Jobs keep growing as the US added 139,000 non-farm payroll positions in May, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.2% from last month. LinkedIn's latest Belonging Blueprint survey found that just over a third of LGBTQ+ workers feel comfortable being their full selves at their place of employment.
LinkedIn Career Expert Andrew McCaskill joins Wealth to share his tips for LGBTQ+ job seekers to navigate the interview process and resources to research company cultures.
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I also want to talk about a report that LinkedIn recently released, its belonging report and the belonging blueprint, finding that only 35% of LGBTQ+ professionals feel comfortable being their full selves at work. What were some of the findings here that really stuck out to you?
So, a lot of the findings that stuck out were that LGBTQ+ professionals, they have a higher rate of turnover once they get into organizations, largely because the organization was not what they thought it was. So you may see a job description that looks very inclusive, the company looks really inclusive on paper. What we did with this belonging blueprint was saying, it's really important for you to know before you go. So here are the questions that you should ask, here are the culture cues that will help you identify safer spaces. Many people have felt like they've had to code switch, going into a safer space using some of these tools and tactics on the front end, like looking at our using the values-based matching filter on LinkedIn or looking at these company pages to see if they have employee resource groups. Also, phone a friend. Your network will tell you whether or not this is a safer place for someone from your community. Friends won't let their friends go and work at companies that are anti-LGBTQ+. The other piece of it is that the interview process and the offer letter process are also key opportunities for you to jump in and see what that process looks like.
That's a great point. Yeah. You have tips, and you were starting to hit on some of these. For every step of the job seeking process, starting with the job search, how can we leverage and the community leverage some of these tools to make sure that they're going into an organization, which was, you were starting to touch on, that actually is supporting not just because it's the du jour. Yeah. Not just as Pride month, right? But because it's more in their long-term just value system that they have.
Yeah. On the front end, looking at some of the indexes like the Human Rights Campaign, like trusted sources for members of the LGBTQ+ community to better understand what a company's culture is. The other thing is during the interview process, ask really smart questions. Even if you're not comfortable saying, "What's it like for an LGBTQ+ person here?" Look and see if like are the hiring managers or recruiters using pronouns. Maybe say, "Hey, I saw you have employee resource groups. Talk to me a little bit about what those look like and how you feel about them." Even just their reactions to you asking about that can give you some real clues. The other thing for LGBTQ+ people that I think is really important too is like, you may not always be able to say, "Oh, well, are there other queer people in leadership?" Because you can't look at people and tell. Is take a look at, are there members of other marginalized groups in leadership? A company that has women and people of color, or people who have disabilities in leadership probably also is a company that may have real commitments to inclusion, equitable hiring, and being able to places where people can thrive. The offer letter is a big deal. Yeah. We oftentimes look at the number and we're like, yay, we do the math. It's the off the offer letter benefits that are so important, because if a company on their off the order offer letter benefits, if the company has benefits for things like, um, family planning or family building support, or you may have only one stop on your gender journey, but if the company has gender affirming care, it's a good sign that they have other policies in place that will be highly inclusive.
I'll add one more. Take a look at the companies that have had shareholder votes where those shareholders have voted down anti-DEI, which this also includes anti-DEI activist pushes where shareholders have actually pushed back against those to make sure that there are more opportunities to uphold these values as well. Yeah. Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time.
Thanks, man. Appreciate it.