Live from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Julie Sowash, executive director of Disability Solutions, braved Chad & Cheese’s snark-fest to talk AI ethics, hiring underdogs, and why “data transparency” isn’t just corporate jargon. Julie dropped recruitment wisdom about balancing tech with actual human connection (wild concept, right?) while reminding companies that “diversity commitments” aren't seasonal trends like pumpkin spice lattes.
She also dished on HR's 2024 reality: market consolidation’s crushing vibe and why DEI needs more than a LinkedIn post. Through it all, she stayed real, passionate, and even threw in some love for her co-hosting hubby, Chad — proving that even in HR, romance isn’t completely dead.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
0:00:00.0 Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
[music]
0:00:25.2 Joel: Who are you and why are you here today?
0:00:27.2 Julie Sowash: My name is Julie Sowash. I'm the executive director and co-founder of Disability Solutions. I'm here because I am presenting tomorrow on ethical considerations in AI, on Friday after everybody has an awesome time tonight. And yeah, just a lot of learning, making great connections, got to participate in the RL100 yesterday, which was really fantastic. The inaugural US event tonight, it was great.
0:00:55.1 Chad: So, looking forward, what advice would you have to your peers in the next 12 months?
0:01:03.3 Julie Sowash: I think it's really two things. And they're the same two things I say every time and that's because things like at their base level don't change, right? Recruiting is not rocket science. I know we like to pretend that it is, but it's not. It's human-human connection, it's using technology efficiently, and it's using our data to know what we need to get done. And what's working and what's not working. And so every single time I meet with senior TA leaders, senior HR leaders, I get really intimidated when it starts because I think, oh my God, these guys are gonna have it all together. It's gonna be the one that makes me look like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Inevitably, every time that we still don't have the basics, and the basics is the data. And so, that's really the first thing. And I think the other thing is trying to be a little bit more proactive and less reactive to the environment around them, right. I mean, we've got to go like COVID, George Floyd, we had this really kind of resurgence into the humanity of the world, into how we're gonna make hiring more balanced. We're gonna bring in diverse talent. We're going to do all of these things and talk a lot of talk.
0:02:21.8 Chad: Shit, yeah.
0:02:23.9 Julie Sowash: And then conveniently, as the winds change, companies use that as an opportunity to retract. And I know there's pressure in the market and I know I am very protective and very covetous of my brand. I built it. It's my baby. I understand. But it's sheer weakness to see these Fortune 100, Fortune 1000 brands pull back because they're scared of a little political change. You're in or you're out, right? And it's okay if you're out. Just be who you are. Don't try to pretend that you're into DEI. Don't try to pretend that now you're not into DEI because the political winds change.
0:03:09.8 Julie Sowash: Be true to who your organization and your culture are because it's like it's whiplash for the job seeker. And it's this fake hope that companies give that fake like illusion of hope that we're finally going to get pay right? That we're finally going to build our pipeline so that it's black, brown, LGBTQ, and disabled. And then you just pull the sheet right out from under our feet again and we start over.
0:03:37.3 Joel: So you are presenting tomorrow. Is some of this the focus or some of it sounds like AI in recruiting and bias around that? What's the focus?
0:03:46.4 Julie Sowash: So I think that I'm generally optimistic about AI for our community and the diversity community in general, just because we are having good conversations. I'm actually pleased at the maturity of the conversations that we're seeing at this event, online, and in other places. And so I get to present with FairNow and we're gonna talk about why it's important? What are some of the key components of ethical considerations in AI? Why it's important to underrepresented communities like mine? And then how do we make sure that once we get that in the seat and we get that in place, that we can actually start to move in the right direction and make sure that we're continuously moving in the right direction?
0:04:34.7 Julie Sowash: I'm excited about conversations around synthetic data sets, greater transparency, real time data. And I think the biggest thing that I've heard kind of and I'll say knee jerk again, but that's probably not the right word is companies going, we cannot use AI because there's too much risk because our data is not clean. The reality is that it's not possible to have clean data right now. You have to have tools, partners, and data to drive in what is gonna be a better data set. And we have a starting point and we move incrementally forward. And there's nothing wrong with moving incrementally forward instead of just saying, I can't do this because it might create risk for myself or my company. We need to be excited about what the future holds with AI and really have good governance and good behaviors out of the gate so that we know that we're doing the right thing and that we're using the technology and the data properly.
0:05:34.7 Chad: So looking backward...
0:05:37.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah.
0:05:38.0 Chad: 2024...
0:05:37.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah.
0:05:38.7 Chad: What surprised you the most about 2024?
0:05:42.6 Julie Sowash: I think it's been the constriction in the market. The labor market is incredibly strong. The US economy is incredibly strong. And I think that we're starting to see some attempts to consolidate parts of the HR tech market. And that's a little bit what's driving layoffs. It's what's driving margins down. It's what's driving budgets down. And it's not really as realistic to the actual market itself, as in the COVID money is kind of drying up. And now we're making decisions that we should have been planning for a lot earlier. And some companies are looking again how to raise profits by squeezing out middlemen and other people in the market. And sort of the dismay, I guess. It's like it's January and I'm hearing, hey, the market's gone to hell. Everything is a mess.
0:06:35.8 Julie Sowash: There's 10 million open jobs in the US. We have the lowest inflation in the world. Nothing was bad, right? But we talk ourselves into these panics because we haven't built and thought proactively to what the market's gonna look like in 18 months or 30 months. And that's really what I would love to like see HR leaders do better, right? How do we talk to our C-suite? And you and I got to talk about this yesterday with the RL100 is if you know that you need more money, you need to make a business case for how that money's gonna get to you. You can't just go to, hey, let's build a great EVP and a great career site. We don't need other marketing dollars. We don't need other attraction dollars. That's not, that's not right.
0:07:19.6 Julie Sowash: And so we end up selling ourselves short instead of saying we need multi-touch attribution, we need multiple channels to get in-front of the talent that we need, and we need to be doing it regularly because hiring is gonna ebb and flow. That's part of it. And so we really need our TA leaders and our HR leaders to think more holistically, and further down the timeline than right now.
0:07:42.4 Joel: Yeah. I know that you live this every day, the diversity question, the inclusion question, and it sounds to me like you're, you're creating a picture of the mental hurdle is hard for companies to get over, but I would guess that a lot of companies want to be inclusive. They want to attract a wider net of folks, but maybe don't know how to do it. For those folks that are looking for tactical examples or success stories, what do you tell them to get to that place?
0:08:11.9 Julie Sowash: Yeah. Again, I mean, it's not rocket science. You have the numbers in your database, you know where your candidates are falling out. You don't need to for me to bring you a Pepsi, right? Who we've helped hire 4,000 people with disabilities. You don't need to see that. What you need to do is spend the time and your data and really be thoughtful about your funnel, and then go through it and see where there are opportunities and know that there's not always gonna be an opportunity to hit the metric you want, but we need to be moving forward incrementally because this is a lifetime's worth of work. That's what I tell my team every single day, is we have to figure out how to keep moving the needle, even though the needle's never gonna move as fast as we want it to.
0:08:58.4 Chad: So 2025, looking forward, what is your number one priority?
0:09:04.3 Julie Sowash: My number one priority is continuing to push DEI belonging and not letting it go, because some people are uncomfortable with it, not letting it go because it's not the hot, sexy thing to do right now. This is our job, right? This as DEI professionals is my job to always be the broken wheel, right? To always be pushing because as long as underrepresented communities are not well represented in the C-suite and the leadership and the TA departments, we're never going to get to equity. So, I'm just gonna keep pushing the envelope, making some people mad and saying that brands need to be true to who they are and not try to play this back and forth game.
0:09:46.8 Joel: So the big question is, what's the best thing about being married to Chad Sowash?
0:09:51.8 Julie Sowash: Have you seen him? Case closed.
0:09:53.0 Joel: [0:09:54.8] ____ Oh that.
[laughter]
0:09:55.8 Chad: Thanks. Appreciate you stopping by.
0:10:00.7 Julie Sowash: Is that not what I was supposed to say?
[laughter]
0:10:03.5 Chad: That was perfect. That was perfect. If somebody wants to connect with you for professional reasons, where would you send them?
0:10:10.7 Julie Sowash: LinkedIn. Julie Sowash. You can find me there. All the socials. Also, disabilitytalent.org.
0:10:18.6 Joel: Thanks For hanging out for a little bit, Julie. Enjoy the rest of your day.
0:10:21.6 Julie Sowash: Thanks guys.
0:10:22.6 Chad: Thanks.
0:10:23.3 Podcast Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded it to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuggle heads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.
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