Inclusive Recruiting: What Gen Z & Remote Work Means for Hiring

Welcome! Today we're sharing insights from Oana Iordachescu, former Senior TA Leader at Wayfair, Zalando & Criteo, on three critical challenges facing modern teams.

Some of the initiatives directly impact recruiting and others fall into the wider context we’ll be recruiting within in 2025 and beyond, most of which feel like they’re only going to get more important.

If you’d like to hear the full interview, it’s available on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

1. Latest Inclusive Recruiting Practices

Current Challenge: More tooling, automation and new processes can inadvertently create new barriers for diverse candidates.

Practical Steps

1. Take the Harvard Implicit Association Test for self-awareness:

Question your tech vendors about:

• How their matching algorithms work

• Potential biases in their systems

• Impact on diverse candidates

• False positive rates for AI screening

2. Train all decision-makers, not just recruiters:

• Hiring managers

• Interviewers

• Leadership team

• Anyone involved in selection

3. Focus on candidate experience:

• Review your application process

• Monitor for unintended barriers

• Get feedback from diverse candidate groups

Oana's key message: For all these areas, organisations need "a mix between training and awareness, tooling usage, and then self-management and self-growth."

2. Generational Teams

The Challenge: 60% of workers report generational conflict. Up to five generations now work together with different communication preferences having the potential to cause friction.

Practical Solutions

• Cross-mentoring between age groups and domains (e.g. 45+ with 20-something colleagues)

• Support multiple communication channels (older generations might prefer calls, younger might prefer text)

• Study how different generations complete the same tasks

• Build bridges rather than forcing change - "You can't necessarily make everybody flip their whole style"

3. Cross-Cultural Communication

The Challenge: Global teams often struggle with different communication styles and cultural norms.

Practical Solutions

1. Create a "cultural cheat sheet" during onboarding covering:

• How people greet each other

• How to establish rapport

• Feedback preferences by culture

• Communication norms

2. Establish clear communication rituals:

• Decide between written vs verbal updates

• Set clear processes for sharing ideas

• Define how decisions are made

• Document these expectations

Oana’s top tip: “Small efforts go a long way as first steps, making the effort is the most important thing”

Interested in learning more?

✅ That's it for this week! We hope these practical tips help you improve inclusivity in your recruitment process. Please reply to this email with any feedback - we'd love to hear it.

💜 If you’re interested in learning more from TA leaders, check out PURPL. We have courses on DEI + ALL other areas of operational talent acquisition within a single subscription.