Do Good Companies Discriminate in Job Hiring?

If you're a minority, especially African-American or Latino, but perhaps also Asian, bi-racial or gay, you have no doubt by now asked this question as the writer below has. You've been looking for a job, you see the bullshit ad tab of these employers that says they're an "Equal Opportunity Employer", and you look around and ask yourself: "If they're so committed to diversity, why do I still feel like people like me, by and large, are at the bottom of the totem pole?" "Why does the white man or woman get the opportunities, have the relationships, get the break, and why don't I?" Why does almost every recent poll or statistical chart indicate that whites are happier with life, have more income, are more gainfully employed, have more opportunity to be who they want to be, and that even higher education won't make the lives of minorities better than their white counterparts?

Find me a minority who hasn't experienced discrimination in the workplace. Find me a minority who feels better off now than, say, 4 years ago? Find me a minority who feels they can truly achieve parity with their majority neighbors. Find me one, and I'll find you 100,000 who will say otherwise. That's a harrowing statistic we should all be frightened about.

In the meantime, read this Q&A from DiversityInc.com, whereby the "white guy" (he's a featured and actually much-respected contributor to this magazine) answers this question from his racial and cultural perspective, while being mindful of the challenge of diversity:


By Luke Visconti (the "white guy")

© DiversityInc 2007 ® All rights reserved. No article on this site can be reproduced by any means, print, electronic or any other, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Question:

My company is on your Top 50 for Diversity list and will soon be celebrating Diversity Week in November. There will be rewards given to nominees who embrace diversity, which is all very good. My question: How do you help a company see that they must also keep a watchful eye on those managers who don't care about receiving an award and think that they can continue to operate as business as usual? I have been with the company for 15 years. During that time, I have taken advantage of the generous education program and received a bachelor's and soon to be two master's degrees. Last year, my department decided to outsource many jobs, mine included. For those of us who want to stay with the company, we have until this October to find another job. Since March of this year, I have, on record, 54 job postings [that] I have applied for. Of those postings, I have only been interviewed for six of the jobs. During each interview, the hiring manager finds some area of their business that I am not familiar with to point out that I am not qualified for the position. I know of a few individuals (non-minority) from my department with less qualification who have already found new positions, but I am still looking. I cannot believe that out of 54 postings I [don't] qualify for any of them. I am not writing this question out of bitterness. I am only writing it to find an answer. All I seek is an opportunity.

Answer:

I'm very familiar with your company and it is a long-term leader in diversity management. This doesn't mean that every manager is "on it," but you stand a much better chance of finding a progressive manager at your company than most people do.

Since I don't know you, I am forced to give general suggestions. Not all of them may apply to you. Please understand that I am not trying to diminish the reality of your experience when I suggest that you can take action to change your outcome.

Please consider this checklist:

1. Give your next job application your "full game." Study for the interview, understand the person with whom you're interviewing, know the department, try reaching out to that person's friends for insight into what areas give the manager the most pain. Make yourself a walking encyclopedia of solutions.

2. Follow up. Make sure your follow-up correspondence is not a form letter. Make it relevant to the potential new supervisor.

3. Politics. See if you can leverage people you know to apply influence on areas that interest you for a transfer. Find managers who HAVE been active in your company's diversity-management efforts. Utilize your employee-resource-group network.

4. Appearance counts. Make the best of your personal visit. Dress one level up. Use the spellchecker on your correspondence (I'm not sure why people think that misspellings are OK in an e-mail).

5. Be positive. Forget about the 54 jobs you applied for. Focus on the future. You love your company—tell them about it. Tell them how much you care, how proud you are to work there and how satisfying it has been to avail yourself of their generous education benefits. Tell them how you want to use that knowledge to their benefit and work there until you retire. It's hard to resist a positive message like that. Don't include anything negative. Air your opinions with the highest level you can reach by writing letters to executives, and ask for their help!

6. Learn. We have a number of really good career-advice articles on this web site. Click here.

Your industry is going through hard times. Despite that, their commitment to diversity has not wavered (again, I'm not discounting your experience, it's just that your experience at your company is likely to be much, much better than at the average company).

By the way, there is opportunity in tough times; a good manager will be much more open to hiring someone they don't know who is well prepared over an "old boy" who is taking it for granted that they'll get the job.

My heart goes out to you and I wish you good fortune in finding another position in that company.