Serilda Summers-McGee, Founder and CEO of Workplace Change

How I Hire

Serilda Summers-McGee is a workforce development and human resources expert. She is the Founder of Workplace Change, where she works with clients as Chief Human Resources Officer to assess culture, resolve workplace challenges, and recruit and retain underrepresented executives and staff in inclusive, positive, and high functioning work environments.

Before starting Workplace Change, Serilda was the Chief Human Resources Officer for the City of Portland, and has worked with clients like Wieden + Kennedy, the Portland Trail Blazers, Kaiser Permanente, the Oregon Department of Education, and many others. She believes in fostering cultures that accept people for who they are and empower them to thrive. Her book, Change the WorkGame: Building and Sustaining a Diverse Workforce, goes into depth about how to accomplish this and more.

Highlights from our conversation include:
-Serilda’s approach to working with clients (3:33)
-Defining diversity, equity, inclusion, and transparency (5:33)
-Why many hiring managers fail to find and hire diverse candidates (8:33)
-The various biases that come up in the workplace (9:31)
-How sexism, racism, classism, and elitism play into hiring decisions (13:12)
-What it means to be ready for workplace change (14:23)
-How to be more successful in recruiting and retaining diverse talent (18:35)
-The importance of asking why you want more diversity in your organization (21:29)
-Why you should start by diversifying your network (24:21)
-What an inclusive selection process looks like (25:32)
-How to create a more inclusive culture (29:30)
-What role human resources should play (33:59)
-Why change requires leadership to act (34:59)
-Serilda’s strategy for hiring (35:38)
Her predictions about the future of work (38:00)

Visit HowIHire.com for transcripts and more on this episode.

Follow Roy Notowitz and Noto Group Executive Search on LinkedIn for updates and featured career opportunities.