Student hiring can provide a key opportunity to change the future of our profession. Recognizing this and that hiring is a privilege, we wanted to be more intentional in considering inclusion, diversity and equity (IDE) in all aspects of the hiring process. Rather than offering a one-off workshop for the many hiring managers across our decentralized library system, we opted to develop a community of practice (CoP). This CoP provided a space for open and honest conversations and questions. This non-hierarchical venue for hiring managers, allowed us to deeply examine current student hiring practices and to think critically about how to make student hiring practices more inclusive and equitable. As part of hiring, we also wanted to think about how to rebuild work environments to make them more welcoming for student employees and fostered a greater sense of belonging. In this session, we’ll describe how we went about forming our CoP, what worked well, and lessons learned. Attendees will leave with tips on how they might implement a similar CoP at their institution.
