How to Develop Hiring Policies & Procedures That Increase Diversity
According to the 2005 Society for Human Resource Management Workplace Diversity Practices survey, almost 75 percent of organizations claimed that diversity was a driving factor in business decisions, but just 20 percent had designated staff to promote diversity. Diversity benefits organizations by creating a wider range of perspectives, talents and ideas. To stay competitive, organizations must honestly assess current hiring practices and find innovative ways to recruit top diverse candidates.
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Instructions
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Evaluate your current recruiting and hiring practices for diversity. If you are not attracting a group of diverse candidates, analyze the stats: Determine how many women and minorities you tend to interview compared to others. Compare the backgrounds of the candidates you have recruited, hired and promoted with those whom you haven't. Determine what types of candidates you need to reach out to through recruiting strategies.
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Write job descriptions that emphasize diversity. State specifically that your organization is interested in hiring those who will contribute to the diversity of the work community. Using narrow language such as "women and minorities" tends to attract a narrower pool of applicants than broader language. Remember that diversity refers to not just gender and ethnicity, but religious beliefs, sexual orientation, age and life experience.
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Recruit from diverse institutions. Reach a wider range of applicants by recruiting through colleges, graduate programs or business organizations with higher numbers of women, minorities and people with varying economic backgrounds.
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Ask colleagues for recommendations and referrals to qualified applicants. Follow up by asking if any qualified women or minority candidates stand out. This may lead you to new and promising candidates.
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Create a hiring committee. Invite employees with a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives to adequately represent the diversity you aim to promote. Together, develop top criteria for evaluating candidates and create a written evaluation form. Have all members of the committee fill out the form for each candidate. These forms have been shown to improve objectivity. Let the entire team aid in making the decision. Require all members of the committee to share their evaluations of each candidate to get everyone's point of view.
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Acknowledge your own biases. Be aware of any personal prejudices that may influence your recruiting or hiring processes. Avoid eliminating candidates from consideration for personal reasons or assumptions about their personal lives.
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Hire diverse professionals laterally. Identify outstanding, diverse candidates that you know, including new professionals, middle managers and other leaders. Look for candidates who are already in the position you would like to fill at another organization. Hire a recruiter to help you attract and bring in these leaders for an interview.
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