8 Tips To Improve Your Recruitment Strategy From The Perspective Of Diversity And Inclusion In The Company

Most recruiters and managers agree that a good diversity and inclusion strategy in the company is essential to contribute to making it more innovative and creative, and therefore capable of obtaining better results. In fact, the recruitment of diverse teams favors the general development of any project.

Having different backgrounds and points of view on your team brings new ideas that facilitate problem-solving and drive innovation in business processes. So it is not surprising that companies around the world are showing increasing interest in diversity-based recruitment, selection and hiring strategies.

However, it should be noted that the issue of diversity transcends the results and the proper functioning of the company. Building teams of qualified candidates, regardless of gender, origin, race, religion or sexual orientation, is an important step in achieving true equality in the workplace.

What Does Recruiting Mean From A Company Diversity And Inclusion Point Of View?

Diversity in the workplace is founded on the idea that any team should be a reflection of society. This implies that the workforce must be made up of different types of people, of different origins and with different backgrounds. This variety can refer to gender, experience, socioeconomic position, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

There are two types of diversity: intrinsic and acquired. The first is linked to race, sex, age and any other “physical” trait that defines us as human beings. For its part, acquired diversity is that which contemplates aspects that can develop and evolve over time, such as education, experience, values ​​and knowledge.

Recruiting with diversity requires the application of a selection process free of any bias for or against the candidate or the group of candidates. It is a type of recruitment based on merits and its sole objective is to find the best candidate of those who aspires to the position, offering equal conditions to all participants in the process, regardless of their origin.

Why Is A Diversity Recruiting Strategy Important?

Worker diversity is a growing trend in business, and it’s understandable. In addition to being an ethical choice, recruiting from the perspective of diversity and inclusion in the company translates into significant benefits that favor performance, innovation and productivity.

Some of these advantages include, for example, having a team with a broader repertoire of skills and experience, a greater awareness of the linguistic and cultural richness, and the ability to choose from a wider and more varied pool of candidates.

When there is diversity in employees, it is more efficient when it comes to solving problems, promoting creativity and innovation in the work environment. The result increases the possibility of making better decisions and having better results in general. Not surprisingly, having multiple points of view allows members of the same team to constructively discuss the details of a project and reach the best possible solution from a much larger amount of information.

The strategies of recruitment, selection and hiring of personnel from the perspective of diversity guarantee the improvement in the performance of the team and benefit the innovation in the sector.

Eight Tips For Recruiting A Diversified Workforce

As always, a business process change involves asking yourself a few key questions:

• Which is my goal?
• How can I evaluate the success of my strategy?
• What is my diversity recruiting metrics?

Without first defining these variables, it is difficult to successfully improve the recruitment, selection and hiring strategy from the perspective of diversity. Sit down with your team and identify your goals.

Once you’ve taken this first step, you’re ready to improve your diversity recruiting strategy with the tips below.

Check Your Job Postings.

One of the best ways to recruit diverse candidates is to review job openings for changes that prioritize adding more candidates. For example, in this review, you might identify ads that are targeting a population group or people with a very specific level of expertise. If this is the case, make an effort to make your ads more inclusive that attract candidates from different backgrounds.

Don’t be afraid to write job offers targeting diversity-based recruiting. It is important that you connect with the most suitable candidates for your company and that you convince them to work with you.

Use Alternative Sources That Integrate Various Types Of Candidates

A great way to ensure that your talent pool is filled with diverse candidates is to seek out these professionals in different locations. Don’t always use the same job portals if you want to reach new candidates; Focusing only on sources that you already have mastered can cause you to get stuck on candidates with too similar profiles and, consequently, a lack of diversity.

Instead, look for alternatives that help you find diverse candidates in the places where they move. For example, there are many online and offline groups dedicated to women in technology. This could be a great source to proactively discover and connect with high-potential candidates rather than waiting for them to find your company through traditional job search platforms.

Encourage Your Employees To Spread These Ads On Their Networks.

It is very likely that the members of your team connect in their networks with people with a similar background to yours. Creating a referral program is an effective solution to expand your recruitment strategy with diversity and inclusion in the company, showing that you value the plurality of ideas and trajectories.

If your goal is to hire a more specific group of professionals, contact some of the employees who are already part of the team and who belong to that same sector of the population. Encourage them to share your job offers on their networks and give them the necessary tools to promote your company. Both employees and candidates will feel that their presence and opinions are considered, which is great for keeping team morale high and future recruiting prospects high.

Create A Company Policy That Attracts Diverse Candidates

To give value to the strategies of recruitment, selection and hiring of diverse personnel, it is important that certain values ​​are part of daily life. This is why it is so important to proactively implement business policies that attract diverse candidates.

In this sense, you can consider a change in company policies related to free time and programming in order to include more religious holidays, corporate events and other types of activities. Encourage flexible work hours that allow candidates to continue to participate in their environment and do not require that they always stick to a standard schedule.

It is also important to encourage employees to have a voice when they believe that certain company policies may be hampering diversity. Individual biases are always an obstacle in the work environment, so fostering open and honest dialogue is essential to ensure that everyone feels welcome.

personnel services is a good way to ensure that your recruitment strategy for diversity and inclusion in the company works as it should.

Hide The Personal Information Of The Curriculum In The Selection Process

An increasingly widespread recruitment technique is to hide personal information in CVs to prevent selection from being biased by any prejudice.

Information such as names, places of study, date of birth or specific locations can compromise the impartial evaluation of candidates, even unconsciously. These cognitive biases are easy to identify and remove.

Take Advantage Of Artificial Intelligence (AI) To Examine Resumes And Have The First Contact

One way to ensure that you have eliminated any bias or prejudice in the curriculum selection process is to use artificial intelligence through personnel selection software. These platforms can be programmed to filter and highlight specific skills and experiences by applying different metrics when analyzing candidates’ resumes. With this process you will obtain a totally impartial list of applicants, free of any bias.

These recruitment platforms can also be used during the first phase of contact with the selected candidates to send them tests and questions that they can answer without having to provide their personal data. The objective is that you can make the decision of who you are interested in knowing more in depth without prejudice interfering. Eliminating these types of limitations will be more complicated in later phases, in which there is already more direct contact with the candidate, either by phone or in person. These “blind interviews” will be most effective early in the process.

Reconsider The Aspects That Most Affect The Selection Of Candidates

This advice returns to the point related to the review of job advertisements in which you had already considered what you really want in a candidate and had made the appropriate changes to the texts. A fundamental part of recruiting diversity is to always ask yourself about those aspects that you value most in candidates, the reason and if this appreciation is not based on your own prejudices.

Take the time to analyze how you are testing and selecting candidates and ask yourself if, honestly, you are not unconsciously targeting only a certain group of people. If so, make an effort to recognize these cognitive biases. If you’re not sure about it, ask a colleague for advice to help you through the process.

Build A Talent Pool With Diverse Candidates

It is proven that candidates who are different from others are less likely to be chosen when they are the only representatives of their group on a roster of applicants. 

To avoid this bias when choosing, you can apply a few simple tricks to your recruiting strategy. For example, listing people from the same demographic will dramatically increase the chance that one of them will end up being hired.

Consequently, creating a roster with a proportional number of diverse candidates will provide a more level playing field for everyone when deciding who to hire.

Of course, the priority criterion must be to respect the aptitudes of the candidates included in the list. After all, recruiting from a diversity and inclusion perspective in the company is based on hiring the best applicant, regardless of their origin.

Metrics To Monitor Your Diversity Recruiting Efforts

As with any other innovative practice, they are recruiting for diversity must be measured and translated into KPIs (key performance indicators) to form part of company policies. Using the right recruiting software, recruiters can monitor and evaluate top metrics from a strategic perspective and make less biased hiring decisions.

Here are some key metrics to measure the success of your diversity recruiting process:

• Percentage of diverse candidates present at each stage of recruitment
• Percentage of minorities at different levels of your company
• Employee satisfaction score in terms of diversity and inclusion in the company
• Retention rate among minority groups of employees
• Awards/recognitions granted by groups of special interest and advocacy of efforts in terms of diversity and inclusion

Likewise, to measure the effectiveness of individual recruiters, Silicon Valley’s international eminence in human resources , Dr. John Sullivan, suggests applying these metrics:

• Percentage of diverse candidates interviewed by those responsible for hiring a given process
• Percentage of job offers extended to diverse candidates in a given process
• The turnover rate of various hires in the period of one year
• Average satisfaction rate of diverse candidates ( from a survey )
• Average manager satisfaction score (from survey) after hiring process based on diversity and inclusion
• Assessment of the average job performance of various hires in a one-year period

Obviously, the ultimate goal of your company is to get the best talent. The search for diverse talents will allow you to achieve this goal successfully.