Diversity in Hiring: Best Practices for Better Outcomes
Norma Rodriguez, Director, Office for Faculty Advancement
When leaders hear about diversity in hiring, their minds may jump to questions about quotas, or they may feel resistance or apathy due to the myriad demands of the recruiting and hiring process. In actuality, affirmative action is not about quotas. Diversity in hiring is intended not only to break down barriers and create pathways for historically excluded and underrepresented groups but to ensure our teams and departments benefit from varied perspectives and heterogeneous experiences. Further, strong diversity hiring practices uphold the UW’s guiding value of diversity and commitment to inclusive excellence and also contribute to building a workforce that reflects the diversity of our student body.
To illustrate a few best practices that can transform your approach to hiring and help you maintain balance and consistency, I’d like to focus on two common hiring process challenges: (1) There’s very little diversity in our hiring pool and (2) We have a diverse pool but keep hiring the same kind of people.
Problem: There’s very little diversity in our hiring pool
Solution 1: Rework the job description. Often, when faced with a vacancy, we dust off or borrow from old job descriptions. Rather than relying on tried-and-true verbiage, take the opportunity to revamp the job description and pare it down to the essentials.
- Carefully review each line of the description. Consider what language is essential versus what language might be limiting or may unreasonably “weed out” applicants.
- Utilize “and/or equivalent experience” language to encourage qualified applicants whose experience or career path might not be an obvious match.
- Ensure that the requirements truly align with the responsibilities, and remove unnecessary required or desired qualifications.
You should also take the opportunity to add diversity language to the job description (as well as any job ads). Showing that diversity is valued may increase the pool of diverse candidates. For example:
- In describing the position, highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion.
- Describe the unit as a place that values diversity and diversity-related work on multiple levels.
- Include the UW’s broader commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Consider requiring a diversity statement that describes a candidate’s experiences and commitments to diversity and inclusion.
Solution 2: Improve outreach. Send job announcements to listservs and organizations that serve large numbers of historically underrepresented populations, for example to UW Affinity Groups or the MOSAIC listserv. You can also reach out to diversity-related committees or sections of professional organizations. Consider creating an outreach budget, especially for higher-level searches, in order to allocate resources for advertising with publications that attract diverse readers.
The Staff Diversity Hiring Toolkit includes a section on outreach that provides more details on advertising, networks, and recruiting web sites.
Problem: We have a diverse pool but keep hiring the same kind of people
Solution 1: Become aware of implicit biases. Stereotypes and preconceptions about social groups can influence our behavior toward members of those groups, both positively and negatively, without our conscious knowledge.
Even if we don’t consider ourselves biased, most of us see what aligns with or confirms our established beliefs and make associations quickly based on our experiences and beliefs. Consequently, we tend to hire people who look, speak, act, or even think like us. This kind of in-group favoritism — if unrecognized or unexamined — may cause a white suburban soccer mom to favor a candidate who shares one or many of those same characteristics (ethnicity, lifestyle, parental status). The same could be said for a first-generation Filipino dad whose hiring decision might be influenced by feeling kinship with a recent immigrant who is also a father.
Other kinds of bias include bias toward dominant groups or toward those who represent commonly accepted norms or stereotypes. In the first instance, a white male candidate may just “seem” more qualified; in the latter, hiring committees might gravitate toward programmers who are male or nurses who are female.
Finally, there is also the “fit” fallacy. Departments have their own localized culture, each college has a culture, and the University as a whole has a culture. We may lean towards candidates who seem to be a good fit with our local or institutional organizational culture, leading us to hire “ourselves” over and again.
One way this can play out in the hiring process is through moving target syndrome—changing the requirements for the position as the search proceeds in order to include or exclude particular candidates. Often, this happens unconsciously or what seems to be organically. In actuality, however, a moving target is an indication that implicit bias is at work. This brief video produced by the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is a great tool for anyone who reviews job applications and would like an introduction to implicit bias and how it works.
Solution 2: Utilize a rubric. Having a pre-defined rubric is an effective way to maintain balance and consistency. A rubric is an assessment tool that aligns the stated position requirements and priorities in a way that can be used to evaluate an applicant or application package.
Though developing a rubric requires more work on the front-end, it minimizes subjectivity throughout the hiring process and facilitates a more effective and objective approach to screening.
- Create a rubric based on the criteria in the position description.
- Apply the rubric consistently for all applicants and by all members of the hiring committee.
- Score an applicant’s materials using a straightforward system. For instance, give one, two, or three points for low, medium, or high evidence or proof of meeting stated criteria, respectively.
For help developing a rubric, please consult this sample rubric for an assistant director of communications position.
Solution 3: Build a broad hiring committee. We can overcome our innate tendency to hire ourselves by developing a diverse hiring committee. If your unit or department has a diversity committee or group, invite a member to join your hiring committee. Look outside of your immediate unit as needed to diversify your committee and bring a wealth of backgrounds and experiences to the table.
When building your committee, consider multiple perspectives. For instance, a team with diverse ages and positions but similar ethnic backgrounds may not seem inclusive to an applicant from a non-dominant ethnic group, just as a team of ethnically diverse people in their mid-twenties may not seem inclusive to an applicant in their fifties.
Don’t go it alone
I hope the above problems and solutions have helped demystify diversity in hiring and provided ideas for retooling your approach. I encourage you to consult the Staff Diversity Hiring Toolkit regularly as you plan and implement any recruiting and hiring process. This tremendous web-based resource was developed to help hiring managers and others involved in the hiring process and covers policies, planning, outreach, candidate review and selection, and onboarding and retention.
Remember that recruiting and hiring should be a consultative process. As you plan for your next hire, talk with your employment specialist, HR administrator, supervisor, or others as appropriate. And when you have that thoughtfully formed hiring committee in place, use it; call upon them as much as possible. You can also reach out to staffdiv@uw.edu for help.
