How can companies reduce bias in the hiring process?

Within Kraft Heinz, it really started by acknowledging that there are inherent biases in the hiring process. A lot of people claim that there aren’t, but you just need to realistically look at it and for us we said, ‘yes, they are definitely there’. Once we all established that we had those biases and articulated what they were, we build in what we call smart checks and controls to actively counter biases.

We don’t necessarily believe in having a quota on certain biases, for instance, the number of women in a firm or the number of people from a certain ethnicity, but we do believe in creating these active checks and controls.

For instance, we more actively use profiling when we hire, recognizing, for instance, that the current Kraft Heinz population might be very blue/reddish with a lot of analytical hard drivers, while for the direction we’re going as a business, we need more creativity, organisers and harmonisers - so the more yellow and green type of people. As such, we’re actively including that in our evaluation of people, countering your own bias, because obviously a red person will be more attracted to a red person in the hiring process.

Second, in every hiring process, we’re including cross-functional interviewers, meaning someone who has nothing to do with the role/team for which we’re hiring, to make sure that we are not biased because we really want to fill a role. In this way, we have someone objectively evaluating the true fit. As such, when we are looking for a Finance person, someone from, for instance, Supply Chain would also talk to the person.

As our last counter towards biases in the hiring process, we are actively trying to make the inflow of candidates in the hiring process a fair representation of society. If, in theory, the inflow of candidates is 90% male, it is not that weird that the output of the process (i.e. people being hired) is also 90% male. What we are now more actively doing is making sure we get our inflow from different sources. Think of, for instance, building partnerships with student associations that are more connected to different ethnicities. The key is to understand that most companies focus on bias in the hiring process (i.e. the evaluation and selection of candidates), though focusing on your inflow in the hiring process is as important.

How does your company work to retain high potential employees?

The thing that Kraft Heinz does differently compared to other companies is offering good career perspective. Not that others don’t offer career perspective, but Kraft Heinz has a unique aspect in offering employees non-restricted career dreams, regardless to where an employee currently stands.

What I personally like about this is that you can literally go in every career direction, zigzag to wherever you want to be. Our HR lead was originally a marketeer, our MD originally managed the field sales, and one of our European Heads of Category used to be a Finance person. Basically, meaning that wherever you want to go, Kraft Heinz will support you. If you start off as a Finance person and suddenly decide you want to do Marketing, you can go to Marketing, although you have never done Marketing in your life. At Kraft Heinz, we believe more in having certain capabilities, rather than having certain experience, when being assessed for a role.

That particularly makes Kraft Heinz unique and, when combining this with our active talent management, it creates strong career perspective. We try to talk ambitions and career planning very actively with our people. If you show your talents that they can become whatever they aspire and we’re going to help you to work towards that, that really gives talents perspective. You need to give talents perspective, so they know they’re going somewhere. 

Second, we are really focusing on the belonging to a certain BU [business unit] to make sure everybody’s engaged and understands what they are doing in contribution to the journey we’re going as a BU in whatever direction that is, so they have a certain sense of belonging.

I do really think that’s super unique, Darren; I really don’t hear that very often about being able to go in any direction you want, more focused on the ability as opposed to ‘have you done it before?’ and I guess you are already seeing the benefits of that, giving people the opportunity to move to other areas, and you will see the retention in staff I assume?

Definitely, there are two elements. You really see people that enjoy working within Kraft Heinz and are highly talented remaining with us and growing fast, though at the same time we are also a highly demanding organisation. It is also the case that certain people after an x amount of years say, ‘okay, I enjoyed my time doing this, but I want something different now, so I’m leaving’. I personally think you also need to accept that consequence of the way you build your company, in the sense that if you want to create a certain DNA within your organisation, it will mean that not everyone will fit forever. Retention is an important topic for us, where we try to work hard on retaining the people that fit your company, but you won’t be able to retain everyone if you strive for a certain DNA within your company.

What advice would you offer to someone moving to the Netherlands?

First of all, my advice would be, do it. I think the Netherlands is a good place for expats. First and foremost because everybody speaks English, which helps communication wise. Besides, I find Dutch people very open; it is a country that is very open to different cultures, and people are willing to connect and engage if you show that willingness to them. So do it, that’s the first advice I would give.

Second advice is taking advantage of the typical directness of Dutch people. Dutch people are known for being very direct in their communication, which sometimes can be experienced as harsh. Though, at the same time, that also opens up the door for the counterpart to be very direct to them and that is a very unique style in working together, which can be very effective. There is a lot to learn from that way of working, so although on the one hand it can be very offensive to experience for the first time, it can also be a very valuable experience in leadership.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you are at?

Let’s start at the beginning of my career. I graduated, interviewed multiple companies in the Netherlands, but then I decided I wanted to go abroad and, more specifically, wanted to work in the US region. At the same time, my girlfriend wanted to move to the Caribbean. In the end, I moved to the Caribbean without having a job. I had a lot of conversations in the Netherlands, so I could have easily gone for a very good job, but decided I was going for a change. Eventually, within two months, I got a job, and started at EY being part of the US zone, which set me up to do a couple of years’ consultancy, giving me a very broad experience in running business and business management.

Every step in my career I’ve not really planned for it, but I just have a lot of confidence that if I will make a move, I eventually will get where I want to be. That is, for me, one of the risks that I have taken. Is there any other angle you are looking for, because there is risk in everything, there can also be risk in decision-making, what we’re doing, etc.?

Obviously, it’s an incredibly open question and I think that’s a great example of really pushing outside your comfort zone, and having confidence in yourself that it will work out and that you will get what you want out of it.

For somebody at your level, you’ve got to where you are relatively quickly - I hope you agree with me. I’m a little bit intrigued because to have the title and the responsibilities you have, it would probably usually take a lot of people longer and I just wondered if there was anything there that you might have done differently that made you where you are now?

I don’t often speak about it, I don’t like saying, ‘yes, it went fast’, because I think everybody develops in their own career at their own pace. But the difference here is that every time when I was considering something in my career or was talking about a move, I was very explicit about what I wanted in my career, and as soon as I got an opportunity, I would go all in. It’s the confidence that I know I will get there that helped me to grow very fast.

As humans, we have a tendency to be a bit risk averse and doubt at the moment we get an opportunity; I barely doubt when I get opportunities, I just have confidence. As long as it suits my passion and what I like to do, I go for it and take on the challenge, while being humble and acknowledging I need to work hard to make my next role a success. That attitude helped me in my career progression so far.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

Determine what you want and go for it. That’s something applicable to everyone, not necessarily only for leaders. Be in the driving seat of what you want. More specifically for leaders, my advice is, understand and acknowledge that leadership in itself is a craft. I didn’t realise that too much when I started in my career. You can become very good in any technical function or area of expertise, but leadership is an expertise in itself and you need to play an active role in mastering that domain of leadership. This means you need to learn it, you need to invest in it, you need to talk to people, you need to get your experiences and, most of all, try to actively be aware of what is required to be a leader.

I think that’s the most important advice, because you will see, in the first couple of years in your career, it is more about your proactive mindset, the way you spot opportunities and go for it. But the higher you come within an organization, the less functionally involved you’re going to be. It’s going to be more about strategic discussions and about leading people, and I think on that part we often forget that leadership is not something that is just there, you need to actively develop it.

Who is the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

I split this one in two. For me, first when you talk about business, the type of profiles that inspire me are, for instance, Elon Musk. If you talk about visioning, if you talk about belief, that is what this guy is all about. Jeff Bezos for me is the same type of guy. What makes them special is that they dare to focus on the real long-run over the short-term, especially when being pressed by external factors as a consequence of being on Wall Street and stuff like that. It is very impressive that they are able to hold on to that vision, go for it, go against all current and eventually build a super big business out of it.

That for me is very impressive. It’s like they’re almost a couple of years ahead of us, thinking about not what’s happening now, but living almost five years in the future, so they understand where we need to be as an organization in the future and move towards it. For me, those guys, when you talk about risk profiling, daring to do something, be confident in what you’re able to do, those are very good examples.

On leadership, which is the second element of inspirational people, I find Simon Sinek very inspiring. The way he looks at leadership and just the constant flow of one-liners that that guy shoots, always being very accurate and very true, is very impressive in every element. He said, ‘leadership is not a licence to do less, it’s a responsibility to do more’. It’s all centred around what do I do as a leader, and how do I drive, really creating the purpose in an organization.

Another interesting one for me is the CEO of Alibaba, Jack Ma Yun, I find the guy very impressive. Not often known for it, but he always said that he built his business on the motto of only trying to find smarter people around me and making sure that these people make his job as easy as possible. He is not often known and quoted for that, but that spirit of, if you want to be a good leader, don’t try to be the best, just try to have the best people around you, I find that very inspiring.

We actually encourage our candidates to read Start with Why by Simon Sinek, as it’s an awesome way of looking at things for sure.

While we continue to face the realities of COVID-19, how have you seen your approach to Finance?

It’s a good question and there are two elements. First, from the business-orientated side, which is not only Finance, it stressed the need for agility, which was a journey we were already on in fast moving consumer goods. The changes are picking up, the trends are becoming more influential, so there was already a need to become more agile, and for me, COVID just accelerated it. For instance, in Finance, when talking about practical decisions on where to invest, due to COVID, food service was going to be locked down for the next x months, while retail was going to boom. So we decided to completely take all our investments from food service and push everything on retail. Those are very disruptive changes to make, because obviously you have contracts, you have marketing plans, you have people investing in there, but it shows that if you’re agile, you will profit in the long-run from those decisions. From a business side, this was my key learning and one we still are trying to apply every day, the way you approach innovations, the way you test and learn on your strategy, I think COVID was showing us once more how fast the world can turn 180 degrees and what you need to do as a business.

The second way COVID affected us as a company was through its impact on people. I have not seen something before that was so influential on people’s energy level and mental stability in my life. In the sense that people all of a sudden realised how important it is to have connections and how those connections are a very important part in our day-to-day business, although we never actually talk about it or recognise it in that way. For me, when talking about leadership, it showed the importance once more of being close to your people, making extra effort for them, which goes in very simple terms as just meeting up one-on-one in person, making sure within the team they have the cross-functional check-ins, making sure you have coffee chats with people outside of your own direct lines. Very simple things, but the effort you make in ensuring that people remain connected and the importance you give to relationships among co-workers can have a big impact on someone’s mental health and happiness. This was once more highlighted to me due to COVID.

Thank you to Darren for speaking with our Director - Finance, Hannah Mallia.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.