Editor's Note

Is it Time to Make Braver Hiring Decisions?
Hilda Rosca Nartea


One of the most important calls during the SHRM 2019 Annual Conference & Exposition is the call for HR professionals to make hiring more inclusive — specifically, by recruiting people who may usually be perceived as “wrong,” “different” or even “difficult,” such as people with disability, formerly incarcerated individuals and people over 50.

Such a call can be considered a highly risky move in the world of recruitment. Traditionally, safe and sure candidates are favoured, especially in the Japanese workplace where the tendency is to overvalue the safe worker, because the preferred course of action is the one that minimizes the possibility of error.

But opening the workplace to people who normally would have been locked out of the job market is not just a way to tap a wider pool of talent, hereby helping address the current talent shortage. It’s not just another approach to resolve a host of other recruitment challenges global businesses are facing today. On a deeper, more impactful level, it’s also an opportunity to improve the workplace and the community.

"I'm not saying that everyone who applies for a job deserves that job. But everyone deserves the dignity of work," Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, president and chief executive officer of the SHRM, said. “When you give people second chances, you can change lives. You can create a better world."

Once we realize that making the shift to more diverse hiring practices is also taking a step to a better world, it completely sets a radical tone into the task of recruitment. The tasks that may have become mundane: shifting through resumes, facilitating assessments and going through interviews one after the other, takes a more valuable meaning. You’re not just trying to meet quotas or fill a vacancy. You are creating possibilities that impact real lives and the real world.

The line-up of articles we have for this issue of The HR Agenda reflects this brave new perspective necessary in today’s brave new world of recruitment.

There is a concrete, crucial truth that often gets buried in the day-to-day: the work HR does, especially recruiting, can be truly life-changing and world-transforming. Taking the time to remind ourselves of that truth can be a tool for making more strategic decisions that serve both businesses and people better.

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Hilda Rosca Nartea is editor in chief of The HR Agenda. She heads the content team of a Dubai-based digital agency and is also a content producer for non-profit organizations, having done projects for the United Nations Development Programme under the Philippine Department of Energy. She studied Film and Audio-Visual Communications at the University of the Philippines.


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