Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
My name is monique liston, Founder, Chief Strategist, and Joyful Militant at UBUNTU Research and Evaluation. In this post, I invite you to consider radical recruitment for new voices in our field.
In evaluation, equity, inclusion, and representation are common ideals. But how often do we examine our recruitment and hiring practices to see if we genuinely uphold these principles? At the AEA 2024 conference, I presented “Dealing with Dignity: Hiring and Recruitment to Amplify New Voices in the Evaluation Field,” challenging attendees to reimagine the systems we rely on to build teams. Recruitment is more than filling roles; it’s about fostering environments where all voices are respected and uplifted.
At UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, dignity is the reciprocal acknowledgment of inherent self-worth between individuals and society. “Dignity” isn’t just a concept; it’s a standard we apply to our work and how we build our teams. Each person deserves to feel valued, autonomous, and respected within the context of their own identity and experiences. Our recruitment practices aren’t just about finding qualified candidates but about building meaningful, respectful connections that fuel collective liberation. Here are three tips to help you do the same!
Our recruitment practices at UBUNTU emphasize that we are not “harvesters” of talent; we’re “cultivators.” Traditional recruitment prioritizes efficiency and immediate results which makes jobs extractive for individuals, but we take a different approach. Cultivating talent means creating a space where new team members can bring their authentic selves and have the support they need to grow. We do this by defining roles with intention, and embedding our values in every step—from job descriptions to onboarding—to build a team grounded in mutual respect and shared purpose.
Use storytelling to convey your values, goals, and the vision behind your work. Stories help prospective hires understand the job they’re applying for and the community they’re joining. This approach allows applicants to see how their values align with ours, creating a strong sense of belonging even before they start. It’s an invitation for them to envision themselves within our mission.
Transforming hiring practices to center equity and dignity isn’t always neat or easy. As adrienne maree brown reminds us, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” We must embrace the inevitable messiness of change. Working against entrenched systems of oppression is complex; it requires commitment, patience, and a willingness to confront discomfort. We invite candidates and team members to use “race words”—to say “Black,” to say “white,” to openly discuss identities and privileges. This openness can be uncomfortable, but it’s essential for supporting genuine racial equity and liberation.
The future of evaluation depends on amplifying diverse voices and centering dignity at every level of our work. If we’re serious about creating an equitable field, our hiring and recruitment practices must embody this commitment. Diversity is not just a goal in numbers but in power, perspective, and influence. I encourage all evaluators, hiring managers, and leaders in our field to ask: How can we align our hiring practices with our values? How can we ensure that dignity is not an afterthought but a foundation? Let’s create spaces where all voices are heard, respected, and valued—where dignity is the standard, not the exception.
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