Hi Indy,

yes, I completely agree. It is all too easy to "follow the pack" in hiring, or indeed in any other area, and that leads to conformity, lack of differentiation, me-too strategy and so on. Obviously imposing quotas (or limits) is one way of getting recruitment officers to hire different types of people, but I wonder if there are other ways of generating the same ultimate outcome of diversity? perhaps getting recruiters to define, in advance, the ideal mix they want so that the diversity of the team becomes their responsibility rather than an externally-imposed guideline? Or perhaps we should find creative ways of identifying talent in the first place? I remember a senior executive at the Guardian telling me how they had hired a guy with no journalist training because they were monitoring some sort of blogging site and they found he was gathering a lot of interest for his views. They looked in an unusual place, and they found a highly skilled but non-traditional hire.