Through my mysterious day job, I am part of a group that talks about different organizational challenges that face our company. One of the issues that we are working is how we can improve the diversity of our company. I confess the conversation has been an eye-opening experience for me. Some of my basic assumptions were flat out wrong when it came to supporting a diverse working environment. It's funny how you can be doing something wrong, and not even know realize that your best intentions aren't serving the greater good. I've always been a big proponent of admitting when you are wrong and trying to do better.
I'd like to go into more detail later, but I don't yet feel qualified to do so. I will give one example of something that surprised me. In the past, I would like to ask a couple of personal questions to get to know the person better. These questions weren't really job-related in any way. By asking these questions, I was biasing my opinions to people that were more like me, which is exactly counter to diversity.
We've divided our effort to improve diversity into a number of steps including improving our potential hires pool, improving our interviewing practices, improving our onboarding process and company policies. I've been tasked with doing some brainstorming about how to increase the diversity of our hiring pool.
Steemit has seemed like a pretty diverse ecosystem so far. I'm curious if anybody out there has any resources that might be of an assistance in reaching out to build a diverse hiring pool. Our company is based in Oregon and has offices in Eugene and Portland so we'll be focusing on connecting to people in those areas, but I'm open to the USA and even worldwide resources. As I said before, any input is welcome, as we are still learning what we need to learn at this point.
I think the easiest way to dig into the diverse talent pool is to offer competitive pay and competitive benefits! Another way is to have a company environment that seems fun and friendly for everyone.
Diverse, skilled workers are even rarer (much rarer) than simply skilled workers. Expect to pay more! It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Universities have the exact same issue-- they fight over the most skilled AND diverse students, so they compete by offering competitive scholarships.
Also, consider specifically advertising for diversity in those roles. I'm not sure about the legality of this, but at my company, we have "diversity interns", which are, internships only open for people who are "diverse".
The brilliant part about "diversity interns" is that eventually, they graduate, and you can hire them as full time. You have a full summer, or even a full year to assess if this team member is a good fit while they are still in school.
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Nice post @rantar
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