Diversity and Equal Opportunity Office - University of South Florida

Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, and Diversity Recruitment Strategies

The following strategies were designed to facilitate achievement of Affirmative Action and Equity Accountability Goals. The hiring official may consider these and/or develop new ones. Whenever appropriate, the University will:

1. Announce vacancies on computer bulletin boards and computer networks.
2. Subscribe to computerized vita/talent banks.
3. Request assistance of Presidential Advisory Committees in the recruitment of women and minorities.
4. Offer incentives and rewards for employees who facilitate or assist in achievement of Equity Accountability, and Affirmative Action goals by identifying and recruiting women and minorities for categories in which they are underutilized.
5. Ensure that women and minorities participate in training programs (e.g., national conference), at least, at the level of their availability.
6. Initiate joint appointments (faculty and administration or vice versa) of current female and minority employees to part-time and adjunct positions.
7. Compensate departments, who have been successful in meeting their Equity Accountability Goals, for time and money spent in aggressive recruitment of women and minorities.
8. Extend deadlines for application whenever the representation of women and minorities in the pool of candidates is less than 80% of the availability.
9. Institute additional outreach programs to recruit women and minorities for internships, assistantships and similar positions.
10. Telephone ([e]mail) potential minority and female candidates and encourage them to apply.
11. Recruit women and minorities who are on sabbatical leaves from other universities.
12. Announce, post, advertise all employment, promotion and transfer opportunities, including acting, interim, temporary, and part-time appointments.
13. Make an inventory of current female and minority employees to determine their skills and experience level and encourage them to apply for positions for which they qualify.
14. Expand search for minority and female candidates to include experts from non-academic areas like business, private practice, military, government, or industry.
15. Identify "essential" functions of a position, and the skills and knowledge needed to carry out these functions, before interviewing for the position.
16. Use selection criteria that are quantifiable, reliable and valid (job-related), including, but not limited to cooperativeness, open-mindedness, reliability, endurance, stamina or ability to relate to people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, cross-cultural skills/knowledge/abilities (when these attributes are known to be related to performance of a particular job).
17. Control for bias in employment processes by carefully selecting members of search committees, and ensuring than females and minorities are represented on the committees.
18. Discard selection procedures that are not objectively valid, if data suggest that these procedures exclude minorities and women.
19. Develop new faculty exchange programs with colleges that have high percentages of women and minorities.
20. Use achievement of Equity Accountability Goals and fair labor practices as factors in evaluation of the performance of supervisors and managers.
21. Create postdoctoral fellowships in issues of interest to women and/or minorities.
22. Increase the number of graduate assistantships for women and minorities.
23. Use a more personal approach in recruitment; if a candidate declines a nomination or an offer, telephone the candidate to determine if his or her reasons for declining can be addressed and resolved.
24. Invite female and minority scholars from other institutions to participate in conferences, seminars and symposia sponsored by the University.
25. Create endowed chairs named after women and minorities or dedicated to the study of issues of interest to women and/or minorities.
26. Institute an Equity Accountability/Affirmative Action/Diversity Award.
27. Award grants for research on recruitment, selection and retention of women and minorities.
28. Award grants to faculty for development of female and minority recruitment networks.
29. Grant release time for intensive recruitment of female and minority faculties.
30. Give a cash award to departments who develop innovative faculty diversity systems.
31. Initiate joint appointment (faculty and administration or vice versa) of women and minorities who qualify for such appointment.
32. Appoint women and minorities to some of the noncompetitive visiting postdoctoral fellow, and faculty positions for which they qualify.
33. Appoint women and minorities to some of the noncompetitive interim, temporary positions for which they qualify.
34. Maintain pools of female and minority applicants for courtesy, temporary, adjunct and part-time appointments.
35. Use USF Grant-in-Aid Program, USF EXCEL Program, and other similar professional development programs to facilitate the upward mobility of female and minority employees (faculty and staff).
36. Grant release time for mentoring and/or coaching of female and minority.
37. Appoint, at least, one professional or one manager as Unit's Equal Opportunity Liaison.
38. Appoint Unit's Equal Opportunity Liaisons, members of the Equal Opportunity Committee, and members of the Presidential Advisory Committees.
39. Conduct "Exit Interview" of female and minority finalists.
40. Allocate funds for recruitment of women and minorities at national conferences.
41. Allocate funds for aggressive recruitment of women and minorities for Job Groups in which they are underrepresented.
42. Utilize auxiliary aids and services in the recruitment/selection process (e.g. interpreters, audiotapes, videotapes, assistive listening devices, videotext displays).
43. Announce, post, advertise all student worker-positions, including assistantships and fellowships.
44. Make formal arrangements for referral of applicants by recruitment sources, and for follow-up with and feedback to recruitment sources.
45. Administer employment tests in the most effective manner to ensure that their results reflect the skills, aptitudes, or whatever such tests purport to measure, rather than the impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills of an applicant (except when such skills are the factors that the test purports to measure).
46. Comply with the requirements of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.
47. Establish "Hospitality Committees" or "Welcome Wagons" to assist new employees.
48. Provide incentives for participation of women and minorities in planning, and governance.
49. Establish team awards to foster cohesion, cooperation, integration and collaboration.
50. Make promotion to supervisory positions contingent upon demonstration of functional knowledge of equal opportunity and affirmative action regulations.
51. Appoint or designate someone as minority recruiter in units in which there is chronic underutilization.
52. Consider access, equity and diversity factors in the strategic planning process of the University.
53. Discuss and reinforce the Unit's commitment to equity and diversity in staff meetings.
54. Conduct meetings with supervisory employees to explain the intent of the Equity Accountability, Affirmative Action and Diversity Plans of the University and of the Unit, and assign individual responsibility for their implementation.
55. Collaborate with the Office of Equal Opportunity Affairs in the identification of problem areas (e.g. discrimination, recruitment, selection, and retention).
56. Organize seminars on equal employment opportunity and affirmative action for employees and students, in collaboration with Equal Opportunity Affairs.
57. Award vacant positions from its Equity Accountability pool to departments that have demonstrated attainment of Equity Accountability Goals identified for the previous plan year, and can document the contribution that the additional position will make to University's strategic directions and goals." USF Rule 6C4-15.002).
58. Update the Availability estimates for all Equity Accountability categories.
59. Expand the functions of the Unit Equal Opportunity Liaisons.
60. Expand the HomePage of the Office of Equal Opportunity on the World Wide Web".
61. Intensify Equity Accountability Briefing of search committees and hiring officials.
62. Review progress made toward Equity Accountability Goals in President's staff meetings, and in meetings of the Leadership Council.
63. Use female and minority administrators as part-time faculty.
64. Institute additional outreach programs to recruit women and minorities for Senior Level Administrative positions.
65. Monitor/place employment advertising in minority publications, ensuring ad meets guidelines and targets minority recruitment.
66. Establish University-wide standards for advertising positions in local and national journals and publications.
67. Intensify recruitment of women and minorities for Distinguished Research Professors.
68. Conduct university-wide salary studies to evaluate the effectiveness of salary equity processes.
69. Enhance efficiency of mentoring and retention programs.