The #1 Challenge Facing Your Recruiters’ Ability to Increase Diversity Is THIS.

 

💥This is #IncreaseDiversity, a weekly newsletter + monthly workshop series sharing best practices for employers who want to implement effective diversity recruitment programs. To see previous editions, visit JenniferTardy.com. | IG: @IncreaseDiversity 💥

 News From #TeamJTC:

 👉🏾 NEW EBOOK: We are very excited to announce that we are adding a new eBook to our INCREASE DIVERSITY TOOLBOX. The Art of "Calling in" Hiring Managers. If you already subscribe to the Increase Diversity Toolbox, you are in luck as this eBook will be available to you FREE of charge. Otherwise, we invite you to subscribe to the Increase Diversity Toolbox to gain access to this eBook along with many great resources. 

👉🏾 FREE CHECKLIST | 💥 We have a FREE, downloadable CHECKLIST for leaders called The Platinum Checklist for Hiring Professionals: 10 Immediate Actions Leaders Must STOP Doing in Order to Increase Diversity. Click to download your free copy. 💥

 
 

The greatest challenge facing a workplace’s ability to increase diversity is the recruiting team overcoming prior conditioning of being “easy to do business with.” This conditioning generally looks like this: treating the hiring manager as a customer, ensuring 100% customer satisfaction, and holding true to the philosophy that the customer is always right.

Recruiters are placed under a tremendous amount of pressure to be agreeable, nice and a non-burden to the hiring manager. Few recruiters want to be the bad person, especially when they are expected to support the company and/or the hiring manager's best interests. But what happens when the customer isn’t right? In context to diversity recruiting, what happens when the hiring manager is creating an obstacle course for candidates from underrepresented groups to get hired—due to the hiring manager’s implicit bias?

 Answer: Recruiters are less likely to disrupt the bias for fear of consequence.

 This expectation leads to unrealistic ideas of how recruiters should conduct themselves while in partnership with hiring managers. When a recruiter is conditioned in this manner, the idea of pushing back, disputing, contesting, or challenging a hiring manager's behavior is unnerving.

This behavior turns into a convenient rationalization to avoid hard decisions, uncomfortable conversations, and controversial actions.

 But guess what, the work of increasing diversity will not always be a comfortable one. There are many obstacles created by hiring managers that hinder the success of the hiring process and the ability of the recruiter to do the job they were hired to do. But if recruiters can work to create a common ground coming from a place of empowerment and leadership, they will be able to disrupt that which is creating the obstacle course. 

 How can recruiters “call-in” hiring managers and have a conversation that will transform their working relationship and most importantly remove the obstacles hindering the goals of bringing top talent to the organization? For starters, we must discontinue the idea of the recruiter always being easy to do business with.

Here are a few ideas that can help to move this forward:

1. Recruiters must position themselves as business partners or advisors to hiring managers and eliminate the idea that they are there to be order takers and paper pushers. Help your recruiters learn and develop the skills of advisors and business partners.

2. Recruiters must be empowered to push back. In other words, when they see (or hear) something, they should say something...ideally directly to the hiring manager. Don’t hold back.

3.  As a recruiting leader, role model advocating your point of view and escalating as needed to ensure your voice (and that of your team) is heard. Many recruiters learn from their respective leader what it looks like to be their own advocate, especially when working with leaders and/or other departments.

 Remember, when we’re preoccupied with seeming “easy to work with” instead of fair or when we optimize for pleasant conversations instead of honest ones — we hurt our team members, hinder increasing diversity, and ultimately enable the hiring system to exclude instead of including. Let’s make a commitment to producing different results by taking honest, empowering, and fair steps that will lead to the achievement of goals commonly created.

If you want to learn The Art of "Calling in" Hiring Managers, be sure to subscribe to our JTC Increase Diversity Toolbox today.

 Join the conversation: What steps do you think recruiters can take to shatter the idea that they should be “easy to do business with?”

 
 

✅ We will use the weekly #IncreaseDiversity newsletter platform to do five things:

  • Challenge organizations to dig more deeply when it comes to diversity recruiting and retention programs

  • Clarify misconceptions or demystify complex topics related to diversity recruiting

  • Share best practices in diversity recruiting and retention

  • Answer frequently asked questions related to diversity recruiting and retention

  • Build a safe learning community for hiring professionals

 
CJennifer Tardy