Purdue?s employment process and diversity

In the Staff Recruitment and Selection Procedures Manual, President Martin Jischke states:

Purdue University is committed to maintaining a community which recognizes and values the inherent worth and dignity of every person; fosters tolerance, sensitivity, understanding, and mutual respect among its members; and encourages each individual to strive to reach his or her own potential ? As a land-grant institution, Purdue has long been committed to the principles of equal access and opportunity in education and employment. Recognizing that our faculty and staff are vital to the fulfillment of our mission of academic excellence in learning, discovery, and engagement, Purdue is dedicated to ensuring its employment processes are fair and open to all those who wish to participate.

To ensure that Purdue's employment processes are fair and open, Human Resource Services has changed the employment process.

We now allow people to apply for specific positions, and as a result, we are seeing greatly increased numbers of people being considered for each of our available positions.

In addition, we are now forwarding the resumes of all qualified applicants, not just the top qualified applicants.

	This allows supervisors to have more control in determining whom they believe the top qualified candidates are, and it increases the numbers of resumes available for their review.
	Again, the applicant pool is larger, and the statistical likelihood is that the applicants are more diverse than if the group were smaller.

Employment consultants are available to work with you to develop recruiting plans that will target a diverse audience with the job skills you need. Here are some ways they can help:

	Free Web postings on sites targeting minority groups with specific professional skills
	Sourcing techniques to locate qualified individuals who are not actively looking for work
	Recruiting tools for you to use when you attend conferences and other meetings attended by people who work in your field
	Locating low-cost advertising venues
	Attending and hosting job fairs to attract recent graduates and more experienced job seekers

Now that the applicant pool is larger and we are able to target more diverse applicants, it is important that supervisors understand at what point during the employment process they may give preference to candidates from underrepresented groups.

At the beginning of the process, you can widen the pool of applicants in an effort to increase the number of underrepresented groups in your applicant pool. This is done by focusing on minimum qualifications when posting your position, and casting a wide net through recruiting activities targeted at a diverse pool of applicants.

Your compensation analyst and employment consultant can help you widen the pool of qualified applicants with these techniques.

The other time you can consider underrepresented candidates is at the very end of the employment process.

	If you have several candidates who are similarly qualified for your position, you may opt to hire a candidate who will help you meet an affirmative action goal.
	However, if you have several candidates who are not similarly qualified, it is inappropriate and counterproductive to base your selection on any factor outside of job qualifications.
	You must hire the person who is most likely to be able to perform your job successfully.
	It would be a disservice to the University and to the job applicant to make a poor hire to achieve an affirmative action goal.

After the hire

It is important to remember that our efforts to meet our affirmative action goals at Purdue will include measuring the number of employees who are retained. This underscores the importance of using appropriate techniques to increase the applicant pool, to consider diverse candidates, and to make your hiring decision based on the best qualified candidates.

Beyond this, it is important to make sure that your managers and other employees are ready to accept and work with someone who may be very different than they are. Human Resource Services and the Office of the Vice President for Ethics and Compliance can help with basic diversity and sensitivity training. In addition, we are available to help you locate additional resources for diversity training.

- Adedayo Adeniyi, assistant director
HR Training and Development

- Deborah Turner, assistant director
Employment and Compensation