Job Fair as Systems Audit
I Wasn’t Looking for a Job. I Was Looking for a Pattern
Apologies for the lack of a data deep dive this week. In my defence, I have been preparing for first and second round job interviews this week so I have been fully booked. I have a story instead…
Job fairs for “academics” in my city happen twice annually. I did my homework and found that the English-language workplaces did not have any roles available in data analysis/business intelligence which is where I have been concentrating my efforts of late.
So, I decided to have a little bit of fun with it and basically give a stand-up live-version of this Substack instead. What if I gave them something they could use? Instead of ramming a square peg into a round hole, just offer them something useful?
My approach was to pull some of the graphs I coded myself for this newsletter and make a two page data infographic to take recruiters through the issue: they are recruiting with no issues from abroad but people aren’t staying long-term and there are so many qualified people already here who do not get a look-in.
This was well out of my comfort zone, especially since I think I made everyone very defensive and nervous. What is she selling? -anxiety. I meant it with love: it’s a systems problem. I’ve clocked it. I even think I know the solution: get the people who recruit from abroad to talk to the people who recruit nationally.
If you're hiring in Denmark, ask yourself: Who are you really filtering out? What does your funnel reward? Who made it to the final round and who never had a chance?
Track different inclusion KPIs:
% of applicants filtered out before human review
Ratio of local vs. international hires already living in Denmark
Ratio of international hires who were already in Denmark vs. recruited from abroad
Number of career switchers in final interview rounds
Average time-to-first-promotion for international hires
Exit interview mentions of unhappy spouse/family
I didn’t go to pitch today. I went to observe. Maybe just leave something behind that helps someone rethink their systems.
Here is what I gave them (full disclosure, as soon as I printed it I wanted to change some headers around, so they’re more to my liking in this version)
Note on charts1
The funnel is meant to be illustrative, I don’t know the numbers for obvious reasons. But neither do they, to be fair.