Affirmative Action Goals: Creating a Diverse Workforce
The University of Michigan's policy on Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action (PDF) shows that the University is very committed to creating and maintaining a diverse workforce.
It is your responsibility to ensure that the candidate pool is diverse and robust. In addition, you are responsible for conducting a review of RIF candidates and checking performance evaluations and rehire status of candidates to be interviewed.
Tips on Recruiting a Diverse Staff shows that there are many ways for hiring supervisors to help the University maintain a diverse workforce.
Jobs with Goals:
Affirmative action goals are campus goals, not departmental goals. An e-mail will be sent to you if a posted job has a campus affirmative action goal.
If the position has a goal, you need to compare the makeup of the candidate pool to the availability data. The makeup of the candidate pool is found in the Affirmative Action Availability Report (MS Excel). This report will show the percent of the applicant pool that is female and the percent minority.
Ask the following in determining if your candidate pool is sufficiently diverse:
- Does the short list of candidates (those that will be interviewed) include minorities?
- Is the pool of candidates reporting race and gender a significant portion of your overall candidate pool? If not, the variation in percentages may not be significant since you have a large unknown population. If so, you may want to consider outreach efforts.
- In general, if the makeup of your candidate pool is within 10% of the availability data, your pool is sufficiently diverse.
As an example, the availability data indicates 52% females and 12% minorities, while your candidate pool indicates 60% female and 10% minorities. Clearly, your pool is reflective of female availability. Since your candidate pool is somewhat short of the minority availability, you would need to take the further factors into consideration in determining next steps.
Should you determine the pool is not comparable to availability data, the following outreach resources are available:
- Repost the position
- Conduct a search of external applicants, invite candidates to apply and reassess the pool
- Contact Web site/professional organizations
- Use other sources for expanding your pool such as:
- Word-of-mouth
- Newspapers (e.g. local/ethnic)
- Unemployment Office
- Religious/Social Organizations
