Thursday, June 17, 2021

15457: Head-Scratching Over Headhunter Headaches.

 

Adding another thought or two in response to the Advertising Age report on White women advancing in Adland. The founder of Grace Blue—a global executive recruitment firm—opined on the matter as follows:

 

“I’ve done this for 15 years and there is certainly a greater onus now on bringing in female leadership than there ever has been before. This was a trend that began to emerge probably three or four years ago and then really came to fall two years ago. Now whenever we take on a new leadership search, a big part of the mandate is to ensure that whenever we come back to clients there is a diverse slate of candidates by every metric.”

 

Onus? If drawing White female candidates from a group that nearly matches the largest pool—ie, White men—is deemed an onus, how would the headhunter describe the task of identifying eligible racial and ethnic minorities? On a related tip, has a recruitment firm ever presented data to show how many executives of color were appointed through their services? Revealing recruiters’ success with diversity would undoubtedly be viewed as a tremendous onus—and a pain in the anus.

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