Bridging the Gap: Diverse Job Seekers, Employers and the Internet

Recruiting, managing and retaining a diverse workplace is a key issue facing today’s executives and HR professionals. The market drivers are clear: the global economy and advancements in technology have spurred increased interaction among people from diverse ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds, and have caused major demographic shifts in the ethnic make-up of the U.S. population. Despite all of this, HR professionals remain challenged with finding, recruiting and retaining diverse employees.

Key Features:

While almost all organizations recognize the importance and benefits of workplace diversity, not as many have fully committed the resources necessary for the policies and programs to support it.

Two-thirds of organizations have a documented diversity policy (a written document that contains a mission or vision for diversity within an organization).
Half of organizations have a formal diversity program (initiatives such as diversity training, diversity recruitment, diversity advisory councils, employee forums, and mentoring programs), yet only 37% of organizations have specific diversity recruitment targets or goals.

Diverse online job seekers care about diversity. They recognize that it is important, and this affects the way they conduct their job search. However, many are not convinced of the benefit to highlighting their ethnicity during the application process.

92% of online job seekers agree that “Diversity improves creativity and innovation in companies.”
85% agree it’s important that the company they work for actively tries to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.
73% agree that when considering a job it’s very important that a company already has a diverse workforce.
43% of diverse job seekers say it is disadvantageous to indicate their ethnicity when applying for a job.
56% say they sometimes wonder if they will be hired more for their ethnicity than their abilities.

Nearly all HR professionals and diverse job seekers agreed that the Internet is a powerful tool for connecting diverse job candidates with employers.

78% of HR professionals who have posted jobs stated that the Internet helped their companies reach the widest and most diverse pool of candidates.
80% of HR professionals have posted jobs on national Internet recruitment or job sites.
87% of ethnic job seekers reported that the Internet helped them find out about jobs they would not have known about otherwise.
Three of the top four resources used by job seekers in the past year involve the Internet.
Overall, 39% of ethnically diverse job seekers said they used a national Internet recruitment job site during the last year.