Diversity and inclusion help companies achieve a competitive advantage as well as unleash its employees’ creativity and innovation as they directly affect the overall performance of the company. In addition to that, diversity in hiring helps companies achieve equality in the workplace. ZenHR highlights 6 ways that can help you recruit for a diverse workforce.
1. Write Inclusive Job Descriptions
The language that you use in your job descriptions makes a huge difference on the number of applications you receive. Write your job postings in a way that is appealing to everyone regardless of their gender, background, religion, age …etc. Avoid using gender-centric words, avoid unnecessary requirements, and make sure that you demonstrate your company’s values by showing your commitment to diversity and inclusion.
2. Expand your Sourcing Methods
Don’t rely on the same candidate sources every time you want to hire a new employee; instead, explore different, unconventional sources so you can reach a more diverse group of candidates. Although employee referrals are considered to be one of the best recruitment sources, it’s not recommended that you solely rely on them. Try to use online and offline communities and networks, third party recruitment websites, and social media channels.
3. Build an Employer Brand that Showcases your Diversity
When potential candidates view your company as a place that values diversity and respects all of its employees regardless of their differences, this will make it much easier for you to attract and retain the best people out there. Start by creating a solid brand that includes people from all walks of life and make sure that you communicate your values and what you stand for online and offline.
4. Create Company Policies that are Appealing to Diverse Candidates
Attracting diverse candidates requires implementing company policies and benefits that are encouraging for candidates to apply for your company. For example, work from home and flexible working hours policies will give you access to working mothers and people with disabilities who need special time arrangements during their working days.
5. Implement a Blind Hiring Program
Improving your diversity recruiting strategy requires eliminating any conscious or unconscious hiring biases in screening candidates. You can opt for blind hiring practices and solutions to improve this strategy. You can use some (or all) of the below solutions:
A valid and reliable pre-hiring assessment is a great tool to measure your candidates’ personalities and job-related skills without being blinded by the candidates’ personal information and background.
Try Testello’s Pre and Post Hiring Assessments for Free: https://testello.com/en/request_demo
You can remove the candidates’ names and personal information from CVs when reviewing them, as this helps you objectively evaluate candidates’ skills, knowledge, and competencies without any potential biases.
If you are using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with a built-in AI technology, you can filter candidates based on the required experience and skills, and let the robot review the candidates’ CVs and job applications according to the selected factors.
6. Include More Diverse Candidates in your Pipeline
A research conducted by Harvard Business Review, came up with a strategy called “get two in the pool effect” which means that when the final candidate pool has only one minority candidate, he or she has zero chances of getting hired. For example, if there’s only one woman in your candidate pool, there’s statistically no chance she’ll be hired. So you should have at least two minorities in your pipeline.