In this episode of Tech Talent Today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Juliette W. Samson, CIO and VP of Supply Chain at CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) – Food and Beverage. She’s responsible for implementing new technologies and optimizing the supply chain process to increase speed, service, and profitability. Juliette is a graduate of Cornell and Columbia Universities and speaks four languages. She is a determined mom who left no stone unturned when she had to find her daughter a kidney. You won’t want to miss Juliette’s amazing story of her journey of balancing her role as a mother with her journey into leadership in the technical world.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

• • • Juliette W. Samson’s journey to CIO [01:45]
    • Life as a female engineer in the 80s [07:07]
    • The importance of mentors [10:32]
    • Juliette’s move into the financial world [14:56]
    • Raising a family as a businesswoman [19:48]
    • Managing difficult times and a career [22:55]
    • Career advice for those in IT [30:33]

Women in science

Juliette W. Samson was born in Eastern Europe, where having women in science was normal. Both her parents were physicists. When they moved to America, her mother had difficulty finding a job because she was overqualified for almost anything available. For Juliette, it was natural to become an engineer. When she started her career at Western Electric in manufacturing, her male supervisor questioned her about why she became an engineer. Her response was to ask why he became an engineer. When he responded that it was because he liked it, she caught him off guard by saying she did as well!

Choosing the right place for your career

When Juliette started her career, she chose to join AT&T because it was large enough for her to move around and learn everything. The benefit of a large company is that it provides many opportunities to learn different things which will help you with future positions. Juliette emphasizes the advantage of understanding your goals early in your career. That’s a hard thing to do, but it’s worth taking the time to dwell on the future. This sort of planning allows you to map out how to get where you want to go.

While at AT&T, Juliette was thrown a curveball; the telecom industry had started to shrink. With two young children, her income needed to be dependable, so she needed to choose between staying in the same field or trying something different. She decided to go into IT because she felt it was a close match to the telecom industry. Also, no matter the company, IT will be necessary. While searching for IT positions, Juliette was interviewed by Merrill Lynch for a financial role. The interviewer was very interested in how she was going to manage the transition of industries. She said she’s managed quite a lot of issues in her life, both personal and professional, and there’s nothing she can’t do; she just needs a chance. She got the job and really enjoyed her position there. She continued in the role for a year when Pfizer asked her to join the company. Because of Pfizer’s impact in the community and the world, she accepted the offer.

Using your career to impact the world

Juliette has been a CIO for seven years, however, she didn’t set out in her career to acquire a title. Her goal was to utilize technology and enable processes that affect people’s jobs and lives positively. That’s why she became an engineer. She was particular in the roles that she accepted by choosing companies that positively impacted the world. She advises everyone to take the assignments no one wants. If you take something difficult, you’ll build your career while accomplishing things no one else could.

Juliette W. Samson emphasizes the advantage of understanding your goals early in your career #goals #career
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Resources & People Mentioned

• • • The gap at the top – Korn Ferry
    • Lafayette student receives a kidney from a stranger
    • Renewal.org

Connect with Juliette W. Samson

• • • On LinkedIn

Connect With Jodi Kulek Mayer

• • • https://clearmonttech.com/about/meet-the-team/
    • Follow Jodi on LinkedIn

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The post How One Woman Overcame Extreme Obstacles on the Path to CIO, with Juliette W. Samson, Ep #1 appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.

If you’re looking to attract more women to your workplace, you may want to take a good look at the benefits your company offers. Not just the standard health insurance and vacation days. Women in many instances are solely responsible for being the primary caretaker of the children or elderly parents in their family, while also managing a full-time job. Being able to ease this burden a bit will go a long way in attracting women to your company. So what does this look like?

Childcare Options

If you’ve followed the news recently, you’ve no doubt heard about the efforts of the female employees at Amazon to get onsite childcare included in their benefits. Amazon employees are on a campaign to get Jeff Bezos to offer onsite childcare, citing increased productivity from its current employees and an ability to attract and retain high-quality candidates in the future.

Taylor Soper, a writer for GeekWire.com shares, “Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet all offer backup daycare benefits. Starbucks began providing it this past October, citing a study from the National Survey of Children’s Health that showed 2 million working parents quitting their job in 2016 due to childcare issues.” Soper goes on to say, “They could point to examples such as Patagonia, which has an on-site childcare center and in 2016 saw a 100 percent retention rate for women who had children over the previous five years.”

Onsite childcare is not the only option to consider. Some employers are opting to contribute to childcare costs or offer backup childcare for times when their childcare provider may be sick, or they need alternate care.

Why Is this Necessary?

If your company does not currently offer childcare options, you could be eliminating an entire pool of candidates right off the bat, as more and more companies increase their benefits in these areas. Most of the companies listed in the Working Mother’s 100 Best Companies, list childcare benefits, including more paid leave options and backup childcare as standard benefits.

Katheryn Reynolds Lewis, a writer for Working Mothers.com, goes on to say in an article about caring for special needs kids, “Employers are looking for other ways to support their workforce’s caregiving needs—and differentiate themselves in the war for talent. More and more, this means benefits for children with autism and other special needs, as well as programs for older school-age children. Of this year’s 100 Best Companies, 94 percent provide emotional-support counseling for teens and tweens, 88 percent offer support for treating employees’ children with autism, 63 percent facilitate college coaching, 41 percent have tutoring services, and 25 percent give employees a homework hotline. While there’s a fee for some of these, others are free.”

It’s becoming clear that to stay competitive in attracting new talent, companies need to step up their game and offer the best benefits packages possible to mothers and caregivers. Childcare costs are a major source of stress for mothers, with the national average for in-home childcare being $28, 354 and $8,589 for in-center care, as reported by The 2016 Care Index. These costs are even higher for those living in major metropolitan areas. Julia Beck with the Harvard Business Review points out that, “…NYC, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. These are the very same cities where employers struggle to recruit and maintain skilled talent.”

If your company is not providing any benefits specific to mothers, it would be worth looking at what some of these other companies are doing and finding ways to incorporate some of their practices into your company culture, if for no other reason than to remain competitive when recruiting.

The post How to Attract More Women to Your Tech Team appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.

But the only way it could possibly work is if the hiring manager forms his or her own preconceptions about the candidate prior to the interview. And if someone on your staff is taking mental shortcuts in their candidate evaluations, your organization is likely missing out on some of the best hires on the market.

Here’s how confirmation bias can creep into your hiring process – and how to fight it.

Confirmation confusion
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to confirm ideas we suspect to be true. After all, that’s how science works: by forming a hypothesis and then testing it. But problems start to creep in when we allow our favorite hypothesis to shape our view of the results.

Say, for example, that your hiring manager believes any candidate who went to a certain university is automatically well-suited for your company culture. That might be true – but it’s most likely not; and that belief is going to exclude a whole lot of qualified candidates before they even get a chance at an interview.

This is an extreme example, of course. But the same principle subtly influences many of us, whether we’re aware of it or not. Any time a decision maker assigns extra weight to evidence that confirms their preconceptions, while discounting evidence that goes against those assumptions, they’re likely to miss out on some great opportunities.

The pitfalls of bias
The most obvious downside of confirmation bias is that it’s unfair to candidates. For example, if the hiring manager believes that confident candidates are always best for the job, the client with the strongest eye contact and firmest handshake will be the most likely to “qualify” on this basis – never mind the stellar portfolios presented by many of the other applicants.

Confirmation bias can also influence hiring decisions in less obvious ways. If a certain hiring manager believes that (for example) an Oracle database certification is more meaningful than one from IBM, then any candidate who’s failed to obtain that specific certification will be less likely to make a positive impression, regardless of their actual expertise in that area.

Preconceptions like these can seriously limit your organization’s talent pool. Even worse, these kinds of biases can disqualify candidates who’d bring innovative perspectives to departments that desperately need new thinking. In short, confirmation bias may be eliminating the very candidates your organization needs most.

How to fight it
It’s not always easy to see confirmation bias, especially in oneself. One helpful technique can be to simply write down a short list of factors you believe are most important in a candidate – and have your hiring manager do the same. Check one another’s lists carefully, keeping an eye out for any qualifiers that aren’t particularly relevant to the job and its skillset. And make a conscious, verbal commitment to set those biases aside during the hiring process.

In the interview itself, make sure you give the candidate time to make a case for the benefits they can bring your business. Set aside the outdated belief that you can “size up any candidate in five seconds,” and be aware that first impressions may not always be accurate. Some candidates may simply be nervous to meet you, or may not be sure where to begin. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and focus on their portfolio rather than on their handshake.

The more you’re able to recognize confirmation bias at work in yourself and your hiring team, and take steps to counteract it, the more likely you’ll be to hire candidates who actually fit your business’s needs. Invest a bit of time in rooting out this bias, and your new clarity will pay dividends for years to come.

The post How to Fight Confirmation Bias in Your Hiring Process appeared first on Clearmont Technologies.