Diversity In The Workplace Archives

What College Graduates Are Looking for in Their Job Search

It’s the time of year again for college graduations! This means more accounting and finance candidates are entering the workforce.

You want to take advantage of the knowledge, skills, and ideas this new group of talent has to offer. One of the best ways to attract these job seekers is through your benefits and perks. The more your benefits and perks fill these graduates’ needs, the more likely the graduates are to want to work for you.

Offering any of the following can encourage new college graduates to apply for your jobs.

Diversity and Inclusion

New college graduates prioritize joining a company that celebrates and values the differences among its employees. These companies tend to excel at innovation and problem-solving, making them highly attractive to job seekers.

Make sure your company has employees of different cultures, ethnicities, genders, ages, and backgrounds at all levels. Showcase your employee resource groups (ERGs), cultural holiday celebrations, and other commitments to diversity and inclusion as well.

Work-Life Balance

The ability to control their time is important for recent college graduates. This is especially important for stress relief as these graduates transition from an academic setting into a professional setting.

Ensure you emphasize whether your company offers remote or hybrid work, a flexible schedule, generous paid time off, and mental health services. These benefits and perks help make your organization attractive to job seekers.

Tailored Benefits Package

Recent college graduates seek benefits that fit their current career and personal interests. These benefits may include student loan repayment, paid family or personal leave, or financial planning education.

Consider offering one or more of these benefits. The more you cater to recent graduates’ needs, the more inclined they will be to apply for your jobs.

Professional Development Opportunities

Recent college graduates want to work for an employer that provides opportunities for professional development. Because their first job serves as a stepping stone for their career, these graduates want to know what the future within an organization may hold for them.

Consider offering opportunities for mentorship, skill-building, and leadership development. The more opportunities for professional development new graduates see, the more likely they are to want to work for you.

Attractive Company Culture

New college graduates seek a company culture that blends with their personality and interests. The more these graduates feel that the culture is a good fit, the more likely they are to remain long-term.

Be sure your culture actively supports learning and growth. This should include ongoing employee recognition for their contributions and results.

Need Help Adding to Your Accounting and Finance Team?

New college graduates typically look for diversity and inclusion, work-life balance, tailored benefits, professional development opportunities, and attractive company culture when deciding where they want to work. Offering these increases the number of new graduates who apply to work for your company.

If you need help adding members to your Chicagoland accounting and finance team, turn to the experts at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Learn more today.

How to Ensure You’re Hiring a Diverse Talent Pool

Having a diverse accounting and finance team increases your company’s innovation. Cultivating different perspectives and backgrounds contributes to more creative ideas that effectively solve problems. This leads to better individual, team, and company performance. Building your group of qualified professionals regardless of their gender, background, race, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics, provides you increased access to top professionals needed to keep your company moving forward.

Here are five ways to include diversity in your candidate pool.

Revisit Your Job Postings

Rewrite your job ads to include language that speaks to a larger range of candidates. Certain words tend to discourage different types of candidates from applying. For instance, ads with words such as “ambitious,” “assertive,” and “self-reliant” tend to attract more male applicants. Ads with words such as “committed,” “interpersonal,” and “responsible” tend to attract more female applicants. By eliminating such gender-coded words, you can reduce the bias in your job ads. This includes using neutral job titles and descriptive language that includes both male- and female-coded descriptors.

Target Your Sourcing

Source candidates from diverse places they tend to hang out. For instance, if you’re looking for high caliber female finance candidates, this may include online and offline groups dedicated to women in finance. If you seek veterans, LGBTIQ people, or people with autism or disabilities, advertise your jobs in forums they may visit or magazines they may read. Niche job boards such as Diversity Working, Hire Autism, Hire Purpose, Recruit Disability, and 70 Million Jobs are options as well.

Request Employee Referrals

Ask your diverse employees to refer people they know. They should have networks of people with backgrounds similar to theirs. Encourage your team members to share job postings with their connections. Provide tools to promote company culture. Show that you value teammates’ ideas and input.

Provide Targeted Internships

Offer internships to people with a specific background. Reach out to local schools and community groups to form connections with students—team up with established programs that encourage growth. Internships provide work experience and immersion in company culture for potential new hires. Seeing firsthand what your company is like encourages diverse candidates to join your team.

Refocus Your Screening Process

Reconsider the traits to look for in candidates. Think about which skills, experience, and qualifications are most important for the role. Make sure they’re not favoring one group of people with similar backgrounds over other groups. Evaluate your interview questions and testing process. Determine whether the results are being steered toward specific types of people more than others. Include a diverse range of peers in conducting these evaluations. Change your methods as needed.

Diversify Your Talent Pool

Focusing on diversity among candidates increases engagement, productivity, and team performance. You gain access to a broader range of skills and experience needed to solve problems and drive innovation.

Find diverse talent by partnering with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We provide the experienced candidates needed to help bring your business to the next level. Get started with us today.

Diversity and Inclusion Will Help Curb Employee Turnover

Employee turnover is a problem that all companies face, some more than others, but it is also something that can be corrected. Depending on the turnover issues at your company, the fix can range from easy to incredibly difficult. Companies looking to curb employee turnover should fix the diversity and inclusion issues that plague their organizations.

Read on as we discuss how these two items, once improved, will help reduce employee turnover at your company.

Lack of Attention Causing Turnover

According to the results of a 2015 survey conducted by Korn Ferry, companies blame employee turnover on the lack of attention to inclusion and diversity within the workplace. Of the close to 700 companies that responded to the online survey from January 27 to February 2, 84 percent of them said that, “lack of attention to these two items are causing employee turnover issues at their organizations.” Some 70 percent of the survey’s respondents noted that they, “have inclusion and diversity programs in place and active for employees.” Close to 72 percent of respondents said that there is, “a conscious effort in place at their companies to create a diverse culture of inclusion.”

Do Programs Enhance Employee Retention?

The same survey found something very interesting when it asked participants if their programs actually enhance employee retention. Of the close to 700 respondents, only 56 percent of them believe that the programs they have in place actually enhance employee retention. To go even further into the responses of the participants, the survey found that 42 percent of companies feel that there is an unconscious bias present within their employee ranks when it comes to diverse backgrounds regarding sexual orientation, religion, gender and race.

Does Your Company Have Diversity and Inclusion Issues?

It is a good idea to find out what diversity and inclusion issues might be present. Ask yourself the question “Does Your Company Have Diversity and Inclusion Issues?” to to begin a very important discussion among leadership. Even though the survey period is complete, you could still take the survey to determine what your company’s answers would be as this would help you evaluate the situation at hand.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that diversity and inclusion both play a major factor in the employee turnover rate at your company, no matter the industry in which it operates. High employee turnover means that your company is spending extra resources to find, interview, hire and onboard new employees only for them to leave after a short period. The more your company promotes a diverse workplace and is inclusive to all employees, the better your employee turnover rate will be, with it bordering on very low.
To improve your recruitment for diversity and inclusion, partner with a great finance staffing agency in Chicago like Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We have candidates from all types of backgrounds ready to go to work for you, and improve your retention rates.