How to Improve Your Diversity Recruitment Strategy

Today, with all the equality movements and the support that’s going to different minority groups, it’s hard to imagine that any company would allow itself not to make the workplace more diverse and inclusive and continue discriminating against certain genders and nationalities.

Yet, it’s still happening, even among the top employers.

Last year, Oracle, a computer software company, got into a discrimination scandal based on gender and race. The company went through a federal audit, which revealed discrepancies in salaries and the number of diverse employees.

Oracle’s scandal revealed that the company underpaid its diverse employees over $400 million, which resulted in a lawsuit. Needless to say, Oracle has also lost its prestige as one of the top employers in the tech market.

There is no doubt that such lawsuits will become more frequent in the upcoming years, as the fight for equality and diversity in the workplace continues.
To avoid getting into this mess, you need to start working on turning your company into a more diverse workplace. And this change should start with your recruitment strategy.

Today, we are going to take a look at a few tips on where to start when it comes to making your recruitment strategy more diverse, employee-oriented, and inclusive.

1. Revise Your Recruitment Ads

It’s a common practice to target and attract job candidates with recruitment ads. However, not that many companies make their ads diverse enough.

According to OnRec, with reference to Indeed, only 13% of all job adverts include diverse and inclusive language in retail, hospitality, and personal care industries, in particular. And, only one-third of diversity statements mention gender.

So, what should the diverse recruitment ad look like?

There are three main characteristics you should be aiming at when creating your recruitment ads:

• The language in the ad is neutral. There is nothing that would indicate that you’re looking for someone of a certain race or gender. The ad avoids words like waitress, handyman, salesman, as well as other gender-coded words.
• The ad doesn’t discriminate against age. Additionally, there should be no indicators that you’re not accepting applications from candidates older than a certain age, which is also a sign of ageism tendency that’s often prosecuted by the labor rights authorities.
• The ad mentions your commitment to diversity. Ensure that you include information on your company’s culture and values regarding diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

If you have a video ad for recruitment purposes, it also matters who’s presenting the information. In this regard, Deloitte made the right move and invited the employees from different backgrounds and ethnicities to tell about their experience at the company:

(Video credit: Deloitte US)

In this case, there is no need to talk about your diversity policies as your employees are proof that your company is open-minded and inclusive.

Besides, engaging employees in your recruitment ad also gives a sneak peek at what kind of people work in your company, drawing the job candidates’ attention with the same values and personalities. We also highly recommend you use an Application Tracking System (ATS) to keep track of the status of all job applications.

2. Write Diversity-Oriented Job Descriptions

The Indeed study that we mentioned in the previous section also reported that only one in eight job descriptions included diverse and inclusive language. That is a poor tendency and could easily be avoided by adding just a few words to your company description.

You don’t have to go all out about your values and thoughts regarding diversity, considering that job descriptions are not that long in general. Just take a look at how Cisco handled it in its job description on LinkedIn:

A couple of sentences is enough to tell that Cisco’s focus on diversity is the necessity that helps the company move forward and remain innovative.

Here’s another excellent example from KPMG:

Here, the company is more direct about its recruitment process, stating that it takes into account all federal, state, and local laws to ensure diversity in the workplace. It is enough to let the job candidates know about your views on cultural diversity and its role in your company’s success.

However, it’s not enough just to mention your company’s openness to diverse candidates and leave out gender- and race-specific language as well as ageist statements. Otherwise, your job description will contradict itself.

Here, you should follow the same rules as with your recruitment ads: use neutral language, avoid mentioning age, just the years of experience, and mention that you expect job candidates to commit to diversity as much as you do.

At this point, you can also mention that you only use blind resumes and interviews and that you’re doing it to remove any biases and make the recruitment process fair and open.

3. Create an Employer Brand Based on Diversity

It’s not a secret that companies review their job candidates’ social media accounts to have a clearer picture of whether they are a good fit for the corporate culture.

However, job candidates do it as well to evaluate the company that is interviewing them, its culture, values, and diversity and inclusivity.

Angela Friedman, an editor, and a manager of a team of writers at EssaySupply, shares that when asked whether they checked the brand before applying for the job, 74% of her team members confirmed it.

All this indicates the necessity of having an employer brand that would represent your brand and its values, both online and offline.

There are quite a few benefits that you will gain from building a strong employer brand. According to this report by LinkedIn:

• 28% reduction in an organization’s turnover
• 50% lower cost per hire
• up to 2 times faster recruitment process
• 50% more qualities candidates

Of course, the numbers will also depend on how your employer brand represents diversity and inclusion.

There are three aspects of an employer brand that nurtures diversity:

• Diversity in talent acquisition – an inclusive company has a high percentage of diverse employees in its staff.
• Open-mindedness in customer relations – a diversity-friendly employer brand has good relationships with stakeholders from different backgrounds and tailors its products to diverse audiences’ needs.
• Complete transparency – an employer brand has a clear diversity and inclusivity policy that it shares with anyone looking into its activities.

Apart from these characteristics, an employer brand that focuses on diversity also promotes it online to encourage others to be more open-minded.

Marriott is a champion in this regard. On its Marriott Careers Instagram page, the brand tells stories of its employees, most of whom come from different backgrounds and ethnicities. Many posts emphasize the importance of inclusivity as one of the levers of a company’s growth:

(Source: Marriott Careers)

Your goal is to make diversity the focus of your employer branding if you want it to impact your recruitment strategy significantly. All your branding efforts, both offline and online, should represent you as an employer that strives for inclusivity and views it as the only possible option for your company’s success.

What Else?

To conclude our insights on building a diverse recruitment strategy, it is essential to note that none of your efforts will work out if your staff and your C-suite are not open to diversity and inclusion.

So, even before you start transforming your recruitment strategy, it makes sense to have your employees go through training to get rid of unconscious bias that is often present during the recruitment process.

Once you have that in place, you can start working on your recruitment ads, job descriptions, and general employer brand that should all express your positive and open attitude towards diversity and inclusivity as essential contributors to organizational success and continuous growth.

This article is written by Estelle Liotard who is a Writer, Editor, and Communication Specialist working on digital publishing and term paper writing in her spare time. She is fully dedicated to her writing profession and aims to develop new content creation and research competencies through articles and case studies. Estelle also enjoys reading up on writing-related literature, which she hopes will help her improve her craft further for the benefit of readers worldwide. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.