Senior Sports Reporter, Orlando Sentinel

Best news I've read on the job board in some time...

Great hire... Jeff is a great guy and a great writer.

 

Pretty much any gig put up on this board can add one more person of minority to people applying...I apply to them all and I am Native American.

 

I'm not picking a fight but did you look for a Native American to fill a vacancy? Did you ask anyone about one or any other minority group? Too many times the search for minorities is limited to a call to another sports editor asking them have the run across any interesting resumes. Again, this is not a fight or a jab at you personally, but the excuses for not diversifying staffs are worn out.

 

I've always been a bit curious as to how they can tell whether a candidate's a minority or not...never thought about the column sig thing. For me, I'm half Mexican and half Welsh, but you'd never be able to tell the Mexican half from my name.
Congrats to Jeff, btw. What a great fit for both parties.

 

I belong to AWSM, NABJ, Hispanic journalists and Al-Qaeda and put them all on my resume.

 

Ace is being a playful ass but sometimes, candidates may put one of the alphabet groups on a resume. Hell, I've seen some resumes with a photo. Again, it's difficult to find good talent but when I hear people ask where are the minority candidates and there are those like Jared Poertner who are out there, I shake my head and wonder. There are no more excuses for staffs not to be diversified. And I'm not talking about having one woman or one African American or Native American on the staff and calling that diversity.

 

Hiring good candidates isn't easy, period. You make it sound like there's a giant conspiracy afoot.

There are multiple factors that can impact a candidate pool: time of year the job is posted, location of your newspaper, the staff’s makeup, how much you pay. A job posted in January will get a completely different set of resumes than one posted in September. Same with a desk job or a beat position.

The problem we’ve seen lately, and it strikes me as odd, that good candidates are hard to find even in this economic climate. A lot of people have left the business and aren't eager to return. Others can't move because of financial hardship brought on by a layoff or low-wage jobs in our industry. Some can't sell their homes.

Competition for qualified candidates is fierce, especially ones championed by NAHJ, NABJ, etc. They usually get their pick of where they want to work. I’ve lost bidding wars with other newspapers in this fashion and we’re talking actual fair wages — not the 35K a year, cost-of-living nonsense tossed around by so many in our industry. For some papers, you can only go so high.

All a hiring manager can do is widen the pool of candidates as much as possible and then try and narrow it to your top three or four picks. Some chains mandate that you can’t hire unless you’ve interviewed a diverse pool of people. It’s a great exercise in adding different backgrounds to your department — IF you can get them to come on board once you’ve talked.

You seemed to imply that Moderator1 didn’t live up to your expectations when it came to how he explored hiring for positions. Sometimes you do all you can to cast a wide net and it’s not enough. Other times, it works out perfectly for the paper and the candidate.

Another issue, though it has nothing to do with diversity per se, is the amount of resumes each opening produces. I find that most of the candidates aren’t qualified for the basic aspects of the position. It’s a lot of chaff to wade through, because you have to respond to each person individually, even the unqualified ones. I usually try to address what they’d need to improve on to work with us and to send me updated clips in six months or so.

Just a lot that goes into hiring that doesn’t fit your broad-brushed statement, Drip. Seemed unfair to Moderator1.

Oh, and Tim Stephens is a hell of a guy. Don’t know Shain, but congratulations.

 

I understand the sentiment, and your point, Drip.

The thing is, though, with staffs getting increasingly small, and more hap-hazard and at least somewhat more unprofessional just because of the changing media culture, and with hiring practices now influenced, mightily, by such things as cheap/non-existent budgets, the need/desire to limit candidate searches to a certain geographic radius, and with really, less care/weight given to journalists' qualifications and experience, etc., something like diversity almost can't help but go out the window, at least to a proportional extent.

It just...happens, Drip...naturally, and as a matter of course in these circumstances. Nobody has to pointedly/intentionally ignore diversity, or really try not to improve it for either of those unfortunate things to happen. And on small staffs, if there is the one, token person each of African-American, Hispanic, Asian or whatever descent, well, that is, actually, a pretty diversified staff. It's all going to be relative, and probably, proportional, given the numbers game and whatever other factors there are at any given time that contribute to such scenarios.

Also, as Moderator1 points out, just getting someone of another race, or cultural background in terms of bloodlines is no guarantee that you are getting a qualified minority applicant -- or even a minority who really thinks/sees themselves as a "minority" or a diversity candidate anymore.

In some cases these days -- it's not like we're just out from the days of slavery now -- that person is uninitiated and uneducated enough in terms of their own history and their proximity to cultural traditions/differences is distant or not-emphasized enough in their own lives as to make their personal experiences as minority applicants not much different than that of your garden-variety Caucasian.

They may be diversity candidates in name/skin color only, and it is just something they are citing/taking advantage of because they can -- and not really for any reason having to do with how much they can add as an ethnic candidate/employee compared to someone else.

As with any hire, it depends on the person, and the situation.