HIRING FOR TRUE DIVERSITY RATHER THAN JUST TICKING A BOX

Published Bsale Magazine | Expert Advice and Insights on Business Sales

Author: Richard Triggs www.areteexecutive.com.au

Author of Winning the War for Talent.

Over my 20-plus years as an executive recruiter, it has been interesting to watch the evolution of the debate around diversity in the workplace, especially at a senior executive level. What was once regarded as ‘nice to have’ has now become in many instances mandatory. On multiple occasions, we have been engaged by ASX100 companies specifically to headhunt women for key appointments to meet a gender diversity target.

Now diversity extends far beyond just gender to include sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, people with disabilities, and increasingly people from an Indigenous background (especially at board level). I’m certainly a big advocate for diversity and highly encourage our clients to step beyond their traditional avatar of what makes a good employee. It’s also essential that there is a commonsense approach to ensuring that even when hiring for diversity, the appointed candidate is equally well credentialed based on merit. These people definitely exist. The challenge becomes how to find and attract these people to your organisation. Here’s a real-world example:

A few years ago I was at a gender diversity debate dinner, one of only a handful of men in a room surrounded by at least 150 women. It would be fair to say there was a lot of heated commentary about the ‘patriarchy’, the ‘glass ceiling for women’ and similar statements. So I decided to do a bit of an investigation. In the previous month, we had recruited four C-suite roles (CEO, CFO, COO and the like), three of which were for not-for-profits. In every instance, the client had specifically said that they would love to employ a woman.

Across the four roles, we had 800 unique applicants to our advertisements. What percentage of these do you think were women? Seven per cent! Fortunately, we are headhunters, so we are not reliant on ad response to fill our vacancies. If women truly want these opportunities yet aren’t applying, what’s going on? This is definitely a generalisation, but often if a female candidate reads an advertisement that calls for ten criteria and she believes she only has seven or eight, she often won’t feel it’s worth applying as she is underqualified. On the other hand, if a man reads the same advertisement and believes he only has three, he’ll think he’s absolutely the best candidate for the job! (Once again, yes, I know I’m generalising; however, it is a common scenario.)

What’s the answer? If you legitimately want to hire for diversity, you need to accept that you are very unlikely to get the right quality and quantity of candidates from advertising alone (whether you’re seeking gender diversity or otherwise). You need to headhunt these people because they are generally in higher demand, not actively looking, and may be less likely to apply (as mentioned above). Hiring for diversity is an excellent thing. Hiring exceptionally talented people who have proven key achievements and transferable skills is also a great thing. Don’t fall into the trap of hiring people purely to achieve a diversity target.

Employ the best person, who also happens to bring diversity to your team. Hiring policies that include both attributes, versus one or the other, is where the gold lies. Do this consistently and you will have an amazing business.