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Tips for Building a Diverse Talent Pipeline

By | The HR Suite

Businesses worldwide are continuously showing their commitment to inclusion and diversity in the workplace. And while the self-scrutiny on diversity may have started a few decades back, most companies are yet to attain the goals they set when starting.  

Facebook, for example, recorded a 0.8% increase in its black workforce between 2014 and 2020, showing just how slow the progress has been. Other companies that share similar sentiments are also experiencing low single-digit growth in their diversity plans. 

It’s a factor that raises the question, what’s stopping them from achieving their goals? 

According to a global survey of 9,000 hiring managers and recruiters conducted in 39 countries, the problem lies in finding diverse candidates to recruit! Below are tips on what managers and recruiters can do to find a more diverse talent pipeline. 

  1. Audit Your Job Postings and Descriptions

The first step you should take to diversify your talent pipeline is to stop using gendered language in your job postings. Regrettably, everyone has an unconscious bias they rely on when communicating, even when dealing with professionals. 

An excellent way to avoid these biases is to manually audit every posting and remove harmless words that may indicate a bias towards a particular gender or race. Professional tools such as Grammarly can help simplify the auditing process. 

  1. Create Effective Goals

Setting a recruitment goal is one of the most effective strategies you can hope to implement. Learn to implement the saying, ‘you can achieve anything you can measure.’ Sit down with an interview coaching specialist and your fellow recruiters and assess where you’re at in matters of inclusion.  

Go through your findings to determine whether this is where you as a company want to be. If it’s not, find ways to begin working towards the goals you want to achieve. An example of goals you can include in your recruitment strategy are: 

  • For every role that arises, try to dynamically source 15 interviewees from the groups that are already underrepresented. 
  • Rewrite upcoming job descriptions to showcase how your firm prioritizes diversity recruitment in all positions.  
  • Assist in training at least a third of your current workforce on how having an unconscious bias can affect decision-making. 
  1. Leverage Diverse Channels When Posting Job Openings

There are hundreds of channels available today for use in posting job openings. But overreliance on a given platform, say LinkedIn, to post all new openings can severely limit your hiring power.  

It would help if you broadened your horizon to allow you to reach a more diverse talent. Where possible, try to leverage as many platforms as you possibly can when advertising. Remember, the more platforms you use, the better your chances of reaching the underrepresented groups. 

  1. Use a Structured Recruitment Process

Work with a career coach to identify your ideal candidate profile and use it to create a structured recruitment process. In this process, your goal is to ensure that every candidate will go through the same steps and answer the same set of questions.  

A structured recruitment process ensures that bias won’t creep in and that all candidates will face the same conditions. Include a skills assessment exercise in the hiring process to obtain a more objective understanding of the contributions each candidate can make.  

  1. Consider Implementing Blind Hiring

Blind hiring has become popular in leading organizations worldwide, including places such as HSBC, the BBC, and Google. By anonymizing the recruitment process, you significantly get to reduce the likelihood of unconscious bias affecting your decision-making.  

While blind hiring has proven effective, it does have some limitations of its own. For example, the removal of names and addresses from resumes doesn’t mean that identities can’t present themselves indirectly. 

  1. Look Within the Organization

Your present workforce can prove to be a great resource in your journey to building a diverse talent pipeline. Often, the best workers are those that happen through referrals. Thus, consider seeking advice from your people on how to attract a more diverse talent pool. 

If you have an LGBTQ group in your organization, for example, you can lean on them for advice on improving future job postings. This same group may also help point out potential candidates from their networks.  

Conclusion 

It takes lots of communication, education, and the use of a thoughtful outreach approach with your team and career coach to build a diverse talent pipeline. However, remember that creating diversity is merely the first step. 

Next, you have to ensure that everyone working within the company feels included, which will help give them a sense of loyalty and belonging. To achieve this, you’ll need to create real change within the company, something you may have to learn through training and openness.  

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