Member-only story
THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
The Challenge of Hiring Anti-Racist Employees
My interviews these days have a few more curveballs
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
In my very first column here at LEVEL, I dropped some game on one question that any person from a marginalized community should ask while being interviewed for a new job: “How would you define diversity and what does that mean to you?” It’s a query that has, for the most part, helped me suss out companies that clearly don’t give a damn about making their workforces fair and safe spaces for Black employees like me. Yet as of late, I’ve been able to drop it from my repertoire completely.
For the first time in more than a year, I’ve been playing the field for a heat check on my market value. I’ve noticed that things are different this time around — and not just because I’m staring potential employers in the face via my laptop screen. In what’s likely hangover effect of Freedom Summer 2020, interviewers have been beating me to the punch engaging with topics like diversity, equality, and inclusion. It’s an encouraging indicator of the small shifts happening in corporate America.
I’ve even seen it from the other side of the interview process. As a member of the DEI committee at my current job, I’ve been tasked with sitting in on Zoom interviews with prospective hires. The process has been… interesting, to say the least. (And dumbfounding to say the most.) The conversations have been conducted panel-style with a few of my colleagues, all of whom are White or White-passing. I appreciate being part of the process, a representative of the fleck of color employed on staff, able to use my innate racism radar to help build the best team possible.
We’ve stuck to a pretty straightforward script for these interviews: some questions about background, successes, failure, decision-making processes, improvisation, leadership, conflict resolution. And then, quite abruptly, we get to the good stuff.
“Tell us about a time when you’ve experienced racism in the workplace.”
