Strategies to Diversify Your Office

A: First, you need to know what diversifying your office looks like — which demographics are underrepresented in your office? Are you seeking to improve racial diversity? Age diversity? Gender diversity? You should know where you’re trying to focus your efforts, to make sure you’re targeting the specific barriers that have prevented candidates in those demographics from being hired and retained until now.  

Next, a job board is not a panacea. While there are great job boards like Partners in Diversity or PDXWIT that specifically target candidates who might represent racial or gender diversity in the context of your office, we find that many great candidates who are on these job boards are also on larger sites like LinkedIn and Indeed.  

More important than identifying a few boards is to make sure your website and job postings are compelling, invite candidates from different backgrounds to apply, and include what work you’ve done toward creating a more equitable and inclusive office.  

It’s also important to take a multi-pronged approach to your recruiting efforts. For example, many referral programs can exacerbate the homogeneity of an office, because most referrals are similar to the employees referring them. However, making intentional efforts to go to job fairs in communities that are underrepresented on your team, hiring interns through organizations like Emerging Leaders Internship (ELI), working with a recruiter to pull together a diverse slate of candidates, sourcing inclusively, and developing internal candidates can all have lasting impacts on diversifying your team and retaining the great talent you are attracting.