Here we go again! It’s another World Cup Football Championship, the biggest GLOBAL sporting event that the world celebrates! This time it’s in Africa, a continent that has never had the Cup Championships, a location intentionally selected by the FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football) to reflect the true global affection and nature of this grand sporting event.

Football soccer has always been a tradition in my family and I’ve never missed a World Cup game in my entire life!  Besides, the World Cup Games has always been a perfect opportunity for people to witness the power, magic and “electricity” of diversity.  How is soccer and diversity recruiting related?  For one thing, FIFA the worldwide governing body of the World Cup Soccer Tournaments has obtained organizational strength, depth and congruous demographic representation from its application of multicultural talent acquisitions.

Since my childhood I’ve always been intrigued by the human dynamics of the World Cup.  It’s always been an amazing experience!  To see so many different cultures, colors, people, foods, languages, clothing, national flags, etc. etc. was always unforgettable! 

The FIFA league takes huge strides in assuring that their human capital (referees, medical workers, coaches, commentators, administrators, etc.) reflect the hundreds or races, languages and cultures represented in the sport of soccer.  Although FIFA was founded in France over 100 years ago, their current worldwide administration that sponsors and administers the playoffs around the world is made up of citizens from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, men, women, and people from just about every industrial background possible! 

Truly from an analytical stand point, FIFA and the World Cup events have successfully created a veritable “buffet-of-cultures,” with just about every nationality represented.  Yet, it’s that blend that creates the electricity in the air that arises when everyone is simply different and put in one place!  At World Cup soccer events, attendees and FIFA employees alike speak different, look different, they somehow play different, yet all share one thing in common:  an affinity for football (soccer). 

The World Cup clearly illustrates that given the opportunity, it is within our GENETIC nature to prefer, embrace and desire diversity—differences, variety!  If you’re at all human, it’s unavoidable, we all like variety and CHOICE!  We all enjoy it!  We all love it!  Diverse environments are a psychologically intriguing, more appealing to people and a socially energetic phenomenon to all involved.  Diverse peoples ultimately not only choose to interact with one another, but WE PREFER it!

Question is: how do you harness that successful diverse World Cup synergy into your company as a recruiter?  What strategies and protocols will practically and effectively inculcate that culturally diverse synergy into the work place?

This column will take a closer look at the final two of the four key strategies and “ingredients” necessary to architect and deploy an effective diversity staffing campaign: 3) solidifying your diversity campaign processes and protocols, and 4) planning out an effective sourcing strategy for finding diverse candidates.

Before we move on, let's recap the four necessary ingredients to a successful diversity staffing strategy:

1. Secure your company's leadership commitment.
2. Be prepared to educate and train all employees and managers that will participate in the initiative.
3. Design and solidify the diversity processes and protocols necessary in your diversity initiative.
4. Spend the necessary time to plan out an effective diverse candidate sourcing strategy.

3)  Solidify and construct your newly established Diversity Strategy’s plan practices

Presuming you’ve already successfully executed the first 2 steps of a successful diversity staffing campaign (as described in article II), you can now begin to solidify and construct your newly established strategies and corporate practices for the diversity plan.  By this point, it's important for your hiring managers and any other participants be appropriately trained and knowledgeable in the strategies and protocols that will be deployed to diversify your company.

Invest a lot of attention in the interview process.  If the interviewing process is NOT expedited appropriately and effectively within the plan then the diversity strategy will fail.  Not only will you as the recruiter have to REDEFINE how to interview and what to interview for, but by necessity you will also have to assure that your hiring managers and participants are perfectly versed and capable of executing all the diversity mandates (not just the interviewing aspects of the plan).  Everyone involved in the diversity strategy must completely understand what their role is and how to execute.

RECONFIGURING HIRING DOCUMENATION

These new definitions and procedures in the hiring process will, as a requisite require the reconfiguration of many of the hiring documents.  My experience has been that job descriptions will have to be completely rewritten to reflect your company's new diversity effort.  Make sure that the job descriptions not only contain the simple qualifications, but also the new definitions of diversity that by this point you should have already articulated and integrated into the staffing process.  Make sure your job descriptions sell your company’s diversity, do not be afraid to publicize that your company seeks creative people, outside the box thinkers, people that are “colorful” in their thinking and team work.  Be careful not to get yourself into legal trouble with documentation.  I don't need to remind you that any verbiage that even slightly insinuates the possibility of preferential treatment is illegal.

Review all of your interview documentation.  If your hiring managers use a particular interviewing document during interviews make sure that those documents also reflect your company's diversity strategy.  The same can be said about checking references.  Any candidate can walk in the door of a company and really talk up their cosmopolitan nature, and brag about their “I’m well traveled” and “colorful” side.  Make sure you have some purposeful and well thought out reference questions prepared for when the time comes to check the character background of your candidates.

If your company has decided to utilize affinity groups or business resource groups, make certain those  participants are ready to socially engage and embrace any of the diversity candidates that may require interaction.  It's like having your house in order.  You must make sure that everyone does their part in the strategy and that they’re rehearsed seamlessly to project an effective and congruent diversity message.

4)  Effective diversity candidate sourcing

TRUTH ABOUT DIVERSITY SITES

Once you're confident that your diversity strategy’s infrastructure is effectively in place you can begin your sourcing for strongly qualified diversity candidates.  Your sourcing campaign should be a dual pronged effort both online and offline.  I will not bore you with the many diversity oriented resume database sites that are out in cyberspace.  If you’re reading this article, you’re probably sophisticated enough to know of the many diversity focused resume sites already in existence.  What will surprise you is that many of these sites are NOT that effective in helping you source the diversity candidates you may be seeking.  Many studies have produced results that indicate that the vast majority of diversity candidates prefer posting their resumes on the general career and social media sites, such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc….   so to be frank, I have not found these various diversity sites too useful.

The online tools that have really helped me in sourcing great diverse talent, has been the corporate websites, e-mail campaigns and without a doubt social media recruiting techniques.  One of the first places candidates visit in regards to working for your company is of course your corporate website.

CORPORATE WEBSITES & DIVERSITY

An effectively planned diversity staffing strategy will always include the shrewd utilization of the corporate website towards the multicultural recruiting & branding.  There are so many things you could do with your corporate website that promotes diversity staffing that I could probably write and devote an entire article just to that subject.  Social media optimization is the first thing that comes to mind, and if I get enough requests, I’ll focus on just this resource as a diversity recruiting resource.  However, some of the most effective uses of the corporate website for diversity staffing have included: posting pictures of your diverse staff having fun together, bragging about how your company reaches out into the community to help for example senior citizens – children - the disabled - even providing scholarships for at risk youth, etc.  

Many of our clients have taken our suggestion, and have posted information about their work life programs - specifically for employees ... programs like on-site free child care, management mentoring programs, subsidized senior care, flexible work schedules - anything that could attract and retain a diverse make up of employees.  Some very calculating companies have even added a list of their business resource groups specifically oriented towards Asians, Hispanics and African Americans with online buttons inviting visitors to their job pages to “push the button” and communicate with a peer from their possible demographic group… pretty ingenious and interactive if you ask me.  The possibilities are endless and only limited by your own strategic and “colorful” imagination.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AND PUBLICITY ADS

Perhaps the most misused and misunderstood diversity sourcing tactics are the social media, marketing and publicity ad campaigns.  And yet, if done successfully, these techniques can render among the best responses for diversity candidates.

Case in point, during one successful consulting project where our objective was to reach out to higher level multicultural executives, we drove the development of a strategic outreach ad on behalf of one of our clients.  This ad was developed and published in Spanish/English newspapers to take advantage of the Cinco de Mayo holiday.  Cinco de Mayo is truly a deal in much of the United States.  We leveraged the holiday as an opportunity to deliberately attract potential Hispanic / Latin candidates for our clients The ad was integrated in a very strategic and viral social media marketing campaign via most of the social media channels. 

Integrating the modern social media strategies with traditional marketing techniques was a total success!!  We managed to successfully integrate Cinco de Mayo and humor into the ad to capture the audience we were trying to “fish-out” (bilingual executives).  It became apparent that this kind of tactic could easily be applied and customized for any demographic community you may be trying to source for.  Newspapers, social media and magazines are not the only venues either.  Magical results have been achieved with the radio airwaves, television, press releases, internal corporate speaker’s bureaus, public-service announcements, etc., again the sky is the limit!  I will chronicle other social media diversity recruiting techniques we’ve deployed in health care, high technology and finance recruiting projects in another column at a later date.

SPONSORSHIPS

Finally, another very creative and unique way for your company to source out diverse candidates is through corporate sponsorships of ethnic and cultural events in your community.  How about sponsoring a Pilipino festival? How about showing your corporate colors at an ethnic concert or local soccer game?  One client where we were leading the staffing effort asked us for some ideas to diversify their company.  After a lot of strategizing and brainstorming we simply opened up the local newspaper and found a story about a local high school Chinese performing arts troop that was in need of funding to perform in the local San Francisco Chinese New Year parade.  Bingo!!  The high school troop found their sponsors in our client, and our client found their venue to recruit from.  During the course of the parade we suggested to our client that they aggressively distribute marketing cards in both Chinese and English playing up the company's successes, diversity, benefits and of course job openings.  From that one sponsorship effort our client ultimately hired three technical professionals for their development department and our new receptionist!  We of course promptly posted up the photos of our involvement in the parade on the clients corporate website.  Not bad for an afternoon of fun, camaraderie and great food!

Conclusion

Deploying a diversity talent acquisition campaigns are not for the faint of heart.   However, all of these strategies can, and absolutely should be cultivated and led by the staffing and HR department of any given organization.

As a recruiter, understand that recruiting is a business imperative, directly impacting a company’s gross margins.  If you can understand this, then you will also understand how diversity staffing represents the perfect opportunity for ALL recruiters to legitimize the importance of talent acquisitions in today's global economy.  If you’re still not convinced of the power of diversity in business or people relations, just check out any of the 2010 South African World Cup tourney games … and feel that dynamic electricity that a novel blend of people and cultures from around the world can create… then imagine how harnessing just a tiny bit of that into your company could positively impact your organization

Share your thoughts with me, remember I’m here to help!

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Biography

H. Martin de’Campo is a managing principal of HUMANATEK GROUP, a professional recruiting consultancy and a columnist and commentator on various business media venues on topics involving national employment/labor economics, strategic corporate recruiting, and diversity careers & staffing.  Previously, he was a William Keck Fellow at the University of Southern California; an Alfred Sloan Foundation Fellow (Research) while attending the University of California, Berkeley; in 2006 Human Capital Magazine featured him as a “Future HR Thought Leader of America;” and in 2009 Martin and Humanatek’s staff were awarded “Outstanding Service Recognition” by  Senator Diane Feinstein and Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigoza.  Martin is the author of numerous articles on employment/labor economics, human resources and recruiting and has appeared on TV & radio programs and countless business journals. 

To reach Martin and Humanatek recruiting services (retained & RPO) visit: www.Humanatek.com / email Martin at /martin@humanatek.com /or follow Martin at: http://twitter.com/Humanatek

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