As a manager, you are constantly sourcing, recruiting and hiring new employees. Who you hire directly affects the diversity within your organization. This section offers specific suggestions for using an inclusive process to meet your organization's hiring needs.

Workforce planning

Before you begin to recruit and hire new employees, you should develop a comprehensive workforce (or staffing) plan based on your organization's current business plan. The workforce plan may identify specific demographic groups that you wish to target because they are currently underrepresented in your organization's workforce. As part of your workforce planning, you also should do the following:

Participate in diversity training. You, along with everyone else who interviews candidates, should participate in diversity training to increase your awareness of personal biases that may inhibit a fair evaluation of all candidates.

Develop clear qualifications for each position. You should review all job descriptions to ensure that only the specific qualifications necessary to performing the position are included. Often, job descriptions are filled with superfluous credentials – for example, a master's degree -- that may unnecessarily restrict the pool of available candidates. In other instances, job descriptions emphasize specific types of experience, when competencies gained from other experiences would be just as applicable or useful.

Develop recruiting materials that reflect visible diversity. You should review all recruiting materials (brochures, videos, etc.) and make sure that a visibly diverse group of employees are represented. You also should include a statement of your commitment to diversity and inclusion in all recruiting materials.

Assemble a diverse interviewing panel. Because everyone brings their personal biases into the process of evaluating candidates, it's important to have as many employees from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible participate in the interviewing process. In this way, qualities that may turn off some interviewers may be explained as cultural differences that have no impact on the candidate's ability to perform the job.

Ensure that policies and benefits are attractive to potential diverse recruits. Different policies and benefits will be attractive to different groups. For example, women, and increasingly men, often select employers based on the organization's work/life balance policies. Family-friendly policies typically provide opportunities for flexible working hours, telecommuting, job-sharing, and permanent part-time positions. Domestic partner benefits can be offered to attract gay and lesbian employees. Floating holidays or personal days are appealing to non-Christian employees.

This toolkit is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace legal, compliance, or other professional advice. TWP assumes no liability for the use of this toolkit.
Web-based Leaders' Toolkit, © Copyright, 2002. Technology Workforce Partners. All Rights Reserved. Technology Workforce Partners was a consortium of high technology companies that worked collaboratively on diversity issues in the workplace from 1995-2005.