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Recruiters find minority hires in diverse ways

Posted on 18. Mar, 2005 by Bill in Employment News

Recruiters find minority hires in diverse ways

Bianca Carpenter (29) of Chicago talks with Illinois State Police field recruiter Brian Clay. (KEVIN MANNING/P-D)
Melissa Hamilton won’t have to search for a job in May when she graduates from the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Hamilton, 23, already has been hired at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an associate tax accountant. She found the position through Inroads, a national program that helps train and place minority students in internships and full-time jobs after college.

The program also is a recruiting tool, used by some companies as a way to find qualified minority candidates to fill positions in their firms.

Employers often face a catch-22 when trying to fill jobs - they need to attract a broad pool of applicants, but it’s illegal to hire someone based on race, gender, religion or ethnicity.

It’s a fine line companies have to walk, or they could be in danger of discrimination, said Jerry Hunter, a labor attorney and partner with Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis.

Companies are allowed to say that they welcome applications from minority candidates and female applicants. But some get into trouble when they ask for specifics.

“If they indicate they are looking for candidates of a certain race, color or sex - that’s prima facie for discrimination,” Hunter said.

So, how does a company ensure its pool of applicants is diverse?

Some recruiters are checking resumes for subtle clues, or targeting diversity job sites and black colleges to attract candidates. Professional groups like the National Black MBA Association or the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers also are popular picks for recruiters seeking to fill jobs in select industries.

“If you want to fish in a particular way you need to understand where the fish are,” said Jim Beirne, an associate dean at Washington University’s Olin School of Business. A no-brainer, right? Wrong, Beirne says. As a former recruiter at Hewlett-Packard Co. and General Mills Co., he says the diverse candidates with experience always had more recruiters tracking them down for jobs. “The point is not to just look at isolated pockets and when those are gone, say there are no candidates that reflect diversity,” Beirne said. “We had to expend extra resources.”

That means companies may have to cast a wider net to find minority applicants who qualify for positions. Good recruiters do their research to find the best people possible, said Carolyn Lowe, executive vice president for DHR International, an executive search firm in Chicago.

Looking for an attorney? Try looking in other law firms, and maybe the ethnic bar associations, like the Asian-American and Women’s Bar Association, Lowe said. She also checks minority-oriented magazines, like the Top 50 companies listed in Black Enterprise magazine.

“We provide our clients with diverse candidates regardless of whether they ask for it; it’s good business,” she said. “With the growing ethnic population, if you don’t have people of color, you’re missing out on talent.”

Recruiters say it also doesn’t hurt candidates to list special affiliations and groups on their applications and resumes. “There’s any number of groups a candidate can self-select into and from a recruiters point of view, it’s a way of distinguishing an applicant from the others,” Beirne said.

It’s likely that more employers will have diverse staffs within the next 10 years. Minorities are the fastest growing part of the work force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Asians, the fastest-growing sector of the labor market, are expected to comprise 5.5 percent of the U.S. work force by 2012, up from 4.1 percent in 2002. Hispanic workers are expected to grow to 15 percent of the work force by 2012, up from 12 percent in 2002. Blacks’ share of the labor force is projected to grow to 12.2 percent in 2012, from 11.4 percent in 2002.

The proportion of women in the work force is expected to grow faster than for men in the next decade. Between 2002 and 2012, the number of women in the work force is projected to grow 14.3 percent, compared to 10 percent for men.

Chicago-based David Gomez & Associates specialized in recruiting for the energy industry until 1999, when the firm’s practice shifted to diversity recruiting. “The first question I would get from my clients is ‘You can help with diversity, right?’” said David Gomez, president of the firm. “They assumed since I was Mexican-American, I could help them.”

Gomez insists that for companies really to achieve diversity, they have to do more than hire employees of different backgrounds.

“It’s about growing diversity and building a bench strength of employees to pull from and once you hire them, focusing on retention and growth in the company.” But with an increasingly diverse work force and talent pool, recruiters say companies that reflect the communities they serve will become leaders in their industries for the future.

“It’s illegal to exclude people from the hiring process, but it’s also been illegal for the last 50 years to exclude those people from jobs,” Gomez said. “The demographics aren’t going away, but companies who get it right will have access to those emerging markets.”

Reporter Tavia Evans

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Tags: Employment News