Adjusting your sourcing strategy to consider equity

- Once you know the skills you're sourcing for it will be that much easier to decide where to go to identify candidates with the skills you need. When using a skills-first approach you can increase the variety of places from which you source. Making sure everyone agrees to the strategy upfront can widen your pool and shorten your time to fill. Take the example of IBM. They included new sources of talent in order to fill critical skills gaps. Those sources included coding camps, apprenticeship programs, formerly incarcerated professionals, people with disabilities, community colleges, and other modern career education programs that attract people reentering the workforce. Sometimes it is just as simple as adding a new college to your rotation when you are participating in on-campus recruiting. Time management is a top skill a recruiter needs to be successful, but sometimes it's not about juggling priorities as much as simplifying your approach to diversifying the places you already visit. I was in a meeting with a group of recruiters where one of them said they would really appreciate it if they could attend HBCUs and not just Yale or go to NBA games and not just NASCAR. What are your sources within your process that you can diversify? Do you go to the same school and the same events every single year? Or do you switch things up? Part of your intake process with the hiring manager should include an in-depth discussion of your sourcing strategy so that they are aware from the beginning, but not only aware, in agreement. A skills-first approach is an equitable talent acquisition strategy when all parties are on board. So if you are going to adjust your recruitment strategy to consider more equitable options, you are also going to need to substantiate that strategy and address the resistance. The resistance isn't always going to come because the hiring manager doesn't want a woman on their team or whatever other form of bias we regularly see. Instead, it more than likely stems from a reluctance to change. Change requires effort. Effort equals extra work, and nobody wants to do additional work if they can avoid it. So part of your strategy for overcoming resistance is going to be to show the hiring manager how this change is actually going to benefit them and provide them the outcome they want. For example, a recruiter was very frustrated about the fact that they had an open role which required a PhD degree. However, when the final candidates were a woman with a PhD and a man without one, the hiring manager decided to move forward with the man without the degree. When sourcing we have to wonder how that man made it into the pool in the first place. Take the word of Kelli Jordan, Talent Leader for New Collar Initiatives at IBM, who has been quoted as saying, "We aren't replacing or devaluing "the four-year college degree, "but rather opening the space to bring in more candidates "from all types of backgrounds who have learned their skills "in a variety of ways." Now, take a moment to think about the type of resistance you have already faced. What strategy can you use to counter it? How might you now approach that conversation differently? What data might you need? To get you started with data points that might be helpful I've included a few in the handout.