Recruiting a Diverse Workforce: Don’t Making Two Common Mistakes

This is the first of a series of blog posts that will help you with recruiting a diverse workforce. The goal is to help you avoid making two common mistakes:

1. Not looking for diversity on your own 

2. Failing to upskill or retain existing employees

We all know that diversity is important, but  we often don't know exactly how to go about finding the right candidates. To help you with your recruiting efforts, we've compiled a number of resources and tools  (see below).

This post will cover 3 different recruitment methods that employers are using to find diverse talent. This article will help you understand what you need to look for in a candidate, specifically because you might be uncomfortable making assumptions about diversity just because the person is not white.

I'm going to start by giving you the entire definition of "diversity" from Merriam-Webster dictionary: 'the quality or state of being diverse : diverseness.

At its core, this means that "diversity" is simply the state of having more than one type of person or group in a particular group. That's it. It doesn't mean anything else. It doesn't have to mean they have to be different races, religions, etc. Just that they are different types of people in your organization.

Now let's introduce you to some tools and resources that can help you recruit diverse talent .

Keys To Recruiting Diverse Talent

Finding the Right Resources

The first step is finding good tools and resources for doing hiring. Here are some of my favorites.

Job Design: This one is used by companies to define their hiring and performance management processes. It helps you figure out how to hire diverse talent. [Link] How do you know if your process is diverse? This article will help you verify your process for diversity by having the wrong candidate pass through your hiring process because the job was never designed for them.

Candidate Recruiting Resource List: This list of tools and resources can help you recruit diverse candidates (and in some cases, determine what type of candidate they need to be). [Link]

Diverse Candidate Profile Checklist: A great way to determine if a candidate is a good fit for the job and culture at your company or organization. [Link]

Diversity in the Workplace Article: This article will help you with recruiting diverse candidates into a previously homogeneous workforce. [Link]

The Traditional Approach to Recruiting Diverse Candidates

Traditionally, companies have recruited diverse talent by sending out recruitment emails and job postings to schools and organizations that represent minority groups. These organizations, such as Black Women's Clubs or Hispanic Technology Groups, would then share the job posting with members of their communities.

There are some problems with this approach:

1. You can't trust that the people from these organizations are high performers . They could be friends of family members who want a job for someone else and not themselves.

2. Depending on the length of the hiring process, you could have these candidates pass through your entire recruitment process without telling you that they are not right for your company.

3. You can't be sure if they have gotten the job that they actually want it. They may have accepted it because they thought it was the only one available or because their family or friends pressured them into accepting it because they would feel guilty turning down a job offer from someone else.

This approach is not ideal for finding a diverse workforce unless you are absolutely certain that every single candidate is highly qualified and will be accepted by all members of your organization as a great hire.

Let's talk about the last of our 3 recruitment methods - diversity of interest.

Diversity of Interest Recruiting

This is a recruitment approach that exists in some organizations, particularly those with more than 10 people. Companies like  Microsoft use this method, and it is gaining in popularity year after year.

The foundation for the diversity of interest recruiting model was the "Affirmative Action plan" developed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson during his tenure as President of the United States . This plan required employers to recruit women and minorities for jobs for which they were not originally qualified. This helped promote diversity in industry, but often resulted in candidates being hired who were simply friends or family members.

The Affirmative Action plan has helped to promote diversity of interest recruiting in organizations such as the tech and engineering sectors. Tech companies are having great success with this process. However, there are still some issues with this model:

1. You don't know the full employment status of the candidates that you hire, particularly if they have been using their other jobs to get ready for your job.

2. It is not clear what type of staff you are hiring, especially if it changes over time . This makes it difficult to align performance metrics between your current employees and those hired from outside of your organization .

3. You can't really know if the candidates are actually interested in your organization or are just looking for something that they think they need.

On the other hand, there are some great things about this model:

1. It will get you diversity into your organization at little to no cost to you.

2. You only have to deal with success or failure of the candidate and not with any employment issues that may come up as a result of hiring them . (Hire them, let them go if they don't work out.)

3. You can clearly see how each candidate will add value to your organization .

4. It's easy to keep track of the candidates that you hire and make sure that they are doing a great job .

The Traditional Model vs the Diversity of Interest Model

There is no real winner here. The traditional model has some benefits to it and some drawbacks to it. The diversity of interest model has some benefits to it but also some drawbacks too (listed above). Whichever approach you use will yield good results, be sure to stay current on how your own organization is recruiting diverse talent.

Conclusion:

This article was written to help you learn how to recruit diverse talent into your organization and to understand the benefits of doing so. Since diversity is a hot button issue , you need to show that your organization is doing something about it. You will find that having a diverse workforce yields many benefits, including lowering turnover, improving overall productivity, better customer satisfaction and increasing your bottom line. Not only will good candidates be more likely to accept offers from you if they are right for the job: they will also be more likely to turn down offers from other companies once they accept yours, because of the fit between them and your company culture .