Your diversity hiring strategy can’t be solved by ‘lowering the bar’

Welcome to Lead With Inclusion! This weekly newsletter is a resource for EVERY professional. Whether you’re a manager ready to be a more inclusive leader, or an employee ready to be a DEI champion in your workplace, inclusive actions lead to inclusive outcomes. Leading with inclusion simply means starting with inclusive actions in everything you do. It means identifying the areas where bias is at work, and shifting mindsets to make change.?

If you’re not sure where to begin, start here.

Let’s talk about inclusive hiring.

When it comes to recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities or professionals with marginalized identities (you might use the phrase ‘diverse talent,’ but we wish you wouldn’t), I often hear hiring managers talk about a need to ‘lower the bar.’ And the truth is: I’m over it.?

If you’re not yet familiar with the concept of ‘lowering the bar’, allow me to provide a bit of context.?

‘Lowering the bar’ is a concept that relies on two beliefs. First, it’s the belief that companies have to hire the best professionals and in order to hire the best people, companies need to have a high bar, or a high set of standards that candidates need to meet in order to get hired. So far, so good - right? Second, organizational leaders believe that the reason why their candidate pool is lacking diversity - e.g. more people of color, women, etc. - is because underrepresented minorities aren’t qualified enough to meet the bar they’ve set.?

That’s where the problem lies. Whether you intend to or not, by suggesting that the only way to hire more diverse candidates is by lowering your standards, you’re promoting the (very biased) idea that candidates from marginalized backgrounds are not qualified - or at least, not as qualified as their counterparts from more traditionally accepted backgrounds (e.g. white folks, men, etc.).?

If we really think about it, even the idea that if you have an open role to fill, you can find ‘the best’ person for the job is, to put it simply, ridiculous. There are 8 billion people on the planet and I guarantee you there are hundreds of people who meet the criteria for the job and could knock it out of the park if given the opportunity. But if your entire management team is made up of one demographic, you’re basically implying (if not in many cases outright stating) that only these types of individuals are ‘the best’ people for the job.

These beliefs are, at best, misguided. And at worst? Actively harmful toward candidates with marginalized identities. These misguided mindsets are part of the problem with inclusive hiring today. If we truly want to change the way we hire, we’ve got to start with mindsets first. Mindsets become habits, which then become actions.?

With that in mind, here are some inclusive actions you can take to start shifting your own mindset (and the mindsets of those around you):

Be an Inclusive Leader

If you’re still holding onto the idea that ‘lowering the bar’ is the only way to increase diversity in your candidate pool, this says a lot more about your state of mind than it does about the candidates. It’s time to change the way you think about hiring. DEI professionals like me already knew that lowering the bar was not an effective strategy for hiring great talent. And if you thought this “solution” was being suggested as the key to inclusive hiring, you misunderstood the assignment.?

For an example of what happens when you attempt to reduce hiring standards, check out this example from Amazon. They recently faced some criticism for allegedly lowering their hiring standards, which some employees ultimately believe led to job cuts due to an influx of new employees who may not have been hired under their typical standards.

If you’re having a hard time finding great candidates from marginalized communities, your standards are only part of the problem. But before we can talk about standards, we’ve got to start with your mindset. Change the way you think, and the way you speak. If your team members hear you grumbling about “diversity hires,” you’re setting a negative example for what inclusive hiring looks like, and the effect of this mindset trickles down.

Lead With Inclusion

Similar advice applies at the individual level. Think about the way you talk about hiring choices on your team with your peers. When a new hire joins your team, how do you think and talk about their identity? If you’re the person on your team who’s likely to suggest that your new teammate is a “diversity hire,” or that they were only hired because they’re ____ [insert marginalized identity here], your mindset is part of the problem. It’s these kinds of errors in judgment that can lead to the marginalized members of your team feeling ostracized, feeling ‘othered,’ and worse - ultimately leaving the team. Then, your team is right back to where you started, and this cycle of exclusion continues on.?

To make matters worse, not only are you contributing to your team’s retention issues, you’re now also exacerbating recruitment issues by making it more difficult for your company to attract underrepresented minorities who, when faced with an offer from your company or a competitor, will choose your competitor.?

If you’re looking to build your skills and knowledge in inclusive hiring, then I’ve got exciting news for you. I’ve got a brand new course that just went live yesterday that will help you build an understanding of skills-based recruiting, and touch on ways to unbias your hiring process. You can be one of the first to view Skills-First Recruiting with a DEI Mindset here.?

Speaking of firsts, you can also be one of the first 100 people to enroll in Unconscious Inclusion?. If you’re looking for more general DEI education that addresses team dynamics, this is an option for you (and your team). Learn more and sign up here.??

About Stacey Gordon:

Stacey Gordon is Executive Advisor and Founder of Rework Work where she and her team coach and counsel executive leaders on DEI strategies for the business, while offering a no-nonsense approach to unconscious bias education for the broader employee population. As a global keynote speaker, Stacey is a Top Voice on LinkedIn and a popular LinkedIn Learning [IN]structor with nearly two million unique learners enjoying her courses.