This is part 3 of a 4 part series.
To focus on becoming a more antiracist firm and workplace on July 1, 2020, we announced our Equity and Justice Action Plan. This series will share resources and documents we developed to Be Just. Do Right. by bringing social justice into our office through culture, work, recruiting, and spending.
The goal of this post is to share how we are making progress on our commitment a year later. This is not intended to be a report on best practices because we are still learning and evolving. Rather, we want to offer our work as a resource to be built upon.
Our Recruitment
Dedicated to improving our recruitment, we are researching and implementing best practices with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind.
Current Metrics:
We are striving to have NY state’s racial representation reflected within our applicant pool, our staff, and our leadership team. This is only our first step as we understand that racial representation is not the whole picture.
To capture applicant data we have added an anonymous and optional applicant diversity survey. Our current recruitment strategy includes using the Rooney Rule to make sure we interview two or more candidates from communities currently underrepresented at I&CO for each open role. We also are identifying recruitment partners that better connect us to these communities. We will continuously track the demographic of our team and adjust our recruitment strategy accordingly.
Equipping Hiring Managers/Interviewers with Tools for Equity
▸ Tools to write more inclusive job descriptions:
- Readability: Hemingway Editor
- Gendered language: Applied | Text Analysis & Gender Decoder: find subtle bias in job ads
▸ Be aware of the types of bias that can show up when reviewing resumes:
- Affinity bias: unconscious tendency to get along with others who are similar
- Confirmation bias: interpreting new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories
- Groupthink: thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility
- Halo effect: the tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another area
- Stereotype bias: memory distortion regarding unfounded beliefs on certain groups based on race, gender, etc
▸ Create an anonymous interview feedback form:
- Prevents groupthink
- Ensures all candidates are being assessed by the same criteria
Creating an Inclusive and Welcoming Interview Process
▸ Interviewers should share their pronouns and welcome interviewees to share their own
▸ We are open to requests for alternative methods of joining a virtual interview
▸ There is flexibility to break up a round of interviews into multiple days
▸ We set clear interview expectations, including:
- Names and titles of interviewers
- Start and end times for each interview
- Dress code (if in-person)
Previous sections in this series have covered how social justice is being incorporated into our office culture and working process. Next, we will explore how we have adjusted our spending over the past year.
