Kate Downing Khaled | CEO & Founder
After a brief streak, venture capital has ditched Black startups.
That’s not just my opinion. It’s a word-for-word headline I read in Fast Company.
After raising a record amount of funding over the past tumultuous years, VC funding to Black-led startups has plummeted to lower than any point since the Fall of 2020.
“Diversity” is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot in venture capital, HR departments, and other places where leaders make decisions about what kind of people to invest in.
And unfortunately, performative “diversity” goals inevitably vaporize the moment the economy faces challenges.
Race itself is not a hiring strategy. Neither is gender.
To retain the best teams, the belief that genius is everywhere must be a core function of your hiring and promoting practices.
Adopting this belief comes in two parts:
1.) Knowing that brilliance and value come from all people, without caveat.
2.) Searching for greatness wherever people are, whoever they may be.
When hiring managers are superficial about demographics *without* believing in the underlying value of all people, it’s only a matter of time, economic stress, and a dramatic shift in work/life values brought on by a global pandemic before things backslide.
But even before the Great Realization of 2020 (read this to learn how and why we’ve adopted that phrase), performative hiring based on race or gender is ultimately playing a zero-sum game with talent.
Nobody wants to stay in a place where they’re tokenized. If the budget for “DEI” is cut during tough times, that’s a demonstration of values more powerful than any words on your “About Us” page.
Workplace leaders who get this ‘right’ tend to also have intersectional identities. But don’t forget that these leaders *do* still hire white people, cisgender men, and other people with privileged identities. Why wouldn’t they?
The difference between authentic and performative HR professionals is the fact that they also understand and relate to the fact that everyone is smart and worth investing in, through ups and downs.
Our modern culture of work was developed to treat humans like units of production or consumption. It doesn’t have to be like that. And we know there are more leaders out there who believe that, too.
In fact, filling open roles with amazing people from all experiences builds strong teams that last.
It’s just a better strategy!
It’s that belief that led us to develop Mailroom, our new HR software that helps large companies fill job opportunities with the best talent from within their organization.
We want to help you give previously-overlooked employees the opportunity to grow, thrive, and experience renewed value in their work — and win big when it comes to building teams that last.
Curious to learn more about Mailroom? Contact us and we’ll give you access to an exclusive first look.
