How to hire a diverse and inclusive workforce?
Most recruitment agencies and hiring managers would agree that a diverse team helps a company to be more productive.
Today, in the present world, many statistics make it known to us that diverse recruitments contribute greatly to better performance of any company. Having a team from different backgrounds and perspectives will contribute new and diverse ideas to drive innovation, creativity and enhance the skill set.
As a hiring manager or HR team, focusing on diversity and inclusion in recruitment is a great recruitment strategy that will help your company to grow beyond your expectations. However, diverse recruitment and inclusive recruitment are beyond business results and its performance. It is a noble cause many companies worldwide are striving for because it helps build qualified teams regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, background, race, and equality in the workplace.
Ways to recruit a diverse and inclusive workforce
1. Audit your job ads
One of the best ways for diverse recruitment is to audit your past ads on your job and make gender-specific or talent-specific changes to have a different range of candidates. In this case, you will have to edit some of your languages in the ads, use more keywords geared toward a specific demographic, and use a style that appeals to everyone.
When it comes to improving and auditing your job ads, learning how to be a better writer is important because diverse and inclusive recruitment will always be hard, but writing the right way makes you a better recruiter. A recruitment consultant can assist you with drafting your job postings. They also help you control variables and know the right way to speak to candidates. In your ads, ensure you focus on your target candidates and explain why your company is a great option.
2. Target different sources to find a range of candidates
Another strategy that will help you improve your diverse and inclusive recruitment is ensuring that your talent sources are full of candidates with different backgrounds, locations, and experiences. To improve your inclusive hiring, ensure you don't rely on repeatedly getting talent from the same sources. This is essential because focusing on a particular source will only provide the same candidates, leading to a lack of diversity.
3. Encourage employee referral programs
Encouraging your employees to refer to their connections is a great way to improve your diversity and inclusion in recruitment because it is likely that they will have networks of people with similar experiences and backgrounds. So, in this case, create a diverse candidates' referral program to help showcase your company to people of different experiences and backgrounds and boost your diverse recruitment strategy.
However, if you want to hire a particular group of people, you can do this by reaching out to people in your team who are in the same demographics of the talent you need. Encourage your employees to share your job ads with their friends and family and provide them with the necessary tools for the promotion of your company.
4. Use blind CVs
Using blind resumes is another way to improve inclusive and diverse recruitment. This is essential because it helps you to judge candidates based on their performance factors, such as their abilities and skills, to deliver the best results. Blind resumes also help to avoid a biased system of hiring candidates. Information like date of birth, location, schools, and names are the things that can contribute to bias in recruitment, even if it is done unconsciously.
5. Automate your shortlisting using an ATS
ATS, also known as an applicant tracking system, is a great way to improve your diversity and inclusive recruitment. Recruitment agencies often use this system to help you to shortlist the candidates with the best skills and potential. They avoid any bias or personal opinions about a particular candidate. Doing this is beneficial because it helps you to hire candidates based on your requirements and helps you to reach diverse talents.
Speak to our leading Recruitment Consultants
Building a diverse workforce within your organisation can be very challenging as there are many factors to consider. Chat to our team of recruitment experts at YNH - we work as an extension to your Recruitment & HR functions which enables us to ensure consistency and quality when hiring candidates.
Choosing us as your software development recruitment consultant gives you access to several recruitment packages which are tailored to fit the needs of your business.
