How Can Employers and Career Centers Partner To Foster Inclusivity ?
Now more than ever, university students and recent graduates are pushing potential employers to answer questions about their DEI practices, from their recruiting process to how they address current political events. A great opportunity to foster these discussions and take the pulse of those entering the workforce is through university career center engagement.
Northwestern Career Advancement works with students and employers to provide career development services and professional opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students. As part of their employer engagement, NCA hosts a quarterly employer focus group which brings together employers from various industries that actively recruit on campus to talk about best recruitment practices and hiring trends These meetings have rotating topics and in light of current events, NCA chose diversity, inclusion, and racial equity in hiring.
“We’re helping students find out where they want to work and they care about what employers say about this,” says Valerie Schoonover, Assistant Director of Employer Strategy at NCA. “We started talking about how we can have a conversation with our employers about this that helps both of us understand what employers are doing in this space. This ultimately helps students navigate these questions as well.”
So what did this employer focus group entail? What was the value? How will it help them promote transparency and convey this to potential job applicants?
Employers and NCA employer strategists broke into small groups to discuss various trends they were seeing, what is working, what isn’t, and to have some frank conversations about DEI hiring goals and progress. Many industries and companies of all sizes were present including financial services, nonprofit, consulting management, arts, and education.
“They started asking each other questions. How do you approach this? What do you think about that? That was a big learning moment for them,” says Eleni Vartelas, fellow Assistant Director of Employer Strategy at NCA. “They’re all going through this together and how do we talk about it in a way that everyone can learn from each other? Providing a safe space for employers to engage and share insight with each other was key.”
Whether it was a large for-profit organization, a financial services company, or a smaller, local organization, they all had different perspectives on what has or hasn’t been done in the past of their organizations, what's spoken about, what's not, and why that's the case.
Creating space and resources
When talking about inclusion, the topic of creating spaces within these organizations through affinity groups came up. But on top of affinity groups, small or large, being safe spaces, what action items are coming from these kinds of groups? This is where the issue of resources comes into play.
“One of the larger organizations was a global firm with a lot more resources than a smaller firm, but they talked about how they're actually able to have cross-training within affinity groups,” Eleni vocalized. “One affinity group might present to them and say this is our lens of how we're looking at it. We can teach you this concept and help you understand why this part of DEI is so important.”
Resources matter and the time you put toward this matters–some organizations have more resources and are able to focus a lot more time and energy on it.
Vocalizing issues
Being vocal about anti-racism in the workforce and teaching employees about that concept is non-negotiable.
Eleni added, “It’s important that they’re speaking up and talking about how tiring it can be to talk about being a black person in the workplace or being sometimes the only black person not wanting to speak for everyone, not being an expert in this field–how hard that can be.”
Employers had the opportunity to compare and contrast the internal reactions to the events of this past summer.
“The two big for-profit companies focused a lot on company-wide statements that were shared from upper management and their reactions to that, whereas the smaller organizations talked about how they approach how their own work and how it’s affected by a deeper understanding of diversity equity inclusion,” Valerie shared.
Prioritizing diversity in hiring and promotion
A few people spoke of the reality that not many people of color are in senior leadership roles at their organizations and how it often stops at mid-level. Being qualified is obviously an important piece of hiring for a role within the job description, but then how does the DEI lens fit in where a person has the qualifications and they have many valuable parts of their identity that they can bring to the workforce.
What now?
One thing that was universal for employers was that they expect students to ask recruiters questions about how they retain talent, prioritize diversity, and respond to Black Lives Matter. Those values are important to potential hires, whether they're students that are just entering the workforce or people who are just looking for new jobs.
Momentum is on their side right now, but how do they keep up these conversations? “Everyone said they wished that we had more time and wanted a part two to this conversation,” says Eleni. “We definitely want to have more quarterly conversations in the future, whether it's a part two or a check-in of some sort. A lot of these conversations were about the organization's responses and then talking about recruiting, so next time focusing more on recruiting and action items”
Emphasizing that DEI is an important part of the recruiting process early, starting with transparency at the student career center level can improve your company’s recruiting tactics and lead to hiring more diverse talent that knows their voice will be heard. Hopefully, more companies can learn from each other’s DEI recruitment practices in this setting and facilitate honest conversations with students. It’s important to remember when hiring–it’s the people who make the difference in the end.