At Chemonics, we recognize that there’s always space for learning and improvement when it comes to an organization’s recruitment practices. With that in mind, over the past year, our Human Resources Division has reviewed and developed more defined D&I strategies. Attracting and hiring a diverse pool of candidates at all levels of the organization continues to be a priority; to this end, we have focused our efforts in building awareness and implementing ongoing strategies to meet our goals of being a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Over the past year, we have developed and piloted several tools to enhance and improve recruitment efforts to recruit a diverse workforce.

• Comprehensive Recruitment Best Practices Multisession Training: Chemonics provides a comprehensive training program on our recruitment processes and our best practices to staff at all levels of the organization. The D&I team has now incorporated and facilitated a module by leading participants through a Mitigating Unconscious Bias in Recruitment training. It is an interactive discussion to allow participants to reflect and draw their own conclusions on any unconscious bias that may exist. The multi-session was last executed in Fall 2019 with another iteration planned for October 2020. Due to COVID 19, our planned Spring offering was cancelled.
• Being an Effective Interview Panelist: Using Degreed, a Chemonics learning platform, we have created an interactive “dos and don’ts” training for our first time participants on how to be an effective member of an interview panel in the company. Through this online training resource, we discuss five steps of unconscious bias. To date, around 124 employees have taken this training.
• Mitigating Unconscious Bias in the Recruitment Process: Earlier this year, we piloted a focused training for one of our divisions on how unconscious bias may show up in the recruitment process. We continue to review how to build upon and integrate further into our recruitment best practices.

Albert E Smith, Director of Corporate Diversity and Inclusion