How are diversity job boards adapting to changing political climates

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[00:00:43] Welcome to episode 96 of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. I am one of your two co-hosts. I'm Stephen Rothberg. And for those who are seeing us on video, you'll notice I'm wearing a little bit of different clothing this time. I'm wearing my Team Canada hockey jersey. And yes, Peter, it's a jersey. It's not a sweater. And no, we will not debate that. Thank you for agreeing. We're all good.

[00:01:07] But I'll let you do the intro in a second. But I'm excited. We've got a founder of a job board. I'm one. So it's always fun to talk to another. Last week or two weeks ago, I guess we had Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster. So we're on kind of a roll. The topic that we're going to be discussing today is also going to be talked about a little bit in the Recruiting Brain Food podcast in about a month on March 21st.

[00:01:32] I'm going to be a guest on that. And Peter, I would imagine that diversity in some way, shape or form is going to be a big topic of conversation at your RecBuzz conference in about a month. Indeed. Well, indeed is a whole different subject. But yes, yes, in fact, diversity is one of the many topics. And we have people there from all over the world. Diversity means different things in the U.S. and Canada, in Africa.

[00:02:01] And those sorts of things. For the record, I'm Peter Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group. We do consulting. We do conferences, RecBuzz, and content for job boards all around the world. And with us today is Shauna Cole, who is founder and president of Hirediverse.ca, which is why Stephen wore his Team Canada jersey.

[00:02:27] Shauna is in New Brunswick, which is all the way up in the corner of Canada. Not quite all the way up in the right corner of Canada, but the far eastern corner of Canada. And diversity in Canada is a bit different from diversity in the States. How is that different? And why do companies in Canada use diversity job boards versus in the States?

[00:02:53] Yeah, so thank you for having me. I love the throw to Canadian hockey. Yay. A brave time to be doing that, too. We know you're not really a hockey fan. This is just a facade. It's just the three of us talking. We can say whatever we want. Whatever we like.

[00:03:13] So diversity, equity, and inclusion is managed differently than it is in the U.S. here in Canada. So when we think of the words diversity, equity, and inclusion in an American context, we're thinking about things like affirmative action quotas and stringent requirements from corporations a lot of the time, right?

[00:03:38] That is a lot of the mental model that goes along with that because that's, in effect, how diversity, equity, and inclusion is working in the U.S. What's interesting is people tend to forget Canada does operate differently in a lot of regards.

[00:03:57] So when it comes to inclusion programming, most of the time when employers in Canada are making investments in diversity recruitment and hiring and posting on places like Hirediverse.ca, a diversity job board, it's because they want to, right? So they likely have a specific goal that's aligned with some organizational objective or their values, right? And that's why they're making those choices.

[00:04:27] There are absolutely some sectors in Canada that have more strict diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements. But for the most part, employers are posting with job boards like mine because they believe in that concept, not because they're legally required to.

[00:04:44] So the employers that are using Hirediverse dossier, other sites that can help them with that in Canada, they're trying to hire the best workforce, right? And in the U.S., compliance is an issue. Do you have a sense for other countries, U.K., markets like the EU, what those look like?

[00:05:08] Yeah, well, the U.K. particularly operates similarly in a lot of ways as the Canadian job market where we don't really have those, we don't see those strict legal requirements. We see employers who are saying, hey, this is something I believe in. I understand that reaching out to diverse audiences intentionally in new and different ways using different platforms can widen my candidate pool, right?

[00:05:37] So we see in other areas as well where it's not a legislative requirement. Employers still make choices to focus and invest in diversity and inclusion, particularly in the recruitment space when they're facing challenges with attracting talent and wanting to reach new and different talent pools.

[00:05:58] Do you think the changing environment in the U.S. where clearly employers believed in diversity, equity and inclusion until six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, suddenly have decided it's not only not important, but it's a very bad idea. Do you think that changing environment in some way will spill over into other countries?

[00:06:23] Or do you think it's just the U.S. phenomenon that will presumably change again when the political climate changes? I'm scared to talk about America, guys. No, that makes three of us. Yeah. It's not that we don't want to talk about the United States. It's just that we don't want to talk about the current environment in the United States. I would rather have a nice rye whiskey than talk about it. But I think we should.

[00:06:51] I would rather have root canal than talk about it. The current situation is, I guess we just don't know what we don't know at this point. Everything's like so new and kind of a complex. But I will say this. The States has traditionally been a leader that a lot of other countries look to as an example. And you can't deny the cultural influence that the United States would have on Canada, right?

[00:07:19] And then even logistically, Canadian employers that will have a head office in the United States, for example. We know if the head office is making decisions about diversity, equity and inclusion, presumably that's going to have an impact on where those employers are posting their jobs in the Canadian market. So all that to say, I think this becomes a bigger question around the overall influence of the United States.

[00:07:47] For me, I think I'm like, will the United States continue to have that leadership status? And will we continue to aspire and look to them to copy what they're doing? Hey, this is William Tincup, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Practitioner Corner Podcast.

[00:08:06] It's a wonderful podcast about the journey of the paths of how practitioners, both HR and TA, kind of go from high school, college, all the way to where they are right now. Some of the things that they've learned, how they've been successful, people that thrive around them, etc. It's a fun podcast. You'll love it. You'll learn from it. Subscribe to it. Thanks. What do you mean look to them? Any week now, you're going to be the 51st state. Oh, no, no, no, no.

[00:08:37] There's not even a state. Well, you'll be the 52nd, because Greenland will become red, white, and blueland and become the 51st state. I am going to go get my Canada is not for sale hat right now. Thank you. And we'll be live for the remainder of it. I would wear the same hat. Yes, he is. I would wear the same hat. Yes, he is. He is absolutely being sarcastic.

[00:09:05] And those of us who know Peter love it. I have a question for Shawna about your employer clients. Higher diverses. Are they primarily smaller organizations? Maybe dozens, hundreds. Are they mostly larger? Thousands, tens of thousands. And also, how do those clients evaluate the effectiveness of your service? Because we were talking earlier about, is it compliance?

[00:09:34] Is it, you know, but how are they measuring you? Yeah. So I guess a couple of things. One is an interesting fact. I touched on it earlier, kind of, you know, will those head offices in the U.S. impact, kind of, what decisions employers are making in Canada? Because, you know, that's where the head office is. Interestingly enough, the majority of my clients are largely based, like, Canadian companies.

[00:10:00] So I see posting to my job board, organizations starting kind of in the hundreds to thousand employee range, municipalities, government of Canada, other government organizations. I see a lot of that. And those are some of the sectors, probably not coincidentally, that would absolutely have some legislative requirements around diversity and inclusion.

[00:10:28] But then on the flip side, I do have a number of postings from private corporations as well. Those corporations would tend to be on the larger, on the larger side. So we're in the thousands of employee range. And then in terms of how we measure the benefit and results of working with higher diverse,

[00:10:51] we have a number of tracking mechanisms, just like any other job board would around whatever you want to call pixels and tracking links and all of that. We also have in our system an ability to have job seekers self-identify as, like, a first step in their process. So they can and they can opt out as well because that's what's legally required. They can choose to self-identify.

[00:11:21] So they can choose to share with that employer in the opt-in process kind of what their background is, how they identify, and how they see themselves as part of a traditionally underrepresented group. So that's all built in that infrastructure.

[00:11:37] So you can tell an employer, for example, that, you know, you ran 100 postings with higher diverse and we sent you X female, you know, Y disabled, you know, Z, maybe transgender, you know, all different kind of diversity metrics. Yeah. And then I, well, job board founders, I think you get this.

[00:12:00] And it's so much of that is on the employer, though, as well, to work with us to set up to set up those those tracking mechanisms. So depending on how they're collecting the applications and what sort of systems they have in place as well. Yes, we can provide we can provide that that type of data.

[00:12:19] But it's so important, especially when it comes to to diversity and inclusion, that the employer is also taking an active role in helping, helping higher diverse understand what those things are that they're trying to measure, understand what those goals are. Because then we, of course, on our end can work towards those specific goals. And in the absence of that, it's difficult to know what we need to really drill down on and actually and actually track. Peter, I think we have time for one more. Do you want to grab it?

[00:12:49] Two 10 second questions each. Number one. Well, one's a 10 second questions. One one's a 25 second question. Should we put on a timer? Should we put on a timer? Yeah, we got the timer right up in the upper left hand corner. Do you consider LGBT or LGBTQ blah, blah, blah, blah as as a diversity target in in Canada? Yes, no.

[00:13:13] So, yes. In fact, in Canada, we have we currently have five protected groups and there have been conversations in introducing two additional protected groups. One being the LGBTQIA plus community and the second being the black community. So they will be so like right now, visible minority is a protected group.

[00:13:38] But the government has said in response to some class action suit, do we actually need to pull out the black community from visible minority and have them be their own entity? And similar discussions are happening for for the LGBTQIA plus community as well. Well, we could certainly go on for a good bit longer. But if we do, we run out of time. So we will both thank you very much for joining us.

[00:14:04] Interesting times for job boards in general, but particularly for diversity job boards, because the world keeps changing. Yeah. And for the diversity job boards that aren't in Canada or whatever, and then maybe you're struggling. I think this is a wonderful roadmap. So thank you for sharing, Shauna. Thank you. Thank you.