What Diversity Recruiting IS. What it is NOT. And What it SHOULD Be.
◀ This is #IncreaseDiversity, a weekly newsletter series sharing best practices for employers who want to implement effective diversity recruitment programs. If you are seeking tips to increase diversity at your workplace, contact us at info@jennifertardy.com and in the meantime, download our free guide, 10 Innovative Ways to Increase Workplace Diversity: Click Here. ▶
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I used to feel so discouraged by the lack of tangibility of diversity recruiting. I always understood recruiting because there was an industry accepted standard and process. But with diversity recruiting, things always felt more conceptual or philosophical, like a pie in the sky concept. There was no real guidance, or steps—it just needed to get done, somehow.
So, as a recruiter with no real direction, I just made up my own version of diversity recruiting. Here is what it looked like. I understood sourcing, so diversity recruiting to me meant finding new places to source people of color. The more sources I could find, the better I felt I was performing. I soon realized that I was doing a huge disservice to the valuable work of diversity recruiting.
Does this story resonate with your experience?
Over time, I learned that sourcing is only one branch of the larger tree of diversity recruiting. Even on that one branch, people of color make up one of many leaves.
So, in honor of Labor Day, I was inspired to use today’s newsletter edition to talk about diversity recruiting: what it is, what it is not, and what it should be in order to clear up misconceptions and ultimately help leaders get more of our available workforce working.
What Diversity Recruiting IS
At JTC, we feel that diversity recruiting is about two things. First, it is about following a standard that ensures your company’s candidate pools are representative of the workforce. Second, diversity recruiting is about dismantling the hiring obstacle course that prevents those in your candidate pool from getting hired. It is not just about what you must start doing to increase diversity (i.e., sourcing). It is also about what you must stop doing. Through diversity recruiting, we work to ensure a diverse candidate population has equal access to apply to your organization’s open positions and move through the hiring process, while being evaluated fairly. It is likely that increased diversity in the candidate pool leads to increased diversity among those interviewed, and ultimately leads to increased diversity within your workplace.
What Diversity Recruiting Is NOT
Diversity recruiting is not and was never meant to be unethical. As a matter of fact, here are five misconceptions about diversity recruiting.
It is NOT a blanket strategy to hire ONLY Black and Latinx people into your organization. Diversity recruiting increases representation where there has been historical underrepresentation in the workplace. For some employers, diversity recruiting may mean increasing representation in your candidate pool among men, for some organizations, it may mean veterans, for others, it may specifically mean Black women in leadership roles. Increased diversity in every company looks different so the diversity recruiting strategy has to mirror the initiative.
It is NOT affirmative action or a quota system. The opportunities afforded by diversity recruiting increases access to apply and be fairly assessed for open positions. It does not guarantee anyone an offer. The hiring team still has the responsibility of selecting the most competitive candidate, regardless of how a person identifies.
It is NOT reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination is the practice or policy of showing a preference to individuals belonging to groups known to have been discriminated against previously. A recruiter’s goal in diversity recruitment is to fill the candidate pool in a way that is representative of those who are available in the workforce. Again, the hiring team still has the responsibility of selecting the most competitive candidate, regardless of how a person identifies.
It is NOT about making exceptions or giving handouts. Groups that are underrepresented in your organization do not need handouts. They do not need special treatment. They do not even need employers to bend the rules in their favor. In order for individuals from historically underrepresented backgrounds to be employed within your organization, they need you to see the bias, disrupt the bias, and radically reduce the bias to build equitable hiring processes. Diversity recruiting does not mean giving certain candidates an advantage. It is not charity. It means removing the landmines and roadblocks that are creating a disadvantage for them.
It is NOT lowering quality. Meritocracy is related to the selection of individuals on the basis of their ability. Diversity recruiting does not prevent meritocracy. It levels the playing field so that individuals have fair access to demonstrate their ability and to be selected on the basis of their knowledge, skills, and abilities only. You will rarely be able to assess true talents and abilities of individuals if the hiring process includes a bias infused obstacle course for candidates from marginalized populations.
What Diversity Recruiting Should Be
Diversity recruiting should just be recruiting. Diversity recruiting should be a standard practice to ensure an equitable hiring process. But we are not there yet. We are still marking words and terms because it is a necessity. Marking “recruiting” with “diversity,” is the same as marking “colleges and universities” with the words, “historically Black.” Marking a term calls attention to historical discriminatory policies, practices, and behaviors that led to homogeneous colleges and universities as well as homogeneous workplaces, both often over-represented by White men. The reason why there is diversity recruiting is because we have a long-standing history of White-only employment practices; and the reason we have Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is because we have a history of historically White-only student admission.
I look forward to diversity recruiting becoming recruiting. I look forward to the day when diversity is not used to describe a person other than White. I look forward to the day when the standard way to recruit no longer must be marked with diversity in order to drive organizations to consider representation within candidate pools.
My opening story about my earlier experiences with diversity recruiting stays with me presently as I am talking about our diversity recruitment training programs for recruiters and hiring managers. When employers come to me specifically requesting more places to source, it is always my first indication that they are presently living where I was in the past. But the benefit is that they are in the right place to unlearn common misconceptions and learn the right way to implement an effective program that fosters increased diversity within your organization.
Join the conversation in the comments. What is one misconception you had to unlearn about diversity recruiting?
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✅ 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
✅ Need support implementing an effective diversity recruiting program at your organization? Visit me and learn about our flagship Diversity Magnet Recruiter Bootcamp + Diversity Recruitment Consulting Services.