Companies are often seeking a diverse slate of candidates for an open position – race, ethnicity, gender, age. As an external recruiter or an internal talent acquisition specialist the screening part of developing a representative slate of candidates isn’t too difficult. We know the recruiting part of generating that candidate pool is difficult and we don’t need anything making that work harder.

The one common factor I see making that more difficult is a poor reputation the company has earned for diversity awareness among all employees. One bad hire or bad keep can mean their comment about “those people are so…” or “women always…” which is addressed only with “they didn’t mean anything” can cost you an outstanding diversity employee. It can also be the beginning of the reputation in the market of not being concerned about diversity awareness.