8th GLOBAL DIVERSITY & INCLUSION SEMINARBarcelona, 27-28 February 2015

So Why Is It So Difficult to Improve Diversity Recruiting?

Top Tips and Best Practices in Diverse Talent Sourcing Strategies

Kate GrussingManaging Director, Sapphire Partners

Copyright@2015 Sapphire Partners All rights reserved

Senior diversity recruiting has been missing from the D&I equation until recently

Why is it so difficult to increase diversity recruiting?

• Women’s representation growing but pipeline leaky• What are most companies doing?• What are the best companies doing?• What not to do?• Challenges and opportunities• Myths• Role of intermediaries• Case studies• Take-aways: the opportunity has never been better

Women’s representation in the labour force is improving but…

Source: Women in the labour market – Full Report, Office for National Statistics UK, 23 September 2013

The representation of women in executive roles remains low

Source: “Women Matter 2013: Gender Diversity in Top Management”, McKinsey & Company, 2013, p. 8

To date, there has been limited recruiting at a senior level to help fill the leaky pipeline

Source: “Women Matter 2013: Gender Diversity in Top Management”, McKinsey & Company, 2013, p. 9

Extensive initiatives have focused on the challenges with retention and promotion: Case study 30% Club research in UK of 17 professional services firms

What are most companies doing to improve diverse recruitment?

• Communicating to their recruiters and exec search firms their D&I commitments

• Proactively recruiting women at graduate levels• Leveraging employee referral networks• Investing in myriad D&I initiatives• Promoting their diverse leaders as role models• Supporting affinity networks and leveraging for recruitment• Tracking by gender recruitment, attrition, pay, promotions,

FWA, mat leave returners, …..• Looking at potential for unconscious bias in their recruitment

and promotion processes• Having a resourcing leader also own D&I

What are the best companies doingto improve diverse recruitment?

• Reporting and sharing their D&I scorecards externally and internally

• Setting targets for diversity at different levels• Mandating search firms and recruiters to have diverse

short and long lists• Developing maps of diverse candidates• Retaining executive search firms with D&I expertise• Re-engineering their recruitment processes• Making opportunistic hires of diverse candidates• Debriefing new hires on high potential diverse

candidates

What not to do in diversity recruiting?

• Accept/tolerate all male longlists without challenging lack of diversity

• Have all male interview panels• Ask candidates their age or marital status• Impose unrealistic targets• Treat all diverse candidates the same• Expect advertising roles to lead to gender neutral

application rates• Make a high profile senior diverse hire without broad

support in place• Ignore the candidate “ecosystem” (partner, children, FWA,

eldercare, pro bono activities) • Take a short term approach and expect results

Challenges & Opportunities: A virtuous circle

Myths in diverse recruiting

• Women are less ambitious • Female pipeline is non-existent• Money is less important to more diverse candidates• Advertising for roles is diversity blind• Recruiting men and women requires an equal approach• Having a woman CEO/business leader makes diversity recruiting

easier

Important role of intermediaries: Executive search firms and recruiters

• Most executive search firms have good representation of women internally but that does not guarantee commitment to diversity in search

• Some executive search firms are truly committed but many are just giving lip service

• Some diversity specialist recruiters lack substance or track records

• Search firm relationships can be very sticky and hard for resourcing or D&I leaders to challenge

• Benchmarking internal candidates can help to confirm women candidates competencies and readiness – but is rarely utilised

Case Studies

Take-aways: Talent hungry companies need greater strategic attention to diversity hiring

• Women candidates often below the radar• Search firms and recruiters rarely invest in building candidate relationships • Employee referral networks can result in homogeneous sourcing• In-house recruiters can find female candidates harder to extract/more loyal• The network effect of lateral hiring can advantage male candidates • Few companies holding their search firms to account or experimenting with

new sources

The opportunity has never been better to recruit highly talented diverse hires!