Heather Durgin is chief of staff at the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), a division within the Pentagon’s sprawling operation tasked with furthering the US military’s understanding and use of artificial intelligence. The JAIC was established in 2018, and Durgin has been in charge of beefing up the department’s personnel since May 2021, which means scouring the labor market and competing for talent with the foremost names in the tech industry.

Compared with private-sector tech companies, the JAIC is an outlier in the AI space, which, according to Durgin, means recruitment efforts have to be creative to stay competitive. HR Brew recently spoke to Durgin about her recruitment strategy and why AI might not be a substitute for human connections in the hunt for promising hires.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Can you walk me through what it’s like to cast a wider net for your recruitment efforts that encompasses candidates who don’t have government experience? That is a very, very hard problem. And it is not because we don’t have the talent out there. Our biggest struggle as the Department of Defense is that we struggle being competitive in the market right now.

We’re targeting the exact same demographics that these tech companies are targeting. And we’re capped at what we can pay our employees by Congress. So we have to compete based on our mission. And so when you have a mission, then you have people who are dedicated. They know that when they’re coming to work, they are solving very important problems, and that the things that they do every single day really, really matter and are going to have a long-term continuous impact on society as a whole.

And so that is the one area that sets us aside from everyone else that’s going after this top-notch talent. And so you have to be really creative, and you have to understand this is what we have to offer people. I can’t offer you $300,000 or $400,000 a year, but I can offer you a purpose. I can offer you a reason to come to work every day. I can offer you the ability to change the face of warfare.

Can you elaborate more specifically on how the department is changing or plans to change the face of warfare? Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

With more than 11 million open jobs across the US, recruiters face the challenge of not only getting the right people to apply for open roles, but also figuring out what “right” means for their organization. Mileage may vary, it seems.

While some recruiters are getting creative in their search for talent by enlisting the help of TikTok stars like Charli D’Amelio, job seekers with disabilities are still frequently left out of the recruiting process. People with disabilities in the US continue to be unemployed at a rate that’s nearly twice as high as their non-disabled peers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One way HR departments can begin to change that, according to one accessibility expert, is to write better job descriptions that include and encourage job seekers with disabilities to apply.

Simple change, big difference. Ted Drake, the global accessibility leader at Intuit, told HR Brew there are some simple work adjustments employers can make to attract more candidates with disabilities that go beyond just checking qualification boxes.

Drake recalls noticing a potential barrier in a job description for a tax expert he was recruiting. “The job description said that they must have excellent verbal and written communication,” Drake said. “But that didn’t cover all the people that were doing the work that were not on camera. So the simple change was adding options, so it was excellent written and/or verbal communication.”

Drake said that for another open role, Intuit decided to remove the college-degree requirement, instead requiring some college and real work experience because people with disabilities are less likely to have a college education than non-disabled people. “It’s just being more open. Not locking down your job descriptions,” Drake said.

Barriers to application. Job seekers with disabilities and advocates say job descriptions featuring language that discourages them from applying are all too common. According to the Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN), a network that helps employers recruit workers with disabilities, “an effective job description will describe what needs to be done, not how the applicant needs to do it.”

EARN provides several examples of common job requirements that disqualify people with disabilities. For example, a reporter position requiring someone to lift at least 25 lbs and sit for up to eight hours, as detailed in a HuffPost article, could unfairly exclude many applicants with disabilities. While these descriptors may describe the job, perhaps the person doesn’t need to physically sit for the entirety of the job, but does need to be at a job station for an extended period of time or be able to move easily around the premises.

The bottom line. Drake urges HR leaders to think about and include people with disabilities as they’re developing a job posting and suggests recruiters remember the mantra used throughout the disability rights movement: “Nothing about us without us.”—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

One of the many responsibilities of most HR departments is to be on the lookout for, and hopefully prevent, any kind of workplace discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces several federal laws prohibiting discrimination at work, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

However, firing or otherwise unfairly treating employees for being overweight is an insidious form of discrimination that isn’t clearly prohibited by any federal laws, and Bloomberg reports that in most parts of the US, people can, in fact, be discriminated against due to their weight (exceptions include the state of Michigan and a few cities, like San Francisco). The article, by labor reporter Josh Eidelson, details how limiting societal norms of acceptable weight has permitted a culture of discrimination against overweight workers that one disability-rights advocate described to Bloomberg as “endemic” in the US.

Despite research that Eidelson cites indicating that many obese people are healthy, overweight workers still face discrimination. One cable installer told Bloomberg he got “risky weight-loss surgery” in order to return to his job after his employer ordered him to lose 100 pounds.

It could be possible for workplace wellness programs to surreptitiously monitor workers’ weight through various wearables. As Liz Brown, an associate professor of law and taxation at Bentley University, told me earlier this month, employers might “incentivize people to be healthy…because the employer thinks more physically active employees [will] be less expensive to provide health insurance.”

Hey you, yes YOU, there in the back. Have you ever noticed or experienced weight-based discrimination while working in HR? What’s an HR department’s function when a worker reports weight-based discrimination? What is your department doing to heighten awareness of weight-based discrimination in hiring? Join the discussion right here on HR Brew’s LinkedIn page, or reply to this email with your thoughts.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: The number of job listings on Indeed.com for HR-related positions increased 119% between February 2020 and December 2021. (SHRM)

Quote: “Burnout in the workplace is not a vast, complex tapestry that we still don’t understand. It is a failure of employers and managers to address core problems plaguing their employees: workplace harassment, an overwhelming workload, a lack of appreciation, and a lack of hope for advancement and a better future.”—Ed Zitron, CEO of EZPR, writing for Insider

Read: For some workers, the Great Resignation may be giving way to what The Muse’s cofounder is calling “Shift Shock,” which she defines as “that feeling when you start a new job and realize, with either surprise or regret, that the position or company is very different from what you were led to believe.” (The Muse)

HR all-stars: ChartHop’s 2022 People Pioneers Award celebrates HR leaders who took on the last two years with creativity and compassion. Meet these visionary leaders and see how ChartHop can help you lead your company through whatever comes next. Meet the winners.*

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Catch up on the top HR Brew stories from the recent past:

• Benefits communication doesn’t have to read like gobbledygook
• Report: “Uncontrolled” gender pay gap didn’t narrow by a single cent from 2021 to 2022
• We’re only beginning to understand the needs of workers with long Covid