why we need to challenge the traditional proxies of hiring: Inspired by @Box + @Year-Up
published 9.26.17
“Talent is universal. Opportunity is not.” Paul Chapman, Chief Information Officer at Box drove this point home at Tipping Point’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Impact discussion last week in San Francisco.
A group of panelists, including Jay Banfield, the Managing Director of Year-Up California, and several Box employees spoke about their experience creating opportunities for diverse candidates and developing exceptional people. Year-Up works to close the opportunity divide by providing inner-city young adults with marketable job skills, stipends, internship placements and a holistic approach to personal and professional development. Similar to many Bay Area tech companies, Box is hiring rampantly. Driven by Chapman’s belief that there isn’t a pipeline issue, but rather an opportunity issue and his Director of IT, Jason Bergado’s, passion for looking beyond traditional proxies for talent, Box partnered with Year-Up to meet its hiring needs by recruiting talented, diverse candidates for internship and entry-level placements.
Rolando Argueta, a Year-Up student and IT Specialist at Box, was one of those candidates. After seeing his friend Harris post about Year-Up and his new job on Instagram, Argueta knew he wanted in. Argueta’s journey, from packing luggage onto planes at SFO, to meticulously hammering away at Year-Up’s rigorous training model, to navigating corporate culture and excelling at his job, makes you believe the American Dream may still be alive. In Bergado’s words, Argueta came in incredibly driven and ready to learn. Argueta and the many other Year-Up students remind us that resting on the traditional structures of recruiting and retention disconnects and isolates talented, diverse candidates, whether they are out of school underemployed youth, parents who leave their careers due to corporate inflexibility or highly qualified under-sponsored women of color who are overlooked for promotional opportunities.
As employers, we need to start reevaluating the proxies we use for signaling skills, be truly open to different pipelines of talent, and embrace the workforce of tomorrow. At qb., like Chapman, we believe talent is universal, diversity is essential, and opportunity should be equitable.
If you’re interested in starting a conversation about diverse hiring or creating a culture of equity and inclusion, please reach out (sam@consultqb.com). I would love to connect.
This article also appeared on LinkedIn
by Sam Hartsock
Cofounder
