We need to be doing so much more

A couple of weeks ago a study was released that revealed some shocking statistics on the potential for new immigrants to Canada and their descendents. In short what the study showed was that in spite of higher than average education levels, income and employment were both below average for second generation Canadians. That is Canadians, born, raised and educated in Canada but who are the sons and daughters of immigrants.

The difficulty of many immigrants in finding meaningful employment is well documented and is usually ascribed to such factors as language issues, difficulty in getting international education credentials recognized or just unfamiliarity with Canadian business culture. The darker and generally unspoken factors are items like ignorance or even outright bigotry and racism. We all want to believe that the latter is not true, that the first reasons, which are all somewhat pragmatic are the reasons immigrants struggle. The results of this study fairly clearly demonstrate that sadly this is not the real case.

We have long believed that building awareness of cultural barriers, the barriers that prevent true inclusiveness is a keystone to a successful diverse workforce strategy. This is in part because the recruiting and sourcing functions of any organization have far more cultural bias inherent in them and far more subjectivity in general then most of us want to ever acknowledge.

I've spoken before on the resume analogy but it remains a good one and so I'll recap it here. If you are a recruiter or screener and there is a position to fill, urgently as of course it almost always is, and you need to pull 10 resumes out of a stack of 100 which resumes and candidates end up being selected? Now we all know that those 100 aren't going to be great, not qualified, lacking experience or just a poorly written resume are all items that can, do and should put us off selecting a candidate. So for example let's say that reduces the list from 100 to 50, how do the final 10 make the cut from those? We can hope that it's for objective reasons but human experience, and the evidence shows that the process is highly subjective and relies foremost on the feeling of connection that you as the screener have for the person whose resume you are holding and cultural affinity, or the perception thereof plays a huge role in that.

The fact that this takes place should really in the end not be surprising, and to some degree at least the screeners and recruiters are not to blame. The process itself is to blame with an emphasis on metrics that do not encourage the treating of all candidates equally and the lack of recognition of the role that subjective analysis plays in the filling of roles. And lest you come away with the impression that it's only the screening process that's broken, it is not, each step in recruitment, candidate selection and hiring has these similar types of flaws, it just happens to be perhaps most blatant at the screening step.

So what can be done about this? I think three things.

Generate awareness. Diversity sensitivity training isn't just a nice thing to do, it really can have practical benefits. While affinity biases won't be eradicated over night sometimes just being aware of an issue, being aware of how an unknown bias is affecting their judgement can help people to re-evaluate some of their decisions in future.

Fix the process. A lot of time and money is spent by companies to metricize and evaluate their hiring and HR processes. It certainly can be said that fully objectifying the hiring process is one of the holy grails of the recruiting and HR worlds. Whether, practically speaking this can actually be accomplished is a matter of some debate but all the same it's worth noting that improvements to the process are going to help diverse candidates, perhaps more than anyone.

Diversify your recruiting, sourcing and HR teams. It almost shouldn't have to be said but one way to eliminate cultural bias towards any group is to include members of that group in the process making the decisions. Fixing the process and raising awareness are both good and noble ideas but can take time to implement and generate results. Making your “front line” hiring and HR functions more diverse will pay immediate dividends in removing these biases and prejudices from you process.

Let's always remember that a moral right or wrong isn't the reason to do any of this. We should feel a moral obligation to do something about the unfairness with a situation like that suggested by the study but that is not the reason to fix it. The reason that you must address the inequality is that until you do you simply aren't hiring all the best candidates. Because until the point that you are sure that you are actually looking at everyone you just won't know what you're missing.