Affirmative Action Program and Placement Goals

As a federal contractor, the University of Washington maintains an Affirmative Action Program.

Overview

The deans/chancellors and chairs/directors are provided annual updates to the University’s Affirmative Action Program. Special efforts should be made to recruit qualified applicants who are representative of underutilized groups (e.g. minorities, women). See the resources below for more specific guidance.  Academic units should refer to the affirmative action programs below in planning annual recruitment and hiring.

Remember: Placement goal percentages are NOT quotas for hiring. They are metric benchmarks for measuring effective recruitment efforts to increase the qualified pool of qualified diverse applicants.

Good Faith Efforts

Good faith efforts outline steps that can be taken in the recruitment and hiring process to ensure a diverse pool of candidates are considered for positions and provides candidates equal opportunity to compete for jobs.

Staff and academic personnel search committees should conduct outreach and recruitment of populations of underutilized groups (e.g. minorities, women) as well as individuals with disabilities and veterans.

Search committees should include academic personnel who are committed to diversity and excellence. Units have a responsibility to ensure that personnel with diverse backgrounds have an opportunity to serve on search committees.

Recruitment efforts include, but are not limited to, proactively placing advertisements with diversity sources and attending diversity employment fairs.

Search committees need to be certain that criteria used for selection accurately reflect the requirements outlined in job descriptions and that these criteria are free of bias.

Governmental Reporting Requirements

In order to meet federal and state affirmative action compliance requirements, the University must request information on the race/ethnicity, sex, disability, and veterans status of all applicants to a specific job.