CareerXroads

CareerXroads


S4 E66 | eXpert Tease: Gender neutral pronouns and job stories with Kay Kelison

November 20, 2020

Announcer 0:00Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We're glad you're here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:16Hi, everybody, Chris Hoyt here from career crossroads, I am bringing you into the fold on a new podcast videocast series that we've been delivering for, I guess just about two months now. Now, I get to take on the lucky task of sitting down with an industry leader and a practitioner and ask them to share just one thing. One thing that they've learned on their professional journey felt as a leader or that they do in their everyday delivery that really makes them successful. Now, these talks are really no more than about 10 or 15 minutes. And as such, we call them an eXpert Tease. Now you can listen in live and participate with questions and chat, or you can find them on our website at CXR dot works or CareerXroads podcasts or on the youtube.com/careerxroads channel, I'm going to tell you if you're watching live, you realize there's never been a better time to dial in because I apparently look like a pumpkin with the lighting and a remote situation today. So that's a good excuse to push you out. push you out to the YouTube channel and check that out. So if you are with us live, you've got the opportunity to drop a question in the session chat. And if we've time, we'll try to address them during that segment. If we run out of time or there are follow up questions, we'll take that conversation over to the open and public exchange that is hosted by csr. And that's at CXR.work/talenttalks now, the topic today is one that I have been looking forward to for quite a while it touches on a subject of DNI that I think oftentimes gets overlooked that actually sits within an area of talent acquisition that's so often gets ignored or avoided when we're talking about job descriptions and being conscious of how important gender neutral pronouns can be when creating a successful description, as our guest today recommends job stories, not description. So let's jump in today. My guest is Kay Kelison and she is the principal researcher at Zillow. Okay, welcome to the show.

Kay Kelison, Zillow 2:05Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here, Chris. I appreciate it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:10I'm really, really happy to have you.

Kay Kelison, Zillow 2:12Great.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:14I enjoy your work. But when you when you talk about gender neutral pronouns, in job stories, what are you really talking about? Why is this so important?

Kay Kelison, Zillow 2:24Well, I think it's important because if we choose certain terms, we eliminate others, we need to think about who to include. And that goes with females, transgender disability folks and stuff like that. And so I look at the job story about how we engage with them, and how we make them feel welcome. And and thought of, you know, in when we're seeking talent, and I think it begins with the job story, or did job descriptions, and how we engage with them by using language that they can relate to?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:09And what is what's something like that look like? Kay, like, what would be sort of a before and after example, for those who this might be kind of a new, new topic for them?

Kay Kelison, Zillow 3:17Well, I think, I think sometimes it starts with the title. Like I've seen some titles that have chair, Chairman, when we should be saying chairperson, you know, when we say he or her, we should be also thinking about them. And they, you know, it's inclusive. Some people don't identifies she and her, or he and him. They identify themselves of them and they. Sometimes it's also as simple as elitist. And affinity bias. You know, I know some of us when we're in tech, we talk about, like, how people associate their jobs, or they're looking for talent. and hire manager might say, start talking about,