Diversity Recruiting Strategies and Expert Advice

Diversity Recruiting Strategies and Expert Advice

Having a diversity recruiting strategy in place is a must. Diversity recruiting has been a hot topic for years in recruitment, and almost all reputable companies and recruitment agencies advocate for it.

If you are new to diversity recruiting, or you are looking for the best tips to kick off your diversity recruitment campaign, then you are at the right place.

In this comprehensive guide, we will talk about:

  1. What is diversity recruiting?
  2. Why is having a diversity recruiting strategy important?
  3. Diversity Recruiting Strategies
  4. Expert’s Advice on Diversity Recruiting
  5. Best Diversity Recruiting Software

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

But before that, did you know that good recruiting software can help you level up your diversity recruitment strategies in no time? Check out Recruiteze and iReformat, and find out how they can help you eliminate any unconscious bias while recruiting.

What is Diversity Recruiting

diversity recruiting

Merriam-Webster defines diversity as follows:

“The state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization.”

Based on this definition, we can say that diversity recruiting is the act of recruiting candidates from a variety of backgrounds with the hopes of creating a diverse workplace.

While some recruiters, HR professionals, and company owners fully understand the importance of diversity recruiting, others continue to fall into the trap of hiring the same “type” of people, time after time.

Here is the good thing: diversity recruiting is easier than most people believe. All it takes is a solid understanding of the importance, a targeted strategy, and the ability to focus solely on talent (not assumptions).

Why is Having a Diversity Recruiting Strategy Important?

Diversity recruiting strategies are essential for promoting a more inclusive and equitable workplace. By implementing these strategies, organizations can access a wider pool of talent, foster innovation, and improve overall performance.

Being inclusive in a workspace is a must due to several reasons:

  1. Increased productivity Research has shown that just a 1% increase in racial diversity increases firm productivity by between $729 and $1590 per employee per year.
  2. Increased creativity – Diversity in a workspace encourages free and creative thinking and new approaches to problem-solving.
  3. Boosting innovation – Diversity and inclusivity has proven to increase the innovation and financial results.
  4. Better employer brand – Being inclusive has a tremendous positive impact on your employer brand, making you stand out amongst competitors (other employers/companies) and gain positive brand awareness.

Harvard University set out to answer this critical question.

Every company is likely to have a unique response, but here are some of the top reasons for its importance:

  • Different backgrounds lead to new ideas and fresh ways of doing things.
  • A diverse staff allows people from all backgrounds to learn more about each other, thus creating a positive atmosphere valued relationships.
  • Building a reputation for a diverse workplace makes it easier to attract top talent regardless of background.

Diversity recruiting strategies

1. Develop a clear diversity and inclusion statement

A well-crafted statement can help attract a diverse range of candidates, promote a positive employer brand, and set expectations for employees.

Here are the steps to create a clear and effective diversity and inclusion statement:

  1. Define your organization’s values: Begin by identifying the core values that underpin your organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. These values should reflect your organization’s culture and guide your approach to fostering an inclusive environment.
  2. Consider the various dimensions of diversity: Diversity encompasses many aspects, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic background, disability, and more. Ensure that your statement addresses these various dimensions to create a comprehensive and inclusive message.
  3. Align with organizational goals and strategies: Ensure that your diversity and inclusion statement aligns with your organization’s overall goals and strategies. This alignment will demonstrate your commitment to integrating diversity and inclusion throughout your organization.
  4. Be specific about your commitment: Clearly articulate your organization’s commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion. This may include specific initiatives, programs, or policies aimed at creating an inclusive environment and providing equal opportunities for all employees.
  5. Use inclusive language: Use language that is inclusive and accessible to a wide audience. Avoid jargon, acronyms, or terminology that may be unfamiliar or exclusionary to some readers.
  6. Emphasize the benefits of diversity and inclusion: Highlight the advantages of fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace, such as increased innovation, improved decision-making, and enhanced performance.
  7. Solicit input from diverse stakeholders: Engage employees from diverse backgrounds and perspectives in the development of your statement. Their insights can help ensure that your statement is representative of your entire workforce.
  8. Obtain leadership buy-in: Secure the support of your organization’s leadership, as their endorsement can help drive the success of your diversity and inclusion initiatives.
  9. Communicate your statement widely: Share your diversity and inclusion statement both internally and externally. Feature it prominently on your website, in job postings, and in company materials to showcase your commitment to current and prospective employees, customers, and partners.
  10. Review and update regularly: Periodically review and update your diversity and inclusion statement to ensure it remains relevant and reflective of your organization’s ongoing efforts and progress.

2. Establish diversity hiring goals

These goals help organizations focus on attracting and retaining a diverse workforce, which can lead to increased innovation, improved performance, and a more positive work environment.

Here are some steps to establish effective diversity hiring goals:

  1. Assess your current workforce: Begin by analyzing the current demographics of your workforce, including factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and disability status. This analysis will provide a baseline to identify underrepresented groups and areas for improvement.
  2. Benchmark against industry standards: Compare your organization’s workforce demographics to industry standards or competitors to understand how your diversity efforts measure up. This comparison can help you identify specific targets and prioritize areas for improvement.
  3. Set SMART goals: Develop specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for increasing diversity within your organization. These goals should be realistic and tailored to your organization’s specific needs and context.
  4. Align with overall organizational strategy: Ensure that your diversity hiring goals align with your organization’s overall strategy and objectives. This alignment can help demonstrate the importance of diversity and inclusion efforts and secure buy-in from leadership and employees.
  5. Involve key stakeholders: Engage hiring managers, recruiters, and other relevant stakeholders in the development and implementation of your diversity hiring goals. Their involvement will ensure that diversity and inclusion are integrated throughout the hiring process.
  6. Implement targeted recruitment strategies: Develop recruitment strategies specifically designed to attract diverse candidates, such as partnering with diverse professional organizations, attending diversity-focused job fairs, and utilizing inclusive language in job postings.
  7. Train and educate staff: Provide training and education to your hiring team and other employees on the importance of diversity and inclusion, as well as strategies to mitigate unconscious biases in the hiring process.
  8. Establish accountability: Assign responsibility for achieving diversity hiring goals to specific individuals or teams, and hold them accountable for progress. Regularly track and report on your organization’s progress towards these goals to ensure transparency and maintain momentum.
  9. Review and adjust goals periodically: Regularly review and adjust your diversity hiring goals based on progress, changes in the labor market, or shifts in organizational priorities. This flexibility will ensure that your goals remain relevant and achievable.

3. Partner with diverse professional organizations

Partnering with diverse professional organizations is an effective strategy to attract a broader range of talent, increase the diversity of your workforce, and demonstrate your organization’s commitment to inclusion. These organizations typically focus on promoting the interests and career development of specific underrepresented groups, such as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, and veterans.

Here are some ways to partner with diverse professional organizations and leverage these relationships to enhance your recruitment efforts:

  1. Identify relevant organizations: Research and identify professional organizations that align with your diversity and inclusion goals. Consider local, regional, and national organizations that cater to the underrepresented groups you’re aiming to attract.
  2. Attend events and conferences: Participate in events, conferences, and workshops hosted by these organizations. This will allow you to network with potential candidates, learn about industry trends, and showcase your organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
  3. Sponsor events or initiatives: Support diverse professional organizations by sponsoring their events, initiatives, or programs. This not only showcases your commitment to diversity but also helps you establish a strong relationship with the organization and its members.
  4. Advertise job openings: Share your job openings with these organizations to reach a wider and more diverse audience. Many organizations maintain job boards or distribute job opportunities through newsletters, social media, or other communication channels.
  5. Collaborate on educational programs: Partner with diverse professional organizations to develop and deliver educational programs, workshops, or webinars. These collaborations can help you demonstrate your organization’s expertise, build credibility, and engage with potential candidates.
  6. Establish internship or mentorship programs: Collaborate with diverse professional organizations to create internship, mentorship, or job-shadowing opportunities. These programs can help you identify and develop talent while providing valuable experiences for underrepresented individuals in your industry.
  7. Seek input and feedback: Engage with these organizations to gain insights into best practices for diversity and inclusion. Seek their feedback on your recruitment strategies, workplace culture, and overall diversity efforts to identify areas for improvement and growth.
  8. Foster long-term relationships: Build and maintain long-term relationships with diverse professional organizations. Regularly engage with them through networking events, collaborative projects, and knowledge-sharing to ensure ongoing support and access to diverse talent pools.
  9. Promote your partnerships: Highlight your partnerships with diverse professional organizations on your website, social media, and other communication channels. This visibility can help reinforce your organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and attract a more diverse range of applicants.

4. Enhance Your Employee Referral Program and Enhance Diversity Recruiting

We’ve said it before, and we’ll repeat it.

One of your best diversity recruiting sources is your current workforce. In particular, diverse employees tend to know and talk to other diverse individuals.

Therefore, to capitalize on your employees’ network, now may be a great time to beef up the employee-referral recruiting program at your organization. This should include a very specific and deliberate message about your business’s need for a diverse workforce and the importance your company places on diverse referrals.

Be sure to communicate your organization’s goals and what you’re planning to do to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce with your employees.

5. Reduce Bias During Sourcing to Improve Diversity Recruiting

Even the most experienced and diverse recruiters may let unconscious hiring bias take over when sourcing candidates. Black, white, Latino, Asian, male or female recruiters often end up looking at twice as many males as female profiles while searching for candidates.

While unconscious bias training can help, it may be more useful to consider deleting a candidate’s name or even taking gender completely out of the equation by labeling resumes with a number instead of names.

On a similar note, if you want to remove discrimination based on socioeconomic background, you can remove addresses as well.

Great recruitment and resume formatting software can help you with blind hiring. It can hide all the sensitive information on the resume that can trigger recruiters to make biased decisions.

Reducing bias at this stage of your recruitment process is a step in the right direction for a more diverse workforce.

6. Use Social Media

You’re likely already using social media to build your employer brand. If not, social media is an incredibly easy way to improve your diversity recruitment efforts.

However, social media also allows you to identify and target very specific candidates. For example, LinkedIn is an incredibly effective diversity recruitment and sourcing tool. If they aren’t already, have your recruiters join LinkedIn so they can start to develop long-term relationships with active group members, as well as post relevant openings or company updates.

Additionally, Facebook can be an effective channel to target your ideal diverse candidates. For example, Facebook allows you to target specific demographics and create targeted advertising campaigns on Facebook to reach diverse student groups.

You can also create a “Diversity Careers” Facebook Page and promote it through a targeted advertising campaign.

If you are ready to start your recruitment campaigns on social media, ensure to check our comprehensive guides on:

  1. Social Recruiting, Written by Leading Experts
  2. Social Recruiting Strategies, also written by experts

7. Utilize the Power of Diversity Recruiting Software

We tackled this a bit when talking about blind hiring and reducing the hiring bias.

What diversity recruitment software does, in a nutshell, is that it hides any information about the candidate that might influence a recruiter to make a biased hiring decision. That information includes:

  • Name and surname
  • Photo
  • Age
  • Sex
  • Education
  • Origin
  • Etc.

If you wish to learn more about this, here is our guide on Blind Resume Software.

If you want to start using this software and streamline your diversity recruitment strategy, then try out iReformat for free.

iReformat allows you to source, parse and reformat dozens of resumes in just a couple of seconds while hiding any information that might make you biased along the way. All it takes is a couple of clicks, and you will be presented with blind, reformatted resumes.

8. Develop Company Policies That Attract Diverse Groups

It is simple.

Develop policies that support people of underrepresented groups and minorities and build relationships with them. It takes time, but the ROI is massive. Depending on the industry you recruit for, these groups might be:

  1. Females
  2. LGBTQ+ people
  3. Religious or racial minorities
  4. Baby boomers
  5. Etc.

Once you determine who are the sensitive and often discriminated groups of people in your industry, you will easily tailor your communication and policies to appeal to them.

Good Reads:

Expert’s Advice on Diversity Recruiting

diversity recruiting

If you have struggled to wrap your head around diversity in recruiting, there are various resources that can provide you with the guidance you are seeking. Here we have compiled what some of the biggest influences might have to say:

  1. ERE Media
  2. American Society of Association Executives
  3. HR Council
  4. National Association of Colleges and Employers

If you are searching for free online recruiting software? Click here to use Recruiteze!

ERE Media

Here is a blog post title that leaves no room for confusion:

“When it Comes to Diversity, Just Focus on Talent and NOT Superficial Assumptions.”

ERE Media discusses the importance of focusing purely on talent, nothing else. Don’t worry about what a person looks like or where they come from. Your goal is to find the right candidate for the position, considering talent above all else.

American Society of Association Executives

There is a difference between realizing the value of diversity and actually turning it into reality. If you want to attract and retain a diverse pool of employees, it is essential to do the following:

  • Understand demographic changes.
  • Educate staff on the meaning of diversity.
  • Learn how to target and interview diverse groups.
  • Develop a diversity-friendly culture.
  • Become known within your industry as the company of choice for a diverse workforce.
  • Measure all recruitment efforts.
  • Build relationships with minority organizations.

HR Council

If a broader recruitment effort is on your mind, now is the time to do something about this. The HR Council discusses what it means to be proactive in terms of your recruitment efforts.

The following advice “can support an organization when engaging a new audience,” allowing you to better connect with a variety of applicants:

  • Get the word out to different groups. Rather than stay in your comfort zone, seek new ways to find talent. For example, you can advertise through employment service centers, community boards, and minority groups.
  • Build relationships with cultural groups. Regardless of your location, you should be able to find several groups in your local area to work with. If not, don’t be shy about expanding your search.
  • Connect with a large volunteer base. If you don’t have any open positions right now, don’t shy away from taking on volunteers. Let these people know that positions may be opening in the future, and they will be considered first.

It’s never easy to change your ways, especially if you have been “stuck in the mud” for so long. It may be hard to adjust your approach, but it’s not impossible. A broader recruitment effort will pay off.

National Association of Colleges and Employers

There is no denying the fact that diversity in recruiting is beginning to pick up. While this is a good thing, there is still plenty of progress to be made.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers tracks data associated with diversity recruiting, noting that respondents to its 2012 (yes, all the way back in 2012) Recruiting Benchmarks Survey have intentions to intensify their efforts to recruit underrepresented minorities. These companies plan on doing so in many ways, including the following:

“Securing management support for the diversity recruiting programDiversity recruiting should be incorporated into your organization’s overall goals with solid support from upper management. Be sincere about diversity efforts. To demonstrate support for your organization’s diversity recruiting efforts coming from the top, your organization might, for example, send a senior-level person to campus to meet with students or participate in an information session.”

You don’t necessarily need a diversity recruiting program, but a strategy for attracting a diverse talent pool is a must. Companies that have the resources and workforce, of course, may want to implement a diversity recruiting program that is staffed with the primary responsibility of targeting applicants of all backgrounds.

Best Diversity Recruiting Software

The best thing about diversity recruiting nowadays is that there is effective software that can help you make the best recruitment decisions without being even the slightest biased.

So allow us to introduce you to iReformat and Recruiteze.

Recruiteze is our free online applicant tracking system where candidates can apply to be added to your database immediately. End-users can access candidate resumes online and make changes quickly.

If you already have a recruiting system, then iReformat makes for the perfect add-on. iReformat allows you to format up to 10 resumes per month for free. Paid packages only start at $10 per month and offer unlimited support, users, and more.

iRefromat can help you by hiding all the information from you that can make you biased towards candidates.

Our free applicant tracking system is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge applicants, offer them the next steps in the overall hiring process, list job ads on important job boards, and streamline your entire operation with just one software.

No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button.

Recruiteze helps you build a candidate database, keep notes, and communicate with active and inactive applicants.

You can eliminate endless spreadsheets full of notes and information by adding your feedback and applicant information into the free applicant tracking system. Everything you need for your recruitment efforts is under one roof.

In addition, you’ll be able to send out personalized emails to each candidate to help save time and effort with our staffing agency applicant tracking system. Communication with applicants won’t fall by the wayside, and you’ll be gaining a great way to keep the applicant engaged and informed.

There are tons of benefits you can gain from trusting our recruitment software! Recruiteze will help your small business save time and money, become more organized and streamlined, and help you track applicants without worrying about top talent falling through the cracks.

Be sure to try it for free if you haven’t used an ATS for small business recruiting and hiring!

Here is more helpful information about ATS that can help you make the right decision:

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