Diversity How companies like IBM became the best at hiring for it

Diversity How companies like IBM became the best at hiring for itDiversity How companies like IBM became the best at hiring for itOn Tuesday, Working Mother released its annual list of the best companies for multicultural women.Since 2003, the publication has compiled a list of the top American companies for women of color. It started with a very small list of three companies in 2003- American Express, Fannie Mae, and IBM- to grow to the current batch of 25.The top five companies this year were Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Procter Gamble and KPMG. The full list can be seen here.For the 2017 list, the companies had to have at least 500 employees and demonstrate best practices in hiring, retaining and promoting women of color to ensure that a variety of perspectives are represented at every level of management and decision-making. In these companies, women of color were 22% of the total workforce and17% of the top percentile of earners.Glass ceilings remainBut thereare still many glass c eilings in this list, proving that this definition of best still needs to be improved. None of the 2017 Best Companies hada woman of color as their CEO, for instance, and only 5% of women of color were executives in leadership roles that reported directly to CEOs.How companies become welcoming for women of colorThere are a few common bonds among the companies that proved themselves welcoming to multicultural women.Keep track of diversityAll of the companies listed were committed to reporting diversity to their boards, which kept them accountable. If companies dont see the needle moving, they can keep changing their strategies to help boost the numbers.Support affinity groups for employeesAnother common bond they provided networking affinity groups for employees. This networkingresource welches particularly neededbecause minority women were found to be using these groups at higher rates than men but they werestill less likely to participate in mentoring than any other demographic - possibly because potentialmentors tend to favor people who look like themselves.Actively recruit and retain diverse employeesPeople of color are not always in the usual pipelines for jobs, such as employee referrals or the infamous old boys club. Companies have to actively search. Something else the best companies did They worked hard to attract diverse women, and they learned how to keep them. About 92% of the best companies had special retention and recruitment initiatives for minority women.Create diverse panels for interviewsSeven of the best companies, including Intel, required a panel of diverse managers to interview new hires, which is an easy way to incorporate different perspectives on what makes a successful workplace.Since requiring this, Intel has seen its diverse representation of people of color increase from 31.9% in 2014 to 45.1% in 2016. One of these hires welches Karenga Ross, who was inspired after being interviewed by a panel of people who looked like her and cou ld share personal struggles. She ended up taking the job and says the people she met in the hiring process have remained her mentors.Its nice to be able to look across that table and see someone whom I can aspire to be, she said.