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Fire Department of New York officials announced this month that a record number of minorities took its firefighter exam this spring. The Fire Department says nearly 46 percent of the potential recruits were members of minority groups. The number of women test-takers also saw an increase this year. Nearly 2,000 women took the test. That’s more than the past three test years combined. That’s a good thing, but it’d be even better if these applicants were even more prepared. More on that in a minute.

Big Improvement keep reading…

Financial and business consulting group PricewaterhouseCoopers captured the top spot on DiversityInc’s Top 50 Companies for Diversity.

Of PwC, DiversityInc said this: “Always cognizant of the war for talent, PwC continuously creates innovative strategies to find, engage, and promote the best and brightest employees, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups.”

Surprisingly, considering the layoffs and slowdown in hiring that have beset the finance industry, it was well represented on the list. Ernst and Young, Deloitte, Prudential, KPMG, and a few others in the sector made the list.

Tar Heel Cops Needed

The highway patrol in North Carolina is hiring. There are 183 jobs open in its “first recruiting blitz in five years.”

Recruiting Company Lawsuit

The U.S. EEOC says Randstad U.S. LP is settling an ADA-related lawsuit for $60,000. keep reading…

When employers look for senior people — and 31 percent will be, a new survey says — the evidence is they’re all looking for the same qualities. Industry experience is important; so is proven problem solving.

Nowhere on the list of qualities a CareerBuilder survey reported as important to employers was craziness listed. Perhaps that trait was covered by the “Is creative” characteristic that 43 percent of the respondents look for in a new executive. keep reading…

I strive to be the world’s most prominent advocate of employee referrals simply because there is no more powerful tool in recruiting. Well-designed referral programs not only identify top prospects that are not in a job-search mode but they also require employees to assess candidates for skills and fit and to sell them on the company and the job. Taken together, this identification, assessment and selling feature make referrals superior to any other source.

If your corporation is not getting close to 50% of your hires from employee referrals, I have gathered 10 compelling numbers that should change your perspective. keep reading…

Hunter College president and IBM's GM of North America Bridget van Kralingen

A new report’s out about recruiting technical women. The document is from a not-for-profit called the Anita Borg Institute (which appears to be putting on a May 10 workshop on recruiting high-tech women … heck, stay in town a week and you’ll see us in Mountain View).

Anyhow, the 50-page PDF called “Solutions to Recruit Technical Women” includes case studies from Cisco, IBM, Intel, and Intuit, and also some good appendices listing how many women receive engineering and other degrees from various colleges.

College hiring is about to ramp up again — and the very best college recruiting organizations would argue it ramped up several months back — so now is an opportune time to conduct an ROI analysis to determine when and where you should hire college grads instead of experienced hires. Understanding the unique competencies and skills that college students bring to a business is important not just in determining the number needed, but where to place them.

As a college professor and someone that advises firms on the design of college recruiting programs, I have come up with a long list of the advantages of hiring recent graduates. keep reading…

As Occupy Wall Street protesters criticize high unemployment and economic inequality, a little-known diversity mandate embedded in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173 / Public Law 111-203) is forcing a different kind of occupation within those very financial institutions. In 2012, Wall Street firms must be prepared to prove they’ve made a good faith effort to employ women and minorities or else they stand to lose billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government.

In other words, Dodd-Frank is mandating that more women and minorities must occupy lucrative Wall Street jobs that heretofore have been dominated by white men who, in gender and ethnicity, resemble Gordon Gekko, the anti-hero of the movie Wall Street and of its sequel. keep reading…

Look around at most any HR conference and one of the profession’s little secrets is instantly obvious: HR is the domain of white, middle-aged women.

A little harder to see is that they are better educated than most of the population, and far better off financially.

Catbert notwithstanding, human resources is a pink-collar profession that looks very different from the rest of the corporate workforce, let alone the U.S. as a whole.

More than a few surveys have noted the gender imbalance in human resources. A dozen years ago the federal Office of Personnel Management reported the dramatic change in its own workforce. In 1969, 30 percent of the HR jobs were held by women. By 1998, the percentages were reversed, with men holding 29 percent of the jobs. A SHRM survey from 2007 came up with similar numbers.

Now, one of the most extensive profiles of HR professionals ever conducted not only confirms that what the OPM found in the federal workforce applies to the private sector, but the diversity there is just what you would expect from eyeballing conference attendees. keep reading…

Falguni Chitalia, a native of India, speaks three languages and holds a degree from Rutgers. She also has cerebral palsy that has affected her speech and limited the use of her left hand.

She struggled to earn a living, for a time clerking at Wal-Mart. But her goal was to find work as a professional in a career that could allow her to be independent. With the assistance of Virginia’s Department of Rehabilitative Service, Chitalia received job counseling and speech therapy.

Today, she is a project manager with Anthem Wellpoint and was recently lauded in the company newsletter.

Her story is but one of dozens being cited as examples of the success disabled workers can have when, with a little assistance from the government, employers reach out to the disability community.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The U.S. Department of Labor is taking the lead in promoting the month around the theme of “Profit by Investing in Workers with Disabilities.” Managed by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, the month-long campaign to build awareness of the contributions of the disabled includes the posting of stories like Chitalia’s, as well as lending support to state and local efforts to increase the hiring of disabled workers. keep reading…

In case you’re looking to apply for this open HR job, be aware that the snow starts in October and melts in May.

OK, so Yukon would like you to know that there’s more to its territory than a six- to eight-month long winter.

In 2008, it began looking at a new strategy for recruiting, retention, branding, and marketing the new brand. It wanted to better attract youth, Yukon First Nation (aboriginal) candidates, people with disabilities, and others, and do a better job at staffing hard-to-fill jobs. keep reading…

I strive to be the world’s foremost champion of employee referral programs. As a thought leader in this field for more than 20 years, I have had the opportunity to assess and research hundreds of corporate ERPs, and most are pretty dull.

Too many organizations task management of the program to a loosely organized committee that rarely invests the time required to build anything more than a conservative, basic program. Despite the conservative approach taken, ERPs continue to outproduce every other external recruiting source (volume and quality of hire). In world class firms, the performance of ERPs is often double that of the average, but they often have dedicated management and a host of features few firms invest the time and resources to support.

If your firm is in the process of developing a new program or redesigning your old one and you are looking to move beyond the mediocre, this checklist should give a number of ideas for building a program that will give you a competitive advantage. keep reading…

In this webinar panel moderated by Gerry Crispin, some of the most interesting companies on the planet and a few of their top recruiters will discuss the challenges, strategies, and tactics for the future of building diverse pipelines and slates.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Two proposals from the Federal Office of Contract Compliance Programs, now open for public comment, seek to require federal contractors and their subs to do more to hire veterans and to provide more information and data in the event of a compliance audit.

So far, neither of the proposals seems to have caused much of a stir, despite nearly unanimous mentions in the various analyses of the additional paperwork and increased obligations on federal contractors.

Littler Mendelson, one of the largest employment law firms in the country, says the OFFCCP focus on veterans “significantly expands the obligations of federal contractors and subcontractors.”

Another firm, McGuireWoods, referred to the proposal for additional data as both “burdensome” and “stealthy.” The firm notes in its analysis, “The agency (OFCCP) does not understand the private sector or have any apparent concern about the burdens and confidentiality issues these proposals place on contractors.”

The OFCCP itself estimated it would take 103.2 hours and cost $135,000 to collect and provide all the data that could be requested in the so-called “Scheduling Letter” — the notice of compliance audit — should the changes it wants be adopted. (The OFCCP has to get permission from the Office of Management and Budget for changes to the document and data provisions.)

Complying with the veterans rules is estimated to cost each contractor $396 a year and take 10.7 hours a year. keep reading…

Home Depot has quietly been expanding its use of Facebook in online games and recruitment advertising on people’s profiles, meanwhile operating with transparency and responsiveness — returning emails in 24 hours — often missing elsewhere in online recruiting.

Miko Covin, who manages the employment marketing group, is one of the key players. She and others in that group — people like Alison Foy — came up from recruitment ad agencies like Bernard Hodes, TMP, and JWT Inside.

Covin arrived in 2008 from JWT, wanting to use the basic marketing and advertising skills she’d learned at agencies and apply them to social media and recruiting. In early 2010 (late in the game, she admits) she opened up a personal Facebook page after a friend invited her to be a Facebook member. She also saw the agency world struggling, social media increasing its role in recruiting, and wanted to move Home Depot in the social media direction.

She spent 2010 on education. There were HR people in Home Depot who didn’t get social media; in fact, some even used the now-awkward word “The” preceding “Facebook.” “I don’t know about The Facebook,” one person said.

Covin kept talking up the importance of social media in recruiting. By the spring of 2010 Home Depot began testing two things on Facebook, targeting people based on the information in their profiles. First, it tried advertising store jobs to females, part of an effort to reverse the perception as a company for male jobs. It casted a “huge net first,” Covin says.

It narrowed after that, targeting people — now both male and female — whose profiles indicated they were in HR, and were based in areas where an HR district manager was needed.

It brought on JWT, the recruitment marketing agency, to help with the Facebook project.

By August, satisfied with the approximately 100 resumes it had received over the summer from these efforts, the recruitment marketing team was feeling that Facebook was a success in recruiting, and it should be expanded. keep reading…

Women have become the new workforce. There are now slightly more women workers than men, given the recession and the shrinking of the manufacturing and construction industries. They have less unemployment: In January of this year the unemployment rate for men was 8.8 percent, yet for women only 7.9 percent.

Additionally, women account for 51 percent of all workers in high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. There are now more women in management positions than men for the first time in American history, and it isn’t stopping anytime soon. Women are projected to account for 51.2 percent of the increase in total labor force growth by 2018. And, these are not exclusively American trends — they are also trends in Europe and many Asian countries.

More women are attending and graduating from universities. Men make up only 40% of the students in American universities while women are closing in on two-thirds of the university population and receive the majority of college degrees. No one is exactly sure why this is happening but we do know that boys are diagnosed more often with learning disabilities and are more likely to be expelled or incarcerated. Or it may be that men are disengaged and uncomfortable with traditional teaching methods. They often feel able to go off on their own, start a business, or just hang out with friends.

So what does all of this mean for your organization and recruiting?

Obviously there will be a growing number of well-educated women entering the workforce. A wise strategy would be one that began to actively seek them out, engage them in learning more about your organization, and provide them with enticements that are geared to their needs.

Most of our recruiting efforts are traditional, and that generally means weighted in favor of men. We assume that most employees are willing to work a “normal” 8-hour day and a “normal” 40-hour work week. We assume they want bonuses and blocks of vacation time. And we assume they are willing to play the political games that are frequently needed to get ahead. These include those beers after work with the boss, talking sports, cars, and participating in events after work.

All of these may not be good assumptions if you want to stay competitive and get the best and most educated people available.

Here are a few things to consider:  keep reading…

You may have read about the big case against Wal-Mart, where to sum it up, the Supreme Court will decide if a gender-discrimination lawsuit can be brought as a class action, one that’d involve more than a million women.

On the podcast below, Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. of Seyfarth Shaw LLP, talks about what this case could mean to recruiting departments when the Court’s verdict arrives. Mattman works out of the firm’s Chicago and New York offices; one of his specialties is defending employers sued in employment-related class actions. keep reading…

As President Obama weighs a sweeping new Executive Order that would establish a coordinated “government-wide effort to promote diversity and inclusion” throughout the federal workforce, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 has already formalized diversity efforts within the financial regulatory sector.

Such developments have led a growing number of experts to conclude that big government may be setting a new benchmark for big business in the United States — at least when it comes to diversity in the workplace. Consequently, now may be the right time for corporate recruiters to start removing potential barriers from the hiring process.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing either considering that the then-Nextel Communications Inc. reported a savings of nearly three times as much in turnover costs as it spent on a $1.2 million investment in diversity training back in 2003.

Largest Employer

“You can’t get around the fact that the federal government is the nation’s largest employer,” observes Eric Peterson, manager of diversity and inclusion at SHRM.

Peterson acknowledges that there is likely to be a ripple effect in corporate America from diversity activities in the federal government. “When smart organizations see this happening in the news and they see President Obama signing a lot of these policies into effect, they are going to take notice and say ‘this is the direction the country seems to be going in and we better respond to that.”

Allen B. Roberts, a member of the law offices of Epstein, Becker and Green and Managing Shareholder of the New York office, agrees the federal bureaucracy is setting the new best practices for businesses to follow with regard to diversity.

“In the instance of the (Dodd-Frank) statute and the new Executive Order, what you’ve got is not only someone out there saying ‘this is the new best practice,’ but also you’ve got some teeth with it,” according to Roberts, who co-chairs his firm’s Whistleblowing and Compliance Subpractice Group.

Interagency Council on Diversity and Inclusion

According to a draft of the President’s Executive Order obtained by The New EEO Source, the government plans to create a high-level Interagency Council on Diversity and Inclusion. Its mission would be to develop a Government-wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan. The Council would be co-chaired by the director of the Office of Personnel Management and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

It would consist of the heads of 19 executive departments and agencies — including many of the government’s largest employers — and such other departments and agencies as the President or chairs may designate or invite.

“Our nation derives strength from its commitment to equal opportunity for all and from the diversity of its citizenry,” the draft states. “We are at our best when we draw on the talents of all parts of our society, and our greatest accomplishments are realized when diverse perspectives are brought to bear to overcome our greatest challenges.”

“For the federal government as an employer, a commitment to equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion is critical. Securing and maintaining a diverse, qualified workforce is one of the cornerstones of the merit based civil service,” the draft states.

Dodd-Frank

Section 342 of Dodd-Frank is specifically aimed at financial regulatory agencies, and extends to “all business and activities of the agencies at all levels, including in procurement, insurance, and all types of contracts.”

It charges agencies to develop standards for increased participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts of the agency, including standards for coordinating technical assistance to those businesses.

Section 342 specifically applies to agency directors of the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, each of the Federal Reserve banks, the Federal Reserve Board, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, according to Roberts.

E. Fredrick Preis, Jr., senior partner and head of the labor and employment section at the Lemle & Kelleher law firm, says private financial institutions are concerned by the provisions of Section 342. “Most of them already have diverse workforces to some extent. It’s certainly brought home to them that they need to continue to do so,” says Preis, whose firm represents management.

Recruiters Need Specific Goals

Organizations that follow the government’s lead on diversity will have to be very specific in defining program goals and expected outcomes — preferably up front, say experts. This should include keeping track of who is hired for a particular job and who is not hired. It should also include a method of tracking the source that was used to find each candidate and some method of measuring the effectiveness of various sources in achieving specific diversity goals.

Women reaching parity in numbers in the workplace: not as big an issue anymore.

Jennifer McClure

Women reaching parity in leadership roles: no luck.

In an upcoming Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership article, Darren Shearer, a senior research consultant at SuccessFactors, compares male-to-female ratios at the staff level to male-to-female ratios at the executive level, showing a marked difference.

In the podcast below, we discuss what’s behind this: Is it discrimination, people’s choices, or some combination? We talk about ways the workplace is still inhospitable to parents of any gender, but why there’s reason to be optimistic about the future.

Leanne Chase

On the line, in addition to Shearer and myself, are Leanne Chase, of Career Life Connection, and Jennifer McClure of Unbridled Talent. keep reading…

When you think about building a diverse workforce, an internal mobility program may not be the first thought that comes to mind. In fact, when we at Sodexo first looked at internal mobility programs, we were focused on helping our employees achieve their career aspirations through internal promotions and hires.

However, over time, we’ve come to learn that these programs also represent a vital component of our company’s journey to build a diverse and inclusive workforce.

The Beginning of an Evolution at Sodexo

Like many companies, Sodexo’s diversity initiatives have evolved over time. keep reading…