Reaching out: Exploring the PPA’s new Good Hiring Code

While the benefits for media companies of having a diverse workforce are clear, just how to achieve this is a much longer conversation. To help publishers on their journey to creating more representative newsrooms, the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) this autumn released a Good Hiring Code to improve hiring across the sector, highlight best practice and provide practical resources for appointing teams and managers.

The extensive guide looks at inclusive recruitment strategies, the role AI plays in appointments, the tools needed for hiring managers, ways to enhance candidate experience and how to use candidate feedback to continuously improve hiring practices.

To celebrate National Inclusion Week, the PPA held a webinar recently to introduce and pour over the Good Hiring Code. Hosted by Sajeeda Merali, CEO of PPA, the online event saw a panel of experts explore the most pertinent issues when it comes to DEI as well as discussing the approaches businesses have taken to attract and retain the right talent.

How has your organisation adapted its recruitment strategies to be more inclusive?

Daniel Pearce, CEO, TTG Media: I think it’s important to say that we recognise this industry isn’t great in terms of hiring more diverse candidates. There is an issue, certainly on the journalist side, in terms of lack of diversity. That’s something we’ve recognised for a while and something others within our space in the travel media have recognised as well. We got together with three other parties (APL Media, Finn Partners and Intrepid Travel) over a year ago to launch a scheme aimed at encouraging interns from under-represented groups. We launched this scheme looking for primarily students, but anyone looking to get a break into travel media. We had over 100 applicants and this summer we had our first interns in place. It’s been a really positive exercise and we’re already discussing how we are going to build on the scheme in 2025.

Jessica Barclay, Head of People, Haymarket: Something that we’re particularly proud of at Haymarket is that, at the beginning of this year, we became Disability Confident Employer level 2 certified. What that means is that we offer an interview to any applicant that tells us they’re disabled and that meets the minimum requirements of the role. It’s had loads of advantages for us so far. We found that our own people are more likely to tell us that they are disabled, which has been a good outcome. We have absolutely attracted more disabled candidates to our roles, and we’ve hired more. So that’s really, really good.

Genevieve Miller, People & Culture Consultant, PPA: I think one group that is often overlooked through the lens of hiring are people that are from lower income households. I know that I’ve been guilty of that myself. For example, I organised a big remote assessment workshop a couple of years ago and made the assumption, wrongly, that everybody would have a laptop and of course, they didn’t. You can’t make those kind of assumptions – I think it’s dangerous. If you can pay interview expenses, which people don’t always want to ask for, that’s really sort of gold star best practice.

What tips do you have for employers when it comes to role design?

Ridhi Radia, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Immediate Media Co: We’ve looked at language in our job ads. We realised that, especially for our tech jobs, we were skewing towards male language. So, we made sure that our languages were gender neutral and culturally sensitive as well, and that was one of the first steps that really helped us become more inclusive. One of the other tips on role design is also to look at competency and skill-based requirements. Rather than a whole list of jargon, just focus on transferable skills. So, candidates from outside of publishing can look at how they’re transferring through industries to try and attract a more diverse group. One of the phrases we use in our job descriptions is: ‘It’s OK if you don’t meet 100% of what’s required. Please still apply if you if you feel like you can do the role.’ It’s all well and good getting diversity in, but how are we retaining them, how are we developing them? That’s really important as well.

Could you tell us a bit more about the importance of putting salary bands on job ads?

Genevieve Miller: Job seekers are demanding that transparency – that is the bottom line. And there’s so much evidence to back that up. Also, if there is a mismatch between what the candidate is expecting and what the role is able to pay you are potentially wasting a lot of time and resources with all the back and forth.

Ridhi Radia: We introduced salary bands about five years ago. One of the main reasons is reducing pay gaps and really creating that trust process from the very beginning with your candidate, and giving an equal opportunity for negotiation. Because there’s so much data that show women and people from underrepresented communities sell themselves short and don’t negotiate at the same level – so it gives everyone an equal opportunity. But there’s a big piece of work that needs to be done before you do that. And that’s internal benchmarking, because especially in publishing, there are so many similar job titles within different brands and different platforms that you work on. So, you really need to understand why a role is worth what it’s worth. And I think that actually helped with a lot of transparency internally and helped us benchmark internally. Now every time a job role goes out, we always have to make sure that we’ve benchmarked internally to make sure that there’s equitable pay throughout.

Jessica Barclay: We’ve got pretty robust benchmarking and evaluating checks. So, I think the problems that we thought we might have right at the beginning, we didn’t have and it’s been really useful. I definitely think that the number of people that have applied to us has increased because of that, because of that transparency. And, yes, there are groups of people that don’t negotiate to the same level and they’re selling themselves short and we’re making sure that we’re attracting those and again, reducing those salary gaps.

When it comes to job applications, how are candidates currently using AI?

Genevieve Miller: An estimated seven out of 10 are using it. AI is allowing candidates to tailor almost an artificially perfect application in terms of the cover letter and CV. A lot of candidates are even using it for online assessments. You’ve almost got AI talking to AI. The other thing that I think I found fairly shocking was that there are now platforms where the candidate can upload their CV and some details, and then the platform will actually auto apply for jobs while they’re asleep. So obviously all of this creates a huge screening headache. So, where we’ve come down to in the guide, having looked at all of the perspectives and at the employer’s perspective as well, is that candidates in this landscape are using AI and they will continue to use AI. You’re sort of swimming against the tide if you ask them not to. That’s probably not going to work. And it’s very hard to detect whether or not they have used it. So, our guidance is – acknowledge that they will use it but give them guidance. I think it’s about ultimately reassuring them that presenting their authentic selves is more important than a perfect application. And then I think, in fairness to the candidate, as an employer, you need to say how you are using AI to create efficiencies, keep the candidates up to date in a timely way and help screen the applications. You also need to stress that it will be humans who ultimately make hiring decisions.

Jessica Barclay: Fundamentally the type of people we’re going to be looking for are going to be people that also know how to utilise AI. We don’t want them to be writing our stories, pictures, etcetera using AI. I want them to rely on the expertise that they bring. But we do want people to utilise AI so that it can be as productive as possible. We’re also utilising AI to screen the CVs, so we have to be honest about that. But what we absolutely insist on at Haymarket – and this is a trial and error, I have to admit – is that we meet people face-to-face. Nobody gets appointed at Haymarket without being in one of our offices and sitting face-to-face with people that they’re going to work with.

Ridhi Radia: AI is the future. I don’t mind it. We want people to be using AI innovatively, be creative with it and try and get it to help your job. But, also, conversations are really important. Face-to-face is really important. Every final interview has to be face-to-face. And, also, base your questions on what they have done rather than just what they’re going to do. Because it’s easier to get AI answers from what they’re going to do, but actually base it on experience and of what they’ve done. I think AI is also helpful for people who don’t have English as their first language. It helps them with their CV writing, and to structure sentences.

Daniel Pearce: I think that’s a challenge when recruiting journalists. I don’t want to be recruiting journalists who are reliant on AI to do their jobs. And certainly, as recruiters, I think we need to be careful about the language we would be using. I don’t want to encourage the use of AI if I can avoid it. We had a really educative experience when we were recruiting for the step-up internship scheme. We had over 100 applications and I think one of the questions was, ‘Give us 500 words on how you want to develop your career as a travel journalist’. One of the candidates who we then interviewed face-to-face wrote the most beautiful prose. Unfortunately, when this person came into the room, they could barely speak English. The AI application had got them in the room and had wasted their time, had wasted our time and blocked another candidate from making that short list. We pasted the application into the AI checker, and it came out as 100% this has been done by AI. So that was a real learning experience for me and something I’m aware of now.