Real Life Examples
- A GSB alumnus recently encouraged his organization to put a referral hire on hold while they looked more broadly for candidates. They posted the job on an industry social media group. Within two weeks they had a diverse slate of candidates, and the original referral hire didn’t even make the short list of finalists. The organization realized that their emphasis on referrals was resulting in sub-par candidates just because they were known and familiar to the dominant group of employees.
- A GSB alumnus that managed a music company reviewed the results of email marketing hires they had made over the years. They found that incoming technical skill as an email marketer had no correlation with success on the job. Rather, successful hires had good quantative skills and deep knowledge of the world of music. Hiring moved from external candidates (who tended to represent the majority group) to promotion of talented customer service representatives, who were a far more diverse candidate pool. The promotion of customer service representatives increased the diversity of the marketing organization and resulted in stronger candidates.
