Introduction to this course

- Hello, everybody, I'm Vernā Myers. Welcome to Fair and Effective Interviewing for Diversity and Inclusion. Every organization knows that talent makes the difference when it comes to how well it can execute its overall mission and goals. In addition, more and more, we're starting to understand that if you want to get the best, you have to have an organization that invites talent from diverse backgrounds because diversity brings different perspectives and that interrupts group think. It spurs innovation. In addition, it brings new skills, markets, clients, customers, you name it. For many, increasing the representation of groups that have been historically excluded from many industries and workplaces is about fairness, equality and equity. Whatever the case, no firm or company can expect to be competent, relevant and performing at its highest capacity in the future without having a diverse and inclusive workplace. So creating that workplace starts with how well a firm identifies, attracts and hires talent. Bringing diverse talent to the corporation or the firm has many components. There's outreach. There's recruitment and hiring decisions process and there's follow-up. Today, however, we're just going to talk about one really extremely important area in this larger process and that is interviewing. And I feel like interviewing is often overlooked. So we're going to talk about fair and effective interviewing as an essential aspect of any organization that is trying to be successful in bringing in the best employees, especially talent from many different backgrounds. Now diversity, just to be clear, refers to a huge number of differences. Some people think it's just race or ethnicity or gender, sexual orientation or disability, but, and we pay special attention to these differences because the under-representation of these certain groups in the hiring pool, however, many of us have to realize that diversity goes beyond that as well. So many different ways that we think, different religions, different regions of the country that we come from or from other countries. So we're talking about a large concept when we're talking about diversity. What I have noticed in the work that I've done is that so many of us think that interviewing is just so easy. You know, after all, it's just a conversation. But to be good at it, to be good at attracting and assessing the talent in an interview is especially important when it comes to interviewing a diverse pool of candidates. Because you have to be aware of at least three issues impacting your ability to enhance the diversity of your workforce. The first one is our own cultural lens. So I want to talk to you about that. The second is our comfort level with difference. And the third thing we're going to talk about is our biases and our stereotypes. These are the three issues that I've seen impact how we interact with and how we evaluate candidates. And you have to think about what kind of impression we are making on candidates on behalf of our companies. Now this is not job specific. I mean, it's not just about who you're interviewing in a particular low level or an entry level. This is about any kind of role for which you are interviewing at any level within the company. Often, individual interviewers don't understand that they are the ones representing the company and its values. So one interviewer can create a positive or a very negative impression on a candidate and that experience can make it more or less possible for the company to attract more diverse talent. I have to tell you, word of mouth and reputation can make or break an organization's efforts to bring in the best talent.