Cities and counties can take several steps to assemble a diverse pool of job candidates

Local governments can expand diversity in their workforces in several ways, says Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law, professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law and author of the book “Bias Interrupted.” These approaches, she adds, can help public entities and other organizations recruit more professionals from under-represented groups.

Williams says that if an agency’s pool of candidates is overwhelmingly white and male, that it will be much more difficult to hire more women and minorities when openings occur. She says that hiring officers and teams should insist that the pool of candidates contain multiple women and people of color. “Creating a diverse pool is the single most important step to interrupt bias—and it doesn’t mean adding one diversity candidate. The odds of hiring a woman are 79 times greater if there are at least two women in the finalist pool; the odds of hiring a person of color are 194 times greater. When the requirement for a diverse pool is not accompanied by metrics measuring who is actually chosen for the job, the tick-the-box approach isn’t going to change anything.”

Does your entity have an employee referral program that rewards staffers to help find the correct candidates for open job roles? If yes, Williams urges agencies to closely monitor referral hiring. “If your organization relies on referral hiring, keep track of that stream of candidates to see whether it lacks diversity. If it does, open up a discussion about whether to eliminate referral hiring or balance it out with targeted outreach programming to other groups.”

Williams says targeted recruitment of women or people of color has positive impacts for every group, with the strongest effect for Black professionals, Asian Americans and white women. “The standard is to recruit more heavily at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs); other important resources are job fairs, affinity networks, conferences, and training programs aimed at women, LGBTQ+ people or people of color in relevant fields.” She adds that when hiring for more senior roles, the best approach may be for an agency to use a specialist in diversity recruiting. One more way to employ targeted recruiting: Consider using LinkedIn creatively to help reach out to a diverse range of candidates.

Williams urges hiring teams to have a meeting prior to the start of a review of candidates’ resumes. The meeting, she says, should cover how to identify and interrupt bias in hiring. Here are a few steps that Williams encourages covering in the review process:

• Pre-commit to what’s important—and require accountability. “Put in writing what qualifications are important, both in entry-level and in lateral hiring. When qualifications are waived for a specific candidate, require an explanation of why—and keep track of which candidates receive these waivers.”
• Rate independently; use a consistent rating scale, and discount outliers. “Establish clear grading rubrics and ensure that everyone grades on the same scale. When a group of people are evaluating candidates, the best procedure is for each evaluator to give their rating independently, without consultation.” Williams offers this suggestion: “Consider having each resume reviewed by two or more managers and averaging the score. If possible, discount outliers—reviewers who disproportionately loved or loathed a candidate.”
• Ask questions about resume gaps. Don’t count gaps in a resume as an automatic negative, “Instead, give the candidate an opportunity to explain their work history and anything that might seem unusual about it. There are many, many reasons people might have a gap between jobs.” Williams adds that hiring committees should evaluate candidates by the work they’ve done, rather than the time they’ve missed. “This is fairer to people with family caregiving responsibilities, as well as anyone who has had to take time off from work due to serious health issues like cancer. If someone has taken time away from paid work to look after children or aging parents, don’t infer that they’ll be less committed to the job they’re applying for now.”

The Center for WorkLife Law has a resource page on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].