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Under-represented Minorities
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Under-represented Minorities
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I recently accepted a position as a material procurement, routing, shipping, personnel manager with a small firm which is experiencing all-too-rapid growth. We are as much as six months behind on orde
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Under-represented Minorities
posted at 5/19/2007 12:21 PM EDT
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Posts: 7
First: 12/29/2006 Last: 5/22/2007 |
I recently accepted a position as a material procurement, routing, shipping, personnel manager with a small firm which is experiencing all-too-rapid growth. We are as much as six months behind on orders. The owner/manager (of some 40 years) is reluctant to expand recruiting efforts primarily because of the fact that there is only one minority in the facility and expansion would require immediate compliance (we have contracts with some gov't suppliers and just enough employees to be on the cusp) with equal opportunity quotas. The recruitment process used to date has been a networking process and family recruitment. There is concern on my part as well that pressure to meet equal op standards will cause us to recruit under-qualified and poorly matched minority members increasing turnover.
Bear in mind that I am involved with efforts opposed to a state licensing program on the basis of disparate impact to minorities. It is neither my interest to exclude nor directly target minorities in a possible recruitment campaign. Ideally, future recruitment would yield representative percentages among the new recruits. The business is a job-shop manufacturer seeking highly skilled machinists (primarily lathes). If necessary, I am willing to explore maintaining current size and cancelling contracts that make up about 8% of revenue (they are neither significant profit producers nor cash flow producers). We currently make over 400 different products and generate over $10M annually, making us about 3x the "normal" job shop size, but certainly still a small company by banking, IT, and resourcing standards. There are about 80 employees total and 2 shifts. There is a "similar" company just across the street that is clearly experiencing trouble. We may eventually expand into that location, but we are not likely to hire those employees. Social loafing and high turnover are obvious even from across the street. Does anyone have an idea about recruiting methods that yield small numbers of potential employees, but are not likely to exclude minorities? I am composing different strategies to address this problem and need some costs, avg success rates, man-hours required, and a general plan of approach for the staffing possibility. |
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Under-represented Minorities
posted at 5/21/2007 7:37 AM EDT
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Posts: 3870
First: 2/12/2002 Last: 11/2/2009 |
Matt:
Here's my thoughts on your situation. First, if you are severely underrepresented in terms of minorities in your workforce, limiting your recruiting probably isn't a good way to go. If you go over your employee number threshhold, you're going to have to show that you have been making a good faith effort to attract minorities. Networking and referrals will likely only produce a mirror image of your demographics as they are now. Cheap and effective recruiting is something of a Holy Grail thing. I've been recruiting for over 25 years, and I'd be rich if I had the answer to that one. It's either going to cost money or time or both. My recommendation is to advertise in the local newspaper as well as online. You will probably get a lot of responses and will have to review them, but it's a very visibile "outreach" methodology. You can also reach out to some local minority organizations or churches which have heavy minority congregations. To protect yourself, make sure you have very objective criteria for what you're looking for in candidates. I am concerned, however, that your environment isn't very open to recruiting minorities. Your ownership has decided not to grow because to do so would require affirmative action compliance. And you yourself are concerned about finding qualified minorities which seems to imply some bias on your part. If there are indeed some built in biases in your workplace, I think you need to address these first. |
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Under-represented Minorities
posted at 5/22/2007 12:39 PM EDT
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Posts: 7
First: 12/29/2006 Last: 5/22/2007 |
We are growing, just not through recruitment at this time. We should be at 4x our current (revenue) size in 6 months based on contract orders already in place.
I know that advertising in the paper and on-line will bring the method into compliance, these are methods used by law firms and universities which have less than representative percentages among their staff. However, I will not be reading through the 3,000 plus resumes accumulated this way. Continuing with the current method and using ads and targeted campaigns to "outreach" into compliance is not really the way I want to go with this. My "bias" is from the fact that recruiting based on race, ethnicity, or gender is not going to yield the same level of competence as recruiting based on qualifications (church attendance is not a qualification we consider). I do not mean to be overly critical of your suggestions, but I do not currently see the practical side of them. Objective criteria should keep me busy for a while, but the question remains of how to include minorities not currently included while maintaining the reliability of the process. |
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Under-represented Minorities
posted at 5/22/2007 3:05 PM EDT
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Posts: 3870
First: 2/12/2002 Last: 11/2/2009 |
You're not going to get 3,000 resumes. Unemployment rates are pretty low these days so your response rate will be far less than that.
Most of the major boards now allow for some degree of qualification screening. You can apply some "knock out" questions that will specifically ask things like "do you have a minimum of 3 years of experience using computer controlled metal lathes". |
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