The Corp has committed to improving diversity in its hiring process with the cooperation of the Georgetown Scholarship Program (GSP). The push for a more diverse applicant pool is a part of an effort to address the organization’s overall lack of diversity, according to a statement on the Corp’s website.
Part of this push involved changes to The Corp’s application. A specific change was the addition of a question that asked applicants what they believed made them unique, according to Bella Todaro (SFS ‘17), director of The Corp’s human resources.
“This question gave us a lot [of] insight into people’s backgrounds and allowed us to purposefully interview a range of applicants,” Todaro wrote in an email to the Voice. “We also asked for the first time if our applicants were members of GSP. As new partners, we are so excited to work with GSP, and this information gave us a more complete portrait of our applicants.”
Todaro wrote that the application asked for demographic information, which was collected anonymously from the pool of applicants and separated from the applications. The new hires then self-reported their demographic information for company records. She wrote that she believed that the new effort was successful in producing the most diverse hiring class The Corp has had.
Taylor Farias (COL ‘20), a new Corp Catering hire, said that one of the first questions on the application asked applicants whether or not they were a part of GSP. “The fact that they wanted the applicant to indicate if they were part of this group told me that they were actively searching for students from any one of these backgrounds as a way to extend their organization,” she wrote in an email to the Voice.
She added that the only issue she had with the application process was a lack of diversity among the students conducting the interviews at certain locations. She wrote that she believes the organization is actively trying to become more diverse,however, and that this was not an issue in every interview.
Jason Low (COL ‘17), president of the GSP Board, wrote that The Corp and GSP have worked informally together for the past three years. “The Corp has helped fund various GSP initiatives, from supplying complimentary drinks for GSP’s Peer Mentor/Mentee coffee chats to donating Corp Gala proceeds to GSP’s programmatic fund in 2014,” he wrote. He also wrote that GSP has worked with the Corp to improve the diversity of the Corp’s new hires.
Agnes Lee (SFS ‘17), GSP Student Board Partnership chair, wrote that the GSP Student Board and The Corp upper management will be committed to maintaining this partnership and focusing on its effects on both organizations. “Part of our partnership agreement involved Corp Information Sessions held in the GSP office allowing The Corp to reach a larger pool of potential applicants than it might otherwise reach,” she wrote.
“Working with GSP and having conversations with GSPers in the Corp also gave the Corp an opportunity to look more critically at its application process and how it is perceived by the non-Corp Georgetown community.”
