How enabling change is the key to ad sales diversity

It’s easy to talk about increasing diversity in the workforce, but at big organizations only deep systemic changes can have a direct impact.

At Paramount Advertising, we want to make our organization a more welcoming professional destination to a diverse talent pool. So we started by analyzing how we hire our ad sales people, and how we work to uncover where our ways of operating were limiting or exclusionary. We recognized that the key to enabling change was to overhaul our process for hiring and retaining ad sales talent. 

Our organization’s goal is to reflect the demographics of the United States. Diversifying our workforce isn’t only the right thing to do, but also has been proven repeatedly to be good business. It enables us to understand, reflect and serve our clients and our audiences better. 

Our company and content represent the most diverse audiences in premium video. We create content that speaks to cultures broader than any other group of creative networks, and we have for years. Our ad sales department needs to reflect that diversity, so we should be in meetings looking, sounding and feeling like our audiences more than we currently do. 

A new approach to entry-level hiring

In our team, we felt our entry-level position was our best opportunity to create the most impact. To that end, we created the Paramount Ad Sales Associate program. Twice a year we hire a cohort of 30 or more in a program designed to teach our newest employees the entire media business over their first 18 months with us. 

To widen the scope of applicants and reimagine our recruiting approach for the program, we distinguished between must-have skills and nice-to-have skills. Ultimately, we eliminated random requirement thresholds that we felt were poor indicators of the capabilities we wanted in salespeople. We also explored new ways to discover and vet talent beyond the traditional college campus visits and internal referrals, which can exploit biases. We asked ourselves if we should depend only on college admission teams and GPAs driven by multichoice testing.

Behavioral science

To help achieve balanced hiring, we partnered with Paramount’s human resources, people analytics and talent-acquisition departments to screen applicants with a behavioral science tool called Pymetrics. A Pymetrics application, taken before a first interview, assesses personality and behavioral traits based on the profiles of our most successful employees to see if someone is a match for a role. We’re constantly improving the assessment to remove existing bias.  

Lastly, we realized that media companies have been resting on their reputations for a bit too long. Our entry-level salary made it possible for only the most affluent applicants to survive in expensive cities like New York and Los Angeles, so we raised the starting salary significantly to make the positions accessible to far more applicants. 

Results

Since launching the program in June 2021 in New York, we have hired three cohorts in total, including expansion to Los Angeles and Chicago, nearly 100 hires in a year. 

The results have been exceptional, seeing an increase in BIPOC hiring of more than 200%. The Sales Associate Program has also saved time and money by increasing retention and reducing attrition and has also had a demonstrable impact on the engagement of employees.

Joaquim Jose, an ad sales associate hired through the program in June, said, “Paramount hosts an amazing open-door policy where you can talk to anybody you want about their projects, their visions and their roles." We highlighted Jose on our LinkedIn page as part of a larger campaign to celebrate the diversity of our employees and inspire others to work with us. 

Inclusion and retention

The work doesn't end with the hire. Fostering inclusion in the workplace is important and necessary. To help address this we created The Advisor Network, a mentoring program for the entire ad sales organization to help entry-level employees grow and excel. The program provides an outlet for sales associates to connect with someone outside of their reporting structure, perhaps from a similar culture or background, who can offer advice and share knowledge about their own corporate experience.

Jo Ann Ross was the first woman to serve as head of ad sales for a broadcast network at CBS— and is the longest-running ad sales exec in TV. As a trailblazer in the industry, Ross knows first-hand how important it is to get people into the industry who previously didn’t have a place.

“I couldn't be more proud of this initiative,” Ross said. “I have seen the value of investing in the next generation of leaders, and it’s not only good for our culture, but it's also good for our business.”

Long-term impact

Over the past couple of years, there’s been an industry-wide conversation about media companies renewing commitments to implementing change in their workforce to better reflect multicultural audiences and consumers. At Paramount Advertising, we’ve gone beyond checking the box with symbolic gestures and have moved the conversation from awareness to action through a strategic plan of innovation. 

While our team is proud of our work, we recognize there is much more to do and will continue disrupting the system to create best practices and next practices that achieve long-lasting impact.