If you’re an HR pro, recruiter, or DEI specialist, there’s no doubt you’ve been involved in some sort of diversity driven hiring initiative. Depending on your industry, company, etc., you may have specifically tried to target Black talent, and noticed some rather unique challenges. You may have been asked socially driven questions you weren’t expecting. Perhaps, despite being genuinely interested in the opportunity, the negotiation was tougher than anticipated or they were curious about growth, performance evaluations, feedback, and other Black professionals across the company, especially at the executive level.
Hiring a Black professional comes with its own challenges and (✨news flash ✨) it should!
Black professionals have to endure so much when pursuing, evaluating, and accepting a role. The hiring game just isn’t the same for us so we will appear harder to hire…. and we should.
Here’s why:
1. Black professionals face multiple types of discriminated in the hiring process. From name bias to unnecessarily higher requirements, the amount of unrealistic expectations we’re expected to reach is ridiculous to say the least. Can YOU imagine something like hiring potential impacting what you name your children?!
2. Black professionals are typically offered lower salaries while being expected to do more. We have to negotiate harder to ensure we’re being compensated fairly, THEN continue to investigate when raises are handed out to ensure we aren’t given the short end of the stick.
3. Black professionals in leadership roles are often undermined, our expertise scrutinized, misunderstood, misjudged, and our passion mistaken for anger. We’re accustomed to having our integrity questioned and constantly looked over for opportunities.
Because of the history of hiring Black professionals, especially in corporate spaces, we’ve learned to be choosy about the companies we join and things we say Yes to. So, what can you do to make hiring Black professionals easier?
1. Understand that you’re attempting to tap into a community. You need to approach the process with a genuine desire to bring something to the table.
2. Be transparent. Don’t be coy about your organization’s challenges (even around DEIB), be open with salary information, and growth path.
3. Don’t be lazy. Simply hiring a Black person to head HR, DEI, or Recruitment won’t be a silver bullet. Too often companies think that they’ll do this and it will solve all their problems because the Black person they hire will teach them to hire others and be the beacon/token to attract more Black talent. It doesn’t work that way.
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Hi, I’m Pam, Founder of How to Hire University, and I teach leaders how to hire top talent for their teams and organizations. If you find yourself struggling, I invite you to make my book How to Hire part of your onboarding and training process.
