Demystifying the Recruiter Experience with an ATS Simulation

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Cheryl Rotyliano. She’s the Senior Associate Director of Market Readiness & Employment at the Wake Forest University School of Business. Thank you for being here, Cheryl.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Thanks for having me.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I’m super excited to have you, and I’ve been looking forward to talking to you today about how you and your team are, as you put it, demystifying the recruiter experience for your students there in the Wake Forest School of Business. And it sounds like you’ve developed this really cool simulation that kind of replicates an ATS system and gives each student a behind-the-scenes look of what recruiters actually do and some of the challenges that they have to manage on a daily basis. I don’t want to give away all the details just yet, but as a teaser for anyone watching or listening, Cheryl’s program is just a super smart way to show students how the hiring process works rather than just tell them. So before I get into my questions, Cheryl, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your role there at Wake Forest?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Sure, yeah. There might be a little bit of background on the university and my role that gives some context to why this was developed and some of the history behind it. So as an outsider, before I joined Wake Forest, I was attracted to the high level of attention that career development was on campus and the forward-thinking mindset. Spoiler alert, as an insider, I still feel the same way. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. My role specifically focuses on what we call coaching excellence, which is focusing not just on what we are offering, but really focusing on the how. It’s a focus on quality and on impact. And so with that, some of the questions that I ask myself and ask our coaches to ask themselves is things like, how can one-on-one appointments be more impactful than they currently are? Or how can our programs continue to elevate student needs? So it’s a true eye on quality and thus this higher use simulation was developed at least 10 years ago, and so this past year has been really infusing technology and AI, which made the perfect sense in terms of my focus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes it very timely too. I imagine.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Indeed, I’ve gotten a lot of good practice with some of these systems.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, cool. Yeah, I’m excited to dig into all of those details here in a minute. But before I get into the more specific questions about our topic, I do want to kick us off with the question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

So there’s a few aspects of Career Everywhere that resonate especially with me. One is the shift from being a career provider that’s really service oriented to more of a facilitator, for sure, and equitable access. People that work with me know that I repeat that pretty often. Does everybody have access to this? Is this under the radar? Can we communicate this further? So there’s a level of forward-thinking that I enjoy with the Career Everywhere community.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Yeah. I love how the Career Everywhere tenets, a couple of which you mentioned, just simplify this seemingly big idea into just a few key things like you mentioned becoming or moving from sole provider to facilitator, working with people across campus, which is a good segue into our topic today. So again, it’s all about how you’re demystifying that recruiter experience. You’re giving students, again, a behind-the-scenes look of what recruiters have to deal with so that they actually understand how the application process works and hopefully have a little bit more empathy for what recruiters go through. So just to start us off with some context, can you walk me through this ATS simulation you’ve developed and what this program entails?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Sure. Yeah, so we can definitely get a lot more into the empathy development because that’s something that I do feel passionate about. The program in general I’ll try to go step-by-step in what it looks like so people can envision it a little bit. Currently, the program runs live. I’m developing an asynchronous version, but not quite there yet. So it runs live. It can be facilitated online or in person. We’ve done both. For groups of students anywhere from 10 to 100. The scale is pretty good with it. We split students into small groups for the activity because we’ve found that more meaningful conversations will happen when they start to disagree with each other on the decisions that they want to make for hiring. So really good conversations that helps facilitate.

As far as the order of events goes, typically we can fit this into an hour. It is pretty tight as far as the hour is concerned, but the time rush is part of the activity. So each portion is very specifically timed so that they feel the crunch the way a recruiter may to have a deadline that they need applicants by, and then they need first rounds to be done. And so that level of pressure we’re trying to simulate. So in the beginning, there’s an introduction phase, introducing the activity, what the general purpose is. That’s where they really learn that they are going to be our recruiter today. As part of a hiring team, we do explain the basics of an ATS system being that some students may not come into the room having that knowledge to begin with, and then we’ll orient them to the job description itself so that they know the position that they’ve been recruiting for and trying to drum up interest with students.

So after the job description, they move on to the actual ATS. And so it’s modeled after Workday. Even as a professional who… I work at a school who uses Workday for our own systems, and I still had to dig a little bit to see exactly what this looks like in most companies and all the things. So it’s not a view that students normally get. And so they see in this simulation a model after Workday that includes the candidates, all kinds of other information, of course, their resume, how the ATS would’ve scored them, any event attendance that the recruiter may have put in based on visiting a campus, the date and time of the application, things like that. And it’s a good level of information and slightly overwhelming as, again, you’re in a time crunch trying to figure out how to do this.

So they have 15 minutes to sort through currently it’s at 40 applicants, which is still small and the scheme of many job applications, but they have 15 minutes to select five candidates. In that 15 minutes, they’re not given a ton of direction as to how to select those candidates because that’s part of the learning opportunity is that each small group will come up with their system. Do they want to rely on the ATS score itself? Do they want to create emphasis on people who submitted an optional cover letter? There’s all of these judgment calls that they’re trying to make really quickly.

The next step after they select the five candidates is to watch interviews. And so throughout that interview stage and throughout the resume stage as well, we specifically put in a couple of common hiccups that recruiters can face midway into their process. So as an example, there’s a group of candidates in the 40 that never submitted an interview. And so we’ve contacted them, we’re excited about them, but they missed the email, and so they couldn’t submit the recording as requested. And so students are making a lot of calls on the fly as to whether they want to go back to the pool, whether, “Okay, now I’m just going to continue with four” and so forth.

After watching the interviews, they’re instructed to solidify their top two candidates. At that stage, they’re given the salary requirements that were put in for the applications for those candidates. And so again, a learning moment to see what does a recruiter do when you put NA or you’re over the range, that was clearly communicated on the position. So all of these types of things to give a viewpoint into where some of the hiccups can lie. They eventually share at the end who their top candidate was, who they would’ve hired, what salary they would’ve offered them, and their general rationale.

And so the debrief is a really important part of that with asking all kinds of different questions about how their biases played in to their decision-making, any disagreements within the group. There’s, as an example, a cover letter with a typo. How do we feel about that? Some people might be like, “All right, I can set that aside.” And some people are going to be like, “Absolutely not.” And so the debrief is a really fun portion of the activity, but also helps them create their takeaways.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, I love how holistic that is and that you managed to fit it into an hour. Oh my gosh.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

It’s tough. It’s tough. It’s pretty fast moving. It [inaudible 00:10:27] probably be expanded in time.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, that’s awesome though. I’m curious at that last step, the debrief, are you asking them these questions or is there a form they have to fill out? How does that work?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Mostly it’s conversational. So the one thing that we’ve changed over time and that I’ll do this summer when we facilitate this is allowing each group on some sort of a whiteboard probably with our classrooms to be able to identify their candidates so that visually we can see all the differences in who people chose because there’s not an obvious candidate to choose. There’s lots of good choices, some mediocre choices as I would consider them. So, so far there’s a lot of groups who pick different people, and that’s all part of it. So most of it’s conversation just facilitated, asking questions. And students get really opinionated about this. So I always think that’s a really fun part. When they’re feeling emotion towards it, I think is a good sign that it’ll click in their memory and that they’ll retain some of the takeaways.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. I just love this whole setup because I’m this way in that I learn by doing rather than just someone lecturing me or talking to me about it. I definitely like to apply what I’m learning. So I could see how this would be really effective for your students. Okay.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, it’s fun.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s super cool. I’m curious, why did you decide to set up the simulation or make these adjustments that you’ve made recently?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

So both at my time at Wake Forest and then at other universities as well, there were some common comments from questions, some of these common topics that kept coming up. So I imagine many of the listeners have heard something to the effect of a student saying, “I know my career coach is saying to tailor my resume,” but who has time for that? Or LinkedIn quick apply is great because it’s fast and easy, and I don’t have to do a lot to just apply and blast out those applications. I’m sure we’ve all heard to some, “Level networking is just an awkward thing to do, so can I not?”

And so many career practitioners I think are highly educating students on what they should do, but I’ve always still felt resistance. And so trying to come up with different ways to actually change their behavior. I go back to some of my psychology undergrad days of all of these theories and things, and the one that stuck in my mind for this was the theory of planned behavior. And so it’s the factors that will contribute to somebody actually changing or deciding to do something. And so paraphrasing, the three factors are do I want to do this, should I do this, and can I even do this? And so considering the three factors with revamping the simulation, it really aims to show them so that it can hopefully lead to that behavioral change.

As we talked a little bit about empathy for a minute, I also have seen this disconnect between students and recruiters to some level. I think everyone is trying to work on that in what is life actually like, why are students not responding to my emails? Or as a recruiter, why did I send them a recorded interview request and why did the student not want to do it? So some of that empathy development for what’s actually happening on the other side of things.

And so as I have been researching ways to develop empathy and what works for this age bracket for a traditional undergraduate student, I found some research of developing empathy for undergraduate nursing students and really solid backing that that happened through immersive and experiential learning settings that provided opportunities for guided reflection. So I was like, “Okay, I think we could do that. If I have this cited research along with some of just,” of course, like gut reactions was a career coach, “Then, all right, let’s do this.”

Specific to simulations themselves, another study noted the importance of really getting the perspective of the person that you’re trying to understand rather than just thinking about what you think they think. So really walking around in their shoes, testing it out. Without a simulation, I don’t know how students do that from the recruiter space unless they specifically have a recruiting internship, which of course would be beautiful. However, we can’t set that up for all students. And of course they have other interest areas. So it was the most scalable way using some of that research backing to be able to have students walk in their shoes a little bit.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did want to call out for the people who are watching or listening that will include links to some of those things that Cheryl just mentioned in the show notes, so you can go check those out for yourself. Cheryl was also kind enough to share several screenshots about the program and how it’s set up, so you can use that as inspiration if you want to maybe set up something similar for your program. So Cheryl, I’m curious, is this program or is this simulation, is it required? If not, how do you get the word out? How do you get students involved?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

It’s a combination. I have goals of really spreading this throughout campus, thus Career Everywhere concepts. Currently, at least within the school of business, we have some required and some optional. There are some spaces where we’re privileged to have career courses. So as I talk about the summer, it’s our master’s students in a career course, and we do this higher use simulation as a capstone at the end. So you’ve learned these concepts and now we’re putting them so you see how this functions. In other spaces, it’s more of a one-off program that’s more voluntary. I hope to roll it out with some student organizations. So lots of goals there, but currently, yeah, a combination of required and not required.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So for the students where it’s not required, how do inform them about this program? How do you get them to want to participate?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

That’s a good question. Right, yeah, that is always at the forefront. Really in terms of Wake Forest, it’s partnering with other people, either student organizations or going into a classroom with a faculty member who thinks that these concepts can really apply to the content in their course. Something like business communications course or something where the concepts really do make sense. In a lot of cases, it’s that partnering aspect and having the relationships to be able to say, “Hey, we have this new thing. If you’re interested, here’s some information.” And having that level of trust we’re lucky to have at Wake Forest.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I’ve heard that theme throughout most of these podcast interviews that it’s all about those relationships, especially with faculty and staff [inaudible 00:18:57] the campus. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I’m curious, I know this is going to be a big one for anyone listening to this episode, but how did you go about setting up this simulation?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

That’s a good question. I could talk for a while about this, so I will be detailed, but brief. Certainly different phases of development. As I said, there was a version of this simulation that existed that we used for at least 10 years prior to now. That version was using paper versions of resumes, and the concepts were getting across, but we weren’t using technology and certainly weren’t tying in ATS systems at all. So to some level, I did have that foundational work built out, and then I was adjusting and doing a lot of tech adjustments.

And so my steps were… In terms of preparation, the first would be deciding on a job description that is as specific as possible, but general to as many students as you possibly can. And that’s tough. I went with a version basically of a leadership development program, and so to try to be able to point to some specific skill sets, but have most students be able to be interested. And so writing the job description. Writing the diverse set of resumes, that was a heavy lift there. Some AI assistance, which was helpful. I used 40 to be able to, for the time simulation, have enough, but would I have liked to do 200? That would’ve been great, but 40 of this for now.

Scoring them the way the ATS system would. I knew that was going to be a portion of it. And so doing that and then creating the AI-generated interviews. So that was a ChatGPT in putting the resume, inputting the interview question and then giving it some direction. And so of course you want these responses to be different. And so as I was creating the AI videos, I’d say pause in weird places or make it seem like you’re not confident or talk only about your student org even though your resume says a lot more, all of these different prompts to try to save time in the generation of this.

So the first stage was really the content generation that I used AI as much as I could. Once those foundational pieces were in place with all the folders and all the things, I organized them onto a website. Not a website designer, but some free website builders that make it pretty easy. I used Wix just out of a hat, W-I-X, but there’s tons of them available.

And then the third step being the spot checking. So as I said before, we didn’t want there to be a really obvious candidate that rose above everybody else because the learning and the takeaway is based on the different judgment calls and the disagreement that happens. And so making sure that there are pros and cons built in and that I haven’t accidentally made all of the seemingly female candidates a lot stronger. There’s all of these other biases that I have to be careful of too.

And then step four being the testing and pilot phase. As anything new, we’re trying try to roll it out in stages, and so not too long ago had a bunch of our career coaches do it to see if there’s things we want to add, see if they chose different candidates, which they all did, which I thought was fabulous. So that’s the general steps. I think the most amount of time spent will be in the content generation portion.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. Do you just use the same job description, the same group of resumes, the same video interviews? Do you use those just across the board for the different groups that do this?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yes, for now. I would like to have different versions in the future. At the moment, they are all Wake Forest students for one opportunity, and so I’d like to generalize it a little bit more in the future too.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. I’m curious, how long did it take you to create all of that content?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

AI did help, but I’m the type where if I can have some really focused days, it will help, rather than little chunks. So I found myself… I think it was, give or take, because I get pretty determined when I’m taking something on this where I just want to finish it so bad. It was like three, four days.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Work days. So a good chunk of time, all in all, but 20-ish hours.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, it’s funny I’m the same way when it comes to writing or pretty much anything creative. I’m like, “I just want to do it all at once. I don’t want to do a little bit of it at a time.” Sometimes I wonder if that’s a result of my journalism training where I’m used to having to just write the story all at once, send it off, and then move on to the next thing.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

That could be. Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

So did you talk to recruiters in this process as you were generating this new content, updating the ATS angle to this? Were you talking to recruiters getting their input as you developed this?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

So I had talked to not in a extremely organized or structured fashion. That’s one of the things that I hope to do over the summer and fall, is to continue to show more people. As an example, I’m keeping track of who the top candidates were and gathering that data because students are always curious, “Who should I have chosen then?” And so as it continues, we’re working on some, especially with some of our recruiters that we have strong relationships with, to making sure that we’re continually, if something major changes about an ATS system, all right, here we go back to this 3.0 simulation. So we’ll continue on an ongoing basis to do that.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Speaking of the ATS part of this, I’m curious, I don’t know the behind the scenes of stuff of how an ATS works, but does your documentation explain to the students why a resume is scored the way that it’s scored, or do they just get the score?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, there is some documentation about how it functions. So on the front end of the activity, when we’re orienting them to how the ATS looks and what this huge table basically, how it functions, we’re explaining what the scoring considerations were. The big one is keywords on the resume that match the job description, so to what level were they able to do that? Does the formatting on the resume serve or hinder that keyword search? And so there’s one tricky resume in there that’s fabulous but doesn’t work as far as the ATS is concerned. The only students who go one by one and look at every resume, they’re only going to catch that person. They’re not going to catch it based on the score because there was functional errors with the formatting. So we do as much as we can, and we have some kind of external links so that they can dig further into that once they recognize the importance of the ATS, and it’s like, “Okay, now what am I going to do?”

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s true. It’s kind of the teaser.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah. Let me not just tell you how difficult this is, let me give you some tools now so that you can make sure that your resume is effectively serving the ATS system the way you need it to.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Oh, that’s fascinating. Yeah, that would work for me for sure if I felt the pain a little bit. I’d be like, “Okay, I need to go research why this is the way it is and how I use that to my advantage now.”

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Once you’ve seen it in action. Yep.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s pretty effective. Speaking of that, what are some of the results that you’ve seen since launching this new and improved version of the simulation?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, so in general, the activity as it’s existed in the past, because some of it is consistent from the past version to the new version, the students really love the interactivity, and they love the challenge. They’re like, “Game on, Cheryl, here we go.” And I love that. Again, that emotional, when you can evoke that just a little bit, I love to see that energy rise. And so in the group work, as surprising as it sounds, this is a place where I think that they can come together. Some group works is a little bit tough, but this is an hour and then you can leave. So group work in this context we’ve gotten really good feedback about.

The new version, especially with our career coaches, as I said, everyone shows a different person, and really loving the modernization because this is stuff that we’re teaching about ATS and about recorded interview processes and all of that. And so being able to really show the students those aspects really helps. So far it’s mostly subjective feedback and I’m working on collecting some real data as we continue with students in this academic year.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. I am curious, what have been some of those comments from students, if you can think of any off the top of your head?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Sure. It’s to some level what you would expect that they don’t realize how difficult this would be. They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll just choose a candidate. It’s no problem. Hiring is so exciting to be able to have this type of power,” but don’t realize how difficult the time constraint will be. And so they walk away having enjoyed the challenge, but also needing to process it for a bit after. And so there’s that aspect.

And then just generally, again, because the way it’s set up is ATS heavy, there’s personal aspects, did the student attend an event and have they gotten a referral and things of that nature. But we’re using tech for this for a reason to emphasize the ATS. So their takeaways usually are like, “Whoa, this is serious stuff that I need to figure out how to do,” and that’s perfectly okay with me. If I can emphasize the importance of something and then give them resources for them to explore and then engage later with their coach, then I think we’ve met the mark there.

Meredith Metsker:

Sure. Yeah. I’m sure it gives them lots of opportunities for some self-reflection on what they have done as a student and what they might look like as an applicant to a recruiter.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, it’s a good perspective to have and also humbling.

Meredith Metsker:

I bet.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

For sure. Which in my opinion, is like you could be humbled now in your preparation phase or humbled later, maybe both anyway, but we may as well educate you now on what this looks like.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, in a safe space.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Right, [inaudible 00:32:52] all is fine. We just want to inform your strategy so that it’s not too difficult when you really get into it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, so you’re not going in blind. That makes a lot of sense. So to confirm, the job description that these students are hiring for is an entry level, a first job out of college type of job?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Something like similar to what they would be applying for? Okay.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yep, yep. It’s modeled after a traditional leadership development program, but it’s a fake job description.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Interesting. You’ve touched on it a little bit, but what’s your vision? What are your future goals for this program?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

There are at least a few, but the main one at the moment, at least the one that comes to mind immediately is in the spirit of Career Everywhere, is wanting to spread this higher use simulation further in Wake Forest, hitting some of those pockets that we may not reach to the same level. I would love to train other coaches to be able to facilitate the activity for sure. Again, and that spread of knowledge. Let’s have every student partake in this activity. Why not? I would love to have an asynchronous version at some point. I’ve been playing around with that so that students at 2:00 A.M. can take themselves through a recruiting simulation if they so choose. And then the other piece is continuing to collect data and feedback as this is purposefully fluid because that’s how the system works. I don’t know, however many years ago, and I was not talking about ATS systems at all, and here I am. So wanting to continue to change, adjust to truly be in line with what the market is looking like.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So to clarify, right now, are you the only person that is facilitating this? You facilitate on your own?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

At this moment, yes. There are other people who have been facilitating in years past the version 1.0, and so far it’s been me with the 2.0.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Working on it.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a lot.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I have so much fun with it though. It’s barely even work.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s the sweet spot we’re all aiming for, right?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

So when you were talking earlier about wanting to get this in front of more students, maybe getting it into more classrooms, would that involve training faculty on how to facilitate this themselves?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I would be thrilled to do that for sure. Yeah. I’m a yes person, so if faculty, I’m like, “Yes, why not?” It’s not so complex where it’s not possible. And the way that the facilitation runs, it’s teachable to non-career coaches. So I would love to be able to do that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And theoretically, if they were that knowledgeable about the application hiring process that they could facilitate this, then maybe they could also work these concepts into the rest of their syllabus.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Absolutely. Right.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s a win-win.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yep, yep. I agree.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s cool. I’m excited to see what the future of this simulation holds for you all.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Absolutely. Yeah, me too.

Meredith Metsker:

Cheryl, you’ve already offered lots of great advice, but is there any other advice that you would give to career leaders who may want to launch a program similar to yours?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I think with anything that feels new or feels forward-thinking in any way, my advice is always set the time aside. It’s worth it to be able to do something new that feels exciting, that really might catch on in a really positive way for students and has great impact. And so the build out is time-consuming for sure, but it’s worth it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like that’s been the case for you for sure. I just thought of another question, but I’m just curious, do you have any favorite stories or memories from any of the groups that you facilitated? Any major lightbulb moments? Anything you’d want to share?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Oh gosh. There’s quite a few. I find a lot of amusement and joy in watching the small groups of students interact with each other. It also plays a lot into team dynamics. So it’s like there’s going to be the leader. There might be some more passive people and things. I remember a group specifically in one of the examples I used earlier of that there was a typo in a cover letter, and they could not get over the disagreement on this typo, otherwise, a great candidate because it’s designed in a way to be an obvious decision. This particular team spent a good 10 minutes, which is a long time, on this one candidate to decide whether they were going to agree with this typo.

I’ve had other groups where they actually split in two, and they’re like, “We really couldn’t come to a decision. So we as this group selected this candidate, and we as this group selected this other candidate.” I’m like, “All right, that’s really interesting. That’s not really how this works, but let’s talk about it.” So all of that, pulling things out as to how things can happen. Again, that bit of emotion that comes in that I am digging my heels and I am not going to be okay with typos ever, and other people that don’t care as much about it. So that particular one tends to have strong opinions.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, I bet. I’m sure there’s some people who are like, “Mistakes happen” and others who think, “This shows clearly a lack of respect for the job and the process, so why would we hire them?”

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yep, yep. You said you were journalism, right? So [inaudible 00:39:56].

Meredith Metsker:

So I would probably have some strong feelings on a typo making its way into a final resume.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair.

Meredith Metsker:

I am curious too, in the debrief, you mentioned that you talk about those biases that can crop up and how you might reflect on that and address those. How do you facilitate that part of the conversation? What kind of questions are you asking?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

So it starts out with a really general question, like did you find any trends in the candidates that you felt, I’ll say attracted to, but any candidates that you were drawn towards? Did you notice any trends? And they keep track of who their first five were and then who the two were, and then who their final was so that they can look back and see. And it does happen for some groups where they will end up with sort of a subset of their population, not that we have all the demographic information on each, right. Just like an ATS wouldn’t necessarily have that. So noticing trends is sort of the first safe question that we go into. And I think with students, at least in my experience, again, in creating the space and the vibe that we’re going for is most of them call themselves out. They’re like, “I really like athletes because I’m on the soccer team, and I just think that people are more motivated if they play sports.” I’m like, “Okay.”

And so it’s continuing to pull out those questions. So in that case, that one has actually happened where they’re like, “I’m going to pick people that play on sports teams.” And then it’s, “Do you think that there’s anybody that you would miss if you only took that approach” or, “Take a look back at this candidate real quick and tell me what your thoughts are on them.” And so it’s that taking the time to be deeper in their approach. With more time, I think we’d go even further. We talk a lot about name discrimination, so that’s always part of it.

The job description says some line like, “We are specifically inviting diverse candidates to apply.” And so hopefully they’ve picked up on that with the job description. This is what my company’s asking me to do. And so they’re like, “Cheryl, how am I supposed to know that besides creating judgment on their name?” And I’m like, “That’s a good question. Let’s talk about it.” And so we talk sometimes about blind ATS system and all of these other things that can exist. And some of the realities of the system. Again, in that let’s not go in blind. Sometimes name discrimination can happen. We shouldn’t pretend that it never will, because I’d rather you align your strategy with what will work. So some of those different things can come up in a really awesome way, sometimes tough conversations, but ones that I think need to be had.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. Again, just for introspection on their own part, and hopefully growing as a teammate or someone who’s going to be working in hopefully a diverse workplace, understanding some of those nuances. And also, again, like we were talking about earlier, developing that empathy for recruiters who have to manage these challenges and think about these things all day every day.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, it’s not an easy position.

Meredith Metsker:

No, no-

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Nothing else they understand that after the simulation.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah. I know just having this conversation with you and in our prep call, I’m just like, “Man, recruiters do a lot.”

Cheryl Rotyliano:

It’s true.

Meredith Metsker:

Kudos to any recruiters listening to this episode. We appreciate you. Okay, I want to be mindful of our time here, but Cheryl, is there anything else you would like to add before I start wrapping this up?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I think the only thing I would just invite anybody listening that if you have thoughts or feedback, as I said during this ever-evolving simulation, to feel free to reach out and let me know. I’ve collected a bunch of perspectives and I have not collected all of them. And so feel free,

Meredith Metsker:

I am sure you will have some folks take you up on that. I’m sitting over here like, “Cheryl needs to patent this program.”

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I have thought about it. I have considered this. I don’t know how to do that, but-

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, maybe there’ll be some demand for it.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. On that note, if folks would like to connect with you or learn more from you about this topic or anything else, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Either LinkedIn. I’m a career coach, I’m on there all the time, or my email is fine too. I’ll respond to both.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. And for those of you who are watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include links to Cheryl’s LinkedIn profile, and I’ll include her email in the show notes as well so you can easily find her on there. All right, so Cheryl, to wrap us up, I like to do this, answer a question, leave a question thing that I do at the end of every interview. So I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you will leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was Sarah Coburn of St. Lawrence University and she left this question for you. What day of the week would you be and why?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Okay. So I asked my husband this earlier when you sent me the question, luckily. So I’m glad you sent this to me in advance, this one. So I want to be Saturday or Sunday, but I’m not. My real answer is Thursday. I’m highly productive. It’s just how I function, so I’m not quite so serious, so as a Monday, Tuesday, but Thursday, you still have some fun inside, but you’re still getting the work done. So that’s my answer.

Meredith Metsker:

Thursday, I love it.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Not quite so serious as like Monday, Tuesday, but still [inaudible 00:46:53].

Meredith Metsker:

I would want to meet the person who says they’re a Monday. I’m curious.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

That would be fascinating.

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. What question would you like to leave for the next guest, Cheryl?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

So my colleagues over the last about 10 years will giggle at this if they watch this because they will have heard this before. It’s a question I ask in interviews a lot. And so my question is, what would you do if you found an in your backyard? That is the question.

Meredith Metsker:

Interesting.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

I have heard [inaudible 00:47:33] full spectrum of responses to that question.

Meredith Metsker:

I think I would take a picture first. After that, who do you call?

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, right. Somebody help me.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s awesome. I’m curious, why ask that one in interviews? Is it just to gauge people’s sense of humor or-

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Partially, yeah, to see how they respond to a question that they weren’t expecting. And the other thing is because there’s really not a proper right response. So you can see people who are trying to just appease with the right answers. You can see them trying to figure out, what am I supposed to say here? And then when they realize that there is no correct answer, they truly just say whatever they would’ve actually meant. So a personality question. I’ve heard call my mom, I’ve heard call animal control. I’ve heard like have all my friends over, so we can take a selfie with it. Across. the board.

Meredith Metsker:

Go find some peanuts.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Yeah, feed it.

Meredith Metsker:

Elephants like peanuts, right? I love that. I’m excited to hear the next guest’s answer to that one.

All right. Cheryl, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was a really fun conversation, so much practical knowledge. And again, for the folks who are watching or listening, I will be sure to include the screenshots, all of the resources that Cheryl mentioned, so you can start maybe thinking about how you might want to apply this at your campus. But anyway, yes, Cheryl, thank you so much. This was great.

Cheryl Rotyliano:

Sure, my pleasure.