Yikes! You just received an email that your company is enacting a diversity recruitment initiative for the upcoming quarter. Naturally, you’ve been given zero input on how to accomplish this. But no sweat, you’ve got this. After all, you are a recruiter, so you’re used to keeping lots of balls in the air and juggling priorities.
There’s no need to panic. You can do this. That’s because as talent acquisition professionals, we are the gatekeepers and ambassadors of our companies — which means that we absolutely have the power and ability to impact diversity recruitment.
I’ll be talking a lot about this during “From Commitment to Action: How to Use Diversity Hiring Metrics for Real Impact,” a webinar taking place on Wed., Jan. 27. But in the meantime, here are some important points to ponder about diversity recruiting.
First, it’s important to truly understand the reason behind diversity recruitment. There is both a business case and moral case.
Let’s start with the business case. If you are a numbers person, there are plenty of them. Per a 2015 study by Mckinsey titled “Diversity Matters,” which surveyed 366 public firms, two key findings provide a clear link between diversity and revenue:
Meanwhile, the 2018 Yello Diversity Survey found that 83% of candidates say that diversity of an employer is a critical factor in deciding whether to apply or accept a job offer.
As for the moral case, we all saw the social unrest that unfolded in 2020. A large part of that anger, of course, was about police abuse. However, there is also a feeling among many marginalized minority communities that society at large and companies do not care about them. After all, they don’t see many of themselves at these organizations.
This is again where recruiters can step in and be the voice in the room to direct recruiting initiatives toward these underserved communities to show that we care.
When we talk about building diverse pipelines, what we are really talking about here is the source of hire. We must review our talent pipelines and analyze where we are recruiting from. Are we reaching out to diverse sources such as HBCU’s, women’s colleges, ethnic professional organizations, and other perhaps nontraditional sources?
Also, with this pandemic and the increase of remote work, there exist opportunities to build even more diverse pipelines. Are there any jobs in your company that are not currently remote but could be? If so, then have the conversation with hiring managers.
We can make a great impression on diverse candidates and make sure they feel welcome by making sure their candidate experience is first-rate. A few tips on candidate experience: