The Hiring System: Part II: How Career Coaches and Employers Can Support Keesha

This is #IncreaseDiversity, a weekly series sharing best practices for employers who want to implement effective diversity recruitment programs. In this edition, we are exploring the hiring system through a five-part composite case study demonstrating the career experience of being underrepresented in the hiring system. In Part 1, we introduced you to Keesha and the obstacle course she faced to land a job. Missed it? Check it out here. Welcome to Part II: How Career Coaches and Employers Can Support Keesha.

Some like to believe that the system is broken. It is not. It is working very well. The hiring system is doing exactly what it was designed to do centuries ago. It was designed to preserve access to the best positions for Chip and to exclude Keesha. And through long-standing policies, practices and behaviors, the hiring system has been preserved. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has moved the needle forward, there is still a lot of work to do to reach equity in the recruiting experience for candidates like Keesha.

Until we reach radical equity in recruiting, Keesha will need your support. She does not need handouts. She does not need special treatment. She does not even need you to bend the rules in her favor. For Keesha to successfully make it through the hiring system, she needs you to see the bias, disrupt the bias, and radically reduce the bias. Helping her to win does not mean giving her an advantage. It means removing the landmines and roadblocks that are creating a disadvantage for her.

"Helping her to win does not mean giving her an advantage. It means removing the landmines and roadblocks that are creating a disadvantage for her."

What about Career Coaches?

According to the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), 25–40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaches, and corporate titans such as GE, Goldman Sachs, and Google are now spending more than $1 billion annually on executive coaching in the U.S. alone. In addition, Marketdata findings indicate that the number of coaches is growing as consumers seek clarity and motivation regarding career changes, life-work balance, dealing with changing technology, finance, relationships, health, and more. People are using coaches more than ever to help navigate both life and career. Keesha could benefit from having the right career coach in her corner.

Keesha could benefit from having the right career coach in her corner.

Career coaches come in many forms. Whether working at a campus career center, outplacement firm, or working independently (e.g., recruiter turned career coach), you have a significant role in hiring because you have insight that can be shared into the hiring process. Your insight into the hiring process and the unwritten rules to being successful are key to help Keesha to land a great job and get a promotion. But that's just being a good coach. In order to be a great coach for Keesha, there are four things you can do:

(#1) Help to navigate the internal dialogue where she may question her own ability due to previous experiences within the hiring system. There’s a quote by Charles Cooley that goes, “I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.” In other words, if enough people project their own perceptions and expectations on you it may distort your own understanding of who you are and how capable you are. Help Keesha to discover truths about how qualified she is. Assist her in healing so that she is able to see beyond previously biased performance reviews, biased decisions that she was not quite ready for promotion, and moments where her peers treated her like she was invisible. When you hear Keesha downplaying her accomplishments or sharing past negative feedback, a powerful question you can ask Keesha is, “is this true?” Asking this question opens dialogue to seeking the truth in order to dispel any falsehoods. In addition, ask her where her perception of her own abilities originates. What milestone did she experience that makes her think certain ways about herself.

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.” - Charles Cooley

(#2) Help circumnavigate the external bias. Managers may question Keeshs'a ability due to the biases they hold. It is great that you understand the hiring process, but a solid career coach can also help Keesha to understand the hiring system and how it is impacted by unconscious bias that results in individuals questioning whether or not she is enough. By sharing with her common areas of unconscious bias, you can help her prepare for it. Then provide her with tools and tips to help her to navigate the bias. To do this work, a Career Coach must first learn about the hiring system, its bias and the obstacle course it creates. If you don’t know about the obstacle course, how do you help Keesha to prepare for it?

(#3) Nix the one size fits all approach. If your coaching does not fully support Keesha’s job search experience, when Keesha does not land a job, she is more likely to question herself, than to question your coaching. Instead, remember that we are all unique and our experience of the world is different. Meet Keesha where she is, in her experience of the hiring process, and coach from there. Techniques should be tailored to the individual taking into account experiences and the challenges they face.

(#4) Check yourself. This is the first rule that I learned when approaching the work of diversity, equity and inclusion. We all have bias. No one is exempt. Ask yourself some very real and tough questions to identify bias baked into your approach to coaching. Reflect on the following questions. What subjects do you avoid or take too lightly because you do not feel qualified, capable, or comfortable to address directly (e.g., racism)? Where do you feel personal resistance? When you think about people who identify like Keesha, or people who are totally different from you, what thoughts come to you, both negative and positive? Your areas of resistance are indication for areas of development. Do not ignore it. Learn from it. Your development in the areas where you feel resistance and identify bias will help you to effectively support Keesha.

What About Hiring Managers?

There is no way around it. You have the most access to Keesha, the most power to give access to Keesha, and because of both reasons, you have the most work to do.

Here are seven ways you can support Keesha.

(#1) Hire (+ promote) Keesha because of her value, not because of how she identifies. How she identifies creates value because it increases the diversity of thought, or spectrum of perspective in your organization. Focus on spectrum of perspective. The more diverse your organization is, the more blind spots you will cover. We will unpack the spectrum of perspective in Part III of this series.

(#2) First, do no harm. These words are a part of the original Hippocratic oath taken by physicians. Managers can benefit from following these words. Make it a priority to mitigate any potential psychological harm, damage, or injury to employees due to unconscious bias. The experience you create for Keesha can be damaging and lethal if you are not careful. Hold yourself accountable for learning about bias and how it manifests within each of your roles as a hiring manager, while on-boarding Keesha, while managing Keesha, and even as you consider the promotional process. She can hope to work in a bias free company, but you can help to make it a reality. Remember, employees do not leave good companies, they tend to leave bad managers.

(#3) Gain perspective and empathy. Strive to build psychological safety with Keesha. Through open conversations you can begin to understand her perspective and explore solutions you can implement to empower her. Ask marginalized groups what they need, listen, and create solution from there. Not the other way around.

(#4) Edify Keesha and position her well inside the organization. Keesha is not an individual hired into your organization because she is a woman, is Black, or any other self-identifying features. She was hired because she brings great value to the role (i.e., by way of her knowledge, skills, and abilities) and great value to the company (i.e. by way of her perspective due to her lived experiences). Make sure the company knows exactly the value that Keesha brings and how her lived experiences increase the spectrum of perspective for the organization thereby giving the organization a competitive advantage. This is very important because without credibility, and with so many preconceived notions on how diversity played into the role of hiring Keesha, it will be hard for your team to take her seriously. When you edify a new employee properly, your team will start to listen to them. In addition, position her for the level of power and authority her position requires.

(#5) Make sure your environment is ready for Keesha. Every company has a culture which is an ideal it aspires to reach. On the road to the ideal culture, your organization cultivates certain environments. Think of your culture as your intent, but the environment as the impact or outcome. Your company may have good intent (i.e., culture), but how are employees presently impacted (i.e., environment), especially employees who identify similarly to Keesha. Is your company, business unit, and/or department ready for increased diversity? Does it have a culture of inclusion and belonging to ensure that as you increase diversity you increase retention of those who have been hired.

(#6) Expect success. When we expect someone to be a higher performer or contributor to our teams, our engagement is different. Expect Keesha to lean into her work, secure a seat at the table, have a voice, and share her perspective even when it is totally different from everyone else’s. Tell Keesha this is what you expect of her. Make sure she is empowered to bring her whole self to work because her whole self is what you value and believe makes her a high performer. Most importantly make sure she knows that no matter what, you have her back.

(#7) Share the career success playbook. What are the unwritten rules to getting ahead on your team, within the department, and within the organization? Do you have to enter exclusive networking circles? Do you have to have a certain look or presence? Do you have to say or not say certain things? What do you have to do and who do you have to be to win the most influence and have access to the most coveted roles within your organization? If you do not know the answer to that, look and see who holds those roles today and learn more about how they got there. Then have that conversation with Keesha. Unveil the political game. Whether she elects to play the game or not is up to her, but at least she knows about it. And if she does want to play the game, let her know what you plan to do to enable her to navigate effectively.

Our nation did not simply wake up one day to a bias infused obstacle course baked into the hiring system. And we will not get out of it overnight either. It takes building trust and dismantling the policies, practices and behaviors that continue to create an obstacle course for Keesha to get into your company and to get ahead.

And that is how we will use the #IncreaseDiversity newsletter. Our mission is to unpack things that employers must start, stop, and continue to do in order to see, disrupt and mitigate the bias baked into one of the most powerful systems in the nation, the hiring system, all in an effort to increase diversity. Our goal, is to create radical equity in recruiting.

Are you ready?

Next week, I will share more information about the phrase, “spectrum of perspective,” and I will show you exactly how you can use this to help Keesha and your company be competitive. That is the benefit to increasing diversity.

In the meantime, let’s take some time to unpack today's article. Please comment below answering both (or one) of the questions:

In what other ways do you feel career coaches have a responsibility to support Keesha?
In what other ways do you feel employers have a responsibility to support Keesha?

Do not forget to like, comment, and subscribe to the newsletter. This is part two of a five-part edition. Join us next week, July 21, for Part III: How employers can leverage Keesha’s spectrum of perspective.

Part I: Keesha meets the hiring system
Part II: How career coaches and employers can disrupt the hiring system
Part III: How employers can leverage Keesha’s spectrum of perspective
Part IV: A closing message for Keesha
Part V: FAQs

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