Diversity

How Recruiters Can Drive Diversity Efforts

The entire recruiting and staffing industry has been upended in the past few months. Live recruiting events and conferences have been canceled. Some recruiting teams are scaling back or putting projects on hold, while others are focusing on reskilling or redeploying teammates to other business priorities. On top of this, we’re also seeing a trend towards a hiring manager do-it-yourself model that basically bypasses the recruiter and sourcer entirely.

However, we are seeing one big area of opportunity: Recruiters who are true value-added partners to their hiring managers by sourcing, recruiting, and closing outstanding talent — especially diverse talent. These recruiters are in high-demand and this demand is increasing. But being successful in this new opportunity requires a different set of skills and competencies. By benchmarking best practices, we’ve been able to capture these skills in our new “Recruiter of the Future” competency model. Download it here and be sure to sign up for our ongoing series of webcasts. (The next one is July 29, 2020, but if you can’t make it, you’ll still be able to find the recording.)

The metric of success in this competency model isn’t jobs filled on time and at the lowest cost, but quality of hire and job satisfaction on the candidate’s first-year anniversary date, not their start date. We refer to this idea as “Win-Win Hiring.”

A successful Win-Win Hiring outcome occurs after one year when the hiring manager fully agrees the new hire is an outstanding performer and the new employee is still highly satisfied with the job. The factors in the competency model describe what’s needed pre-hire to achieve this type of Win-Win Hiring outcome post-hire.

Without going through all of the factors of the competency model, the following are the ones that are essential prerequisites for achieving these Win-Win Hiring outcomes. (If you want more details, this video lesson will help fill in the gaps and help you better understand the performance-based hiring process.)

Know the job: Recruiters must be able to answer properly when an outstanding prospect with multiple opportunities asks: “Can you tell me a little about the job and why it could represent a career move?” A vague generic answer filled with hyperbole, buzz words, and the word “awesome” isn’t good enough. For a strong prospect to move forward, the recruiter needs to be able to describe the major performance objectives of the role, the importance of the role, some detail about the hiring manager’s leadership style, and how the company promotes diversity and inclusion.

Source and recruit in tandem, not in sequence: This is a huge shift that redefines the entire sourcing and recruiting process. In our new model, the recruiter must not only be able to identify outstanding talent including a preponderance of diverse talent, but also be able to contact and convert these names into pre-qualified and interested prospects. The measure of success on this factor is the quality and diversity of the sourcing pool and high conversation rates at every step in the funnel.

Ensure hiring managers make accurate and unbiased decisions: Recruiters need to present detailed evidence of outstanding performance when presenting candidates to their hiring manager clients to prevent strong candidates, especially diverse candidates, from being excluded for biased reasons. This course has been designed to help recruiters and hiring managers remove bias from the decision-making process — starting by understanding why job descriptions must define success as a series of performance objectives, not a generic list of “must have” skills, competencies, academics, and experiences that are inherently biased.

Offer the best career opportunity, not the biggest compensation package: You’ll never have enough money in your budget to attract the strongest and most diverse talent on a consistent basis. However, if you do all of the above, you will be able to present your opening as the one offering the best career opportunity. Measures of success for this factor are high top-to-bottom funnel yield and acceptance rates from the strongest and most diverse talent — all leading to a positive Win-Win Hiring outcome post-hire.

The world of recruiting is not ending, but it is changing. And it will be a rewarding change for those recruiters who participate. As Jim Rohn said long ago, “Things will get better for you when you get better.” These and the other factors described in the “Recruiter of the Future Competency Model” offer a complete guide for getting better.

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