How can you support diverse hires?

Diversity also includes belonging. How your people add value to your organization. It's not just limited to recruitment; it is also a retention strategy. Diversity of what every single employee brings to the table and the unique value that they bring defines the company culture. Recruitment DEI efforts also need to include retention.

Start with ruthlessness and messy candor. To what level of diversity can your organization make a sustained commitment? If you hire only Ivy MBAs, will you hire/support those from state schools? Will you hire talent from community colleges, and commit to investing in their further education and training? In summary, define does diversity mean education, race, gender, and socio-economics? Or all of these?

Promoting diversity and inclusivity in hiring is vital for fostering innovation and creating a dynamic workforce. Committed to supporting diverse hires through targeted outreach, unbiased screening processes, and inclusive interview panels. By valuing different perspectives and backgrounds, we should aim to build a team that reflects the rich tapestry of our global society. Together, we can drive positive change and unlock the full potential of any organization. #DiversityMatters #InclusivityAtWork

In my experience, supporting diverse hires goes beyond recruitment. It's about defining clear diversity goals, ensuring unbiased hiring practices, engaging with diverse communities, and creating a positive experience from the application process through onboarding and retention. These practices help in not only attracting diverse talent but also ensuring that they feel included and valued within the organization. "Unity is strength. . . when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved." - Mattie Stepanek.

Defining diversity goals is like charting a compass for organizational growth. Consider incorporating a "Diversity Impact Assessment" before finalizing goals. This assessment analyzes how diversity initiatives align with your business strategy, potentially unveiling novel opportunities. By proactively addressing challenges and capitalizing on benefits, your diversity journey becomes a strategic force, propelling your organization toward a more inclusive and prosperous future.

Supporting diverse hires goes beyond reviewing hiring practices. It involves explaining to everyone that this is not a forced activity, but rather a beneficial process for the company. Many companies have good hiring practices, yet they struggle to improve diversity hires due to the lack of support from hiring managers and teams. It's important to emphasize the advantages of diversity and inclusion, and to provide training and guidance to hiring managers and recruiters on avoiding unconscious bias. By fostering a culture of support, everyone can create a welcoming environment that attracts and selects diverse candidates, ultimately benefiting the company as a whole.

Diversity hiring without inclusion is like a recipe without ingredients. Having a good hiring process is not enough if the team is not inclusive and accepting of diverse team members. In addition to having a strong recruitment process it is important to implement policies that promote diversity AND inclusion, utilise data to provide a clear picture of the current reality, hold individuals and leaders accountable for poor behaviour and non inclusive practices, and educate to foster understanding, action and positive internal change.

Review ALL Policies / Processes / Procedures / Forms / Templates in all formats (online and offline) and turn off the diversity tone deaf references. They're there - trust me. Now that the basis/platform is clean. You can build the hiring practices by referencing 'clean' thinking about diversity as a disruptive force which will drive innovation and growth.

Start with your talent acquisition staff. Are they all glossy MBAs who would consider hiring someone without an MBA a triumph of diversity? Are these 3 generation professionals who may not understand the merits of hiring talent that was the first in their family to graduate from college? Talent usually serves as a conduit to hiring managers, but if given the charter, talent can also be advocates for diversity.

Best hiring practices involve a strategic and thorough approach to identifying, attracting, and selecting top talent for an organization. It begins with a clear definition of the role, including specific responsibilities and qualifications. Crafting an inclusive job description and promoting it through diverse channels helps broaden the candidate pool. Leveraging a combination of interviews, skills assessments, and behavioural evaluations aids in comprehensively evaluating candidates. Collaborative decision-making, involving multiple team members, can provide well-rounded perspectives. Prioritizing not just technical competence, but also cultural fit and alignment with the company's values fosters long-term success.

Being a ADHDer, I always tend to talk about it a lot so people do talk to me about it. It's understanding them, by giving them the right tools, support and having someone that understands them. Normally this just simple communication.

Don't be a "diversity tourist". For example: Engaging doesn't mean attending a conference on autism. Authentic engaging means identifying universities with a strong autism support function (there are means to identify these), and recruiting on those campuses. It means identifying autism peer groups and asking: What do you need to excel? Will any of your members join our internship program? Will those members give us feedback on what we need to do better to support them?

Careful, careful, goes this step. Do not mistake doing good, for good done. Don't be a do-gooder! Ask the experts in their field of challenge, what does assistance look like? How can your organization be a catalyst for change in their particular challenge? How can your organization bring about a change in mindset, and provide a vehicle to highlight solutions for the challenge.

Provide specific examples here of the types of groups, for example, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce or HBCUs. It's best not to have employees serve as ambassadors of a program unless it's well-established and already clearly defined, which takes time.

For diverse candidates to truly feel valued and welcome, this really emphasizes the importance of transparency in the process, which I always try to provide when interviewing. I encourage candidates to be candid with their questions - to me, an interview is just as much about them evaluating us as a potential employer as it is us evaluating them as a potential employee. It's easy to get lost in the urgency and occasional desperation of today's market, but no one benefits from a bad fit. You can only get so much information from the limited time of an interview, so everyone involved benefits from candor about our respective expectations in the process.

Start with your corporate website. Outline, step by step, the hiring process. Provide a chatbox for jobseekers to ask questions regarding the hiring process. Identify those people within the organization who recruit for various function, be it interns, campus hires, or those by various functions. Provide guides to 1) how to dress 2) interview questions you can expect 3) timing on your website 4) provide talent with enough resources that recruiters can offer useful feedback at each step of the way.

Hiring, committed to a series of well thought-out steps/processes made readily available and transparent, mean little when they treat all candidates with a one size fits all approach. First rule of hiring/recruitment - every recruitment is going to be different, every applicant will be unique, every hire will bring a new dimension. Understanding each applicant, comes from carefully reading their submission, studying it and doing some background research. Know the applicant - after all they're expected to research, us the company they're applying for. Nowadays with all that is available online - knowing the applicant is doable.

In my opinion, the first few sentences can be cut completely. Every single candidate should be respected throughout the process, regardless of what your company initiative is.

Start with shadowing: Two weeks when someone can "shadow" their peers to observe how the function functions. Assign "buddies". Make part of the assigned buddies' performance review their success in mentoring their diverse hire. Establish "class cohorts". Let prior classes of diverse hires who have navigated the company successful connect with the latest class in structured and unstructured circumstances.

Big, big supporter of the 'buddy' system. Gives the 'buddy' ownership of the process. Gives the new recruit personal insight to the company. Sets the new hire up with a human reference... and a possible companion for lunch or invite to the company basketball team.

Individuals have to be Mentally Interested. In a multipolar environment, diversity recruitment must be carefully planed from sourcing to selection to placement to ensure candidates are also open to diversity in their team; otherwise the goal may be defeated. Irrespective of where the candidate is sourced from, the candidate have to be mentally and psychologically interested in such diversity driven work environment. This will encourage team building and it's bonding.