Hold recruiters accountable for the racist wage gap

How systematic disadvantage is weaponized as just another bargaining tactic

As the Diversity Grinch, it’s true that I spend my time casting blame and skepticism on Corporate America from my perch atop Mt. Crumpit. But I also want to be fair. And there’s one group that hasn’t been getting their fair share of blame. But don’t worry I’m going to correct that right now. Recruiters, this one is for you.

We love to wring our hands and pretend to care about the ever-worsening racial wage gap. And yet we act like it’s something that—like the weather, or an “officer-involved shooting”—just sort of happens. It doesn’t. It is actively and knowingly perpetrated by specific people.

Facts about the racial pay gap according to PayScale:

·        It widens with career progression
·        It varies by industry
·        It’s worse for women in every category

Say you’re a recruiter for a corporation. That means you’re simply trying to get the best talent at the best price, right? Wrong! While that might sound like a reasonable, market-driven endeavor, the result is a predatory practice that targets the naive, desperate, and overly grateful. (And please don’t get me started on that happy-to-be-here mentality.)

There are two major players in the economy: capital and labor. Minorities in the U.S. disproportionately come from generations of labor, and are underrepresented in the capital class (investors, business owners, etc.). Minorities have thus been largely shut out of the process that decides what a fair price for labor is. And when it comes to salary negotiations, minorities often lack the generational knowledge necessary to negotiate the best deal for themselves. That systematic disadvantage is weaponized against them as just another bargaining tactic.

Let’s break it down
Going into a salary negotiation, recruiters and hiring managers have access to critical information that gives them leverage, including what a company can afford for talent (salary bands). They can manipulate the negotiation process to manage a candidates’ perceptions. It’s said that you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. But based on the numbers, corporate America has been negotiating differently with minorities for a long-ass time.

If you’re the first generation in your family to participate in this corporate recruiting process, what chance do you have against these operators? I’ll tell you. Not much. You gotta be taken advantage of a few times, and somehow discover what your mediocre colleagues are making before that light bulb goes off that says, “Holy shit, I am being screwed!” And by the time that happens, you’re already two levels behind in the pay scale. Or you can take the preventative approach like black homeowners trying to get their house appraised and remove all evidence of your blackness just to get fair value.

How do we fix it?
Like I said at the top, I want to be fair, so let’s acknowledge that recruiters are not at the root of the problem, but are (or at least can be! #NotAllRecruiters!) the fruit of a poison tree. They’re incentivized by the system to devalue people. So let’s incentivize the opposite of that. Evaluate the results of recruiting—not only in terms of the diversity of the workforce, but also in achieving equitable compensation throughout an organization. Institute mandatory pay equity training that cleans up this intentionally messy and confusing process. And don’t just assert that you offer competitive salaries. If your salary is that damn competitive, why don’t you just put the number in the job descriptions? The Harvard Business Review calls pay transparency “the number one thing employers can do to build trust.”

In the meantime, recruiters, we see you.