How Moneyball Recruiting Can Lift Your Game on Diversity

The issue of workplace diversity is one that continues to challenge many Boardrooms around the country and it appears many organisatons are yet to put their finger on a solution.
In particular, there’s been a significant push in Australia in recent times for organisations to focus on positive, progressive strategies to engage, recruit and retain women in leadership and business.
It seems unconscious bias, during the recruitment process, has a lot to answer for.
Now, I’m no authority on recruitment, or solving the nation’s gender diversity issues for that matter, but one of the perks of working for a conference company is that you get to hear many wise people speak on lots of interesting topics.
One person who stands out to me on this issue is the self-titled Boolean Blackbelt, Glen Cathey. His presentation on the Moneyball Approach to recruiting given at the Australasian Talent Conference a couple of years ago demonstrated how traditional methods of recruitment are naturally subject to unconscious biases, such as what we think a high performer looks, acts and even sounds like.
The Moneyball appraoch to recruitment is about moving away from using largely subjective means of assessing talent, and instead making hiring decisions based on more objective, fact and data-based means which take into account things like traits, experience and accomplishments – the stuff that can sometimes be overshadowed by our own preconceived thoughts about people in the interviewing process.
As Glen’s presentation shows (below), Moneyball derived as a strategy on the baseball field to recruit players on the basis of merit. However, it may well be what organisations need to help lift their game in the diversity stakes and it may help to open the floodgates to people of all backgrounds, race, ethnicity, genders and social economic status.
Those that do are sure to reap the rewards.
Here’s Glen’s presentation, click on the link below to view:
Glen Cathey – Keynote Session


Recruiting for Diversity is a topic we will explore at our ATC2015 Recruitment is Marketing conference in June.  Amy Cato, Director, Executive Women Shortlist and Emma Gee, inspirational speaker, are teaming together to present a half-day pre-conference workshop, “Attracting and Recruiting People with Disabilities”; and Amy will spar with Duncan MacKay, National Manager, Recruitment and Resourcing at Superpartners, as they debate “Do You Need Metrics to Measure Diversity?”.
You can register for the event, here.