If I Were a Campus Career Counselor, Here are 4 Things I’d Share with Employers
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I enjoy learning from our community and hearing about the varying ways your roles intersect with diversity recruiting. I get to speak with staffing agencies who share their commitment to increasing representation and say that employers often ask them for support in increasing diversity through training or in sourcing and recruiting. I also get to speak with Campus Career Counselors globally who want to do their part to help employers increase representation too. It is extremely exciting!
One discussion grabbed my attention that I wanted to further explore in today’s article. It was with a Career Counselor out of Boston. In addition to supporting employers in their effort to increase diversity, she also felt a sense of accountability to ensure students on their campus - that are selected for internships, co-ops and/or full-time employment - experienced inclusion and belonging with these employers. She wanted to do her part to ensure participating students did not feel tokenized or like part of a checklist for hiring optics.
She, like many other counselors, would tell me stories about employers who contact them. The request would go something like this.
Employer: “As a part of our initiative to increase diversity, we would like to build a partnership with your campus. Can you give us direct access to your multicultural student populations?”
If you work at a campus career center, you have likely gotten this request once, or a hundred times by now. If you have been involved in antiracism learning or diversity, equity, and inclusion work, you might notice the twinge of resistance that you feel when you hear from employers asking you for direct access to students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
Here’s the challenge. At what point should employers be granted full, unmonitored access to students from historically underrepresented backgrounds? As a Campus Career Counselor, how can you create space for employers and students to connect, filter employers who are only checking a box, and still be perceived as easy to do business with? That's a tightrope walk, right?
Perhaps you are considering what your role can be in helping to ensure students on your campus are seen and treated as more than a checklist to increase diversity. Maybe you want to do your part to ensure these students have access to an inclusive and equitable workplace environment. Maybe it is very important to you that students can work at a place where they feel like they belong and can thrive.
So, you find yourself in a tough position. As you know, there’s a fine line between being a protective layer for your students and being a barrier for access—or gatekeeper—to employers. As a matter of fact, before responding to employers, there are four areas I recommend you clarify within your team first:
Be clear about your school’s stance on diversity and inclusion. Does your campus have a stance, or are you creating one within the career center? If yes, is the D&I philosophy, commitments, or pillars only for your campus or do they follow your students into the workplaces they intern?
Be clear about the students for which you feel accountable and why. When you think about employers having access to student populations, which ones do you want to safeguard (e.g., all populations, vulnerable populations, BIPOC students, Black students, etc.)? Specificity is key in creating support systems.
Be clear on why it is important that these students are safeguarded during their time with employers? In other words, what are the short and long-term impacts to negative internship experiences?
Be clear about what a good internship or co-op experience looks like for historically underrepresented populations. Be clear about what a negative internship or co-op experience looks like. Also, be clear about what an equitable internship experience includes.
If I were a Campus Career Counselor, here are four things that I would share with employers who want access to our most vulnerable student populations.
I would share:
Our campus commitment to diversity and inclusion. Ask employers to sign a diversity statement or a commitment to diversity and inclusion that ensures alignment with the vision for diversity and inclusion on the campus and in the workplace.
A top 10 checklist. Maybe your checklist could include the top 10 best practices for creating inclusion and belonging within your internship program. Perhaps, it is a list of “not-to-dos” when working to create an inclusive workplace for your students.
A diversity recruiting resources list. Develop a “So you are interested in Diversity Recruiting with our Campus” resources list, package, or even portal for employers. As a part of the package, include resources where employers can learn about best practices in diversity recruiting or sourcing at the campus level and can find new ways to enhance their skillset through training programs.
Our philosophy on measuring outcomes. As employers are evaluating students at the end of an internship or co-op, make sure they know that your interns evaluate employers too. A part of the survey includes questions about engagement, inclusion, and belonging. Collective feedback can be shared with employers.
I appreciate individuals, like the Campus Career Counselor from Boston, who take accountability for their role in protecting the experience of vulnerable populations while also helping employers meet their initiatives to increase diversity. It is easy to justify tiptoeing around employer expectations because of a desire to be easy to do business with, but it often comes at a cost to your students. Keep doing the great work. Keep leaning in.
Join the conversation in the comments. What are some additional things you are sharing with employers on the journey to increasing diversity.
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