Diversity in Action - leboncoin x The Allyance
💖 The purpose of The Allyance is to help both companies and candidates: companies wanting to reach excellence in hiring and candidates wanting to find the perfect companies.
➡️ Let’s meet Emmanuelle Pierre and understand how The Allyance delivered 2 training sessions , about Diversity Sourcing and Unconscious Biases at leboncoin.
__ __ __🔗 DIVERSITY IN ACTION N°7
EMMANUELLE PIERRE
__ __ __Who are you? Tell us everything!
🙂 My name is Emmanuelle Pierre, I am 32 years old and I have been a Talent Acquisition Specialist at leboncoin for a bit more than 2 years.
👗 I graduated with a Master’s Degree in fashion, haute couture, ready-to-wear and luxury. For 6 years, I worked in fashion and luxury in London, and became weary of this sector: too much lies and pollution ☢️
That is when I decided to switch to HR and recruitment. To ensure a smooth transition, I first worked in a ready-to-wear company and then landed in leboncoin. I completely fell in love with the company and its values.
About my DEI journey, I’ve always felt concerned by equality in the workplace, especially women’s position in society.
On the personal side, I am a social animal: I love meeting new people and listening to what they have to say about their lives. HR is definitely the best job for someone like me!
We made sure Emmanuelle was ✅ with us sharing this gif from Little Britain.
Is Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) an important topic at Leboncoin?
✨ DEI is super important at leboncoin! As we’re a 15-year-old tech company, we did not feel the need to address these topics at the beginning. We already had a lot of diversity in our teams, a flat hierarchy and the strong will not to recruit clones. With time, we understood what was a stake and DEI became a huge topic for the Management.
When I started at leboncoin, Pauline Barnouin, now Head of HR at Phénix, was my manager. As we were both quite involved in these topics, we decided to create a committee called “Femmes dans le Numérique” (“Women in the Digital Sector”) within leboncoin. This committee is composed of 13 volunteers, all from different departments (tech, product, sales, communication, finance…) who gather twice a year to talk about the actions that were conducted and the ones they want to make happen.
🌈 Today, there are several topics we would like to address. First, we have an active Disability Program, supported by our CEO, Antoine Jouteau. We make sure to onboard people with disabilities and offer them the best work environment possible. Then, of course, we would like to keep on working about making a difference for women in tech. In a more global aspect, AdeVinta is already addressing many diversity topics, notably LGBTQ+ topics. A lot of colleagues at leboncoin like Guillaume are enthusiastic and motivated to take part in these projects, which is good news!
These topics recently became strategic for companies and candidates. We want to make sure we’re addressing them right, so everyone could imagine themselves joining leboncoin.
How do you make sure leboncoin is an inclusive workplace?
🔊 Our values - commitment, creativity, pragmatism and proximity - at Leboncoin are strong, and we truly want to convey them to our employees so they can embody them on a daily basis. As HR teams, it is our role to ensure a caring work environment where everyone immediately feels confident and included. Everything in their career at leboncoin, from beginning to end, must be inclusive. That is why we value soft skills more than expertise and work experience. We do think that recruiting someone nice is better than choosing someone quite competent but whose personality we’re having doubts about.
About concrete actions, our managers are quite often trained on unconscious biases, inclusive recruitment… This allows us to remind everyone that the Management is definitely onboard with these topics and that they won’t accept any discrimination within leboncoin. That way, we are taking the Management values to the teams, and that works perfectly! The employees are very committed and willing to set up new projects.
👏🏿 Right now, we’re about to sign a charter about Gender Equality and have an active one about Disability, so everyone can feel legitimate in applying to leboncoin.
Discover the Disability charter at leboncoin here.
How did you hear about The Allyance?
✔️ I first heard about Caroline from someone at Criteo. A bit later, when I was studying DEI, I saw a post on LinkedIn about her activity, so I contacted her!
How did you collaborate with The Allyance?
Our collaboration started in December 2020. Caroline instantly suggested that we had a videoconference together. I immediately felt connected to her background and thanks to her very personal approach. We discussed what we at leboncoin had already set up and what our next objectives were, i.e. training our HR teams about DEI.
💻 Caroline then conducted two training sessions (unfortunately in videoconference due to the pandemic):
A 2-hour long training for the entire HR team (HR Managers and Recruitment teams) where she dissected all unconscious biases in recruitment;
A 1-hour long session for the Recruitment team with recommendations on how to do inclusive hires via diversity sourcing techniques.
What I really like about Caroline is her experience in recruitment, but also her openness and availability to answer our questions.
🦄 As of today, the different teams are still using the tools and methods she introduced during these training sessions! Both sessions were critically acclaimed by the participants. They all appreciated her practical approach and the opportunity to truly interact.
In December2020, Caroline from The Allyance led 2 trainings at leboncoin.
We recently had a nice interview with Guillaume, how is he doing?
💝 Well, he’s doing fine and still going all the way with diversity and inclusion topics! He is very supportive with my committee and keeps getting onboard with new topics as LGBTQI+.
I really like that he’s tech-oriented, full of good ideas, passionate and utterly involved in these matters. He is truly an ally within AdeVinta’s group.
According to you, why do companies have a hard time hiring people from underrepresented groups?
I think it is a mix of several things.
📜 First, some companies are not ready to go outside their comfort zones and existing social patterns. They still recruit based on the schools their directors attended. Some others even create “salary groups” depending on the schools candidates attended. This typical French practice perpetuates discrimination. At leboncoin, we’re more interested in who you are than what you did, and I’m convinced that it is the right way to recruit.
This obsession with schools and diplomas breeds a lot of baseless prejudices about people: a woman will one day be pregnant and have children, a person from a diametrically opposed background or with disabilities will not adapt… This is clearly hindering diverse and inclusive recruitment, and this has to stop.
Thankfully , HR teams are increasingly aware of this. Recently, we were invited by Ubisoft, alongside Netflix and Google to talk about DEI. We insisted on the fact that we’re not perfect and that there is still room for improvement, that we’re eager to share knowledge and good practices. Some companies just lack modesty, thinking they’re already at the top. I would not recommend this kind of attitude: DEI is clearly a topic prone to constant improvement and competition is not the right angle. We should keep on sharing and learning from one another.
How do you convince someone to join leboncoin?
🔎 I am not sure “convincing” is the right word. At leboncoin, we do not want to convince someone to work with us or somewhere else: it is more about presenting things as they are to see if people agree or not. If not, then they should work someplace else!
We want to stay authentic and true to our values: people should feel welcome in a caring environment, find a good balance, autonomy and motivation in their daily tasks. We’re all about smooth communication with our colleagues: in addition to paying a salary, we also offer values and cohesion.
To me, all of this means that people who work here also came for the company culture and environment, the possibility to grow and learn. At leboncoin, we are constantly looking for professional and personal evolution, which comes with a good sense of freedom, and that is what leboncoin tries to give to its employees.
Why would you recommend other companies to work with The Allyance?
💝 Absolutely, and that is why I wanted to do this interview! I loved the human experience with Caroline. She’s supporting, understanding and that gave me full confidence in her.
I was convinced that she would perfectly understand our HR issues and therefore bring added value. And she did! Everyone, whatever their level of sensitivity to DEI, always tells me how interesting her training sessions were. Now, some even talk to me about the biases in their recruitment process!
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CONCLUSION
A few words from Caroline, The Allyance CEO:
“Working with leboncoin and Emmanuelle will remain an awesome memory. I was really surprised by the level of committed displayed by the HR team members. During the trainings, they really wanted to understand how they could apply the techniques I introduced to their recruitment objectives. Since then, I know they changed the way they do things and feel proud about having been able to help them!”
✔️ Want more?
If you are interested in knowing more about The Allyance trainings, feel free to get in touch with us.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ✒️ Léa C, The Allyance Contributor:
“I joined The Allyance after Caroline and I met at a ionnalee’s concert! I am a freelance translator and content writer (French, English, Spanish and German). I also work as an administrative employee in the health and data science sector. So, I am not far from Caroline’s core topic! I am very active as a volunteer in social and environmental NGOs, where I always try to put intersectionality at the center of actions because I am convinced that every cause is linked to one another. It is readily apparent that Caroline and I share a lot of common interests, which is why we as friends decided to work together!”