How is Cisco Driving Better Workplace Diversity and Recruiting Skillful Minds Based on Sheer Merit into Its DNA?
“When I look at a person, I see a person – not a rank, not a class, not a title.” ― Criss Jami
And this trait of looking at a person as a person has been at the very core of our approach when we hire recruits. Time and again, we have heard about instances of people and organizations getting biased towards resources knowingly or unknowingly while hiring for different opportunities. And to do away with such perception or consistently prevalent backdoor discussions, we have come up with diversity hiring and blind hiring approaches to keep our head high in an all ethical and transparent way.
What is Blind Hiring?
Blind hiring is the approach of hiring a candidate where gender, age, religion, race, sexual orientation or any other personal characteristics never influence the hiring decision, thus keeping the entire practice free from biases. The primary goal of blind hiring is to remove potential biases from an organizational structure in terms of sourcing, screening, and shortlisting candidates. This results in ending up hiring the qualified and meritorious candidates.
How We Do Blind Hiring at Cisco?
At Cisco, we have always believed that merit should be the sole driving force when it comes to hiring recruits. In sync with our blind hiring approach, we stay away from sharing the resume of the person applying for the position with the interviewer. Instead, we rely on skill assessment platform like HackerRank that helps identify and hire junior level resources keeping our organization free from any form of biases. With it, we also promote the idea of talent acquisition based on a transparent method, keeping all personal and socioeconomic background of the candidate at bay from the entire hiring process.
Since we have started taking this small step towards recruiting, the result has been very positive and inspiring for us so far. With it, we are more aware of hiring biases now and have a better understanding of how it can impact the overall psyche of the organization towards opening up new vistas of opportunities to the eligible and deserving ones. As a collaborative effort, blind hiring has also contributed in improving the candidates’ overall experience with our hiring process. Adding a bit more resourcefulness, we at Cisco are committed towards building a world where recruits are hired based on mere eligibility, nothing else!
What is Diversity Hiring?
Diversity hiring is again a hiring process that’s done based on merit with special care taken ensuring there is no biases while the hiring procedures are underway. The goal of diversity hiring is to create a healthy work environment that is virtually free from any form of discriminatory practice. We, at Cisco understand the role of diversity at work and hence always advocated for hiring candidates from diverse backgrounds.
Our Approach to Diversity Hiring
We believe, a diverse workplace can contribute immensely in enhancing productivity and boosting morale of the workforce. And with our approach to giving weightage to merit, we are here to build a highly intelligent, efficient and diversified pool of employees who can carry our legacy ahead. While blind hiring is more about recruiting junior grad talents, we are focusing more on hiring senior level female workforce with our diversity hiring practices currently.
In order to get started with the process of hiring female candidates in senior level positions, we have formed a pool of hand-picked leaders who have an open outlook towards bringing diverse resources to the workplace. These highly experienced and esteemed pool of Cisco professionals ensures that the best minds are recruited through the diversity hiring approach who can contribute a lot by cross-pollinating the knowledge, experience, skillset and positive approach they bring in.
Cold calling, exercising our connections and socializing are three prime approaches through which currently we connect with women professionals who can be part of Cisco. As diversity hiring works as a means of opening the door to a diversified workplace based on the rationale of hiring without having subconscious biases, people from different backgrounds get the opportunity to work together and grow. And we at Cisco always strive to make it a better place to be on earth using technology, while at the same time giving equal importance to the values and capabilities every individual carries along. Come…be the force you are and you can further imagine!
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