Which recruitment or hiring changes do you think have the greatest potential for building a more diverse workplace?
Mary Person: Many firms have become much more creative with their interview process. The traditional one-on-one interview is becoming less common, and many are turning towards panel interviews. These types of changes help to remove bias and bring more diversity to candidate selection. Firms have also increasingly realized that to maximize diversity in their hiring they must reinvent their pipeline. That means recruiting at diverse universities and diversifying internship programs.
John Graham: We’re at a point where most companies who have made DEI commitments have done a lot of the initial groundwork: unconscious bias training, metrics dashboards, speaker series, pay equity audits, and more. Over the next two to three years, I think more companies will invest in having diverse groups of culturally aware recruiters and hiring managers. When recruiters and hiring managers have expanded exposure and understandings of the diverse talent groups they’re seeking to hire, it helps add dignity and humanity to the candidate experience that leaves a lasting impression, whether a candidate takes the job or not.
What do you see as potential blindspots, as business leaders look to recruit with DEI top of mind?
Teedra Bernard: One common blind spot is misunderstanding DEI work as a one-time or one-leader subject and not an organization-wide activity. Recruiting and hiring diverse talent is one aspect, but it’s just as important — if not, more so — to have the processes and systems in place to support diverse talent throughout the associate lifecycle. Once hired, are opportunities for associate growth and advancement available and easy to navigate? Do resource groups and associate communities not only exist, but thrive? Does the organization actively provide support and share resources to these groups, and do processes exist for associates to share feedback on company culture? DEI is not simply a value that organizations can claim—it’s a constant evolution.
Person: It is great to bring a variety of mindsets, cultures, genders and ages into your workforce. But you must ensure that you create a culture that supports that diversity—a culture that makes these new ideas feel valued and respected. Overlooking the equity and inclusion portion of DEI can be a real blindspot for some companies.
Graham: I agree. Diversity, or increasing numerical representation of diverse groups of talent, is a piece of the puzzle but it’s not the puzzle. I think leaders need to be cautious of using representation as a measurement of progress and instead examine the attrition for existing employees. The increase of employees from diverse backgrounds doesn’t fix systemic issues within the culture. In fact, it can often exacerbate unaddressed culture gaps and create harmful environments for diverse groups you’ve hired. At the end of the day, you can’t out-hire a bad culture.
To illustrate with an example, can you share what your firm is doing to integrate DEI across recruitment and hiring decision-making?
Bernard: Integrating DEI into recruiting and hiring processes starts with being introspective and reflecting on your organization’s own internal practices and principles. At TransUnion, we’ve focused on enhancing our data capabilities to better gauge progress on our commitments, and to drive and sustain long-term change. We’re focused on engaging diverse talent for open roles at TransUnion, and we’re training our recruiters to incorporate DEI best practices into our hiring processes. From there, we’ve been able to prioritize relationship-building with associations and professional groups engaging predominantly Black and Hispanic candidates, as well as networking outreach to veterans, women in technology, the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities.
Person: It’s imperative that companies create a culture of collaboration, in…
Read More: Roundtable on Rethinking Diversity in Recruitment and Hiring