A fair, inclusive hiring process isn’t just a legal requirement—it’s a strategic advantage. Recruiting diverse candidates enhances effectiveness, and fosters a naturally diverse workforce that drives business success and boosts your bottom line. It’s a necessity for businesses that aim to innovate, adapt, and thrive while freeing up precious TA capacity. Yet, achieving diversity in hiring remains a challenge for many organizations. This guide provides actionable steps, real-world examples, and best practices to help your company recruit diverse candidates and secure the talented workforce that will propel your future success.
Challenges in recruiting diverse candidates
It is all too common for well-intentioned organizations to struggle to recruit diverse candidates, systematic and organizational barriers abound. Even when they focus on addressing them, many may not have the resources, training, or technology support to implement equitable hiring practices effectively. To ensure you start smart, evaluate your company’s efforts across these three common inclusion barriers.
- Exclusive Language in Job Ads: Words like “ninja” or “rock star” can alienate candidates who don’t identify with tech culture or hypermasculine terminology. Inclusive content, not just language, is critical to recruiting diverse candidates.
- Over-Reliance on Networks: Referral hiring often perpetuates homogeneity by tapping into similar demographics.
- Unconscious Bias: Hiring teams may unintentionally favor candidates who look, sound, or act like themselves. For example, a study by Harvard Business Review found that resumes with “ethnic-sounding” names received fewer callbacks as compared to those with traditionally “white-sounding” names.
Why it matters to recruit diverse candidates
Investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) isn’t just good ethics, it’s good business. It is also a cornerstone of an efficient, effective hiring process – and that’s always an unwavering priority for TA and business leaders alike.
- Innovation & Creativity: Diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions, according to a study by Cloverpop.
- Market Growth: Companies with greater diversity are 70% more likely to capture new markets (BCG).
- Attracting Talent: Glassdoor reports that 76% of job seekers consider diversity an important factor when evaluating employers.
Best practices to recruit diverse candidates
To ensure your hiring process is truly inclusive, it’s essential to embed fairness at every stage. Doing so not only aligns with legal standards but also strengthens your candidate pipeline, increasing candidate quality and volume, which positions you to fill roles faster and more cost-effectively. Here are some actionable steps to get started.
1. Inclusive hiring practices
Inclusive hiring doesn’t just happen. It is the result of thoughtful and consistent investments in process, people, and experiences. By focusing on the following core pillars of inclusive hiring, you can put yourself in a position to deliver the inclusive process necessary to recruit diverse candidates.
- Inclusion by design: People and process deliver outcomes or lack thereof. So don’t overlook the start of your hiring journey. In the intake meeting, alignment on foundational specifics is crucial to put your hiring on the path to inclusion—and subsequently, hiring success. Smartly investing in the critical talent + hiring manager relationship will pay dividends when inevitable struggles arise.
- Inclusion-focused job posts: Your job post is often the first, and only, content or experience a target candidate has before deciding to apply or pass your job over. Thus ensuring your job ads are welcoming to all talent is critical. You can do this by focusing on job titles, inclusive content (not just gendered language swaps), and showcasing your commitment to DEI and pay transparency. Instead of creating a checklist, why not embrace a platform that does all of this for your writers automatically? Datapeople’s Smart Editor helps you address all these best practices and more to attract qualified and diverse candidate pipelines.
- Data-driven hiring: While the job ad may be the first thing a candidate sees, your process may leave a more lasting impression. Thus, it is critical to understand if it exhibits an inherent bias. You can try to wrangle ATS-supplied analytics, or take a shortcut and embrace the powerful pre-built recommendations and visuals in Datapeople Insights.
2. Culture of belonging and fairness
The perception of your company influences every interaction you have with talent, from application to acceptance. To recruit diverse candidates, you must focus broader than just your hiring process. The good news? There is a known playbook you can follow to immediately, and authentically, make a positive impact.
- Employer value proposition (EVP): For many candidates, your EVP is a lens directly into your promise to them. It speaks to who you are, your true intent, and how you’re investing in their success. But remember, your efforts need to extend beyond creation. Importantly, they should influence your hiring practices.
- Employee resource groups (ERGs): Empower employees to create groups that celebrate shared identities or interests, such as women in tech, BIPOC, or LGBTQ+ allies.
- Inclusive onboarding and career paths: Make new hires feel valued from day one by offering DEI training and pairing them with mentors. Provide them with transparent career paths by creating clear advancement criteria and mentorship programs.
Get ready to recruit diverse candidates
Building a diverse workforce isn’t an overnight achievement, but the steps you take today can set the foundation for a more inclusive tomorrow. By focusing on inclusive recruiting practices and a supportive culture, your organization will be well-positioned to recruit diverse candidates and retain top talent that will propel your innovation and business performance.
Diversity is more than just a metric—it’s a commitment. While your path to prime your company for success may differ, below are common areas of focus that will help you more easily recruit diverse candidates.
Compensation
- Publish reasonable pay ranges in job descriptions to reduce negotiation biases and set expectations upfront. Not only are these increasingly becoming a legal requirement, but they also promote a culture of transparency and fairness.
- Promote benefits that resonate across demographics, like fertility assistance, mental health resources, and remote work flexibility. In a competitive talent market, thoughtful benefits can go a long way to piquing interest and securing an application.
Recruiting
- Make inclusive hiring practices second nature. Embrace a modern talent efficiency platform grounded in inclusion such as Datapeople.
- Invest in your talent technology stack to deliver the candidate experience you desire consistently and measurably. A modern ATS is a great place to start, but you may also wish to consider a CRM.
Company Culture
- Invest in your authentic Employer Value Proposition, which should be built with inclusion in mind. Regularly collect employee feedback to measure inclusion and act on improvement areas.
- Showcase your commitment to DEI on your careers page by sharing stories, videos, and statistics that highlight progress. Diverse talent recognizes this is a journey, not a destination, so be vulnerable when sharing your progress.
Learning and Development
- Provide mandatory DEI training to hiring teams, emphasizing topics like unconscious bias and inclusive language. While training is important, the ability to use it day-to-day is critical, with Datapeople Anywhere hiring teams can collaborate effortlessly and inclusively, reinforcing training learnings day in and day out.
- Encourage leadership development programs with additional training as appropriate tailored to employees from your ESGs or other underrepresented groups.
Since our founding in 2015, we’ve seen that while the language, focus, and strategies around DEI continue to evolve, one truth remains constant: a fair and inclusive hiring process is also an efficient and effective one. For talent acquisition and business leaders, it’s a proven cornerstone of talent stewardship success. If you’re navigating today’s complex hiring landscape and looking for ways to embed equity into every step of your process—especially in this post-affirmative action environment—Datapeople is here to help.
Let us show you how we can support your journey toward equitable, high-performing hiring practices.