Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals
October 24, 2012 

Organizations with a formal diversity recruiting effort are better able to bring in diverse candidates than those that have no defined effort. For example, results of NACE’s 2011 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey found that, although African Americans accounted for just 8.1 percent of the bachelor’s degrees conferred, African-American candidates make up an average of 10.5 percent of new college hires among organizations with a defined effort. In comparison, among companies without an effort, just 4.5 percent of new college hires were African Americans.

There are several steps organizations that are successful in diversity recruiting take. Among them are:

• Securing management support for the diversity recruiting program—Diversity recruiting should be incorporated into your organization’s overall goals with solid support from upper management. Be sincere about diversity efforts. To demonstrate support for your organization’s diversity recruiting efforts coming from the top, your organization might, for example, send a senior-level person to campus to meet with students or participate in an information session.
• Building relationships with and through the campus career center—Seek out the designated person at the career center who is responsible for working with diversity efforts, then determine how you can work to be a part of a program and increase awareness of your company. This might include presenting during classes, holding workshops outside of class, participating in mock interviews, and more.
• Getting involved in relevant campus groups and organizations—Doing so is an excellent way to help you build your candidate pool. You can use your career services and/or faculty network to leverage these relationships with campus groups.
• Offering internship and cooperative education programs—Provide experiential education opportunities through which students, including minority students, can gain experience, and transferable, leadership, and communications skills. In addition, make sure to let students know the program is available, for example, by marketing it during career fairs and information sessions.  
• Sending diverse recruiters to campus—Students want to interact with others like them who have experience in the organizations for which they’re considering working. Send a diverse group to tell their stories.
• Being strategic—Review the events or programs you’re sponsoring to understand the benefit of that sponsorship. The type of event you sponsor depends on the outcome you hope to achieve.

For directories of minority institutions and minority associations, see www.naceweb.org/Knowledge/Diversity/Diversity_Resources.aspx.