Data as Healthy Friction

Iraj Samuel, Talent Partner at Accurx:

Thank you for having me. My name’s Iraj. I’m a talent partner at Accurx. And today I want to talk to you about something that sounds a bit backwards: using data as healthy friction.

Now, before I ever worked with reports or dashboards for a living, I was a self-declared math kid, and that’s where these lessons have really come from. Using something that I always loved and learning how to put it into work. So the headline before I get into it is three real moments from my time at Accurx where data got in the way, but in a good way. Let me walk you through it.

So honest confession, early on in my career, my instinct was always to lead with emotion. I’d go with my gut. It felt fast and it felt human, but it wasn’t always right. And funny enough, this is that same math kid. And back then I always loved numbers, but it was numbers for its own sake. No stories attached, no one to use them on. What’s changed since then isn’t my love for numbers specifically, but it’s understanding how to use it on people and not just problems.

And that takes me into my first lesson: data forces you to prepare. So I’m going to take you back to 2022 when I joined Accurx. I was working on a role, and the candidates I was speaking to just didn’t feel senior enough. But again, this was a gut feeling. And what I kind of said to myself is I felt like the salary offering was just too low at the time.

So I went to the hiring manager and said exactly that. No real data, just a feeling, and it didn’t land. And from that point I got frustrated. So I went and vented to my mentor and manager at the time, Rachel, and she gave me really simple advice to not just approach with problems, but always understand how you can propose with solutions.

I went back to the drawing board and I created a really basic report on how I could compare all of the stronger candidates I was speaking to and what their expectations were, and how that definitely was a lot higher than what we were offering at the time. And since then, that was the easy part. It got people to listen, and I really started to understand the power of data. It’s not approaching with less emotion, but better prepared emotion.

My first example of where data really forced me to prepare is something I like to call the calibration gap. Now, at Accurx, we conclude every hiring process with a values or cultural focus interview, and it’s always hosted by a member of our executive team. And as a talent team, we early on started to feel like some interviewers were a bit stricter and some a bit warmer. It was a real kind of tactic to learn. But again, this was all a gut feeling.

From there, the first thing I wanted to do was look at the data. And I looked at a really basic pass through report, and you could see there was a good panel average of about seventy-five percent, but it was really clear that one person stood out. Half of the candidates that they were speaking to were being turned away, and they were working on some of our more junior roles, so it felt like an easy narrative to approach, but I didn’t want to individually target that person.

Next, I tried to go into a bit more data and understand how people were being scored throughout this process. But I started preparing, not with a script, but with empathy. I thought, “What are some of the challenges that they might say to me?” Or maybe everyone else is green-lighting candidates, and they were the only one doing the role filtering. And like I said, I thought there’s a bit more work we can do here.

So I created a feedback calibration map using Ashby’s templates, and this is where you could really see the power of the numbers. So using this, I was able to speak to that individual, and being able to visualize their individual metrics alongside the rest of the team is really what helped it land. And from there, the conversation was, “Where are we misaligning as a team? But also, how can we pick your brain to understand what your expectations are?” And that was just ensuring that the conversation wasn’t, “You are the problem,” but it was, “How can we align?”

Onto my second lesson. You can’t influence with inaccurate data. Now, nothing that I’m about to talk to you about today matters if the data is wrong. The second a stakeholder sees a bad number or inconsistent metrics, the conversation’s over before it’s even began.

Now, at Accurx, we created an Ashby chart, and my job is not to police anyone, but really understanding how as a team can we force habits instead of one-off actions with how we handle data. So I printed it out, I got every member, including myself, of the talent team to sign it and it sits by our desks day by day.

And my process in approaching this was creating Ashby reports with alerts and doing the occasional Slack nudge message when I saw something that just didn’t really make sense. But now, the entire team are individually proactive about ensuring our data is kept up to date and consistent as possible. And a line that always sticks with me is that accuracy shouldn’t be seen as admin, that it truly is the influence, the power of influence.

And that brings me to my next example, the waiting game, and this one’s about speed, or maybe the lack of it. So I was working on a specific role, and we had candidates waiting in a specific stage. No communication, no action, several plus days waiting. You can kind of relate it to a striker who’s just sitting in a box receiving no service from their wingers, like Harry Kane.

So I built up a lot of frustration in this moment and I thought to myself, “It feels so, but how can I really prove it?” So I focused on three different areas. For this specific role, I wanted to look at the average time that candidates were waiting in that stage. Our scorecard SLAs and where this role was really performing alongside the rest of the company. And last but not least, the candidate withdrawal rates. And as you can see, all of them were staggering.

So from there, I vented again to my manager and CPO at this time, and it was a verbal conversation, but I had the numbers at hand. And the point I tried to get across was, “This is being communicated as an urgent role, but not being treated like one.” And I left it to them because they’re more senior than me to drive it in a leadership meeting with some stakeholders who were involved in this hiring process. And really quickly we started to see some change. Scorecards were being submitted quicker, stages were being scoped properly, and momentum overall increased. Now at Accurx, one of our principles is moving with urgency, and this was a great example where data really turned a value from something that we say into something that we do.

Now, onto my final lesson. Accessible data can change behavior. Now, this is Chloe, our chief people officer at Accurx, or as I like to call her, CP. It’s super fitting. And Chloe’s actually in the room with us right now, and I was pressured to make her stand up, but I won’t do that to you.

This example is how accessible data really changed Chloe’s behavior in hiring. And previously, Chloe would go to myself or the rest of the team if she needed a specific metric that really stood out to her. And this meant she was waiting on us consistently, and it was data that should have just been there in the first place. So this example is called chasing down the data.

Now, this wasn’t just Chloe waiting for us. This had a ripple effect on the executive members and board members who also were reliant on Chloe for that data. And there was a moment in time where Chloe came to me, and she said, “Iraj, can you get me a list of metrics and reports that I find interesting? Time to hire, time in process, your basics.” But I thought we could take it up a little notch.

So I did some research to understand how can we best balance organizational-wide reporting but also have that opportunity to go into granular-level detail. And here’s what that looked like. I created a personalized dashboard for Chloe, and she had the opportunity to filter by teams and departments, look into hiring performances across hiring managers and the recruiters like myself, and do all of this within specific periods of time.

And now, Chloe entirely owns this dashboard. So she gathers reports, and she presents it to the board and exec members. And if she spots any inefficiencies or things that just don’t look right, she challenges it. And till today, Chloe still does not allow me to touch this dashboard at all. And that’s something that I wouldn’t call self-serving, but Chloe doing the healthy friction part herself.

So a few things before I close off. What data fluency has unlocked for me, in my short career, I’ve now the opportunity to sit in headcount planning and talk with finance about proposals for the future of hiring at Accurx. I’ve also, on many occasions, had the opportunity to be the point of contact for external TA suppliers and really proving return on investment when it comes to hiring. And last but not least, like today, I have the opportunity to give back to the wider talent acquisition community.

So before you go, if there’s one thing I’d love you to pull from this, it’s that the next time data feels like friction or is making you slow down and prepare, or you’re having that uncomfortable conversation that you’ve been avoiding, that’s usually the point. And that’s how data got in my way in a good way, and it can do the same for you. Thank you.