Why it’s important to be open-minded when hiring

Diversity in the workplace is essential for providing different perspectives. As Tash Cahill said to The HR Leader: “Without diversity, you won’t achieve diversity of thought.”

Subhashree Das, client services officer in the contract management team at Konica Minolta, joined The HR Leader to discuss how entering the Australian workforce from India was a challenge and how open-minded hiring processes could have made her transition easier.

“I moved to another continent. Out here [and] pretty much in every country, the main challenge is not having local experience or education. So that is not well-received in a foreign market wherein people who would expect you, even to start with, [to] have something of a local understanding. And to break in is quite challenging,” explained Ms Das.

“Finding an opportunity in my role was really difficult … The professional experience that I did bring to the table, I don’t think that was acknowledged. It was, in fact, seen as a hindrance in my job search here.”

Organisations can help to promote diversity by taking an open-minded approach to talent acquisition and may benefit by looking the outside usual talent pools for candidates.

“I think the term diversity, we do have a good dialogue around it. Companies should actively understand that, moving away from the traditional thinking. What are the other avenues that you can get talent from? And understanding that different roles require different sort of personalities,” said Ms Das.

“Break out of that mould, break the confirmation bias that you probably have because that’s very prevalent … let’s get different type[s] of people on board and see how that good mix can play to our strength.”

Ms Das said that an effective way to create diversity in hiring is to recognise prior experience: “What recruiters need to see first is professionalism.”

“To do a job well, it’s not just the paperwork; it’s what you can do, what you are able to deliver, what you have done. The past experience holds good ground when you do that. So, recruiters need to see that there’s a huge talent pool that they’re completely overlooking, and this talent pool can actually contribute a lot towards the betterment of the culture of the organisation. And in terms of a good turnaround, it can even contribute to the profitability,” she explained.

Increased diversity can help create a diverse support system. Different experiences and values can translate to varied methods of dealing with issues that staff may have.

Ms Das added: “Handling stress, the work stress, it needs a lot of stability, and it affects mental health … You need people who can be that support system. Even in the teams, you cannot just have one demographic and think this is going to function so well … It cannot be just one type of person.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Subhashree Das on 30 January 2023 is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.

Jack Campbell

Jack is the editor at HR Leader.