It’s crucial to ask yourself the following questions if you’re trying to improve a portion of your business:
- What am I aiming for?
- What criteria do I use to determine success?
- How can diversity recruiting metrics be measured?
It’s tough to strengthen your diversity recruiting approach without clearly spelling out these two crucial criteria. Sit down with your team and figure out what you want to accomplish. Do you wish to employ more women in technical positions? Great! Gather accurate figures on how many women you presently employ in those positions, and set a target for how much you want that number to rise.
Let’s look at ways to improve your diversity recruiting now that you have your goals and benchmarks in mind.
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re recruiting a varied group of people is to make sure that the people who apply for your roles are diverse in the first place. Here are some strategies for expanding the diversity of your candidate pool:
Audit your Job Ads
Doing an audit of your previous recruiting advertising and making revisions to speak to a wider range of prospects is one of the greatest strategies to recruit diverse people. You might notice that even some of the languages you employ cater to a specific demographic or level of experience. If this is the case, look for methods to make your language more inclusive to appeal to candidates from other backgrounds. According to Daniel Carter, SEO Lead at LUCAS Products & Services “To improve your diversity recruiting strategy, don’t be hesitant to write job adverts with specific demographics in mind. Let your target applicants know you’re looking for them and why your organization would be a good fit for them”
Target Sources Where Diverse Candidates Congregate
Getting candidates from a variety of places is a terrific approach to ensuring that your employee pool is full of diverse individuals. Rodney Yo, CEO of Best Online Traffic School suggests, “When looking for new candidates, don’t rely on the same sources over and over. Concentrating solely on the sources you are most familiar with can lead to a talent pool of identical applicants and a lack of diversity. Instead, look for opportunities to find diverse applicants in places where they normally congregate.” There are numerous online and physical groups specifically for women in technology, for example. Instead of waiting for high-quality female candidates to discover you through networks like Indeed, this may be a terrific way to meet and interact with them directly. The more you go out of your way to uncover these outlets, the more diversified your talent pool will become.
Encourage your Diverse Workforce to Refer their Friends and Colleagues
Members of your team are likely to have networks of people with comparable backgrounds to them. Building a diverse candidate referral program is a terrific method to increase your diversity recruitment strategy while also demonstrating that your organization values people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Yousun Allen, CEO at Yosun UV Printer recommends that “If you’re wanting to hire more of a certain demographic, talk to some of the people already on your team who fit that description. Encourage them to share your job postings with their contacts, and provide them with the resources they need to help you advertise your organization. Your employees and recruits will both feel valued for their input and presence, which is great for overall team morale and engagement.”
Provide Internships to Specific Groups
Many businesses have begun to implement internal diversity programs that provide internship and co-op opportunities to people from various backgrounds. This is a fantastic approach to get up-and-coming prospects in your field to join your team and gain valuable experience. To do so, Tim Parker, Director at Syntax Integration recommends “Focusing on contacting local schools and community groups to see if there are any possibilities to connect with students. Communities frequently have their growth programs, and partnering with them is a terrific opportunity to give back while simultaneously benefiting from new and varied talent.”
Create a Company Brand that Reflects your Diversity
“The greatest method to increase diversity in your candidate sourcing is to build an employer brand that values people and perspectives from all walks of life naturally”, says Nicholas Rosenfeld, Director at Making A Will. Talk to your staff about the advantages and importance of diversity, gain their buy-in, and instill those principles in your corporate culture. As you do so, you’ll begin to build a reputation as an employer who values diversity. Encourage your staff to discuss this aspect of your company. Keep track of their stories and use that aspect of your company’s personality to market your employer brand. Diverse candidates will seek out businesses that embrace those ideas, and organic growth is the only way to reap those rewards.
Develop Policies that Appeal to a Wide Range of Candidates
It’s one thing to say you appreciate diverse recruiting techniques and teams, but it’s quite another to put those principles into practice daily. That’s why it’s critical to create proactive corporate policies that appeal to a wide range of candidates. Change your vacation and scheduling policy to include additional religious holidays, community events, and other events. Encourage applicants to work flexible hours that allow them to stay involved in their communities without having to adhere to a rigid schedule all of the time. Management teams must also encourage employees to speak up if they believe particular rules are impeding diversity in any manner. Susan Smith, Marketing Manager at Velden Engineering believes, “Individual biases will always play a role in how people perceive and negotiate the workplace, so encouraging open and honest discussion is critical to ensuring that everyone feels welcome. Having these standards in place and actively pushing them in your sourcing is an excellent approach to ensure that your diversity recruiting plan is on track.”
Seed Talent Pipelines with Diverse Candidates
When they are the only ones from their demographic represented on a shortlist of contenders, diverse candidates are considerably less likely to be chosen. Edward Mellett, Co-Founder of WikiJob suggests utilizing a diversity recruitment method known as “the two in the pool effect” to prevent choice bias. He says “The idea is that having a group of persons from the same minority demographic greatly raises the chances of one of them being hired.” As a result, intentionally seeding your shortlist with a proportionate amount of diverse prospects will result in a more even playing field when deciding who to recruit. Of course, you’ll only want to include those that are qualified in your shortlist. After all, employing the best person, regardless of their background, is the goal of diversity recruiting.”
Use Blind Resumes
Jason Feldman, Founder at Immigrate Me believes “Recruiters are increasingly utilizing the method of “blacking out” any personal information on resumes to remove bias from the way they examine candidates.” Even if it isn’t done intentionally, information like names, schools, dates of birth, geographical regions, and so on can all contribute to a biased appraisal of the candidate to some extent.
Use Blind Interviews
Blind interviews follow the same premise of blacking out resumes to decrease bias, but they are used during the first few interactions with the candidate. They can be done by sending text-based questions to candidates through text or your preferred recruitment tool. Candidates are urged to answer these questions anonymously and not to provide any personal information. The idea is to avoid bias when it comes to somebody you pick to interview further. Tyson Stevens, Founder of EduRef says “Removing any personality and bias when speaking with candidates over the phone or in-person is far more difficult, thus blind interviews are most effective early in the process.”
Use AI to Review Resumes
Robert Johannson CEO & Tech Expert at Imgkits says, “Using artificial intelligence technology in your applicant tracking system is one approach to ensure that prejudice is completely removed from your resume screening process. Pre-program your platform to flag and filter for specific abilities and expertise, then let AI technologies comb through your candidate resumes for those terms. This will offer you a completely unbiased shortlist that is free of any bias.
Reconsider the Criteria You Use to Screen Job Applications
This strategy is related to your job ad audit, in which you rethought what you look for in a candidate and how you communicate with them. One of the most important aspects of diversity recruiting is to constantly analyze what attributes you value most in prospects, why, and whether or not this is due to your own bias. Nick Edwards, Director at Snow Finders says, “Examine how you’re testing and screening candidates, and ask yourself if the results are skewed toward certain types of people. If this is the case, you should reconsider your testing procedures. If you’re unsure, poll some of your peers to get a variety of perspectives.”
Increase Diversity in Shortlisting and Hiring
Daniel Carter, Marketing Manager at Loanx says, “the most difficult component of a diverse recruiting plan is deciding who to shortlist and hire. Because you’ll have a strong notion of who each contender is, your prejudice will almost certainly enter into the mix.”
Use an ATS to Automate your Shortlisting
Your applicant tracking system (ATS) can be utilized to objectively cut down your list to the most high-potential prospects. Susan Melony, Editor-in-Chief of Best Hearing Health recommends, “To locate applicants with the most potential and the best résumé of abilities, use the screening features provided in your ATS. This method allows you to remove all personal thoughts about specific candidates from the equation and concentrate just on data that is relevant to the job description. Shortlisting candidates based on specific criteria will assist you in achieving greater diversity. If your talent pool was varied at the start of the process, your shortlist should include a diverse range of individuals and backgrounds. If not, the ultimate diversity recruiting strategy can be used.”
Retain Diverse Candidates By Creating A Comfortable Environment For Them To Thrive
Creating a welcoming environment for your newly hired staff is one of the most significant things you can do for your organization. The importance of retention cannot be overstated, and providing a welcoming environment is frequently forgotten as the final step. In any office, diverse candidates are usually in the minority. R Usmani, Digital Marketing Expert at The Green Pinky believes “Your new employees may find it tough to speak out for themselves or express their ideas, it’s your responsibility to make them feel at ease and give them a seat at the table.”