It's Time to Talk about Race at Work

CHAPTER 13Recruiting and Interviewing Diverse Candidates

You and your team have started talking, constructively, about race and diversity at work. You're following the STARTING Method and you're reaching out to various business organizations in your community and online to help spread the word about employment opportunities at your company. Great job! But before you actively start to recruit and interview diverse candidates, there is some work you have to tackle internally first. You must eliminate inherent bias in your process and prep your team for their role in diversity hiring.

HOW TO STOP “PICTURING” YOUR IDEAL CANDIDATE AND ESTABLISH OBJECTIVE CRITERIA

In Chapter 2, you learned that we all have bias, that even babies have bias! When it comes to work, bias can be in our minds (what we picture when we think of the “right” candidate) or it can be embedded in the recruiting process at your company, through job descriptions or a bonus program for employees who refer others to the company. Bias that exists in our minds can be discussed and dissected to break it down. It's important to do this, because if you or your team have a picture in your mind of the kind of person you want to hire, it can be very difficult to change that mental image.

For example, if you want to hire a truck driver, perhaps you picture a man in his forties who has more than twenty years of trucking experience. So if a woman in her late twenties applies or shows up for an interview, would you consider ...