How To Hire Culturally Diverse Employees: The Top Diversity Hiring Practices

If you are looking to hire culturally diverse employees, here are five diversity hiring practices that have been proven to work. Try them out.

When looking to hire culturally diverse employees many discover that it’s not that simple. Standard hiring practices may leave a recruiting pool dry and leave you empty-handed. But don’t despair, here are five surefire diversity hiring practices you can implement right away.

5 Diversity Hiring Practices Proven to Help You Hire Culturally Diverse Employees

If you’re reading this, you are probably well aware that companies that do not hire culturally diverse employees are missing out on top talent. Test run these top diversity-hiring practices on your organization. Measure your results. And remember, if you need help, I am just a stone throw away.

Top hiring practices: Should you consider cultural fit?

1Avoid Unconscious Biases Using Blind Resumes

Research has shown that resumes with white sounding and male names command more attention and hiring rates than black-sounding or female names on the exact, same resume.

Researchers from the University of Chi­cago and M.I.T. landmark study showed that “Those with ‘‘white’’ names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than those with ‘‘black’’ names.” – NY Times.

You’ve probably witnessed this phenomenon in your recruiting career, right?

The same happens with top tier universities and with certain revered organizations. Undoubtedly, despite all good intentions to hire culturally diverse employees, unconscious biases are at play here.

Why?

Because we tend to feel more comfortable with people who are like us.

This is one of the main reasons why your company keeps hiring people who look and sound alike. They grew up in the same area of the country, went to similar schools, worked in organizations with a similar culture.

But if you want to attract employees that are more culturally diverse you have to be more vigilant of your biases towards specific backgrounds. You have to do whatever it takes to hire different people from the ones that currently populate your office.

Here is where this top diversity hiring practice comes in. Grab the bull by the horns and blind all resumes.

How?

• Request applicants to submit resumes without the name of the university they graduated from.
• Assign numbers to everyone who applies so that you can’t tell whether they are male or female.
• Put everyone through the interview process and select the winning candidate regardless of background or gender.

But you must watch out for pitfalls here. An HR executive – client of mine from a large multinational company – wanted to eliminate a prevalent cultural bias as most of her workers were recruited out of the same three elite universities. She followed this exact process to increase the hiring of culturally diverse employees.

5 Diversity Hiring Practices Proven to Help You Hire Culturally Diverse Employees. Role of unconscious bias.

At the end of 5 rounds of interviews, when the top three finalists were selected, she revealed to the hiring committee the schools they had graduated from. None of them were from these three prestigious schools. The committee suggested to scrap that search and to start all over again because the candidates would not be “a cultural fit.”

This could be one of the challenges that you may have to overcome if you’re committed to hiring culturally diverse talent. Make sure everyone in your organization is aligned with your good intentions.

How did the story of the HR executive’s intervention end? She stuck to her guns and hired the top three finalists.

The result?

20 years later all of them had built stellar careers within her organization.

These culturally diverse employees are a clear example that blinding resumes is a sound diversity hiring practice. It enables recruiters to hire the best people for the job keeping unconscious biases at bay.

Bundle Job Searches to Increase Your Diverse Hires.

2Forget Cultural Fit. Create Structured Interviews.

Businesses have long glorified the cultural fit. Unfortunately, that’s often code for “the candidate we hire must be white” or “male” or “white male.”

This insistence on cultural fit – in spite of what research shows – is one of the reasons organizations are so slow to reach gender parity and inclusion at the highest levels of decision-making.

“Why do we stick with a method that so clearly does not work, when decision aids, including tests, structured interviews, and a combination of mechanical predictors, substantially reduce error in predicting employee performance? The organizational psychologist Scott Highhouse called this resistance “the greatest failure of I-O [industrial and organizational] psychology.” – Harvard Business Review

Structured interviews will help overcome this bias and build a more robust and culturally diverse institution

Here is how to implement this hiring practice:

1. Establish a set of relevant questions for the roles you are looking to fill and always ask every candidate these same questions in the exact same order.
2. Assign a value to each question. For example: You can rate each answer on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being unacceptable/inappropriate/no match to position/absence of skill, and 10 being optimal/perfect match of requirements for position.
3. Have one person conduct the interview and rate each question answered by the candidate as the interview takes place.
4. At the end of all interviews, pass on all the interviews with their rated answers to a second person. Perhaps your assistant. Have them calculate the best performing candidate and tell you who the finalist is.

This eliminates potential hiring mistakes that are frequently made when employees get selected because the hiring manager “connected” with them over things such as having played the same sport in school or supporting the same non-profit organization. Therefore, it helps you decide more objectively who gets the job.

This simple act allows your good intention of hiring more culturally diverse talent to win over your unconscious biases.

3Bundle Job Searches to Increase Your Diverse Hires

It’s easy to hire the same type of person over and over again when you hire for one position at a time.

Hiring managers may unconsciously believe that a man or a woman or someone from a specific ethnic background would be better suited for a specific role, perpetuating imbalances by continuing to hire according to the stereotype for said position. For example, hiring Asian employees for tech positions and Hispanics for customer service.

How do we work around this particular bias?

Research has shown that by grouping or bundling all searches for similar roles it’s easier to notice the mix of people you’re hiring and whether you’re embracing culturally diverse employees.

There is a similar research that shows that when people are asked to pick a snack and they do so day after day, they tend to eat more sweets and junk food than when asked to choose all of their snacks for an entire week. The selection then becomes more diverse and it includes healthier options.

The solution here is simple and self-evident. Rather than hiring for one position at a time, survey the different business units or departments in your organization for other positions to fill. Then, conduct a larger search to hire for multiple positions at once. You will notice a pool of hires that is much more culturally diverse.

Discover how to hire culturally diverse employees.

4Encourage Your Current Diverse Talent to Provide Referrals

Have you noticed how in an area where there were no Ecuadorians or Chinese people at all, suddenly there’s a whole community of them?

It’s human nature. Those who have already settled in a town tell their families and friends about current job opportunities and quality of life. Consequently, the new immigrants settle where they can find jobs and they already have a support system via a group of people who share their culture.

You can replicate this timeless phenomenon to attract more culturally diverse employees.

Here’s how: Ask your current staff to refer qualified candidates for any current open positions.

You are likely to see your culturally diverse recruiting pool increase substantially within a short period of time. The added advantage is that those who already work for your organization will collaborate with the on ramping of their colleagues. They will introduce them to their networks and share company policies and any unwritten rules.

It’s pretty common practice for companies to ask their employees to refer others for open positions. Just cast a wider net and enjoy the benefits of a more culturally diverse workforce.

Mariela Dabbah reveals the secrets to hiring culturally diverse employees.

5Retention of Your Current Diverse Talent Is Priority One

Now, for the final diversity hiring practice and a big bonus if correctly implemented:

Having a good retention plan in place before you hire substantial numbers of culturally diverse employees is a must.

Why?

First, because you don’t want to lose the talent you so painstakingly acquired. But also because diverse talent tends to feel more comfortable working for organizations that value inclusion. They are more likely to check out your reputation before they apply. If you have lackluster numbers and a reputation for not offering true career paths to women or culturally diverse employees, you’re less likely to succeed in attracting top diverse talent.

So, put your house in order before you venture out to hire new staff.

• Make sure that you walk the talk
• Offer stretch assignments and opportunities for relevant exposure to women and diverse talent
• Align their interests with the type of work they do for your organization
• Use transparency in your compensation and promotion practices
• Make all your talent feel respected

We hope these top diversity-hiring practices help you hire culturally diverse employees. Put them in practice and always remember I am here to support your efforts.

Book a 1-hour consultation with me and get unbiased D&I, Career Development & Leadership advice. Ask all the questions you have!