Christopher Taylor* presents a list of questions to help people figure out if their company actually embraces diversity and inclusion.
Whether you’re a member of a minority group or you just want to support an employer who’s taken the right steps forward.
It isn’t always easy to find out which businesses truly support diverse communities.
After all, every employer wants to make themselves look as attractive as possible so that they’ll have their choice of top candidates.
For that purpose, some businesses strive to appear a bit more diverse than they truly are.
The good news is you don’t have to take a shot in the dark.
My name is Chris Taylor and throughout my career in recruiting and professional development I’ve developed a step-by-step plan to assess employers and to separate those who seem inclusive, from those who actually are.
In this post, we’ll cover one of these steps, how to discover if the company you’re interviewing with actually embraces diversity and inclusion.
For more tips on how to ensure you’re interviewing at inclusive companies, watch the full course, Finding a Job at Companies That Embrace Diversity and Inclusion.
The interview is a prime opportunity to see whether an employer truly has the inclusive culture that you want.
The key is to ask the right questions.
At the end of an interview, most hiring managers will ask if you have any additional questions for them.
This is your chance to get the details about anything they haven’t already discussed, especially diversity and inclusion.
- Ask these four questions
Let’s start with the four questions that you should be asking.
The first question is, what are the company’s long-term goals for diversity and inclusion?
With this question, you’re looking for an actual set of specific goals.
Perhaps the business has a target for the average employment life, for minority employees, or for the amount of progression their minority employees achieve.
These types of goals tell you if the company has actually thought about its diversity and established some type of roadmap.
The second question to ask, is what concrete steps has the company taken to improve its diversity and inclusion?
Ideally, the interviewer should be able to explain multiple ongoing programs, initiatives, and policies the company has in place.
Third, you want to ask about inclusion-focused training within the company.
What type of training does the company provide?
Do the team members undergo additional management-focused training when they become supervisors? Be sure to ask who was required to take this training too?
Is it provided to all employees or is the training only provided after the leadership staff becomes aware of some type of employee bias?
Finally, the fourth question to ask is what employee resource groups does your company offer?
Employee resource groups like groups for women employees, groups for employees of colour, LGBTQ plus groups, for example, allow minority employees to have a stronger voice.
These groups are especially important in large companies where individual voices are easily lost or silenced.
If the business offers these resource groups ask for details about how the groups work, what changes they’ve advocated for, and what policies the company provides to make sure the resource groups are heard?
- Know what to look for in the answers from your interviewer
As important as these four questions are, you also need to know what to look for while you ask them.
One way to do this is to consider who you’re speaking with and what type of knowledge they’d have.
For example, an HR rep would know all about the company’s diversity and inclusion directives, while the hiring manager in your department will know which actions their specific team has taken.
You should also think about the fact that your interviewer has an incentive to answer your questions a certain way.
To make sure you’re getting the full picture, ask the same questions to the team members you network with so they can give you their peer-to-peer observations.
Along the way be sure to pay attention to how your interviewer responds to your questions.
Does it seem like they’re fumbling for a response, do they put little thought into diversity and inclusion, or do they seem confident in their answer and familiar with the subject?
Are they making excuses and acting defensive right off the bat?
Above all remember, an interview is a two-way street. The business is competing for you as much as you’re competing for them.
Asking these questions and knowing how to judge the answers can tell you whether you’ve truly found a diversity-driven employer.
*Christopher Taylor is an internationally-renowned ‘Job Hunt Strategist’. He’s also the Founder of the Occupation Optimist, a company dedicated to modernising the job hunt.
This article first appeared at linkedin.com.
