recruiting a diverse workforce

The company’s recruitment strategies continue to succeed. Last year, 59 percent of all new hires were minorities and 40 percent were women. We use the Internet, job fairs, and professional search firms to recruit talented women and minorities. We also develop potential applicants by supporting organizations dedicated to skills training.

Web-based job postings are the most significant way we market career opportunities to diverse populations. Leading Web sites, such as HotJobs.com, Careerbuilder.com, and Monster.com, allowed us to reach diverse audiences in technical fields by linking to a broad range of diversity Web sites. The sites include AmericasJobExchange.com, DisabilityJobs.com, GayJobs.org, WomensLinkWorldwide.org, netip.org (Network of Indian Professionals), AsianAmericans.com, AfricanAmericans.com, MinorityJobsite.com, DiversityJobsite.com, nafe.com (National Association for Female Executives), GayWork.com, HispanicOnline.com, and NAACP.org.

Con Edison of New York also posted jobs on the Society for Human Resource Management Web site, which links to a broad array of professional associations, including those that focus on Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, and people with disabilities. We were introduced to a diverse pool of qualified applicants by participating in job fairs. The fairs were sponsored by Women for Hire, the American Association of Blacks in Energy, CAREERS & the disABLED magazine, and City University of New York campuses, including the College of Staten Island, Baruch, Medgar Evers, Queens, and Brooklyn colleges, and the College of Technology.  We also participated in the New York State Department of Labor’s veterans’ career fair.

Con Edison of New York also took part in college-sponsored career fairs outside New York City, including the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We attended a career fair at Morgan State University, a historically black university, and others sponsored by universities with diverse student populations, including Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Binghamton University and the University at Buffalo. We also took part in the American Association of Blacks in Energy annual conference in Orlando, Florida.

We continued to work with Sairam Consultants, a diversity search firm specializing in structural engineering, civil engineering, and construction management; Buckner & Associates, an executive search firm specializing in diversity, and  Workplace Diversity, LLC, a  minority-owned employment company that targets diverse employees. 

To increase women hires, we again partnered with Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), a nonprofit organization that prepares women for work in traditionally male jobs. NEW has trained most of the women “hard hats” in New York City and has been a model for national programs. The Learning Center trained 253 women enrolled with NEW in 2009. The women learned basic electricity, carpentry, and plumbing and received an introduction to transmission and distribution systems, as well as leadership and management development.  Since 2000, NEW has helped us hire 77 women and we remain committed to this productive relationship.

We maintained our business partnerships with Bronx Community College Project HIRE, an occupational skills training and development program that gives men and women with practical skills to re-enter jobs in the construction trades, and with the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation and the East River Development Alliance, both of which provide job training.