Study Finds Virtual Environment Offers Employers Path to Equity in Hiring for Full-Time Jobs and Internships

Employers interested in diversifying their workforces should consider strengthening their virtual recruiting efforts as a path to more equitable hiring practices, according to a new study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

According to results from NACE’s 2021 Student Survey, historically marginalized populations—female, Black, Hispanic, and first-generation college students—found virtual recruiting provided them a better job-search experience than traditional recruiting. 

“The pandemic changed the way employers look for, recruit, and hire new college graduates for full-time positions and internships,” says Shawn VanDerziel, NACE executive director. “Instead of engaging with students in person through career fairs, on-campus interviews, and other traditional recruiting and hiring activities, they had to shift their efforts to the virtual environment—the new normal for recruiters.”

With ever-evolving fluctuations to the job market and as competitive recruiting necessitates companies lean into new avenues to capture top-tier talent, NACE’s survey data proves virtual settings are among best practices to adopt for hiring, making it easier for marginalized groups to extract key information about a job. In fact, female, Black, Hispanic, and first-generation college students indicated they learned more, got a more authentic view of the potential employer, and had better interactions with employer representatives in the virtual world than in in-person encounters. This includes 71% of Black and 61% of Hispanic students who indicated they learned more via virtual means, while only 49% of white students reported feeling the same.

“Virtual recruiting is a viable tool for employers that want to develop a wider, more diverse pool of candidates,” says VanDerziel. “Employers need to develop a strategy around virtual recruiting that leverages its advantages with historically marginalized populations. For example, virtual recruiting can help businesses and organizations to more easily connect with candidates at smaller historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), broadening accessibility to diverse talent.”

Virtual recruiting may also be a means for helping employers overcome other obstacles to building a diverse and inclusive workforce, such as addressing the inequities that continue to exist today in paid internships.

“NACE’s research found that women, communities of color, and first-generation students are underrepresented in paid internships—used by many organizations to identify talent for full-time positions,” says VanDerziel.

“For college students, the paid internship is often the entry point to the job market, allowing students who secure them to get ahead in their career path,” he notes. “For marginalized populations who are underrepresented in these opportunities, this means they are not getting the same career start as their counterparts, feeding a cycle of inequity.”

NACE’s study found that, by the time they were graduating, paid interns had received an average of 1.12 job offers compared to 0.85 offers to unpaid interns and 0.64 offers to students who did not take part in any internship. This disparity further emphasizes the critical nature of establishing more equitable recruiting and hiring practices that will help create a more evenly distributed playing field in the professional world for historically marginalized students.

“There are a number of steps employers can take to align their internship programs with their goals for building a diverse, inclusive workforce, including using a virtual recruiting strategy to reach a wider, more diverse pool of candidates for their internships,” says VanDerziel. “Similarly, college career centers can also make greater, explicit efforts to help historically marginalized students obtain paid internships, while coaching them in how to navigate the new normal of virtual recruiting.”