How to source diversity with online personals!

Posted by Jim Stroud
April 6, 2006

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Somebody asked me recently how I would go about sourcing diversity. For whatever reason, they thought I would come up with something unique and effective. I hope that this post does not disappoint. (wink)

Right away I thought about sourcing based on ethnic associations, HBCUs and (perhaps) tracking leads via corporate affinity groups, but thought that this was a strategy many are already doing and I like being different. So I wondered where could I go to find information on diverse populations across multiple industries, and discover their unique ethnicity without getting in trouble. I mean, I can not ask the ethnicity of a candidate without inviting discrimination suits. (Know what I mean?) So after scratching my head for awhile, I say to myself, “Eurethra! I got it.” The answer was to pursue candidates through online personals. Let me show you what I mean.

Check out: http://personals.yahoo.com

Below is a screenshot of the Yahoo Personals homepage as it looks to a non-member. Check out the “Add More Search Criteria” button cited by the arrow below. Click it and we can begin.

From this form I do the following: (Button #1) Name my search so I can repeat my search later with newer results; (Button #2) I choose my preliminary search criteria of a 50 miles radius of a particular city (in this case Beverly Hills, CA), I open my profiles to English only (because I do not speak Spanish) and I add age range of 21-60.

Scroll down the page a bit and we see Ethnicity options. I choose most of them. I also click the “must-have” criteria as I do with all of the other selections.

I scroll down the page a bit more and I choose a level of education, profession (sales) and income level of $100,000.00 as (theoretically) that would be the salary and commission of the person I would want to hire.

Finally, I scroll down to the very bottom of the page, click the “Save this search” box and then press the “Find My Match” button.

Abracadabra! I am staring at two results base on my search. No pictures accompanied the profiles I just discovered, but no matter. I am looking to hire and not looking for love. (Smile)

,

I click on the first result to get a closer look at what I found. All of what I asked for is here, but no resume. Oh well… At least I can send this person an email or send an instant message via the “Break the Ice for FREE!” link. Convenient.

Okay, I could keep going with the screenshots, but I think I made my point here. (Hopefully) People who subscribe to personals are very forthcomng in terms of listing their ethnicity and other types of personal information that would prove of interest to a recruiter seeking to hire diversity.

I suppose the next question is “How successful is this strategy?” To which I would reply, “I don’t know.” This is all theory, but I think a compelling one. I would suggest the following next steps…

  1. Create a profile on Yahoo Personals (or some other personals site) and announce that you are looking to network with professionals and not neccessarily looking for love.
  2. Be honest and open at every turn. It is VERY easy to be tagged by other Yahoos as someone that should be banned from the system.
  3. Create multiple searches and save them all. Set it up so that you receive notification of new profiles meeting your criteria and recruit, recruit, recruit.

I would be very curious to hear from anyone who pursuses this strategy. (hint-hint) So please reach out to me?

Thanks!

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