Are You in Search of Qualified Minority Candidates?

The February Stop Series

As life evolves and culture changes, we learn more. As a result, we become aware of not only things we should start to do, but things we should stop doing.  February is dedicated to things we should stop. 

Many leaders and organizations wish to diversify their teams in terms of race, ethnicity and gender. They start by saying something like, “hey, we need more qualified minority employees!” Unfortunately, they have no idea what they are really saying.

Stop saying we are looking for:

• Qualified diverse applicants
• Qualified minority candidates
• Qualified underrepresented hires
• Qualified women leaders
• Qualified veterans
• Qualified [enter any other diversity dimension here]

Let’s look at the premise behind the sentence.

Why do we put qualified in the sentence? What we are saying is: if the candidate is anything other than a [enter your organization’s default here: man, white man, non-disabled, ivy league educated, etc.] then we are going to automatically assume they are less competent.

Do we intend on hiring an unqualified person? Aren’t we going to hire a competent person for the job? Or does our bias leak through by believing that a minority candidate is automatically less qualified, so let’s make sure we only select the qualified ones?

The bottom line is:

The more we realize the impact of what we think and say, the more we can create inclusive workplaces with engaged employees.

And if you have a talent pipeline issue, then invest the time and money to develop your staff.