Increasing Minority Apllicant Flow & Impacting Candidates Slates

1
Recommending a Strategy
Increasing Minority Applicant Flow and impacting
Candidates Slates

• Ideas for Today and Tomorrow

Author Johnny Torrance-Nesbitt, MBA
2

• Here are some ideas to consider for creating more
  Diverse candidate flow--some are immediate and
  tactical while others are strategic and long
  range.
• Have all Recruiters trained by AIRS to become
  Certified Diversity Trainers. This is critical to
  establishing Diversity recruitment as a full team
  approach and effort. This training leverages and
  maximizes the Diversity effect across all
  Recruiters and aids in building a recruitment
  culture permeated with a Diversity approach. In
  addition, these learned skills ensure that
  Diversity is not an add-on but rather an
  important and integral part of your overall
  recruiting strategy.
• For example, some of the things Recruiters will
  learn will be steps to source Diverse candidate,
  etc.

3

• Run specific commercial spots on Minority radio
  stations with high ethnic demographics
  (African-American, Hispanic and Asian).
• More use of Diverse images on the Career Page
  website.
• Post Testimonials on the Career website from
  Minority Women Employees, Interns, etc., from
  all levels.
• Seek volunteers from line areas to serve as
  Diversity Recruiting Champions
• Use New Employee orientation as a recruiting
  mechanism
• Ask all new hires (Minority and non-Minority) for
  referrals of top performers at their former
  companies.
• Conduct an Open House and target specific
  Minority Organizations for attendees.

4

• Build a talent database for Diverse candidates
• Recruiters create a database of Diverse
  candidates at every opportunity (for example,
  Diverse candidates who Recruiters meet at
  conferences meet at networking events, or read
  about in the Industry press or hear about via
  word-of-mouth, etc.)
• Create a Professional Recruiting Event
• (e.g., a 1/2 day Conference --panel
  presentations, breakout sessions, seminars, etc.
  --activity on a Saturday morning for Minority
  Professionals interested in your Industry).
  Invite Senior Executives to kick-off the Event.
  Have Recruiters present to conduct interviews.

5

• Create a Web page with the unique title of
  Minorities in Your Industry, with a unique url.
  When this phrase is typed in to Google for a
  search (by a Minority job seeker), up pops a page
  with this title and information about Career
  Opportunities at your firm. It would then have an
  embedded link back to your main Career page.
• Leverage the In-house Employee Affinity/Network
  Groups for Minority/Women Professional and
  College recruiting purposes
• Conduct a Summit with the Leaders of the Groups
• Develop (shared) recruitment goals/targets for
  Minority Hires.

6

• Conduct a Training session for members of the
  Network on How to sell to Minority/Women
  candidates.
• If there are no Employee internal networks,
  create a Minority/Women Recruiting Council of
  volunteers. This Council could be composed of
  Minority/Women employees who have at least 5
  years service.
• Council would recommend recruiting tactics for
  targeting diverse groups of people as well as act
  as a clearing house for resume dissemination
  and the selling of your Company, once an offer
  was made. This resume dissemination selling
  would have to be completely coordinated with the
  Staffing organization.

7

• Conduct feedback sessions/focus group with
  Minority and Women Employees in order to learn
  more about How to Attract more Minority/Women
  Employees. Focus groups to be held periodically
  to generate new ideas for contests and promotions
  and to gather feedback on our current process.
• Develop a special referral program for
  Minority/Women candidates who are hired (this
  would be an increased amount more than the normal
  employee referral award).
• Consider revising how your job offer is sold
  to Diverse candidates.
• Namely, research from the Recruiting Roundtable
  suggests that minorities placed more importance
  on the companys brand, work-life balance, and
  commitment to diversity when mulling over a job
  offer. These highlighted items must be stressed
  by all Recruiters to successfully close the
  Minority candidate

8

• Build an Alumni page on the your website.
• For tracking high performers (in general) who
  left and
• For tracking high performing Minority/Women
  alumni as well
• Reach out to these individuals and try to recruit
  them back
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Company Career website page.
• Making the Great Place to Work Institute/Fortune
  Magazine 100 Best Companies to Work for Award.
• Making the Diversity Incs Top 50 Companies for
  Diversity.
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Career website page.

9

• Making Black Enterprises list of 40 Best
  Companies for Diversity
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Career website page.
• Making Diversity Incs Top Ten Companies for
  Asian Americans to Work for list.
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Career website page.
• Making the Professional Woman's magazine Award as
  one of the "Top Diversity Employers for Women".
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Career website page.
• Making some of the Top Employer Awards for Female
  and Minority College Students, for example the
  Black Collegian Magazines Top 100 Employers for
  College Students.
• Placement of the Award logo (if won) on the main
  Career website page