MLT’s 2nd Annual Partner Symposium: Sharing Insights and Solutions for Shaping Diverse Talent Pipelines
By: John Rice, MLT Founder & CEO
I am looking forward to spending today with more than 100 of this country’s leading human capital executives at MLT’s 2nd annual Partner Symposium. We are convening this group to share insights and best practices and engage in candid conversations about how our nation’s top institutions can – and must – think differently about how to recruit, develop and retain diverse talent.
MLT is proud to partner with more than 100 of the world’s best employers and universities. Together, we are not only strengthening but also transforming our nation’s talent pipeline.
Based on 12 years of experience working with our partners and helping thousands of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans accelerate their careers, we have developed an employer playbook that offers concrete solutions to help companies and social sector organizations expand their diverse talent pipelines.
The guiding principles of our employer playbook are for companies and organizations to:
- Focus on building critical mass of diverse talent at each level of the organization – not simply at the entry level
- Apply the same level of analytical rigor to their strategy to achieve critical mass that they apply to every other aspect of their business – with well defined success metrics, investment priorities, and accountability
- Implement retention strategies that help individuals be high performers in the current organizational environment, rather than prioritizing “culture change”
- Focus on outcomes rather than activities
We have gained many insights into what motivates diverse candidates during the recruitment process and how to facilitate high performance among diverse staff at every level of the organization. Today, we will share with our partners our latest thinking about how they can improve the success of their minority recruitment and retention efforts.
We all have the same goal: to engage in meaningful, strategic conversations about how to build a critical mass of diverse leadership talent in this country. Although we often speak in terms of pipelines and metrics – ROI, recruitment and retention rates – we never lose sight that our work together is about something bigger than that. It is about putting the American Dream within reach of everyone.
I hope that you will add your comments and reflections below so that together we can further our vision of an America that maximizes the potential of all our citizens.