Summary:

Lily Mittman, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at the Morning Brew, shares insights on attracting and retaining elite talent. She emphasizes the importance of having a strong employer brand and engaging with diverse communities to cast a wide net for talent. Morning Brew focuses on creating an inclusive and fun work environment, offering perks and benefits that appeal to young professionals. They also prioritize career growth and provide mentorship opportunities for employees. Listening to employee feedback through engagement surveys helps shape their retention strategies.

Key Takeaways:

Building a strong employer brand is crucial for attracting elite talent.

Engaging with diverse communities helps cast a wide net for talent.

Creating an inclusive and fun work environment contributes to employee retention.

Offering perks and benefits that appeal to young professionals is important.

Providing career growth opportunities and mentorship programs helps retain talent.

Chapters:

0:03:09 Game-changing realization: strong brand loyalty attracts talent

0:05:42 Strategies for casting a wide net in diverse communities

0:08:05 Robust interview process with diverse interview panels

0:09:17 Focus on company culture and inclusivity to retain talent

0:12:14 Defining career growth and trajectories for employees.

0:16:26 Strong employer brand and community engagement attract elite talent.

0:17:49 Listening to employee feedback and acting on it is crucial for retention.

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Lily Mittman: Thank you so much for having me.

CheeTung Leong: So I'm doing a really bad job of selling the Morning Brew. Could you tell us a little bit more about what it does and what you do at the Morning Brew?

And here we are seven, almost eight years later. So our flagship newsletter is something that we have a lot of brand loyalty to. We have over 4 million subscribers. That get our newsletter at 6 a. m. or before 6 a. m. And it just is like short blurbs on what's going on in the news.

And really since then we've taken off into the direction of a media company. We have several other B2B publications. We have podcasts, we have video content huge social media following. And that's where we are today.

CheeTung Leong: I want to specifically call out the HR brew for our listeners. If you haven't subscribed already, like this is the time guys, like what are you waiting for?

And I love Lily, how you refer to the readership as young professionals. Thank you. I haven't been called that in a while.

Lily Mittman: The big bulk of my job description, I'd say is hiring elite talent to join one of our various teams here at Morning Brew. Some of that includes our reporters and editors who actually obviously create the content for our newsletters. But as I mentioned, we have podcasts and video content and social media. So as you can imagine, there's a lot of folks that that we need for those teams.

We've people on product. We've obviously finance people. We've a huge sales team. Which is how we can keep growing and growing but outside of just hiring, I do some stuff on talent management and specifically how to retain elite talent and partner up with some of the other folks on the HR side to do compensation analysis again, which is a huge part of making sure that we're equitable and we're to market and I I sit on the people ops team.

CheeTung Leong: You guys have quite a wide variety of different type of talent. So tell us a little bit more about any kind of game changing realizations you've had around both attracting and retaining any talent.

Lily Mittman: Attracting, I would say the first part of it, which I obviously can't take too much credit for myself, is having really strong brand loyalty.

But in addition to that, I think that also helps retain people as well. I think people are really happy when they feel like there was a lot of representation.

Talk me through a little bit about how you go about doing that.

Lily Mittman: We try to immerse ourselves in some of these communities, and obviously you can't get join a a network that you're not necessarily represented in but we partner up with them as, as far as adding our jobs to their job boards and supplying content to their websites so that, again, that's just some brand recognition.

So we, have partnerships with, I think every year we pick about four or so diversity networks where we are utilizing their platform by posting our jobs, creating content getting involved in any sort of like virtual events or hiring events or job fairs a lot of them have Slack channels that we try to engage with their talent there.

CheeTung Leong: I think you've gotten through to engaging with those communities. Once you get them through the interview process, is there anything specific that you guys do to ensure as little bias as possible in that process?

Lily Mittman: We implemented interview standardization last year, so every person that is interviewed gets these, is evaluated on the same criteria there's obviously a little box to say for anything that's specific about the candidate and do you recommend them to move forward, but as far as what are our employees are asking on interviews and what they're how they're providing feedback.

But what we're asking is, do we feel like they'd be a fit based on our core values? So not just, do you like them? Could, you imagine getting a drink with them after work? So that's been really helpful for us. And I think that what, I think what's really cool about that as well is that it's really guided some of our younger employees on how to conduct interviews as well.

So I think that there's been a lesson as well for some of our more junior folks here at the company that may just be interviewing for their first time.

CheeTung Leong: And beyond the interview questions, is there a way that there are multiple people that are providing their input to minimize individual biases? And then is there anything special that you guys do through the offer and onboarding process as well?

Lily Mittman: So we always have a pretty robust interview schedule, I would say I would say at the very minimum and maybe even for just a really junior role they're meeting about three people at a very minimum.

We hope, and again we try to do this organically, but we hope our interview panels are diverse, which again shows anyone that we're interviewing what it might be like to work here at Morning Brew, which is another good point. Some of our content that we put out, we, we really try to give a full, rounded picture of what it is like to work in Morning Brew, because I do think again, you can do everything right in the interview process but people want to know, Are they going to feel included?

Are they going to feel like there's a sense of belonging once they join the team?

CheeTung Leong: And now you've done all the hard work to bring these guys into the organization. How do you go about retaining them, making them feel engaged? Having them work well together as teams of very diverse people.

A, is it fun? Because, again, as I mentioned, this we cater towards young professionals, so as you can imagine those are the types of people that like to work here. So A, is it going to be fun? B once people are here, do they feel that there's a sense of inclusivity and belonging?

So one of the things that we've done is create ERGs. We have, I believe, five or six of them. And there's no pressure to join, it's optional, but for those looking to find other folks like themselves here there is a, place to go and in addition to that, we have a culture club, we do a lot of really awesome lunch and learns where we're hearing different people speak about their experiences, whether it's just in life or in the workplace.

We had a ton of people that, that joined. So we just try to find really fun ways of incorporating all the different types of folks that we may or may not have here. And even if we don't just we may down the line or just giving our company a really good idea of Sort of the different diversities that are out there and how to help make people feel included.

Lily Mittman: We actually just have a really great group of people that are excited to come to work and are excited about the product. So I don't think we get a lot of that in like in the middle of the day or interfering with people's work. But we do have it's certainly not every week but we do try to have regular opportunities for people to socialize together.

Whether it's just something small in the office after business hours or A bigger event that people can take part of. We've done things in the past like like field day, for example, so it's not necessarily going to a bar or having drinks at the office. We try to really have a, again, a pretty well rounded rounded options for how people can get involved.

CheeTung Leong: On top of these random moments of fun, it sounds like the Morning Brew also pays a lot of attention to defining career ladders, growth trajectories, and internal transfers for individuals. Tell me a little bit more about how you guys think about that and how you match that with the career aspirations of each individual employee.

Obviously people are excited about the fun when it comes to Morning Brew, but everybody wants to know that there is growth opportunity for them. And that's something that we're really excited about as well. And, one thing that we. Have done this year, especially is we've done a bunch of internal transfers.

So it was something that we do engagement surveys twice a year. And one thing that we had heard about in the last engagement survey is that people were wondering do we promote that would they be jeopardizing their position by letting us know that they were interested in another position here at the company?

And I, do believe that also helps with retaining our employees that we really love here.

CheeTung Leong: You did mention the Employee Engagement Survey, so you do that twice a year as a means of listening and you also we also discussed a little bit about mentorships previously, so how do you guys go about doing this in a way that is not forced?

Lily Mittman: It's tough. And in general, just about everything other than certain federal regulated trainings or surveys is optional. So we don't really force anybody into anything that they're not excited to do.

One of those things is ERGs. We don't force anybody into joining. We don't force anybody to be a part of the culture club. We don't force anybody to go to the Lunch and Learns. We really want people to be there because they want to be there. But one thing another thing that we had learned from the engagement surveys was that people were interested in a mentorship program.

Perhaps the more senior mentors could provide some direction and mentorship to the younger folks of a how to navigate difficult conversations at work. That was a really big topic. How to negotiate. That's a really big topic. And just generally, like, how do you feel the company's doing?

What do you hear about? In your conversations, since, of course, the more senior people are having conversations with more senior people in the company. So that, that's been a, that was a fun program that we had this summer. We did it, it was just, I think, three months. And it, and again, I'm sure people that felt like maybe there wasn't chemistry with their mentor, but it was really up to the mentee to set the cadence of how often maybe they would meet and come prepared with questions as well. So it's really them leading the conversation.

The other one was having, I guess related to that, is the diversity, not just of, the individuals that you work with, but also just the kind of programs that you have available to you. How would you describe all of this and condense it into some kind of framework or takeaway for the listeners?

So one of the things we do is we have our benefits and perks in our job description. So we let people know up front. This is what it's like to work here. These are some of the awesome perks that we have. And and we intentionally try to make ours really unique so that people may feel that's a something that may make them lean towards Morning Brew versus another opportunity if they're in that position.

DEI is a huge one. Not just obviously signing up for all of these networks and slack channels and going to job fairs, but really engaging with the communities. And again, that sort of helps with your employer brand as well. It makes people excited to apply to your jobs. So that's on the on the attracting side.

That's how we heard people wanted mentorship programs. We ask them how often do they want to have lunch and learns? How often do they want to hear from Folks from some protected classes and what their experiences are like So I think it's just about listening to your employees and just trying to really deliver on that.

CheeTung Leong: Excellent So you've shared a lot today and I'm sure our listeners are gonna have lots of questions to follow up on what you've said. So if they wanted to find you, what's the best way for them to do

Lily Mittman: you can find me on LinkedIn, Lily Mittman. I am the only one at Morning Brew so you could find me there.

And if you're interested in checking out Morning Brew's content we have a really awesome TikTok. We have awesome Instagram content. So I would send you in that direction. We have some really fun creators. That's something that's unique to us. That I would look for and follow and get to know us a little bit and hopefully sign up for our newsletter.

CheeTung Leong: Thank you so much, Lily. Thank you so much for hanging with us today. And for those of you who are listening, I hope you've enjoyed the show.