Memorandum

City of Lawrence

TO:	Thomas M. Markus, City Manager
FROM:	Brandon McGuire, Assistant to the City Manager
DATE:	January 31, 2019
RE:	Gender Diversity in Employee Recruitments

Following an update on the ongoing formation of the Municipal Services and Operations (MSO) Department during the January 14^th City Manager’s Report, Commissioner Soden commented about gender diversity among the MSO management team. The MSO department’s management team is depicted in the attached functional organization chart. When originally formed last fall, women comprised three of the eight members of the MSO management team. In December 2018, two of the women on the team, the General Manager of Environment Science and Technology (GM EST) and the General Manager of Administration (GM Admin), resigned to pursue other professional opportunities. The functional organization chart presented on the January 14^th Manager’s Report reflected these vacancies. Recruitment for the two positions was recently completed.

Recruitment efforts were designed to generate a diverse pool of candidates in order for the hiring process to result in most qualified and experienced candidates receiving an offer of employment. Of the 52 total applicants for these two positions, 63 percent were women. Of those applicants, six women and four men interviewed, which reflects the overall applicant pool composition and demonstrates a gender-diverse selection of final candidates. Contingent employment offers were recently made to and accepted by one male and one female candidate.  

The city’s standard job posting outlets (LJW Online, CareerBuilder, Indeed) enables jobs to be distributed to hundreds of other job boards across the country, many of which include a diversity focus. Advertisement of these positions on the city’s traditional outlets was supplemented with posts to known industry sites, such as American Public Works Association and Water Environment Federation, which are embedded with their own equal opportunity and diversity outreaches. Supplemental “boosts” through the Lawrence Journal-World’s online posting network (The Job Network) were added to ensure distribution of these positions was especially effective in four specific categories: social media, performance, diversity, and college. 

The performance boost is intended for hard-to-fill roles and targets a wider array of niche and industry-specific job boards to increase the efficacy of the post. The Diversity boost performs a similar function, but with an outreach targeting diversity boards that serve minority job seekers, seniors, veterans and others. Social Media and College boosts perform similarly, with indicated intent. Similar “boosts” have been used for other recruitments, such as with the Police Department’s Crime Scene Technician and Civilian Public Affairs/Communications Analyst, with comparable results to the GM recruitments in regard to the diversity of the applicant pools.