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The United States federal laws protect against employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, and age.  Setting that aside, most (large) companies work diligently to comply with the non-discrimination.  Yet, there is often the perception of the workforce and culture for any company.  Great companies not only follow the law, indeed, they actively embrace a diverse workforce; see a correlation to ideas, innovation, better solutions and better products.

How could we tell that a company is taking a non-discrimination requirement into (better) diverse workforce?  The diversity starts with the feeders (hiring) rigor.  For a glimpse,

• How clear is the job description?  Ambiguous job description breeds interpretation, preference or bias.
• How rigorous is the interviewing process?  How well are the interviewers trained? How prepared are they in meeting the candidates? Lack of objective assessment cultivates subjective opinion within our comfort zone.
• Who makes the hiring decision? Much perception could be built in the first encounter base d on race, gender and, no lesser extent, age. Is the hiring decision made by a committee who has not met the candidates or by the interviewers?
• How is the background check done?  When it comes to a diverse workforce, there could be people from all different backgrounds.  Does the background check cover not just the qualifications in US, but also worldwide.

Starting with job description, some postings look more like a copy-and-paste of a template.  Well, there could be benefits to have a general description. Let’s say the application lands on a phone interview.  In the first few minutes on the phone, it is guessable the interviewer has reviewed your resume and prepared the questions.  There are phone interviews that convince you of solid assessment.  There are those that leave you intrigued what the interviewer could get out of the conversation.  When there is ambiguity, there is more room for bias if not unconscious discrimination.

If an unprepared phone interviewer passes you, there is more to see from on-site interviewers.  If again you run into unprepared interviewers or ask so general the questions, it is hard not to question that they are likely to recommend candidates with similar profiles as themselves. Unprepared interviewers are either overloaded or hiring is not their priority.  Neither seems to represent the position well.  And how likely would these companies embrace diversity in their core values?

For companies that take the effort to have a separate hiring committee to make hiring decisions, they often put high priority on hiring; already have better job posting, content-rich phone interviews, penetrating on-site interviews; predictably end up with a more diverse and high performing workforce.

Posted in Career Management