Whether you are a recruiter or manager, you want your team to bring a unique set of opinions and perspectives. That involves making your team open and available to different races, religions, genders, and physical capabilities.
According to a report by McKinsey, a diverse workforce usually performs better than its competitors. However, many organizations still struggle to attract various candidates.
With inclusive hiring practices, your team will be more efficient, your employees will be happier, and your organization will outperform your competitors.
Defining Inclusive Recruitment
Inclusive recruitment involves connecting with, interviewing, and hiring a diverse range of individuals. This process considers more than gender and race—it also factors in the differences in experiences and values and how they work together to achieve organizational goals.
Through inclusive recruitment, your workforce is pushed to think outside their comfort zone and develop innovative ideas.
Proven Inclusive Recruitment Practices
Sometimes, creating a diverse workforce can be challenging. It involves more than looking at a candidate’s background or offering benefits for disabilities and physical impairments.
To improve your recruitment process and build a diverse workforce, here are a few practices to consider:
Educate your recruitment team
Train your team to catch common hiring biases, like:
- Affect heuristics: Judging a candidate’s ability to do a job based on factors like weight, appearance, and gender
- Confirmation bias: Asking unrelated questions to support one’s initial impression of the candidate
- Expectation anchor: Disregarding a candidate for not being suitable for a role based on a recruiter’s expectations
- Halo effect: Focusing too much on a positive aspect of a candidate’s background to form an opinion
- Horn effect: Forming an opinion on a candidate based on one negative aspect of their background
Extend this training to various teams to create a more inclusive environment. Ensure that this is a recurring training program.
Get creative with your candidate search
You might be restricting your candidate pool by narrowing your search to education and experience. If you usually searched for candidates in job fairs, widen your search by going to colleges and universities with different backgrounds. Widen your search by posting on social media and job boards.
Use tools for objectivity
It can be challenging to get rid of bias, especially if it is subconscious. That is where tools, particularly artificial intelligence, come into play.
AI recruitment systems look at candidates objectively to determine if they’re right for your open position. Choose a tool that you can customize to create the systems you need for an inclusive recruitment process. Make sure to conduct regular check-ups to ensure the recruitment tool is free of human error.
Include diverse people in the recruitment process
The hiring process should include people beyond your recruitment and human resources team. Reach out to other employees and ask for their perspective on the candidate. You can also invite them to sit in on interviews or be the ones to talk to the candidate. Having the candidate engage with different people encourages them to come work at your organization.
Diversity does wonders to your organization—your employees are happier at work, leading to productivity.
However, diversity is not an overnight process. With the right recruitment process in place, you can encourage applicants from various backgrounds to work at your organization.
