How We Conduct Diverse Hiring Schemes in the USA
We were over the moon to welcome Niko Knechtel to Orbis in June 2021, to further our expansion and service offerings to our clients in the USA. He is currently overseeing the team as our Regional Associate Director, and is working to ensure that our D&I efforts in the UK are replicated and implemented across the pond.
We recently spoke about what D&I means to us in an introductory blog last month, where we detailed our metrics as well as plans for the future. Our USA team is focussing on diverse hiring schemes to further our service offering to candidates and clients, inclusive of bespoke searches, and market insight and research to see current diversity gaps at mid and senior levels.
In the USA, there has been an increase in demand from our clients for diversity among submitted candidates. There is a particular focus on female engineers and underrepresented folks within tech.
Due to Covid-19 and the significant changes across global businesses, we have seen more candidates engage due to flexible working and other working models becoming available. This naturally improves diversity from a gender perspective, as well as giving more opportunity to those from varying socioeconomic backgrounds.
“As we continue to build out our Nashville presence, we’re taking every step possible to remain aware of the market circumstances around us. Although it’s clear that some companies are realising the true potential that comes with cultivating a diverse and inclusive work environment, other organisations are becoming more aware that something is clearly not working for them in this arena.
Our focus is to help clients bridge the gap between hiring for what they’ve always known, and hiring for whom they truly need to succeed. We’re taking an inside-out approach to accomplish this goal. Our primary effort has been to implement new recruitment processes which ultimately provide diverse candidates greater access to thrive. In turn, we are pursuing talent on all fronts, regardless of race, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, gender, or any other respective criterion.
This has allowed us to foster environments of innovation, benefiting our candidates and clients in the best possible capacity. By achieving a diverse workplace, we can all collectively put forth our best ideas, balance out our decision processes, extend our reach to the surrounding communities, and help change the way our world looks at hiring.” - Niko Knechtel
Our diverse hiring schemes, although centered around metrics, are also deeply rooted in company culture and employer value propositions.
Each client we work with will have different quotas they need to reach from a data perspective, however, we also ensure that it complements their wider culture strategy so it isn’t performative or “box-ticking”.
Some of our methods are as follows:
5:2 gender and race diversity ratio as a minimum applied to all candidate shortlists
Anonymized profiles
Removal of identifiable factors which depict unconscious bias towards background or education
Some of our searches have included:
Bespoke search for Black and Hispanic professionals within Engineering in the USA
Female only search for an EMEA CIO position
Exclusive project to source female-only engineers
“We recognize that not all workforces are equal. We partner with all size companies, from seed to enterprise, to support change where needed when businesses recognise that ultimately something is not working. We aim to impact this, by building high performing, diverse teams.” - Alex Stone
We are excited for our continued expansion in the USA, and will actively share our efforts from a D&I perspective to demonstrate how we plan to evolve our service offerings.
