Since the inception of The National Organization for Diversity in Sales and Marketing, Inc. (NODSM) in 2003, it has been relatively easy to support companies as they seek to diversify their sales and marketing positions.  On the surface, the business case has been made that your employer base should be reflective of your consumer base.  It makes good business sense to have different perspectives sitting at the table to discuss a plan of action for reaching out to diverse segments.  What has always been amazing is that companies will pay a ton of money to develop and execute a diversity recruiting strategy for their sales and marketing teams, but pay very little attention to what happens once that hire is made.  That is disturbing to us.

Our business model is such that we are referring top-tier, diverse, hard to find people that we have established relationship with and look to us to connect them with companies that are fully committed to the ENTIRE process of hiring a diverse candidate.  Part of that process is making sure that their experience once they get hired is positive. Too often, these candidates are painted lovely pictures of how a company values diversity only to find out that the manager they are working for could care less about diversity because they can’t see how it benefits their world.   We have a major disconnect at the mid-manager level that really needs to be fixed.

So companies pat themselves on the back for having an aggressive diversity recruiting strategy but what about the retention strategy? Does your employer branding fall in line at all with what it is really like to work at your company? If not, do you have a plan to try and fix that disconnect?  It’s not easy…we realize that, but it is essential for you to preserve your employer brand in diverse segments.  Visit our blog often where we will discuss these issues and try to offer solutions to not only diversity recruiting strategies, but also retention strategies that will strengthen your brand in diverse segments.