“It’s hard to define what diversity is because everyone has an opinion.”
– Goldman Sachs diversity ad, 2000
The road to diversity has for millenia been the road less traveled. Since the dawn of the human race, marginalized classes – often minorities – have struggled to be allowed the liberties and rights that are recognized today as self-evident. Advocates of equality were shunned at best, and more often persecuted. So it was that when our founding fathers sought to provide each and every citizen with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, the ideas were deemed radical and remained largely theoretical. People of color were enslaved, women were barred from the voting booth, and religious freedoms were hard to come by.
Throughout the 20th century, the citizens of the United States and the world at large bore witness to many incremental advances along the road to diversity. The civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and most recently the LGBTQ+ movements formed a fertile landscape of tolerance and inclusiveness in American society and beyond. The road less traveled has become a roaring freeway of activists and beneficiaries of the new social structure.
Where Are We Today?
While paying homage to progress, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that we have hardly arrived at our destination. In the workplace, rampant discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, age, physical state, sexual preference, and religion is alive and well. Women are better educated, yet earn 83% of the salary of their male counterparts. A study conducted in 2004 indicated that resumes that bore names such as Emily or Greg are more likely to receive a response than “black” names such as Lakisha or Jamal. The job market is unkind to those with handicaps, and the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded in 2020 that those over the age of forty are only half as likely to be hired.
Why Hire Diverse?
It’s no coincidence that humanity’s most fiscally successful era coincides with a blossoming of human rights activism. Whether you seek to incorporate your values into the hiring process, or you simply wish to grow your revenue, diversity hiring is the way to go. Studies conducted in the last five years show that corporations that diversify their teams have higher revenues, and achieve greater success. This can be attributed to a multitude of factors: Diversity invites fresh perspectives, fosters creativity and tolerance, broadens the prospective talent pool, and ultimately strengthens your brand.
How Can A Diversity-Focused Recruiting Agency Aid Your Search?
A more shocking statistic was the disparity between the good will of hiring officers, and their actual hiring practices. Due to unconscious bias, businesses who were less likely to examine resumes with stereotypically Black names were among those who had expressed a direct interest in diversifying their hiring process. An executive search and recruitment firm with a broad spectrum of diverse employees is uniquely suited to assist you in discovering exactly what qualities and attributes in a candidate can help your company excel. As a business with employees from a multitude of rich backgrounds, Shepherd Engineering Search is proud to mark Global Diversity Awareness Month 2023 and all year round with diverse, equitable, and inclusive searches across the nation and beyond.
