This is your opportunity to ask Jackye Clayton any questions you have about diversity sourcing and recruiting. Jackye is an advocate of incorporating diversity into your overall recruitment strategy and will happily take your questions and respond to them here on SourceCon.

This week’s question is about defining diversity, understanding its importance, and how to go about implanting an effective diversity sourcing plan.

So you learn the client you are recruiting for has a diversity initiative. Hold on…did you just receive a discriminatory job order? What the heck does diversity even mean? Do they just want women? Blacks? Tall people? Tall black women who can play the banjo? What exactly are they asking for!?!?

Funny thing is, if you ask the client, they usually won’t tell you exactly what they want either. Most companies these days strive to have a diverse group of employees. But what does this mean for recruiters that are tasked to find the diverse “ones?” We need to remain “PC” and keep our client happy. This is a very delicate balancing act.

In order to put things in proper perspective and truly understand what recruiting diverse candidates would mean, I had to break it down.

Diversity is defined by a single word: variety — which basically means different.

But very few people follow up with the question:

“Different in what way?”

The next question we all want to ask, and don’t, is this:

“How and why is diversity important in the workplace?”

We can all agree that we really just need to find the right skill, the right talent for our companies and clients. But I really want to explore further on why we NEED “different” perspectives. Because…

In my mind, “different” represents areas such as culture, ideas, values, lifestyles, classes, goals, and so forth.

“Different” – and therefore “diverse” – is NOT just about gender and/or skin color. It is so much more than that.