Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

In today’s competitive hiring landscape, sourcing and engaging campus, diversity, and veteran talent continues to challenge recruiters. NBCUniversal believes that attracting and retaining the best, most diverse talent provides a significant competitive advantage.

The following recruitment challenges led NBCUniversal to implement a new system:

• Within the media and entertainment industry, NBCUniversal saw under-representation in race across all functions, along with women in technology-based roles due to a variety of reasons. Some likely difficulties in gaining access to the industry include: perception of the industry being very relationship driven, including the idea of nepotism during the hiring process.
• Unconscious biases across different backgrounds and cultures.
• Socio-economic status, causing geographic or relocation challenges – New York and Los Angeles are the largest media hubs, but are considered expensive and inaccessible for many.

The Solution

In a creative and innovative culture, NBCUniversal ensures its recruiting helps to source and hire canddiates with diverse backgrounds, ideas, voices, and passions to find solutions and ensure success.

The objectives of the program of work were:

• Commit to diversity in all recruiting practices.
• Utilize strong leadership to emphasize the commitment to diversity.
• Equip and support diverse candidates to be successful in their roles
• NBCUniversal implemented a multi-pronged recruitment strategy which included:
• A Fellowship Program – a 10-week paid, summer internship experience that included housing
• Schools Program – offering early exposure to careers to help inspire budding talent to become advocates of NBCUniversal 
• Partnerships with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) .
• Engagement with Diversity Partner Organizations

The results

The program is categorized in to three pillars:

1. Diversity Hires: NBCUniversal has seen an increase in the number of diverse hires and continues to see spikes in race diversity and women, especially pockets of the business where it has previously had challenges, such as Technology and Sports.
2. Intern Success: NBCUniversal not only offers hands-on job experience, but also provided tools that students may need to overcome certain barriers of entry in to the industry, NBCUniversal is able to continue to watch and assist more diverse students to enter the industry, acquire success while within the Internship program and return to the organization after graduation, which is a huge win and telling of the impact on their careers.
3. Business Influence: The level of influence the current program infrastructure has provided has helped business leaders in other areas of the company to re-imagine how NBCUniversal can recruit and develop competitive talent from diverse backgrounds, especially in challenging areas across many industries, such as in Technology of Sports.

In the past year, NBCUniversal has extended this diversity influence by:

• Helping to establish the Media Tech Fellowship Program. The program is funded by NBCUniversal’s Technology business, but operated through the campus recruiting team.
• Developing a CNBC “Women in Tech” fellowship.
• Acquiring diversity recruiting responsibility for future NBC Olympics coverage.

Metrics

• Measured using WCN technology, NBCUniversal hired more than 2000 interns into the Campus2Career Internship program in 2016.
• An additional 270 interns worked on the NBC Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or at the NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, CT and through partnerships with HBCUs and other strategic diversity initiatives, NBCUniversal is able to increase diversity for Olympic intern hires by over 15%.
• The program delivered a 100% acceptance rate from candidates who had offers extended to them.
• A steady increase in the number of candidates from diversity backgrounds taking up internships – particularly in areas where the industry has had historical deficits, Sports, Late Night Television, CNBC (Business Finance News) and in Technology.
• Candidate feedback shows interns leave with greater recognition for NBCUniversal and a marathon of memories that will continue to run long after their internship is over. In addition, NBCUniversal has received public recognition from its partners such as the 2016 Corporate Partner Award from Howard University.
• NBCUniversal Campus recruitment is making significant strides in meeting parent company Comcast’s aspiration to have 33 percent different races and 50 percent women across the workforce.
• The number of different races has increased by over 50 percent between 2010 and 2015, and the number of women by over 35 percent in the same time period.

The Technology

WCN deployed its WCN Diversity solution, tailor built to deepen engagement and maximize the power of events to connect with diverse candidates. The solution combines the power of WCN’s Engage and Event products to identify promising talent and tailor recruitment marketing approaches accordingly. Best-in-class technology helps organizations to build relationships using relevant communications, complimented by its best-in-class recruiting events management – with demonstrable ROI.

Disruptive Factor

Within the media and entertainment industry there is under representation in people of color across all functions, along with women in technology-based roles due to a variety of reasons. Some likely difficulties in gaining access to the industry include:

• Perceptions of the industry being very relationship driven, including the idea of nepotism during the hiring process.
• Unconscious biases across different backgrounds and cultures
• Socio-economic status, causing geographic or relocation challenges – New York and Los Angeles are the largest media hubs, but are considered expensive and inaccessible for many.
• Lack of education & exposure on opportunities that exist, which includes myths around if internships were paid or unpaid.
• NBCUniversal wanted a new infrastructure, recruitment strategies and development programs that would shine a light on the amount of accessible opportunities in the industry and help to break down barriers. The changes allow the firm to ensure that it is breaking down the barriers and reiterating aspects such as the executive exposure, career development and housing provisions.
• NBCUniversal continues to diversify its workforce by investing heavily in leadership development programs across the company and is committed to creating solutions for overcoming barriers that underrepresented and diverse voices encounter in the industry.

Shining Moment

The Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games helped serve as a catalyst with placements available in broadcasting coverage teams, giving competitive advantage and leaving students with a lasting memory of NBCUniversal for careers in sports media.

NBCUniversal received public recognition from its partners such as the 2016 Corporate Partner Award from Howard University.

NBCUniversal leverages WCN Diversity, which under consideration for the Human Resources Executive HR Product of the Year.