Becoming a Certified Diversity and Inclusion Recruiter

Being young in my career and a white female who grew up in a predominantly white community, I know I have a lot to learn about diversity and specifically recruiting for diverse talent. As the first line of reviewing potential candidates who will work for Crossfuze, I want to bring in a pool of talent that represents our company’s diversity initiatives.

The training course we took is from AIRS, powered by ADP, and is the Certified Diversity and Inclusion Recruiter Certification. It was two days of four hours of training followed by three short exams. While much of the training was focused on Boolean searching and building diverse search strings, there was some great information that can be applied to the full recruiting cycle. 

The first day of training started with information regarding diversity and bias. It was interesting to hear about the evolution of diversity. In the 90’s, diversity was tolerated. In the 2000’s, diversity 

became a more common conversation and was looked at as a business strategy. Today, diversity is a big conversation, it is focused on inclusion and empowerment. My trainer, Jon Sloan, said that in 2019 86% of millennial candidates consider a company’s DE&I when going through their job search. One can only imagine what that percentage has risen to after 2020.

We talked about how a diverse company allows teams to engage in more critical thinking and are less susceptible to “group think.” It allows for other perspectives and increase ability to attract and retain qualified candidates with varied working styles. One comment that stood out to me was “Hiring for a “cultural fit” often translates to hiring someone who is just like everyone else.”

Another discussion we had around inclusion discussed allowing employees to be truly themselves at work. Creating an environment where associates feel free to express opinions, concerns, and ideas openly and where these ideas are valued and considered.

A job posting can sometimes be the first impression an active candidate has of a company and a position. Within our job postings, we want to eliminate any bias that would keep a candidate from applying. Women are less likely to apply to a position they are not 100% qualified for. To engage more females to apply to an open position, we were introduced to two sites that test for masculine and feminine-coded words. Our goal is to use more words that are neutral or feminine-coded in our job descriptions to encourage more female applicants along with male applicants.