Hiring diverse candidates on your team has become essential for any recruiter, especially in recent years. After all, the need for promoting inclusivity and providing equal opportunities is an issue with no “one size fits all” solution. And recruitment is just one of the ways in which you can do that through workplace diversity.
According to research from LinkedIn, 77% of recruiters believe that workplace diversity will soon become an integral part of hiring strategies. Onboarding more diverse talent is one of the most important recruiting trends that will shape the future of hiring. If you want to stay one step ahead, here are some effective ways you can attract more diverse candidates to your company.
Importance Of Workplace Diversity And Inclusion
Before we dive into our strategies for hiring diverse candidates, it is essential for a recruiter to understand why workplace diversity is so important. Having more diverse talent on your team will not only help you get access to more creative ideas, outlook, and skills, but it will also help you enhance your employer brand and position yourself in the industry as a top employer of choice.
But that’s just scratching the surface on why workplace diversity is important. Attracting and sourcing underrepresented diverse candidates isn’t only beneficial for your employer brand and human resource strategies, it is also essential for helping you identify and predict potential new markets to solve problems faced by those niche markets.
Top Strategies For Attracting Diverse Candidates To Your Team
At the end of the day though, the ultimate challenge is to find the best person suited for the job role. That’s why many recruiters have the misconception that finding qualified diverse candidates is nearly impossible.
The truth is, recruiters are rarely using the right hiring strategies for attracting diverse candidates and tapping into pools of underrepresented talent. Below, we are going to look into some of the most effective strategies to help you figure out how to attract diverse candidates for your team.
1. Invest In Diverse Candidates & Partner With Communities
In order to attract diverse candidates, it is important for you to make an actual investment in these underrepresented and untapped talent pools. This goes beyond making efforts to simply source people who come from minority backgrounds. You need to create a strategy that focuses on building relationships with communities, organizations, or institutions that have significance to diverse candidates.
For example, partnering with organizations that are dedicated to empowering women by helping them develop their skills. Such as, partnering with Women’s Global Empowerment Fund, can be one type of investment in diverse candidates. Similarly, you can also partner with universities or colleges that historically have high enrollment rates of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color) students.
These investments will make you more visible to diverse talent and help them see you as an organization that genuinely takes an interest in their well-being. This can be an effective way to attract diverse candidates for your team.
2. Remove Recruitment Bias From Your Hiring Process
Unconscious recruitment bias is one of the most common challenges you will face when hiring diverse candidates. So if you can eliminate hiring bias and be more transparent about your recruiting process, candidates from diverse backgrounds may feel more encouraged to apply.
One way to remove recruitment bias is through blind resumes and interviews. The idea is that by removing a candidate’s name and gender can help recruiters focus more on the candidates’ skills and experience in an impartial manner.
Similarly, adding screening questions and quizzes in the very first stage of your recruitment process can also help in reducing hiring bias. By adding screening questions and quizzes during the job application process, you can impartially select candidates who show good potential and competency early on.
3. Add Company Policies To Promote Workplace Diversity
In order to attract diverse candidates, your company policies must be aligned properly to promote workplace diversity and inclusion. This may include providing special accommodation or assistance to those who need it. It can also include tailored employee benefits that will be useful to minorities. Such as childcare facilities or flexible office hours for working mothers, and others can be taken into account.
4. Create Inclusive Atmosphere And Working Culture
It is not simply enough to have inclusive company policies in place; you must ensure that the team spirit is also supportive and in compliance with your company policies. This means all employees need to have an accepting mindset, and be willing to listen and learn from others with a different perspective or ideas. It’s just that every employee should try to help others grow. This kind of positive mindset atmosphere and work culture can easily attract diverse candidates if you are able to showcase beautifully.
5. Enhance Employer Branding & Employee Referral Program
Employer branding is always essential to attract the right people to your team. After all, just as customers look at a brand before choosing which product to buy, job seekers also look at the company’s reputation as an employer before applying for open positions in the team.
So, if you want to attract diverse candidates, it is important to enhance your employer branding such that potential applicants know that your team believes in promoting workplace diversity and inclusion.
Similarly, you can also focus on creating and developing an employee referral program through which you can ask existing employees to recommend other diverse candidates who have the skills to be a part of your team. Existing employees can often be brand ambassadors for your company, and their recommendation has significant value to diverse candidates.
6. Evaluate Your Job Postings And Employee Benefits
Finally, in order to attract diverse candidates you must pay close attention to how you are writing job postings and use inclusive language. Research from LinkedIn shows that specific words can discourage diverse candidates from certain demographics to apply to your team.
In the same way, make sure that your employee benefits are also tailored to attract diverse candidates by accommodating their needs. This could be longer parental leave, more flexible working hours, disability benefits and insurance, and much more.
Attracting more diverse candidates is a continuous process, and as such, you may find yourself revisiting. Trying these strategies mentioned above to improve workplace diversity and inclusion in your company. With time, you may be able to create a team that is versatile with people from all backgrounds, and thus be at the forefront of innovation in the long run.
Bonus: Top Examples For Writing A Great Job Posting
As mentioned earlier, in order to recruit diverse candidates to your company, you need to be careful about your choice of words in your job postings. For more helpful tips about this, check out our detailed guide for writing a great job posting and take a look at some of the examples mentioned there too.
With these strategies, we hope you can attract more diverse candidates to your team. However, do remember that there is no one permanent process for attracting diverse candidates; if you want your team to be a versatile and inclusive team, then you have to constantly work on promoting workplace inclusivity and pay close attention to what these candidates are looking for when they join your organization.
Enjoyed this post? Then subscribe to our blog for more helpful tips and tutorials, or join our friendly Facebook community.
