Diversity - What it Means to Us

“ We have become not a melting pot, but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

— former President, Jimmy Carter

A term that has found its way into the news and, more importantly, into inquiries from our clients, is “diversity.” But what does it mean? And what does it mean to our work and to the staffing industry in particular?

Various dictionaries and sources define the word diversity, as follows: the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion; noticeable heterogeneity; the relative uniqueness of each individual in the population. In the staffing arena, diversity has come to mean the recruitment and inclusivity of candidates who are different as to gender, race, age, educational background, language, military experience, sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability. In other words, the recruiting of candidates from as wide a universe as feasible helps assure that one’s candidate pool represents a broad spectrum of individual characteristics, attributes and abilities.

Special Counsel prides itself on ensuring diversity not only in its internal staffing, but also in the recruiting it does on behalf of its clients. Were one to look historically at the candidates that Special Counsel has placed, we would probably find candidates who embody every one of the differences listed above, and many more. This is a credit to our recruiting staff and speaks highly of the broadly inclusive methods that have been used in our recruiting.

So, is anything changing? The answer is that, increasingly, corporate legal department clients and law firm clients are not only looking to us to recruit as broadly as before, but also to identify the steps we actively take to ensure that the breadth of our recruiting remains intact and, to ensure that the processes are in place to further expand the available candidate pool. Indeed, many corporations now require reports from their outside law firms (and some staffing companies directly) on what steps they are taking to accomplish the same goals, and what kind of success they have in that endeavor. Some of that duty falls to the recruiting firms with which they partner. Fortunately, our role is the same in both instances — to ensure that we present all of our clients with a candidate pool that is as diverse as can be.

Recently, Special Counsel created a Diversity Initiatives Task Force that has formulated a plan which will study the company’s efforts in achieving diversity and implement new programs and actions to maintain and extend our efforts. We will continue to recruit in ways that have been successful, but also with a mind to investigate ways in which to broaden our recruiting efforts. We will continue to ask ourselves what actions we might undertake to tap into an increasingly diverse universe of candidates. Below are some examples of our efforts. Naturally, we are also eager to hear additional suggestions from our clients.

1. Continue to identify what groups exist with diverse memberships (there are over 100 minority bar associations, for example).
   
   
2. Remain involved with local minority bar associations or affinity groups, attend their meetings and support them in whatever way feasible.
   
   
3. Maintain our level of recruitment for the most qualified candidates available from an ever-expanding diverse populace.
   
   
4. Examine continually the various groups which provide potential recruiting sources.
   
   
5. Maintain our technological expertise in identifying the best candidates through the internet and the best ways in which to apprise the broadest group of people of placement opportunities.
   
   
6. Designate time each day to think about and focus on initiatives that are designed to enhance the diversity of our candidate base.

Most importantly, we will continue to remind ourselves that diversity values differences — and that a beautiful mosaic is impossible with identical tiles.