Interview with Diana Johnson of Texas Instruments "Manager of World Exploration in Search of Great Talent"

We met Diana Johnson last year at a Recruiting Conference and Expo event in New York City. She was one of the featured speakers, and we found her presentation about “Attracting Top Talent" to be one of the highlights of the session.

Her information and insights about the value of diversity were refreshing. Instead of simply claiming that "diversity is important," she supported its value based on the real-world results seen at Texas Instruments: the company’s highest performing divisions are also its most diverse divisions.

We asked Diana for an exclusive interview to elaborate on her experiences with diversity at Texas Instruments, and here’s what she had to say.

I've been with Texas Instruments for 22 years now. I was one of the founding members of Texas Instruments' Digital Signal Processing Department, now over a $4B business at Texas Instruments. While in DSP, I was in Marketing, and served as the DSP Operations Manager. Five years ago I joined Texas Instruments' Staffing Organization as a Staffing Manager, and am currently the Texas Instruments Diversity Staffing Manager.

The traditional title for my role would probably be "Diversity Staffing Manager". But that doesn't capture the true nature of the challenge. At Texas Instruments, we aren't simply looking for engineers to put into roles. We are looking world wide, trying to capture the strong talent across the world to propel our company into the most valued Semiconductor company in the world. So we used a title which would come closer to capturing the magnitude of the task, and was a little more fun!

The most effective methods we use to recruit multicultural employees are Employee Referrals, Networks, Diverse Engineering Organizations (such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, etc), Diverse Resume Boards (such as LatPro) and our Student Program. The largest problem that we, and every high technology company has, is the availability. Multicultural citizens are not entering the engineering field in great enough numbers, so they are under-represented (as compared to the census population data). We need to encourage our young students to pursue math and science to strengthen our engineering pipelines for the future. We define our diversity goals and objectives through a combination of statistical objectives (hiring, retention, promotions, technical ladder representation) and softer indicators (are we a great place to work, do our employees feel engaged, etc).

From a recruiting point of view, the most important thing is are we hiring bright talent that will propel TI to higher levels. This is measured by such criteria as: do the hires come in with a technical ladder title (very rare, but indicates strong talent levels), are they ranked in the top 10% after their first year, and what type of feedback do their managers give after 6 months on the job (we have a "quality of hire" survey that the managers fill out at the 3 month and 6 month mark - this gives great feedback to staffing). We do look at our population numbers in relation to census data to ensure we are hiring strong talent from all population groups.

Yes, we have been able to hire diversity into higher level engineering positions and management positions. The key to this has been to identify key roles where these individuals have the ability to come in and contribute to profound technology breakthroughs. Engineers want to change the world, and they join companies who give them this opportunity!

We have had only positive experiences with our diversity programs at Texas Instruments. Our environment is a very inclusive one - all employees are welcome to participate in any diversity initiative. Our TI employees have formed a number of grass-roots organizations to help the company, and themselves, in support of TI's business strategy. Each initiative is sponsored by TI senior management, and meets on company time. The groups' goals are to accelerate Diversity, empower members, encourage personal development and facilitate recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce. Membership is open and encouraged for all TI employees, not just the affinity group. TI employee diversity initiatives include:

• ABLE Initiative (AI)
• Bangladesh Diversity Initiative (BDI)
• Black Employee Initiative (BEI)
• Chinese Initiative (CI)
• Christian Values Initiative (CVI)
• Facilities Diversity Initiative
• Gay & Lesbian Initiative (LEGEND)
• Hispanic Employees Initiative Forum (HEIF)
• Indian Diversity Initiative (IDI)
• Japanese Diversity Initiative
• Korean Diversity Initiative (KDI)
• Muslim Initiative
• Vietnamese Initiative (VI)
• Women's Initiative Network (WIN)

We believe our effectiveness at using the talents of people of different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives is the key to our competitive edge. Internally we find that our best performing (highest revenue, highest PFO) organizations are also the most diverse. Additionally, as we have become more diverse, we find our external financial results increasing and our recognition becoming more visible (Note: Fortune Magazine has just ranked TI as the #1 Most Admired Semiconductor company for the third year in a row).

I try to encourage them to look at the business case and business results. Managers who view diverse talent acquisition as an EEO compliance initiative view the efforts as a "nice to have". Managers who view diverse talent acquisition as a business initiative and as driving better business results view the efforts as a "must have to win in business". There are numerous studies showing that the most diverse companies also drive the highest business results. And most likely your customer base is worldwide, and is very diverse. So to win in a worldwide market, it is truely a business imperative to acquire and develop a strong, diverse workforce.

I believe our high technology challenges will continue to be the availability of diverse engineering talent. So I think you will see more companies joining together to recruit diverse talent into their industry, and trying to team to develop this talent. At Texas Instruments, you will continue to see aggressive recruiting and development of strong, diverse talent. And you will see a stronger worldwide focus in these efforts.

Being Latino and bicultural is definitely a competitive advantage in today's market! I would advise candidates to ensure they highlight any skills that their bicultural background provides, and outline how they can help a company. For example, highlight language skills they may have (example: bilingual - English and Spanish), any international experiences, and any customer experiences. Also highlight diverse organizations that you belong to: NSHP, etc, as many recruiters use these in their key word search to try to identify candidates with bicultural skills.