How Cisco is finding 18% more qualified candidates and filling roles a week faster

Cisco’s Michael Krupa joins Textio CEO Kieran Snyder to chat about “diverse talent accelerators” in the Cisco hiring strategy

Kieran Snyder: I’m here at HR Tech, with Michael Krupa, Senior Director at the Office of Inclusion and Collaboration at Cisco, one of our partners at Textio. What’s the most exciting kind of product contribution that you have been able to lead, at Cisco?

Michael Krupa: We have a suite of solutions, of which Textio is part of that suite of solutions we’re calling diverse talent accelerators. One, I think, that’s probably the most interesting is one that we built internally, where we take external market data on where to find diverse talent in the market, and we bring that in-house.

We create maps, to visualize that, and then we marry that with our Cisco diversity data. So, a senior leader can see at any time, “Am I above the baseline share, and I’m doing good? Or am I below the baseline share?” So, we’re really bringing data, actionable fact-based data, to the conversation.

Kieran Snyder: You mentioned Textio is part of this suite. How does Textio fit in with what you’re doing at Cisco, overall?

Michael Krupa: We did a pilot, I believe, in Textio, before I arrived a year ago.

Kieran Snyder: Yep, right before you joined.

Michael Krupa: And the recruiters loved using the tool. So, we came back around again, and said “Let’s actually do an enterprise rollout.” They’re all very excited. We just had our kickoff with the recruiting managers, this week, so everyone is really excited. People are already using it. Word has gotten out that it’s available, before we’ve officially launched it.

Kieran Snyder: That’s what happens!

Michael Krupa: We’ve got single sign-on in place, so people are like, the URL is leaked. So, they’re out using it.

Kieran Snyder: Not a well-kept secret.

Michael Krupa: It’s not, and that’s totally fine. That’s totally fine with us.

Kieran Snyder: What kind of results did you see in the initial pilot, that led you to the enterprise rollout?

Michael Krupa: The initial pilot was great, to get some of our reqs through the system. What we were seeing was we started out with a Textio score of 43.

Kieran Snyder: Out of 100.

Michael Krupa: Out of 100, so maybe not the best score to start with. But it’s such an easy tool to use. I think, really, anybody can use it. We had the recruiters going in and making changes, and we got up to an 80. Again, still would like to get—

Kieran Snyder: Get to that 90!

Michael Krupa: Our goal is a 90. And then, what we also saw, based on the results of that, that we were able to fill a week quicker, in filling those roles.

Kieran Snyder: That’s pretty good, given your average starting point was something like seven weeks.

Michael Krupa: Yeah.

Kieran Snyder: I know we also saw that when you had those gendered phrases in balance, you significantly increased the number of qualified people you saw. Something like 18%, from men and women both.

Michael Krupa: And I think that’s really important. Like I said, in the tech industry, it’s both hard to get candidates, and hard to get qualified candidates. So, these are some really good gains for us, that we’re seeing. We’re hoping to replicate that when we go the full enterprise rollout.

Kieran Snyder: Now!

Michael Krupa: It’ll be quite big!