Enhancing your Diversity Recruiting Strategy

What is diversity recruiting?

Diversity recruiting refers to the active search for job candidates from diverse backgrounds. This includes all steps to ensure the talent acquisition process is more inclusive and barriers during the application and hiring process are removed to allow equal opportunity for all.

Why is having a diversity recruiting strategy important?

By having a diverse workplace, you can gain access to a wider range of skills and experiences. According to Boston Consulting Group, companies with diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues and 85% of CEOs say that having a diverse workforce improved their bottom lines. With wide cultural awareness throughout the organization, employees from diverse backgrounds can come together and learn from one another. Having a diverse workforce acknowledges the individual strengths of each employee and the potential they bring to your business. By valuing differences in one another, employees can thrive in a workplace that promotes a fair work culture.

Questions to get you started

When looking to improve any area within your business, it is always important to ask yourself, and your team, questions that will set you up for sucess. Ask yourself these questions or connect with your hiring team to understand the following:

• What are the organizational goals?
• How will I measure success?
• Are there recruiting metrics that will help me be successful?

Develop a brand that displays DE&I

Candidates, diverse or not, seek out companies who value DE&I. In fact, 67% of job seekers say diversity is an important factor when considering a company as their next employer. Talking about the benefits and importance of diversity with your team and management can help get buy-in from your leadership team and engrain those values within your company culture. Once this has started, it is a good time to develop an employer brand that showcases, and values, DE&I. Speak to your employees, send out an anonymous survey to understand how they truly feel, share employee stories, and incorporate your unique personality into how you promote your employer brand.

Equip your employees with diversity training

According to Glassdoor, over 60% of employees have seen or experienced discrimination in the workplace. Similarly, 56% of managers admitted to having favorite candidates. Whether it’s unconscious bias or any other diversity training, it is essential that anyone involved in the hiring process has undergone relevant education. With training, hiring managers can feel confident in the recruitment process to identify and understand their biases – ensuring equality and fairness to all.

Auditing your job ads

Biased language in job descriptions and advertisements can discourage diverse talent pools and perpetuate inequality within your organization. You may notice that some of the language you are currently using is more geared toward a specific demographic or experience level. When reviewing your ads, replace biased language with inclusive language, rethink your qualification criteria, and spend more time considering how to attract the right candidates. At Coit Group, we are partnered with tools such as Eightfold AI that helps anonymize candidates within the hiring process and provides analytics on where employees are not progressing. With technology, hiring managers can greatly improve diversity within the hiring process.

Target sources where diverse candidates are

It’s not always enough to rely on diverse talent applying to your open roles. Be proactive in your approach by researching alternative on and offline sourcing channels such as Meetups, LinkedIn, or historically diverse colleges and universities. Focusing on only the sources that you frequently use can result in a talent pool of similar candidates and a lack of diversity.

Review your candidate experience

The candidate experience is often future employees’ first impression of the organization and first chance your organization can prove its commitment to equitable principles by treating people in a fair and in a consistent way. In 2020, 70% of Latinx, Black, BIPOC and Asian candidates said they stopped an application short because their preferences did not align to the role or company values. Racially diverse candidates attributed this to two major factors: the diversity of the team and the management style of the potential manager.

At Coit Group, we tailor talent solutions designed to meet your organization’s specific diversity challenges. We are flexible, creative, highly experienced, and passionate about building diverse talent for our clients. If you would like to learn more about the tools we offer our clients or how we can help reach your goals, reach out to our talent experts today.