Devon Proudfoot is an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s ILR School. Professor Proudfoot’s current research focuses on gender issues in the workplace; she is particularly interested in understanding how gender stereotypes impact well-being and motivation at work as well as how people experience gender across different cultures. At Cornell, Professor Proudfoot teaches courses on Diversity and Inclusion at both the undergraduate and Master’s levels.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Building a Diverse WorkforceCornell Certificate Program
Overview and Courses
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice efforts are becoming increasingly important in every industry and organization. This push toward diversity encompasses more than just creating an inclusive climate for the employees that are already in your workplace; your organization’s hiring process, from recruitment through to retention and employee success, is an opportunity to create a more inclusive and diverse workforce.
Approaching hiring with an inclusion-centered framework that mitigates bias can result in hiring more qualified people with marginalized identities across all roles in your organization and ensuring that those potential employees feel like they belong in your organization even before their first day at work. This certificate will explore the three stages of hiring — building talent pools, adopting selection practices, and onboarding for employee engagement — detailing methods of inclusion for each stage. By refocusing your hiring practices on inclusion, you can meet and exceed your organization’s DEI goals then sustain them over time.
The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear.
This program includes a year of free access to Symposium! These events feature a week of live, highly participatory virtual Zoom sessions with Cornell faculty and experts to explore today’s most pressing diversity and inclusion topics, including equity, unconscious bias, psychological safety, inclusive leadership, and cross-cultural conversations. Symposium events are held several times throughout the year. Once enrolled in the course, Counteracting Unconscious Bias, you will receive information about upcoming events.
Throughout the year, you may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program.
Course list
Your talent pool represents all of the potential candidates you can hire for a job. As the first step of the hiring process, it is the first critical indicator of whether your hiring process is inclusive. A diverse talent pool is one that encompasses the many potential candidates on the market who could successfully apply for a particular role at your organization and mitigates areas of bias that often prevent marginalized candidates from joining and staying in the talent pool. Without a diverse talent pool, you cannot interview a diverse array of candidates and hire those candidates to create a more inclusive and representative workforce. By eliminating bias in the hiring process, your organization can build a diverse talent pool and create the foundation for inclusion, from recruitment all the way through to retention and success.
In this course, you will establish what diversity and inclusion mean in relation to the hiring process and specifically how they connect to building diverse talent pools. You'll also evaluate your organization's sourcing methods for opportunities to establish more inclusive talent pipelines. You will then enhance your company's messaging to attract a diverse array of candidates and address sources of bias in the initial screening processes that your organization uses for early-stage job candidates. Finally, you'll explore different methods for measuring the effectiveness of your inclusion-based recruitment strategies. These methods will help you create an inclusion-centered approach to hiring that will broaden your talent pool and create more opportunities for your organization to hire candidates of marginalized identities and experiences.
It is strongly encouraged for students to take this course first, unless they have a strong amount of hiring and DEI experience.
Candidate evaluation is the second stage of the hiring process. The evaluation stage allows your organization to determine which candidates from your diverse talent pool are the most qualified to meet the needs of an open position. During candidate evaluation, every step, from reviewing résumés to conducting interviews and making selection decisions, offers an opportunity for inclusion. Yet each step within this stage of the hiring process also has pitfalls that can result in candidates of marginalized identities being excluded and impacting your organization's long-term inclusion goals.
In this course, you will begin by examining how the candidate evaluation stage fits within an inclusive hiring approach, including the power of decision making in candidate selection. You will explore best practices for early-stage candidate evaluations and for interviewing candidates, and you'll evaluate the potential challenges of common approaches like pre-interview assessments and interviewing for “fit.” You can use these best practices to make inclusive selection decisions that reduce bias and emphasize equity in candidate selection.
You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Building Diverse Talent Pools
The hiring process does not stop at making a job offer. Onboarding and retention that lead to employee success make up the final stage of an inclusive hiring process. When you hire a new candidate, that candidate will be integrated within your organization through onboarding and hopefully grow over their time of employment. Candidates from marginalized backgrounds do not want to enter a new organization only to feel excluded immediately upon onboarding or to find themselves unable to advance. By providing candidates with inclusive onboarding measures and equitable, proactive opportunities for growth, you can maintain inclusion both within your hiring practices and within your organization as a whole.
In this course, you will begin by reviewing the concept of employee integration and how it is impacted by onboarding and cultural inclusion. You will then determine the value of making inclusive offers to your candidates, including what equitable benefits and negotiation practices look like. You'll explore how to build an inclusive onboarding experience as well as how to sustain an employee's success beyond onboarding through internal hiring practices. Finally, you will revisit methods of tracking and monitoring DEI and inclusion progress over time to ensure that your organization recognizes the tangible benefits of an inclusive approach to hiring.
You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Building Diverse Talent Pools
- Adopting Inclusive Hiring Practices
There is no such thing as a workplace that lacks diversity. Despite decades of legal and social reform aimed at reducing discrimination in the workplace, inequality continues to be a significant problem in all societies and most workplaces.
In this course, you will identify the perceptual and psychological processes that impact the way that individuals interact with people who are demographically dissimilar from them. You will examine the psychological processes that impact decision making within organizations and identify how professionals can design better work practices and help to more effectively leverage the potential among employees.
As a trained psychologist with research and consulting expertise related to diversity and inclusion, Cornell University Professor Lisa Nishii is uniquely positioned to help course participants understand the complex dynamics underlying diversity challenges and opportunities within organizations.
Symposium sessions feature three days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions to explore today’s most pressing topics. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.
Join us for the next Symposium! From the workplace to our homes, discussions about diversity and inclusion are necessary to become aware of our biases and promote action and change. Throughout this Symposium, you will examine and dissect key diversity and inclusion topics like psychological safety, belonging, and equity. By participating in dynamic and relevant dialogues, you will discover a variety of perspectives and create genuine connections with participants from diverse industries and backgrounds.
Upcoming Symposium: January 2025
All sessions are held on Zoom.
You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.
How It Works
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Faculty Authors
Before becoming the Academic Director for Workplace Inclusion and Diversity Programs, Courtney L. McCluney was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in the ILR School at Cornell University. Dr. McCluney’s research examines how practices and norms in organizational contexts shape marginalized groups’ experiences and perpetuate inequitable structures. Before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, she earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Michigan and B.A. in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Dr. McCluney has published numerous articles and book chapters in academic and practitioner outlets on diversity, inclusion, race, and gender at work. Prior to her academic career, she completed a research fellowship at Catalyst, Inc., and an AmeriCorps social impact fellowship in Boston, MA. Dr. McCluney is a first-generation college graduate from High Point, NC.
JR Keller is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School at Cornell University. His research focuses on how firms combine internal and external hiring to meet their human capital needs as well as the various ways individuals build careers within and across organizations. Professor Keller has explored the factors which lead firms to hire externally versus promote from within, supply chain approaches to talent management, and the use of nonstandard work arrangements. His work has appeared in the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, ILR Review, and the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, as well as a recent book on strategic talent management. Professor Keller earned his Ph.D. in Management from the Wharton School of Business and holds a Master’s in Adult Education from Indiana University along with undergraduate degrees in Finance and Computer Applications from the University of Notre Dame.
Sean Fath is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell’s ILR School. Broadly, his research focuses on managerial decision making, bias reduction in social evaluations, and perceptions of social and organizational hierarchy. Before coming to Cornell, Professor Fath received his Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Duke University.
Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, is Professor of Disability Studies and the Academic Director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell University ILR School in Ithaca, NY. USA. The Yang-Tan Institute is a research, training, and technical assistance center focusing on disability inclusion in employment, education, and community. Dr. Bruyère serves as administrative/strategic lead and as the PI/Co-PI of research, dissemination, and technical assistance efforts focused on employment disability policy and effective disability workplace practices.
Dr. Bruyère is also the Principal Investigator of the National Policy, Research, and Technical Assistance Center on Employment of People with Disabilities funded by the U.S. DOL Office of Disability Employment Policy. She is the author/co-author of five books and over 180 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on workplace disability inclusion. Dr. Bruyère holds a doctoral degree in Rehabilitation Counseling Psychology from University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association Division of Rehabilitation Psychology and of the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists.
Lisa Nishii joined the faculty of the Human Resource Studies department at the ILR School, Cornell University after receiving her Ph.D. and M.A. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland, and a B.A in economics from Wellesley College.
Nishii is an expert on inclusion in organizations. Her research focuses on the confluence of organizational practices, leadership behaviors, and climate for inclusion on individual- and group-level outcomes. Using multi-level and multi-method research designs across a number of large-scale federally funded projects, she has found that leaders play an important role in shaping inclusion. In particular, the extent to which leaders role model inclusive behaviors, clarify the learning and innovation benefits of diversity for the group’s work, and set strong norms related to interpersonal interactions, determines the inclusiveness of their workgroup climates. In turn, workgroup climate has important implications for the authenticity of the relationship that group members develop, the positive versus negative quality of relational ties, the information that is shared among group members, the extent of conflict that is experienced, and ultimately the creativity, financial performance, and turnover rates associated with these groups. Workgroup climate also impacts individual-level experiences of discrimination versus inclusion, as well as engagement and performance. She is currently developing and testing the effectiveness of training interventions for leaders as well as for in-tact teams on how to cultivate workgroup inclusion. Nishii’s earlier research focused primarily on diversity in individual-level cognition and behavior as determined by national culture.
Nishii actively publishes in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Science, and serves on the editorial boards for AMR, AMJ, and JAP. She is currently the Chair of the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division, and the Chair of the ILR School’s International Programs. She serves on a variety of college and university-level councils for diversity, globalization, and engaged learning. Nishii also consults with multinational companies, primarily related to diversity and inclusion and organizational assessment.
John Hausknecht is a Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from Penn State University with a major in industrial/organizational psychology and minor in management. He received the 2004 S. Rains Wallace Award for the best dissertation in the field of industrial/organizational psychology. Professor Hausknecht’s research primarily falls within the domain of staffing and has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. Recent papers have examined applicant persistence in selection settings, reactions to company hiring practices, and predictors and consequences of collective-level absenteeism and turnover. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology.
Professor Hausknecht teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses on human resource management, staffing organizations, and HR analytics. He received the ILR School’s MacIntyre Award for exemplary teaching in 2008. Prior to academia, he worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 firms in the areas of leadership assessment, talent management, and organizational change. Professor Hausknecht is a member of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Society for Human Resource Management.
Devon Proudfoot is an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s ILR School. Professor Proudfoot’s current research focuses on gender issues in the workplace; she is particularly interested in understanding how gender stereotypes impact well-being and motivation at work as well as how people experience gender across different cultures. At Cornell, Professor Proudfoot teaches courses on Diversity and Inclusion at both the undergraduate and Master’s levels.
Before becoming the Academic Director for Workplace Inclusion and Diversity Programs, Courtney L. McCluney was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in the ILR School at Cornell University. Dr. McCluney’s research examines how practices and norms in organizational contexts shape marginalized groups’ experiences and perpetuate inequitable structures. Before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, she earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Michigan and B.A. in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Dr. McCluney has published numerous articles and book chapters in academic and practitioner outlets on diversity, inclusion, race, and gender at work. Prior to her academic career, she completed a research fellowship at Catalyst, Inc., and an AmeriCorps social impact fellowship in Boston, MA. Dr. McCluney is a first-generation college graduate from High Point, NC.
JR Keller is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School at Cornell University. His research focuses on how firms combine internal and external hiring to meet their human capital needs as well as the various ways individuals build careers within and across organizations. Professor Keller has explored the factors which lead firms to hire externally versus promote from within, supply chain approaches to talent management, and the use of nonstandard work arrangements. His work has appeared in the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, ILR Review, and the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, as well as a recent book on strategic talent management. Professor Keller earned his Ph.D. in Management from the Wharton School of Business and holds a Master’s in Adult Education from Indiana University along with undergraduate degrees in Finance and Computer Applications from the University of Notre Dame.
Sean Fath is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell’s ILR School. Broadly, his research focuses on managerial decision making, bias reduction in social evaluations, and perceptions of social and organizational hierarchy. Before coming to Cornell, Professor Fath received his Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Duke University.
Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, is Professor of Disability Studies and the Academic Director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell University ILR School in Ithaca, NY. USA. The Yang-Tan Institute is a research, training, and technical assistance center focusing on disability inclusion in employment, education, and community. Dr. Bruyère serves as administrative/strategic lead and as the PI/Co-PI of research, dissemination, and technical assistance efforts focused on employment disability policy and effective disability workplace practices.
Dr. Bruyère is also the Principal Investigator of the National Policy, Research, and Technical Assistance Center on Employment of People with Disabilities funded by the U.S. DOL Office of Disability Employment Policy. She is the author/co-author of five books and over 180 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on workplace disability inclusion. Dr. Bruyère holds a doctoral degree in Rehabilitation Counseling Psychology from University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association Division of Rehabilitation Psychology and of the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists.
Lisa Nishii joined the faculty of the Human Resource Studies department at the ILR School, Cornell University after receiving her Ph.D. and M.A. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland, and a B.A in economics from Wellesley College.
Nishii is an expert on inclusion in organizations. Her research focuses on the confluence of organizational practices, leadership behaviors, and climate for inclusion on individual- and group-level outcomes. Using multi-level and multi-method research designs across a number of large-scale federally funded projects, she has found that leaders play an important role in shaping inclusion. In particular, the extent to which leaders role model inclusive behaviors, clarify the learning and innovation benefits of diversity for the group’s work, and set strong norms related to interpersonal interactions, determines the inclusiveness of their workgroup climates. In turn, workgroup climate has important implications for the authenticity of the relationship that group members develop, the positive versus negative quality of relational ties, the information that is shared among group members, the extent of conflict that is experienced, and ultimately the creativity, financial performance, and turnover rates associated with these groups. Workgroup climate also impacts individual-level experiences of discrimination versus inclusion, as well as engagement and performance. She is currently developing and testing the effectiveness of training interventions for leaders as well as for in-tact teams on how to cultivate workgroup inclusion. Nishii’s earlier research focused primarily on diversity in individual-level cognition and behavior as determined by national culture.
Nishii actively publishes in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Science, and serves on the editorial boards for AMR, AMJ, and JAP. She is currently the Chair of the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division, and the Chair of the ILR School’s International Programs. She serves on a variety of college and university-level councils for diversity, globalization, and engaged learning. Nishii also consults with multinational companies, primarily related to diversity and inclusion and organizational assessment.
John Hausknecht is a Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from Penn State University with a major in industrial/organizational psychology and minor in management. He received the 2004 S. Rains Wallace Award for the best dissertation in the field of industrial/organizational psychology. Professor Hausknecht’s research primarily falls within the domain of staffing and has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. Recent papers have examined applicant persistence in selection settings, reactions to company hiring practices, and predictors and consequences of collective-level absenteeism and turnover. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology.
Professor Hausknecht teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses on human resource management, staffing organizations, and HR analytics. He received the ILR School’s MacIntyre Award for exemplary teaching in 2008. Prior to academia, he worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 firms in the areas of leadership assessment, talent management, and organizational change. Professor Hausknecht is a member of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Society for Human Resource Management.
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Key Course Takeaways
- Successfully build a more diverse talent pool
- Develop inclusive assessment and selection practices
- Sustain progress in hiring diverse candidates through effective onboarding and employee engagement
- Identify opportunities to track progress toward diversity and inclusion goals throughout the hiring process
- Mitigate bias across each area of the hiring process
JOIN A DEI SYMPOSIUM!
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the certificate brochure to review program details.What You'll Earn
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Building a Diverse Workforce Certificate from Cornell ILR School
- 40 Professional Development Hours (4.0 CEUs)
- 40 Professional Development Credits (PDCs) toward SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification
- 40 Credit hours towards HRCI recertification
- 36 Professional Development Units (PDUs) toward PMI recertification
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Who Should Enroll
- Managers responsible for hiring decisions
- Employees involved with candidate sourcing, screening, assessment, and decision making
- Senior leaders and other individuals who oversee strategies, policies, and practices related to the workforce
- HR professionals
- Aspiring HR managers
- Recruiters
Request Information Now by completing the form below.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Building a Diverse Workforce
Select Payment Method | Cost |
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$3,900 | |