Strategies for Centering Equity in a Search Process

At Clover, we promote equity and mitigate bias by:

• Bringing together a diverse hiring team that includes staff 
• Facilitating search committee discussions and/or training specifically related to racial equity and bias in the search process
• Examining and eliminating unnecessary requirements that may limit the applicant pool  - everything from having a particular degree to the ability to lift 25 lbs.  
• Explicitly identifying the ability to connect with communities served or lead with an equity lens in the evaluation criteria, if that is desired.
• Transparently sharing salary range and search timeline in all of our announcements 
• Creating job announcements that speak to a breadth of life experience and are explicit about an organization’s commitment to equity, so that the door is wide open for potential candidates.
• Seeking out job boards, social media groups, and list serves that are intentionally inclusive and diverse.
• Making ourselves readily available to answer questions and/or meet with all potential candidates, as well as exploring innovative ways to reach new audiences
• Insisting that a minimum of two team members (and usually more) carefully screen each resume, to reduce the risk of overlooking potentially strong candidates due to individual blind spots.
• Limiting candidate's uncompensated time and effort in a search, and/or compensating finalist candidates for their time.

We work closely with our clients to identify additional steps we can take that are unique to that organization, and we learn something new from every search we do; as a result, this list is always growing. Happily, some of these practices are beginning to be commonplace in nonprofit hiring.