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Employers go extra mile for diversity

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 Price Waterhouse Coopers 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 must walk a fine line when trying to fill jobs, said St. Louis labor attorney Jerry Hunter. They need to attract a broad pool of applicants, but it’s illegal to hire someone based on race, gender, religion or ethnicity.

Companies are allowed to say they welcome applications from minority and female candidates. 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 an executive search firm in Chicago.

Looking for an attorney? Try looking in other law firms, and maybe in 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.”

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.

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.