Hello Seekers of Talent!
Tis I, Jim Stroud, back with more sourcing goodness. Although the title says this is part two, it’s really part four because it’s the fourth in an overall series on sourcing and its also part two on the topic of diversity sourcing. For those keeping score…
- In part one, I talked about how to find overlooked talent by targeting authors
- In part two, more of the same, but with different resources to exploit
- In part three, I was inspired by the history channel to discuss diversity
- In part four, this article, I go into… well… read it for yourself.
When we last left our hero, me, I was demonstrating how to find diverse talent by targeting certain companies and by implementing clever searches. Since then, I had a few more ideas on how to find diverse talent by targeting certain companies and by implementing clever searches. Either I am being redundant or revolutionary; I’m not sure, you decide. Here we go.
Diversity Strategy #4 | Find and network your way around Corporate Affinity Groups. I assume you know what those are? Well, I was looking for a list of corporate affinity groups to share with you, so I did this search on DDG and it pointed me to this document where I found information on corporate affinity groups. By using the scientific method of eenie-meanie-miney-moe, I look closer at Motorola and I notice that they have an “Asian Business Council.”
Interesting. This made my “sourcing sense” tingle so, I head over to LinkedIn and search “asian business council” motorola and I find what look like several leads to diverse candidates. My presumption is that if they are on an Asian Business Council then, they are of Asian descent. In all likelihood, that is not the case in every instance but it is a good place to begin my networking.
What next? I would suggest going through the PDF I found or other resources (found from the online search) like it, to see what other leads could be found. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.
Diversity Strategy #5 | Another strategy for sourcing diverse talent is to position yourself around resources that they find of interest to them. For example, let’s say that you wanted to find software developers that are visually impaired. How would you target them, especially when they might not want to reveal that in their CVs for fear of discrimination?
Well, one method is to position yourself around resources that they find of interest. For example, technology magazines that have a braille edition. Wired and PC Mag both have braille editions and there are others; I found those on The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. Chances are you can find similar resources in your country by visiting your local library or doing a search on “government resources for blind people.”
If I wanted to seek out the hearing impaired, I would network with sign language interpreters and post jobs to specialty job boards like CSD Works. And while I’m thinking about it, there are plenty of job boards out there targeting diversity groups like Hire Little People, Prime Candidate, Disability Jobsite and others. But I digress…
Diversity Strategies #6 | Search for candidates that have ethnic or traditionally female names. For example, I do a search for popular ukrainian baby girl names and discover that Alla is a popular name. When I search LinkedIn for software developers in Ukraine names “Alla” I find presumably female candidates. And this had me thinking.
Finding females by names is easy enough, could I apply that same method to job titles? I know that in some languages, objects are described by gender. So, like the french word for engineer when referring to females is “ingénieure.” Could I apply this same logic to other occupations? Hmm… (The hamster in my head is spinning in its wheel now.) When I do a job title search on LinkedIn, I get a mix of female and male engineers. But… aha! When I put ingénieure in quotes, I get mostly (what appear to me to be) female profiles.
I try this strategy for finding female lawyers and get mostly (what appears to me to be) lady lawyers. See for yourself.
Not every language has a male/female distinction for their words, but the romance languages certainly do. So take advantage of this. 😉
Diversity Strategies #7 | Find a luminary in a field that diverse audiences identify with, search their name in conjunction with an event or organization in order to find people who identify with them. For example, when I searched for hispanic scientists, I found this page which cited Severo Ochoa who won a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1959. When I search for “severo achoa award” I find several examples of awards given in this person’s honor to people of spanish descent. For example, this one. I also did a search on LinkedIn and found others who have received a Severo Ochoa award of some sort. Most are in Spain so, I presume they are of hispanic heritage. Maybe not in every case, but surely some.
If you search for minority luminaries in conjunction with words like award, meeting, alliance, group, conference, scholarship and heroes, chances are you will find more awards or events that a certain group of people can relate to. Once you find that award or event, network your way for candidate leads.
Some other examples of awards named after luminaries are:
- Grace Hopper Event – Celebrates women in technology
- The Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s premier prize and highest honor, celebrates greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia.
- Pomeranchuk Prize – Each year since 1998, the award has gone to one international and one Russian researcher for their work in theoretical physics. (Named after a russian scientist)
Jim Stroud