The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer (OCHCO) and the Office of Departmental Equal Employment Opportunity (ODEEO) both have responsibilities related to increasing the percentage of employees who identify as Hispanic or Latino.  HUD provides an Annual Equal Employment Opportunity Program Status Report, also known as the Annual Management Directive 715 Report (MD-715), to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  In HUD’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 MD-715 and FY 2021 and FY 2022 Annual Reports on Hispanic Employment, HUD described 14 primary initiatives related to the recruitment of individuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino.  The initiatives fall into four categories:  barrier analysis, collaboration and partnerships with stakeholders, marketing and outreach, and applicant flow data.  In addition to these initiatives, HUD described several other efforts that OCHCO and ODEEO had completed or planned related to increasing the percentage of individuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino.  OCHCO and ODEEO collaborated quarterly, and ODEEO presented participation rates at quarterly briefings with general deputy assistant secretaries.  OCHCO and ODEEO also hired new staff and filled vacant positions.  Additionally, OCHCO established a recruitment event calendar and initiated the procurement process for technology-based recruitment tools, while ODEEO leveraged minority-serving and Hispanic-serving institution databases.

We found that OCHCO and ODEEO faced challenges with determining the impact of recruitment efforts related to individuals who identify as Hispanic or Latino.  No HUD-wide standard existed for how to measure the success of recruitment efforts.  During interviews, both OCHCO and ODEEO officials stated that they considered success to be an increase in participation rates, which is the number of employees who identified as Hispanic or Latino in HUD’s total workforce, and spreading the word about HUD as an employer.  Additionally, OCHCO was unable to tie a specific hire to a specific recruitment effort.

OCHCO began tracking recruitment events it attended or planned to attend in February 2022 but did not track all recruitment efforts from other HUD program offices or their respective field offices.  Collecting and maintaining complete information about all recruitment efforts, as well as being able to measure the impact of those efforts, are crucial to measuring the success of the recruitment process.

HUD’s applicant flow data, which is information collected about applicants' demographics, such as race and ethnicity, have only been available since FY 2022 due to HUD’s transition to a new system.  This means that OCHCO has not yet determined whether analyzing applicant flow data could help measure the impact of recruitment efforts.  OCHCO plans to organize and analyze applicant flow data as more data become available.  OCHCO also faced data limitations related to its race and national origin (RNO) data.  We identified a risk that the RNO data might not give OCHCO an accurate account of HUD’s workforce because the data do not include a category for those employees who chose not to identify their RNO, as providing RNO data is voluntary.

We offer three recommendations to improve OCHCO’s ability to determine the impact of recruitment efforts and to collect information about recruitment efforts across all HUD program offices and their respective field offices.