As a genderqueer member of the coffee community, I’ve heard a lot of folks in leadership roles express the idea that they want their companies to become more diverse. I know coffee companies have both the desire and the capacity to hire more gender-diverse folks, they just don’t understand what they’re doing wrong. I’m here to help.
The main principle I’m going to discuss in this series is that to hire queer and trans people, you’ll need to have infrastructure that lets them know you want them in meaningful roles in your company, and then doesn’t out them on a regular basis once they work for you.
This process starts with your hiring ad itself, and that’s what I’m going to discuss today.
Tell us you want us and word it right
In your online ad, you can take the first step toward hiring the diverse staff you want to see by having a specific line that your company wants to hire and promote queer and trans people from all backgrounds. This would also be a good time to write up a hiring inclusivity statement that includes all varieties of marginalized folks, but I’m only equipped to tackle gender in this article.
There are specifics in the way you include and phrase this line that will tell potential applicants good things about where you’re coming from when you state your intent.
Avoid saying things like “We do not discriminate based on …” because that sounds like you’re only writing this line to comply with EEOC regulations, and you’re not! You’re actually trying to broaden the scope of what your company can accomplish by diversifying your staff, and you deserve a line that expresses that. Along the same lines, saying “We want to hire and promote” is much better than saying “We want applicants from” because you do want to hire and promote them. A diverse pool of applicants does you no good if the person you hire and eventually promote comes from the same background as the rest of your company.
Diverse groups, not people
Diversity as a word is meant to indicate a whole group of people from all different backgrounds, not a single trans or black person you just hired, so please don’t ever refer to a singular person as diverse. In corporate inclusivity culture, diverse used for a single person has quickly become a code word for a token employee from a different background, and the use of that term will bleed into an overall culture of tokenizing your employees from different backgrounds, rather than truly valuing the experience they bring to your company.
Photos: if you can’t do them right, skip them
Regarding pictures on your hiring page, you would be better off with none than with only pictures of cis white men. If you do want to include photos, be thoughtful about what image they create in an applicant’s mind, and always make sure you get permission from an employee before you use their picture.
Who you are
Lots of coffee companies like to include a fun description of who they are to describe company culture and attract the right folks. If you do this, make sure that when you’re talking about who you are, you aren’t describing a white/cis/het/able-bodied male. If you think your ad might be on the fence or aren’t sure how to talk about your company culture in your hiring ad in an inclusive way, you might want to simply state some core values over a “who we are” section.
Collect pronouns now to prevent problems later
In your hiring ad, please ask applicants to include preferred pronouns as part of their cover letter. This is important for trans employees whom you might accidentally misgender on meeting, but is absolutely crucial for genderqueer employees, whom you will almost definitely misgender. In interviews, interviewers are in the power position and it’s not easy for applicants to correct misgendering in that context. At that point, it will be very easy for the mistake to compound rather than getting corrected. Note: the pronouns you collect in the cover letters of your hires are very important and will come into play at almost every step of the inclusive infrastructure I’ll outline in further pieces.
Get our eyes on it
Another import aspect of inclusive hiring is where you place your ad. First off, you shouldn’t just hire just by word of mouth. If all your hires are friends of employees, you will never diversify your staff from the employees you currently have. I know it’s hard, but try not to give priority to friends of your employees, because it creates an in-group that is usually not very diverse. It’s very important to use an ad built on the principles discussed and post it not just on your website and social media, but also on Craigslist, your shop window and around the city. You want as many eyes to see it as possible.
Moving forward
In writing this, I want to give you some tools to net and promote new, interesting people who will enrich your company and broaden your perspective. Stay tuned for the rest of this series, which will help you build our your internal infrastructure for retaining queer and trans employees. The next part of this series will be about onboarding.
