Benchmarking Your Recruiting and Hiring Practices

Michael M. Harris, Ph.D.

In settling a recent, widely publicized set of race discrimination charges targeting its recruiting and hiring practices, Abercrombie and Fitch agreed to a series of sweeping changes. A review of the consent decree signed by Abercrombie and Fitch suggests that the following practices and strategies will be helpful in designing, implementing, and achieving success in your diversity hiring programs:

1. Make sure all marketing materials, not just recruitment materials, reflect diversity;
2. Create a high level executive position (i.e., Vice President of Diversity) with responsibility for diversity. Be sure that the person in this position reports directly to the CEO;
3. Incorporate diversity initiatives (e.g., include minority-oriented recruitment websites, such as the monster.com diversity website) within your recruitment programs;
4. Create valid, job-related hiring processes (e.g., written job analyses; structured interviews) that will help screen the best candidates and at the same time, will eliminate barriers to minority employment;
5. Evaluate and reward line managers for their performance on diversity recruitment and retention. Performance evaluation forms should include specific ratings on diversity management and reward systems (e.g., pay raises) should explicitly be linked to managerial performance on diversity management;
6. Use appropriate metrics (e.g., percentage of minority applicants, broken down by race/ethnicity; percentage of minority candidates hired, broken down by race/ethnicity) to measure progress on diversity goals.