For Quality Candidates, Fish in a New Pond

When a position opens up nowadays, two questions frequently asked are:

• Do candidates need specific experience in our industry?
• Are we doing what we can to ensure the diversity of our workforce?

Often, the inclination is to answer Yes to both of these questions. But by ignoring candidates outside of your normal recruiting pool, requiring strict specific industry experience, for example, you may run the risk of limiting the diversity in your workforce.

At the very least, you make a broad and equitable workforce harder to achieve.

Many industries still lack representation and inclusion. Data shows that even those that have made commitments to diversity and launch diversity hiring programs fail to meet their goals. Part of this may be because of an insistence on hiring from industry-experienced candidate pools. The CEO of Wells Fargo caught a lot of criticism, deservedly so, for saying the reason for the lack of diversity in their leadership was a lack of qualified talent in the hiring pool.

Diverse and qualified talent is out there if you know where to look. But if you want to transform a company or industry through diversity and inclusion, you simply can’t always fish in the same pond everyone else is. Looking outside your industry vertical is one way to find more diverse candidates. After all, skills and experience can be gained. Inherent talent and aptitude can not.

The process of diversity recruiting can be more expensive because companies have to spend time developing the tactics and sources themselves. Working with a search firm like Durakis, who already has the expertise can often speed things up.

Additionally, venturing outside your “normal” recruiting pool in search of diverse candidates — broadening their pool to a lake — can result in quicker hires, which can cost less.

During our search process, we always begin with our proven process and then add specialized techniques depending on your diversity goals.

We have tools specific for each of several common target diversity categories (women, under-represented racial and ethnic minorities, veterans, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities). Often, the tools you may use for one group need to be different for another one.

Examples of some tools we use for diversity sourcing are:

• Specific boolean strings or focused sites
• Advanced search operators
• DEEP Image search
• X-Ray expertise
• Social diversity sourcing
• Crafting gender-neutral job descriptions
• Other diversity “hacks”

Again, the focus can’t solely be on diversity for its own sake. But by looking at diverse candidate pools and searching outside a hiring company’s niche, we can find not only more diverse placements, but ones that go on to create growth, leadership, and real value and results once they’ve been placed.

To see how we’ll find the best quality and best-fit candidates for your next search, check out the Durakis difference.