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Advice for Employers and Recruiters

To hire more diverse students for internships, eliminate university bias

Steven Rothberg AvatarSteven Rothberg
November 13, 2020


College Recruiter has been helping college students and recent graduates find part-time, seasonal, internship, and entry-level jobs for almost three decades, first through print magazines and then our website, CollegeRecruiter.com.

Until a few years ago, we saw very little movement by the vast majority of employers in where they sourced students from. Most went to the same 10, 20, or 200 schools year after year after year and would make it very, very, very difficult for students of other schools to be seriously considered. Those employers typically used circular logic to justify that approach by saying that they recruited all or almost all of their student hires from those schools and so, therefore, those were the best schools to source students from. The flaw in that logic is that they had no way of knowing of they’d be able to hire a higher quality of candidates from other schools, reduce their recruitment costs, or some combination of the two.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive shift by our employer customers — mostly Fortune 1,000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale — to a more school agnostic approach. In other words, far more employers care a lot less today about which school you attend than just a few years ago. Supporting that approach is Dr. Joe Sallustio, the executive vice president of Claremont Lincoln University, a grad school that focuses on socially conscious degrees for a diverse student base. Dr. Sallustio has spent years guiding higher-ed learners into their desired career paths, so he has a lot of useful advice to offer here. 

Dr. Sallustio recently provided us with a few tips for employers who want to hire more diverse students for internships and recent graduates for entry-level jobs:

  1. Hire based on cultural contributions rather than cultural fit. Companies often aim to hire candidates who they think will be a good “cultural fit,” which typically means they’ll easily “fit” into the organization without much friction. It’s not a bad thing to hire people who align with your company’s values and collective behaviors, but this approach can backfire by inadvertently boxing out diverse candidates. As a result, organizations find themselves with a homogenous workforce that lacks differing backgrounds and beliefs. One of the best ways to avoid falling in this is to ensure your interview panel includes many diverse viewpoints and employees. Also, instead of assessing candidates based on cultural fit, evaluate how they can contribute to the culture.  
  2. Acknowledge and eliminate university bias. Because their college or university credentials are often spotlighted on their resumes, recent grads are at high risk of being subject to an academic bias, where the hiring team makes judgments based on the prestige of their school, the level of their degree, or even their institution’s known political or religious leaning. When companies have a propensity to hire from top educational institutions, they’re simply impeding their diversity goals. First and foremost, to help bolster diversity in recruitment, I recommend removing the quality of education as a filter in the hiring process. I’d even suggest going a step further and instituting a process to hire “blind” based solely on skills and performance. This way, you’re simultaneously eliminating other diversity-thwarting biases that tend to creep up, such as age, gender, race, sexual orientation and socio-economic status. 
  3. Promote your diversity to attract diversity. Diversity can beget diversity. If your organization has instituted diversity initiatives or is otherwise fervent about diversity, make sure you’re marketing that fact to new grads on social, on your career pages, in virtual career fairs and through employee word of mouth. This tells potential candidates that you’re serious about hiring based solely on merit and draws in a broader swath of applicants.   

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