Three Diversity Recruiting Mistakes That Are All Too Frequent
Employers struggle to locate talent due to the Great Resignation, making inclusive hiring procedures more crucial than ever.
In the past year, the importance of diversity in the workplace — and the evident need for change — has become a key focus for many businesses. Business leadership rapidly understands the intrinsic advantages of a varied and equitable workforce, although many leaders wrongly regard diversity programs as a diversion.
However, while many continue to speak the talk, they make terrible errors that limit possibilities for diverse candidates. These errors are not necessarily deliberate, but they substantially and negatively affect diversity recruitment.
1. A lack of diversity in your recruitment team
Recruiting quality individuals requires a formidable recruiting team. But if all your recruiters look and think like you, you are much less likely to hire individuals from different backgrounds.
Your recruiting personnel will be more subject to affinity bias if they lack diversity. This unconscious propensity makes us feel more comfortable among folks we consider similar to ourselves. Frequently, when a hire is based on "culture fit," recruiters have subconsciously or intentionally prioritized this bias.
The simplest solution is to diversify your recruitment. Training should also be provided to your present recruitment personnel to guarantee that you actively seek to diversify your company's workforce.
In addition, because persons with diverse-sounding names are frequently less likely to get called in for an interview in the first place, many companies utilize "blind resumes" in which they delete personal information (such as names or localities) that could result in unintentionally biased evaluations.
2. Restricting the skill pools from which you hire
Frequently, firms hinder their capacity to identify diverse employees by focusing on the same hiring pools they have always utilized. It's time to seek out fresh talent pools if the institutions and employment portals you've visited only provide homogeneous applicants.
This became very evident during a recent meeting with Ilit Raz, co-founder and CEO of Joonko. As the founder of a product that connects diverse candidates with world-class employers, she has firsthand experience with myriad diversity recruiting difficulties.
She mentioned during our talk that the best way to diversify the workforce is to diversify the applicant pool. Many businesses would profit from joining forces and pooling their different talent pools, as opposed to independently sourcing candidates. A pooled pool of prequalified talent will expedite the recruitment of diverse applicants for open positions. Advocacy organizations and job boards for women, minorities and employees with disabilities are examples of additional talent-sourcing alternatives available to corporations.
Do not rely just on a single, possibly diversified source of skill. The more candidate sourcing resources you employ, the simpler it will be to diversify beyond a particular measure.
3. Using discriminatory wording in job descriptions
Minorities, women, and those with disabilities may be dissuaded from applying for positions they are otherwise qualified for due to unconscious biases in most job advertisements.
A critical study by Duke and the University of Waterloo identified extensive lists of "masculine" and "feminine" terms. Participants in the study were given job descriptions that were categorized as more masculine or feminine. Feminine applicants were less likely to apply for all occupations (including ones generally seen as female) when excessively masculine terminology was employed.
The wording employed in job descriptions can influence a candidate's view of the position and the organization subconsciously. It can make individuals feel like they don't belong at the organization, generating a lack of confidence that discourages talented applicants from applying.
Fortunately, there are now some technologies that can assist in eradicating this type of discriminatory language to encourage a more diverse candidate pool.
Now is the time to enhance diversity in recruiting
The benefits of workplace diversity are well-documented. In truth, according to a report by McKinsey, racially diverse teams outperform the less diverse competition by 35%. Exposure to fresh ideas and viewpoints can result in innovations that would not have been conceived otherwise.
Such advantages are only possible if your hiring and recruiting procedures are fair. However, eliminating these and other errors in diversity recruitment can create new opportunities for bright individuals and your organization.
About John Ellis
John is a People Scientist and Data-driven Consulting Leader with decades of expertise in planning, designing, and implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategy programs for clients in a wide range of industries. He is a fluent, bilingual (English and Spanish) analytical strategist capable of evaluating and synthesizing data to identify DEI difficulties and design customized and targeted solutions. Before joining Woods Kovalova Group, he was a Talent & Organization Consulting Manager at Bains, where he planned and implemented organizational innovations for a variety of enterprises.
John enjoys cycling, hiking, and skiing on a personal level.