#014 Diversity Hiring: 7 Touchpoints to Implement It for a Company's Success

This article is about how you can implement diversity hiring for an organization's success.

If you are not sure what diversity hiring is all about and why you need to hire diverse candidates for a company's success, check out this article.

Alright!

Many studies have shown the best way to implement diversity hiring is to make it an integral and ongoing process of the recruiting cycle.

There is no one size fits all approach to diversity recruiting; it depends upon several factors such as the company size and its budget. There might be some strategies that work great for a small or a startup company, but may not work that well for Fortune 500 companies.

You need to make a conscious effort to execute them during the entire life cycle of recruitment for attracting a diverse employee base. It doesn’t mean you lower your bar; the final selection should be based on merit only.

Here are seven touchpoints that work to increase diversity for most companies.

1. Job description: Most studies reflect that the word choice used in the job description should be succinct and unambiguous. Most candidates prefer to apply to the job postings which convey specific roles, responsibilities, and experience for a better job clarity.

For example, you should stay away from using extreme modifiers such as strong communication skills or exceptional analytical skills, to let candidates with some insignificant disabilities in.

If free from biased requirements such as only local candidates or full-time degree holders, then some talents who self-taught themselves with no formal degree can also apply.

Furthermore, it is found that more candidates prefer applying to job postings that are transparent in mentioning the pay range and overview of benefits. This depends entirely on how comfortable your company is in sharing such information in public.

Also, I’d encourage to mention any possibilities for on the job training, as this would allow you to attract a more diverse workforce.

2. Recruitment Marketing: The recruitment marketing efforts should attract candidates from all walks of life. Highlight a multicultural environment by showcasing images of employees who reflect your company’s diverse workforce.

3. Sourcing: According to LinkedIn studies, 75% of candidates are not in the job market. They are either happy in their job or not seeking out opportunities due to some other reasons.

Therefore, reaching out to multiple sourcing channels in parallel to tap resources who are not currently looking, but may be open to a conversation, will help enormously to broaden your talent pool.

In today’s era, the most effective way could be networking via digital platform. You should engage a diverse pool of talents via LinkedIn or any other social media platform.

For instance, you may narrow your search by joining relevant meetup groups, holding open houses and webinars, or attending targeted communities like Guidewire connections, where you can find your target candidates.

The open house is an inexpensive way of attracting diverse candidates. You may hold in-person or virtual events to let your target talents know about your company, its various business function, its high-level growth prospects, and its open job positions.

You may encourage talents to share their LinkedIn profile or resume with you, so you can keep them on your radar for any relevant current or future job openings.

The second most powerful medium of sourcing is via employee referral. You may get the practical strategies in my previous article on Employee Referral. Here is the link

4. Resume Screening: The most effective way to screen resumes is by taking off all the personal details of candidates from their resume. For example, candidate’s name, contact details, location, college or university name and photo (if any).

Some of the hiring managers or interviewers demand to see personal details while screening the profiles. This is the time when you have to take a stand and let them know politely that we all have some sort of unconscious bias which may result in wrong decision making and prevent interviewing otherwise good candidates.

Therefore, screening resumes should only be based on the skills required to perform the job and not on elements, such as if a candidate is a male or female, lives near to the office, is local to the work location, is older, has a formal degree, or is from certain preferred colleges and the like. A female candidate may turn out to be the best fit. A candidate might be planning to relocate near to the work location. An older candidate might be more knowledgeable due to hands-on experience and be well versed with technology despite no professional education.

5. Interviewing: Standardizing technical and situation-based questions before interviewing candidates for a specific job helps in making informed decisions and in turn hiring a diverse talent pool. Such questions can be a collection of interview questions used to hire current employees who are performing well in their job.

This will help you gauge if those questions predict success on the job, provided the requirement of the job remained the same. If the job demands some changes in the roles and responsibilities, the questions are to be tweaked accordingly for accurate decision-making.

Moreover, always look to have a balance of different personalities on your team. For example, a project development team should have a combination of talents with some great at performing the tactical tasks while others with excellent analytical and logical skills for the team’s overall success.

6. Following Up: Keeping in touch with the candidates should be done throughout the recruitment process. Many studies have shown that when candidates experience timely communication throughout the hiring process and receive an immediate response, they appreciate it and tell others about their experience.

This will help you build a diversified talent pipeline, which may result in closing positions faster. For details, please read the related article on having a positive candidate experience. Here is the link

7. Job Offer: The offered salary should be based upon the worth and budget of the position. However, in reality, most recruiters or hiring managers negotiate hard to get candidates on board at the lowest salary.

I can recall a time when a job was backfilled for lower pay by a female candidate with the same skills as her male counterpart. Soon, she found out that she was being paid less than the male who held the same position earlier. As a result, she was unhappy and soon joined the competition.

Not only did it cost a huge amount to hire a new candidate, but it also adversely affected the company’s reputation. It’s important to maintain pay parity across the organization for showcasing a positive image of your company to draw more diversity.

In a sentence: Make diversity hiring part and parcel of your recruitment cycle to gain different insights into problem solving, networking and experiences for having a diversified workforce in your company.

If you still have any questions regarding diversity hiring, reach out to me at nikita.mehrotra@therecruitmentinsights.com .

I would love to help:)

Nikita