S, we're able to put out a disability, a handbook for employers because, again, a lot of companies just don't understand how to do this in a way that also doesn't cause disruption With any diversity effort. It doesn't have to be painful disruption. It can be a change and disruptive. Without it, you know, breaking it all down to build it back up again. So there are simple things that organizations can do.

Donna Bungard: 16:11

For example, my biggest thing is look at our job descriptions. I know that in my past life, when hiring for a role, I'd grab the template, I'd update a few things, I'd put it out there because I was busy and I wasn't thinking I would just boom, boom, boom. I'm absolutely guilty of this 10 years ago absolutely would have been me. But the problem with that is, first of all, we're using templates that may not be inclusive. Second of all, we're not really thinking about the skills we need for a role. We're saying things like strong communicator, and I love focusing on that, on that, because what type of communication? I'm a effective verbal and written word communicator. That is my skill skills, still one of my skills. Um, I apologize, I apparently hit a button in this wrong yeah please try again.

Donna Bungard: 17:11

Sorry about that.

Neil Milliken: 17:12

It did go wrong. Something went wrong. Please try again.

Donna Bungard: 17:14

Sorry about that, something did go wrong, but you don't have to try again. Thank you, yes, so anyway, so one. But, Neil, when I met you in person, I was at we were at Zero Con and prior or shortly after I sat down with this group of individuals and I was having those meaningful conversation. But thank goodness for the translator, because I am not fluent in ASL yet I will get there someday, but I am very, very poor, but I was not a strong communicator. So what kind of strong communication is required for that role? Need someone to document technology, or do you need that person to hop on a podcast and chat about it? So, by grabbing, if we rethink what's normal, if we rethink our processes and it doesn't mean you have to change everything, it means you have to be mindful through it, we're able to build more and more and more into our processes and build inclusion into that DNA. That's great.

Neil Milliken: 18:20

I mean, I think you know, looking for outcomes and asking people, you know employers what outcomes they wish to achieve from potential employees is really key. And there may be, you know, as you say, very specific things like like with communication. So if you need to be fluent in ASL, then you need to be stating that you need to be fluent in ASL, but a lot of the time it's we need to achieve this aim, and a lot of people with disabilities often feel excluded from applying because you know the aim might be that you need to be able to take something from a to b and it's others must be, you know, able to stand for eight hours a day and lift heavy objects and so on, and that's you know. That's. That's talking about the physical capabilities of an individual, which are not necessarily needed to achieve that outcome.

Neil Milliken: 19:17

So by removing that kind of descriptor from job efforts, I think you can actually make it much more tempting for people to apply. Um, you know, I'm certainly try to look at outcomes and relevant skills and capabilities rather than the generic stuff when we're when we're looking at job descriptions. But you're right, everybody, every company, has a template, you know, and every manager is doing this stuff at the last minute with limited time, so the temptation to overwrite a few words from an old one and press send is quite high. So if you can build the sort of checks and balances into the system, it makes it much more inclusive at scale.

Donna Bungard: 20:09

And then there's other things that we can do to be more inclusive, and a big one is dropping degree requirements for roles that don't actually require them. There's a huge disability education gap. There are huge problems in the education system that there are thousands and thousands of really brilliant people working on, but that may not help individuals who are our age and in the workforce now and need a role now. But it doesn't mean you haven't collected and acquired and developed and worked really hard on skill development over the years. So by dropping degree requirements and using a skills-first approach, we're actually bypassing some of those barriers that are not only barriers today but have been barriers for the last 10, 20, 30 years of someone's life.

Neil Milliken: 21:06

Yeah, absolutely, and as someone that's done a lot of work on apprenticeships, I'm a really big fan of not requiring degrees for jobs that don't need them. For the most part, most jobs don't need a degree. They need specific skills, uh, you know, uh, attitudes, the ability to work with other team members, etc. A degree only teaches you certain things. It's essentially shorthand for being able to do certain things right. Um, but there are better ways, and if all we focus on is people's tertiary education, then we're excluding potential. So so, absolutely so I, you, you do work globally, but in the uk specifically, you've been working on disability inclusion. You've got a specific job, or can you tell us about that please?

Donna Bungard: 22:14

well, there's. There's kind of two parts there. Yeah, um so on any of our you know uk. You just go to the indeed landing page in the uk and once you start searching for jobs, you can filter under encouraged to apply for disability confident. But we wanted to partner with Billion Strong to make it a little bit more than just being able to do that. So if you're just interested in just filtering, go for it. That's there. Anybody can do it. You don't need a special link.

Donna Bungard: 22:45

Again, I'm all about mainstreaming access and I love the fact that the team there was able to do this. But there's also a lot of education that has to happen when people are, and there's not only education but there's sometimes emotional barriers. We all have that history of rejection or of barriers, of frustration, and we sometimes need a little guidance. So what we did with Billy and Strong is we put together a resource page first, if you need those resources right there, it's a combination of content Indeed has put out and Billion Strong has put out there to help really set people up for greater success. And then when you go to the Billion Strong Partnership job board, it's already filtered Everything. There is a disability confident employer or they mentioned that in that job description that they are disability confident. So you have all of that focused information right there.

Donna Bungard: 23:50

And why I wanted to partner with Billion Strong in this is that we can't be successful alone. That whole thing about it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to raise me still I'm not done, I'm in my late forties, you know and it still takes a village. And it's going to take a village for brands, it's going to for companies to realize the impact, the quality, the positivity. So we need the billion strong group, we need the disability community to partner with us so that way we can give each other the support we need to make this happen to help normalize disability, normalize disability inclusion and really allow us to move the needle on and close that disability employment gap absolutely.

Neil Milliken: 24:48

You know, the more people get to hear about it, the more people apply to disability confident companies and I think I just need to explain for the global audience that disability confident is uh is a scheme in the uk run by the department for work and pensions which actually encourages employers to go through a three-stage process of becoming disability confident. So you start with a commitment and then you start taking action and by the time you get to level three, which is disability confident leader, you're actually audited on and everything else in terms of what it means in for employing people with disabilities. So it's a it's a really good scheme in terms of really encouraging employers to add a bit of rigor and to encourage applications from qualified candidates with disabilities. So absolutely, I'm glad that people are able to filter and that gives people a bit of confidence that who they're applying to cares. I mean lots of really large organizations. Let's be honest, every large organisation has good areas and bad areas and you know, we know that organisations, you know individuals' experiences often actually come down to the team you're working in and the manager that you're working for. But at least you've got a starting point where you know that the top level, the organization is committed to doing this stuff.

Neil Milliken: 26:34

I think Antonio's got a question. I know Debra's back because I think the wind is blowing through now.

Antonio Santos : 26:39

No, I wanted to dive in into some of the topics that you have been talking about and I would like to know how are you working internally into some of the topics that you have been talking about? And I would like to know, Donna, how are you working internally in terms of working groups, in terms of engaging and advocating internally in terms of accessibility or inclusion, to scale this in the organization?

Donna Bungard: 27:03

Well, our resource group offers a lot of opportunities for, whether it be speakers, um, if there is a need, there may be compassion circles made available. Um, if there is trying to think, there's internal learning opportunities and we recently they put out a ASL training course available for all employees free of charge. As I said, we have an active channel where we talk about things. I'd have to say our marketing team is pretty used to. We have a learn and grow channel. Our marketing team is pretty used to. We have a learn and grow channel.

Donna Bungard: 27:50

Disability inclusive materials often will end up in there and then, in truth, you also just have the commitment of teams outside of those groups. So, for example, we are working on we're setting up our upcoming marquee event and they'll bring me in and ask questions, and they're really good questions. So, for example, one of the things we're making sure this year is that here we are at this big event and we're looking at the seating and the stage and all this and we're making sure that all the accessible seating isn't just all together in one clump. You know, just because people have a disability doesn't mean they're best friends and they all want to hang out together for every darn session ever. So we make sure that there's multiple places so that way you can sit with who you are working with or talking to or conversing with, and not always together, as if this is you know, oh, you know, you have a disability, you know. Therefore you hang out, and that's just one of those things that because there was somebody asked a question, we were able to sit around and talk it through and make sure that we're not only checking a box but we're again being mindful, and that's just one example.

Donna Bungard: 29:10

So internally we have a lot of groups who are having these beautifully mindful conversations and I'm fortunate and privileged to get to be pulled into some of them, even outside of marketing. We pulled into some of them even outside of marketing about various processes or concerns about this, that or whatnot. So, for example, at our headquarters I was asked hey, can you just check out our wayfinding system? And we addressed color contrast. We tested it was already built in, but it was tested the audio opportunities and things of that nature. So there's a lot of just thoughtfulness that gets built in and I think that's a cultural piece that I can't say is specific to the disability community. We have a lot of underrepresented groups that have ERGs sorry, employee resource groups or ERGs, employee resource groups. We have a lot of intersectional discussions about where these things overlap. So we're really working to build a culture and that culture I think emulated externally through the way we approach and advise people, approach hiring excellent donna.

Neil Milliken: 30:35

We had a great discussion. We've unfortunately reached the end of our time. It's blown past. It's almost like there's a hurricane in here. It just remains for me to thank Amazon and MyClearText for keeping us on air and keeping us captioned. So thank you so much for joining us, look forward to next time we meet in person, which I'm sure will come soon, and look forward to continuing the discussion on social media. So thank you very much for the work you're doing and for a great discussion today.

Donna Bungard: 31:08

Thank you for having me.