recruiting a diverse workforce

The success of our 2006 recruitment strategies is clear. More than 50 percent of all new hires consisted of minorities; 21.6 percent were women.

Marketing career opportunities through the Internet was a primary means of reaching diverse populations. Posting job openings through leading sites, such as HotJobs.com, Careerbuilder.com, and Monster.com, allowed us to reach diverse audiences in technical fields through links to a broad range of diversity Web sites, including America’s Job Bank, the U.S. Department of Labor, DisabilityJobs, GayJobs, Womenlinks, Network of Indian Professionals, GayWork, Hispanic Online, and NAACP.

Con Edison also posted jobs on the Society for Human Resource Management Web site, which is linked to a broad array of professional associations, including American Indian Native, National Disability, the American Association of Blacks in Energy, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. We also participated in a luncheon sponsored by the Black Executive Exchange program.

To increase women hires, we strengthened our partnership with Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), an organization that trains and secures employment for women in trades. The Con Edison Learning Center trained 200 women enrolled with NEW in 2006. They learned basic electricity, carpentry, plumbing, and math, and were given an introduction to transmission and distribution systems. Seven women from NEW were hired – six into the titles of general utility worker and mechanic B, and one as a customer service representative. Since 2000, we have recruited 53 women from NEW. As career opportunities arise, we will continue to consider NEW graduates for employment.

Through Seedco, a company that operates one-stop career centers in Manhattan, Con Edison hired nine employees as customer field representatives, bilingual customer service representatives, general utility workers, and mail-processing operators in 2006.

The military is an applicant pool rich in diversity. Through our business partnership with Bradley-Morris, a professional search firm specializing in recruiting military personnel, we have access to this group of potential hires. In 2006, Con Edison hired three women from Bradley-Morris – one specialist and two operating supervisors – and four minorities into the titles of operating supervisor, engineering supervisor, and operating mechanic A. The Recruitment department also established a business partnership with Sairam Consultants, a diversity search firm specializing in structural and civil engineering, and construction management, through whom we hired two women – an associate engineer and an engineer – and five minorities as associate engineers and senior engineers. We also worked with Buckner & Associates, an executive search firm specializing in culturally diverse recruitment.