Communicating your commitment to diversity when your company still has a long way to go.

??How do you communicate an authentic commitment to diversity and inclusion to a candidate when the company is mostly white?

??When you're the interviewer, do you bring it up, or wait for the candidate to ask?

??When you're the candidate, how can you bring it up in a way that effectively tells you where they stand and whether you want to be a part of their process.

Last year, I was working with a company leader who asked me this question:

We’ve been making real efforts to diversify our teams, but we’re still behind. When we’re interviewing a candidate of color, how do we communicate that we genuinely do care and are making strides? Especially when they can look around and see that almost everyone in the office is white?

I loved this question because it was about 25 Uncomfortable Questions in 1:

• How do we do DEI authentically (and not just tick boxes)?
• How do I make sure it comes across as genuine, and not just surface-level?
• How do I talk about diversity and inclusion as a white leader?
• How do I make diverse candidates (and employees) feel welcome on my team?

But as much as I want to (and will!) cover all of these questions, I also wanted to address the very specific question of how to bring up (or address) questions about diversity in an interview process — especially when that diversity is currently lacking at your firm.

Asking an expert

Naturally, I turned to Joanna Walker , who has contributed to Uncomfortable Questions on the topics of hiring and diverse recruiting.

She had some great tips on how to handle such an interview situation with confidence, humility, and — most importantly — authenticity.

Essential learning

I truly consider this an essential conversation for any leader who may feel uncomfortable or unsure around how to make underrepresented candidates comfortable in an interview process, and how to practice talking about diversity and inclusion with ease (and excitement)!

For that reason, I highly encourage you to pass this piece along to your teams — especially anyone who’s in a hiring or interview position…this may just make the difference between getting a candidate to accept an offer and turning them away.

Dive Deeper:

?? READ??

How to communicate diversity when you're not quite there yet | Sustainable Brands | ?? 4 mins

?? WATCH??

How to ask diversity questions in an interview | Starla Sampaco | ?? 2 mins

?? LISTEN??

Big companies are finding out they need help with diversity messaging | NPR | ?? 4 mins

Joanna Walker is the founder of Point HR Consulting, a woman-owned business, with over 13 years of experience in Human Resources. Most recently, Joanna served as Head of Recruitment at Evercore, a premier independent investment bank. She has a successful track record managing the #1 Investment Banking internship over 5 years (ranked by Vault.com), running robust end-to-end campus recruiting strategies, increasing firmwide diversity efforts and ERGs, building out internal systems, and implementing employee engagement tools to improve retention and support.

Melina Cordero is the Founder of Melina Cordero Consulting, where she helps organizations develop leadership and DEI strategies for the post-2020 workplace.?Read the story?of how she leapt from commercial real estate executive to DEI innovator,?explore her services, and connect with her on?LinkedIn, where she shares the latest data, research, and ideas on the evolving world of work.

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