Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in Recruiting for GlobeMed Chapters
Since GlobeMed’s founding, diversity and inclusion have always been central to our values and approach to global and public health. During the last several years, in the wake of increased discussions around diversity and inclusion around the United States, GlobeMed HQ and many of our chapters have been intentionally having additional conversations about how to make our work more inclusive. The chapter recruiting process is a particular area where many chapters have been thinking about diversity and inclusion (D&I), such as GlobeMed at Berkeley, which has been working on a D&I recruitment initiative in the last two years.
A couple years ago, the GlobeMed at Berkeley executive board heard concerns from some chapter members that the chapter did not feel as inclusive as it could be. “We had a number of members address our eboard a couple of years back feeling lost in the space that we had created and feeling like their particular identities either weren’t being represented accurately or that they felt like their voice and what they were doing wasn’t being heard adequately,” Cody Tran, GlobeMed at Berkeley co-president, says. “That set a very serious tone within eboard to want to reevaluate the way that we pursue recruitment, as well as the way that our chapter operates as a whole.”
The GlobeMed at Berkeley leadership decided they needed to consult D&I experts as they were reforming their recruitment process. Adele Wallrich, recent Berkeley graduate and former co-gHU coordinator, had interned at collaborative software company Airtable and knew their head of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Albrey Brown. She put the executive board in contact with him so they could have a conversation about how he approached diversity and inclusion at Airtable and the lessons they could draw from that for GlobeMed at Berkeley.
Airtable was an especially good fit for GlobeMed at Berkeley to talk with because, as Cody says, “Our recruitment process models itself off of the current processes of consulting organizations and other pre-professional organizations here on campus.” For GlobeMed at Berkeley, this consisted of a written application with essays followed by two rounds of formal interviews. “We wanted to look at that and say, ‘What barriers are we already bringing into that by assuming that people have the experience, the knowledge, the background, the context, the capabilities to enter that sort of space and perform well?’”
In April 2020, Albrey and the GlobeMed at Berkeley executive board gathered on a Zoom call to discuss D&I and what GlobeMed at Berkeley could do. During their conversation, Albrey posed questions like: What are ways to make recruitment more low-barrier? How can diversity help you do your jobs better? Why would those who are underserved benefit from membership in GlobeMed at Berkeley? He also discussed the case study of Airtable and the strategies they were using to increase inclusivity and equity in their hiring process and workplace. The GlobeMed at Berkeley team walked away from the conversation feeling like they had the tools to begin integrating changes to their recruitment and chapter processes to make them more inclusive.
Reconvening, they decided to cut down the written application, make it available in multiple formats, and remove any testing or GPA requirements. They also decided to completely redo the interview portion to make it less anxiety-inducing, particularly for students who didn’t have professional interview experience. “When I interviewed — this was before the change of our interview process — there was a panel of six to seven people sitting in front of me and I had to talk to them, and it was really scary as a freshman,” Samhita Bhat, GlobeMed at Berkeley co-president, says, remembering her interview experience. “It’s really overwhelming where if you’ve never had an interview-like experience before that, you can come in and you can have a lot of fear and anxiety about it. And so that was something we decided to completely overhaul.”
GlobeMed at Berkeley formerly used two rounds of formal, professional interviews; in the overhaul, they replaced their first round with an informal coffee chat, changed the focus of the second interview, and stopped cutting applicants between rounds. The first round of interviews is now meant to be a casual, bidirectional, 1:1 conversation between an applicant and an executive board member. The professional setting of the second round was maintained, but the format was altered to be more of a discussion on issues relevant to GlobeMed. “Instead of question/answer question/answer, we would give the applicant a case study to review on a fictional nonprofit organization that they would then think through how to problem-solve issues that our fictional organization is facing,” Cody describes. They also discuss a global health TED Talk, which applicants are sent ahead of time. “That way, applicants who maybe have not had as much traditional interview experience in the past wouldn’t come in and be bombarded with questions but don’t know what to expect, and can prepare themselves beforehand.”
“We were trying to strike the right balance, or the necessity, of maintaining professionalism when we’re looking at basically recruitment, and what sort of barriers does making a recruitment process more professional create?” Samhita says.
Albrey had also suggested that GlobeMed at Berkeley make a concerted effort to reach out to organizations on campus they might not be known to. Their executive board created a list of majors, departments, and student organizations that weren’t familiar with GlobeMed’s work and assigned a member to talk to each one to make sure they were intentional about spreading the word about GlobeMed at many kinds of places around campus. They’ve also been intentional about expanding the scope of their globalhealthU (ghU) presentations, both in regards to the topics covered and who gets involved. “Within the ghU committee, their general members who are working on ghUs, [we are] trying to get them to either help present or take more of a leadership role in building ghUs, leading ghUs,” Cody shares. “That’s also in an effort to create more opportunities for general members to feel like they have a stake in the work that we do and these conversations that we try to lead.”
Samhita knows they still have work to do going forward, but she’s proud of the work they’ve done so far. “It’s an ever-changing process; there’s always more we can do,” she says. “And each summer before recruitment, we set a couple meetings to just talk about recruitment and what we want to change, and we ask every eboard member if they see any parts that they want to change. So this is how far we’ve come, but we know there’s a lot more we can do in the future, and we want to work towards that.”
