First of all, let me be clear, I am not boastful but grateful that I was given the vision two years ago to develop a series of diversity recruiting training that was delivered around the country in 5 cities. My vision was to design training for recruiters, diversity professionals and hiring managers to have the opportunity to come together in a platform that allowed them to not only gain new insights but to learn from each other.
It was the pain I was hearing over and over again from companies saying that ” we cannot find the diverse talent, the right talent, the qualified talent to fill our many available jobs.” So for three years we captured data leveraging our Inclusive diversity Index (survey) to learn exactly what are companies doing that is preventing them from hiring the talent they so desperately cannot find.
For example, we asked questions to gather insights on who’s doing the hiring, if diversity and talent acquisition strategy was aligned with each other including the business, what resources are allocated to support diversity recruiting, and more. These insights allowed me to put together experts from both my team and companies to share current practices, best practices and next practices on recruiting in today’s environment.
The icing on the cake are the DMBA partners that believe in my vision and supported the execution of the training. Thanks to Clorox, Ingersoll Rand, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, PNC Financial and Workplace Inclusion Forum for providing us the support to realize my vision. Moreover, I thank the diversity and talent management corporate executives from Mercedes Benz, Porter Novelli, Novant Health, Clorox, Ingersoll Rand, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, PNC Financial, JLL Americas and TIAA. These experts were able to share insights on work they are currently doing as well as innovative strategies they are putting into practice.
So what did we learn from theses live trainings around the country. Let me with share with you , a few highlights shared with us.
TOP TEN INSIGHTS………..
- The live trainings with different levels and disciplines in the same room was simply phenomenal, outstanding, exceptional, said many participants.
- Receiving CEUs for the training is an added bonus; we trained 500 participants in 5 cities.
- Recruiters are having a difficult time influencing hiring managers to engage their qualified candidates because of their differences.
- Expectations of hiring managers are unrealistic so it is difficult to fill open positions with qualified diverse talent.
- Many of the attendees agreed that bias exist prevalently in the talent acquisition processes and systems used to recruit diverse talent.
- Without support of leadership and resources, diverse slates are unrealistic to put into practice.
- Job descriptions should be redesigned to capture essential functions and competencies, because the way they are used today encourages bias.
- Recruiters do not receive enough training to support their current culture when trying to defeat inconsistencies and bias.
- Extremely difficult to hire diverse talent into rural geographic areas where there is no diversity; so more access and connection to local diverse communities is necessary to achieve retention and attraction.
- Brand alone is not enough to attract top diverse talent; so the packages must be more inclusive.
Ok, I could actually keep going, but you can gain of sense of how valuable participating in this type of dialogue can encourage change. We learned so much and will be continuing to share and encourage organizations to support forums that allows for courageous conversations. We are already confirmed for 5 cities in 2019.
Diversity MBA not only provides these trainings for the marketplace, but we customize for internal trainings for companies, regardless of size; and we will be offering courses in 2019 for virtual innovation labs.
Companies interested in hosting a training please contact Erika@diversitymbamagazine.com.
