Hire Diversity

Diversity in employees is one of the keys to success in business. I would argue one of the most important ones. By diversity I don't just mean the ones that are typically used by corporations such as sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability. I also mean different social backgrounds and work experiences. People from different industries but having worked in similar functions.

Where are you from? Country, city, rural, urban, developed or developing world? Where have you worked? What industries, roles? What have you learned? What are your ideas and views on such and such? What are your hobbies? What do you read? What music do you enjoy? What are you handicaps? Blind? Deaf? How does this affect your being? What about your ethnicity? Do you feel that you are a minority? Do you care? If so, how has it affected your life? What new ideas do you have to solve a particular problem? What perspectives have all of these items given you?

It takes a hiring manager that can think out of the narrow decision tree that most HR Interview Guides create for them. It takes more work to see the link between different industries.

Here is a recent, and personal, example. I have fifteen years of experience in customer service and support having supported some of the country's largest corporations on some of their most mission critical systems. Because I do not have five years of aerospace industry I have been rejected from numerous customer service and management jobs in the aviation and aerospace industry. What is the link between customer service in the IT industry and customer service in the airplane industry? Sure the products are different but, in the end, the desires of the customers are similar in the way they want to be treated - respect, integrity, honesty. Both products are mission critical to those who purchase them and both involve very large expenditures up front and on an on-going basis. Products and service offerings can be learnt. The fact that industry experience is so important to hiring managers, even in the customer management/relationship/service/support domain, only goes to show that most companies put their product divisions ahead of service and support. They are not on an equal footing. I saw this in IT and I believe it is true in other industries as well. The result is the many pitiful service experiences we consumers are exposed to on a regular basis. Companies are not hiring service professionals rather they stick to product specialists and train them to provide service. Why not try the opposite sometime?

These HR guidelines, and the list of qualifications, are ways that companies avoid risk. They will be used as filters and they avoid having to be creative in seeing a fit for someone. Why bother? If you never worked in my industry you will not be of value to my group. If you are a woman you will never fit in to my all-male team. If you are a German than you must be cold blooded and unemotional. If you are deaf you can't possibly collaborate with our team. The problem with these filters is that you end up hiring clones - people that fit your background, your view of a good worker and you end up with a boring, dull, unimaginative and less attractive place for your employees. And your customers pay the price.

To the hiring managers that determined that I was not worth being spoken to let me just say that you have lost the chance to hire someone who is truly passionate about customer service and about the aviation industry. Someone that could have made a difference to your corporation and brought a different perspective to service.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!