Why Leaders Should Be Cautious When Investing in External Diversity Recruiting Solutions
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“Do you mind if I share some unsolicited feedback?”
I asked this question following a brief meet and greet where I was offered an opportunity to speak at a virtual conference dedicated to offering career development for job seekers in higher education. After the person on the other end of the phone obliged, here’s what I shared.
“I would recommend that you consider creating an advisory board that includes recruiting experts. Many of the statements that you have made to me about the recruitment process are either not true or lack perspective. If no one in your network or on your team has ever recruited or hired, there’s going to be a huge chunk of value you will not be able to add for your audience.”
I then politely declined the offer to participate in the conference and ended the conversation.
I share this story for two reasons. One, I often think about the safety of job seekers who are receiving uncomprehensive advice; and two, in addition, I frequently ponder the safety of employers who keep working with recruiting vendors that miss the mark. As a matter of fact, in the diversity recruiting industry, this is even more troubling to me because diversity recruiting intersects two areas of specialization: recruiting and DEI, which means that there’s the potential to miss both marks.
In diversity recruiting, there are vendors that:
help employers to create more inclusive job descriptions
train employers on how to implement effective diversity recruitment programs
offer new job boards to employers seeking to post positions targeting historically underrepresented populations
have created artificial intelligence to replace human decision making during the hiring process
develop assessments to help measure certain characteristics and competencies
There are so many organizations that are popping up, ready to support your diversity recruiting initiatives, but if the firm that’s trying to sell you a tool to support your diversity recruitment efforts isn’t representative, experienced, and trained, I would caution you against working with them. These are the three common issues that I see with new products and services popping up for employers.
Representation. Are any of the leaders (i.e., executive team, board of directors, investors/funders, etc.) within the company representative of the populations that their product or service aims to help you find or attract? For instance, if your company sells products and services that are aimed at helping your company increase representation among military veterans, has anyone at the firm or on the advisory board served in the military or do they have long-standing partnerships with military veterans. Also, what is the vendor’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at their own company?
Experience. If there is no representation on the leadership team, then are the leaders and/or product and service developers trained in recruiting and in diversity, equity, and inclusion? In other words, has anyone served as a practitioner in either, or even better, both, spaces? Who holds the experience at this company?
Training. If there is no representation on the leadership team and no one leading or developing the products and services has been a practitioner in the space of diversity recruiting, then has everyone at least received training: recruiting training, diversity recruiting training, and/or inclusive hiring training?
And even if the vendor has been trained, what was the depth of said training? Was it a 45-minute lunch and learn that barely scrapes the surface, or was it a deeply immersive program designed to unpack the many facets of DEI in recruiting?
If the vendor’s answer to representation, experience, and training is no, then my response to the vendor would be…
Seriously?
Then what is driving the product solution? What is feeding the service solution? You’ve heard of bias in, bias out, right? Typically discussed in context to artificial intelligence, it is the notion that bias can creep into algorithms through biased human decisions at the time those algorithms are created. If there’s nothing at the vendor’s company disrupting the biased human decisions (i.e., representation, experience, or training) it would be concerning to me to work with that vendor. Respectfully, you would be surprised at how often the answers to the questions about representation, experience, and training are no, no, and no.
Buying a product or service from a firm with no representation, experience, and training is just as concerning to me as a job seeker working with a career coach who has never landed a job, has never been a recruiter, has no sense of cultural competence and/or has never hired anyone.
It is dangerous and can impair your initiative to increase diversity. If they’ve never worked in this space, how will this vendor teach you to solve a problem they’ve never comprehensively faced? How will they understand your pain points enough to solve the actual problem rather than its symptoms? And that is part of the reason why it’s all too often that employers have resistance in investing in quality diversity recruiting training programs because past trainings and initiatives, for example, have been “a miss.”
To avoid the ramifications of companies who try and sell diversity recruiting products and services to you with no representation, experience, or training, here are four things you can do:
Tip #1: Be clear on your goals before you start looking for a product or service. Identify the goal and be as specific as possible. It is the difference between saying that you want to increase diversity versus saying that you want to increase representation of Black senior executives in 2021 by 20%.
Tip #2: Do your research and ask questions. Find out how much experience the vendor has and in addition, learn more about how they invest in their own diversity recruiting training and education. Just as it is not enough to have landed a job to be a career coach, it is not enough to understand recruiting when selling a diversity recruiting product or service. In addition, make sure that the vendor applies their own models into how they do business.
Tip #3: Audit for outcomes. Measure the results to see if you are moving the needle in the right direction. Are you reaching your intended goals? Are there any unintended consequences? Pay attention to the impact of the service or tool and make tweaks for efficiency OR pull the plug if you find that it is not a valid or reliable option for your company. For example, Amazon got rid of their AI tool because it was demonstrating a bias against women.
Tip #4: Ask is this part of a larger strategy to increase diversity? Make sure that you are not expecting the product/service from the vendor to do all of the work of diversity recruiting. Check that you are building an effective diversity recruiting strategy, as opposed to contracting a training service in hopes that it will function like a magician and magically make everything better. Your team must also be willing to lean in to do the real work in order to affect real change.
Contrary to what this article may signal, I am a huge proponent of employers partnering externally on diversity recruiting solutions. After all, my firm is a part of this exact industry. We sell diversity recruiting training for hiring managers and recruiters. But we also pride ourselves on representation, experience, and on-going learning and development. It is the only way we can continue to offer value. It is the only way we will ever move the needle and truly make an impact in increasing diversity. What are some other areas leaders should be cautious of when investing in external diversity recruiting solutions?
If you liked this article, you will also enjoy: How to Create the Recruiting Plan Behind the Diversity Commitment
Join the conversation in the comments. What are some other areas leaders should be cautious of when investing in external diversity recruiting solutions?
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