Career Center Adds DEI Employer Questions

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Career Center green eagle lock-up

I was approached by Amy Ferman, Shani, and Teresita in Fall of 2019 to host the career fair portion of the Equity & Diversity Conference in Spring of 2020. Shani and Teresita had screening questions they wanted to ask employers, which I was able to program into Handshake to ask employers whenever they registered. I LOVED having this information from employers! We have an employer listing that I create and we pass around at career fairs; I’ve historically marked employers who are interested/able in hiring international students, and was excited to expand that.

Cue COVID. As we all pivoted to handle this new frontier, I realized I had a good chance to simplify what I asked employers and students, as well as how I could use the data. The exact questions I’ve asked employers during registration have changed somewhat, but I’ve included them below. I lifted these questions directly from the questions Shani and Teresita used during the Spring 2020 Equity & Diversity Career Fair. Handshake is super helpful and automatically integrates these questions into the employer registration process, so they flow very seamlessly.

We’re still establishing and learning how to use the data, but to date I’ve had over 300 employers answer these questions, or similar, throughout the Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Fall 2021 semesters. Drawing inspiration from the questions was the perfect catalyst to be more insightful about what information we gathered, and how we used it. I’m hoping to be able to push this further and highlight employers at in-person events who have diverse hiring initiatives or company cultures.

  • Does your organization have an Employee Resource Groups?
  • What diversity initiatives does your organization have?
  • Do you have hiring initiatives based on any of the following affinity groups? Please select all that apply. Your answers may be displayed at your booth or on the employer listing for the duration of the fair.
    • Minorities
    • LGBT+
    • Veterans
    • International
    • Prefer not to answer
    • Other