How to Recruit Qualified Gay Leaders

This was a guest post written by Rizala Carrington from RizalaCarrington.com

The best method for recruiting gay corporate leaders in the workplace is to promote a diversified workplace. A talented pool of leaders exists throughout the global community. This talent pool is often filled with fresh perspectives and new ideas. Fresh perspectives coupled with solid skills are essential to a company’s success and longevity in business.

Many corporations are looking for ways to enhance diversity from the top down and inside out. One way to do this is by recruiting gay corporate leaders. While affirmative action programs have looked at ways to recruit women, minorities and other excluded populations, many have not looked at an individual’s sexuality as a classic category for exclusion.

People within the LGBT population may see this differently. This group has historically been discriminated against. The military has made some progress in working to dispel myths about discrimination in the workplace. It has a long way to go before rumors of discrimination can be corrected and gay leaders may be actively promoted in service particularly among leadership.

Positive Promotion

One place that gay leaders may be positively promoted is among private institutions. No restrictions exist about how corporate leaders may recruit gay leaders. Many methods can help attracted talented LGBT qualified candidates for leadership roles. Some of the same methods used to attract traditional candidates will work equally well with gay leaders. The key is making the work organization attractive to gay leaders that might otherwise shun a corporate entity. Here are some work tips for attracting competent gay leaders to a work organization.

1. Create a work environment that promotes and embraces diversity in the workplace.
2. Create and embrace policies that show no tolerance toward discrimination of any kind in the workplace.
3. Promote and adopt policies that are favorable toward gays in the workplace, including policies related to health insurance for gay families in the workplace.
4. Encourage team and employee training that teaches employees about being respectful toward each other and embracing each other regardless of one’s beliefs, race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, language, socio-economic status and other related factors. Remember to train employees about the rules and laws that govern discrimination.
5. Keep communication open in the workplace to encourage a commitment to understanding.
6. Recruit from a diverse talent pool to attract as many candidates as possible from as wide a pool of applicants as possible. Do not be afraid to recruit nationally or globally.

Remember that gay leaders have the same skills, competencies and qualities as their traditional counterparts. More and more companies are opening doors to accept new definitions of what is and is not normal in the workplace. Keep an open mind of what diversity encompasses and your workplace may be richly rewarded.

Thanks for reading, have an awesomely wonderful day Special thanks to Mike Doherty for this guest blog post!

About Rizala Carrington

Rizala Carrington was born and raised in Southern California, is currently living in exile with her wife Daniela Wiesenaecker. She is the Rainbow Captain for Team

Take Massive Action, she is helping individuals and businesses learn how to make money online using the 3 C‘s of marketing: Creating Traffic, Capturing Leads and Converting Sales. Want to connect with Rizala? Visit RizalaCarrington.com or email her at riz@rizalacarrington.com.

Related articles

• The End to Workplace Discrimination Against Gays – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Time for Obama to expand LGBT workplace protections (dailykos.com)
• Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) Introduced in Congress (towleroad.com)