Diversifying your pipeline…
Diversifying your traditional recruitment channels…
« It’s not about the skills. It’s the will! »
This from Torin Ellis resonates with me in this talk:
« You see because we’ve had 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow, 50 years of a civil rights era, 8 years of Obama and we’re still chasing diversity and inclusion as if we’re just getting started…
What I want is for you just a moment to pause and understand how you play a role in this equation?
Because what I firmly believe after 18 years of recruiting, is that no matter what technology hits the scene, people do the best job of hiring people…
I can’t lie to you that I’m not disappointed that today we’re still having the same conversation around diversity and inclusion… and here’s the real big thing is that if we’ve struggled to do it under nominal and optimal conditions, you know where people walk into the office, they come through the door and they check in, they work inside of your facility… then how in the world are we going to do it when we are in this gig economy? When we have 40 to 50 million people working in disparate scenarios, virtually.
So, if you couldn’t get the shxx right when you had optimal conditions, then how in the world are you going to do it going forward?
It causes you not to applaud but for you to take a moment to pause and understand how you play a role in the solution…
Here is one thing that I commit to you and I’m hoping that you will be willing to do with me, no more negative press… I have zero tolerance for any more articles that focus on the lack of diversity.
We understand the problem. Force those people to level up when they reach out to you and let’s talk about, write about and blog about solutions.
How do we become part of the solution?
I refrain from being part of the problem…
Ditch the ugly resume paper. You got to understand that… so many people that you will be hiring between now and 2040, they are not going to come through your traditional channels. They’re not going to be able to afford to come through your traditional channels…
They will spend a lot of money putting people in jail but they are not going to spend money making sure you can get an education and so if these companies right now, are trying to recruit talent from colleges and people can’t afford to go to college then what’s that going to do for diversity and inclusion 5 years from now?
So, if I can’t afford to go to college then how are you possibly going to recruit me into your organization if all you are doing is spending time at the college campus?
We have to be a bit unorthodox in our recruiting effort…
The people are out there, we just have to spend the time going to find them. We have to build networks that don’t necessarily look the way we look. We have to comfortable establishing those networks…
Let me tell it really comes down to will. It’s not about the skills. It’s the will. Do you have the will to move the message of diversity and inclusion?
> Torin Ellis | Diversifying the Pipeline | Tech Inclusion NY 2016
How to increase racial diversity at the top of corporate Brussels and Belgium?
G.
The author
Grégory Luaba Déome
Contributing to more inclusive workplaces
Follow: Twitter @cvs_congo | Blogs: LinkedIn and Talent Has No Race
More from me on Ethnostratification and Talent Advancement:
People Analytics when the N is too small
Multiculturalism in Europe failed?
What makes a great team?
Delivering through diversity
The 6 main obstacles to the hiring of talents of non-EU origins in the Brussels job market
The third Socioeconomic Monitoring (Employment & Origin, 2017)
Corporate Belgium – Europe: Ethnicity = Law of Inverse Relevance?
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Born in Congo, I am committed to developing more inclusive workplaces. My passion is to enable others to achieve their potential and to advance equity in corporate Brussels.
About eight years ago, a friend told me something like « in my company, they consider me as a high potential. I participated to the annual event of our industry, 500 people – la crème de la crème – and I was the only non-white in the room. A journalist even came to me and discreetly asked « what about upward mobility »? The problem is that in our industry, the majority of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid are non-whites. The higher you go in the hierarchy, the whiter it becomes. »
What is the diverse makeup or diversity demographics of your team overall?
And of your management and board teams?
