Want to bring diversity in your team? Try these hiring hacks.
Imagine you are hiring for a skill and have identified a small talent pool (similar race, ethnicity and gender) that you use for building talent pipelines. Now, whenever this requirement comes in the future, you approach the same candidates and end up with people who think alike (groupthink). Hence there is no difference in their backgrounds and cultural insights. This is where diversity hiring plays an important role which further helps in understanding new markets and clients.
Hiring people from diverse groups keeps organisations lively, employees motivated and reduces conflicts. As hiring trends change, recruiting employees from diverse groups like LGBT, Women, differently-abled is becoming the norm rather than an obligation.
Here are 4 ways through which you can attract unique and diverse groups:-
1) Eliminating the Bias — Embracing diversity begins with our own workforce and it’s important to identify and remove the biases that existing employees have towards diverse applicants in the overall hiring process be it the Recruiters, Stakeholders, Interviewers or anyone involved in taking hiring decisions. In fact, as technology is advancing there are various tools which help with diversity recruiting and blind resume screening (Hundred5, Gap jumpers, Entelo)
2) Targeted Events — Once the diverse set of people to be hired is identified, an organisation can conduct eye-opening events targeting this particular set of people ranging from women specific coding challenges to skill based conferences led by LGBT speakers. Make sure that your own diverse leadership groups are participating in such events. For instance, a woman leader talking about her organisations’ culture will help this set of audience form better associations and create more impact.
3) Diversity Branding — An organisation’s brand represents who they are and what they believe in. Promising an inclusive brand which respects diversity would increase in attracting more candidates and this can be done through social media pages, brand ambassadors from diverse sections and various other events. For e.g. a program conducted to bring women who had career gaps or breaks back into their jobs can be used for effective branding.
4) Referrals — According to a theory in social psychology, most of us tend to be attracted to people who are similar to ourselves. Hence, enlisting employees with a diverse set of experiences to refer candidates will lead to employing a more diverse staff.
As Pat Wadors (HR Head at LinkedIn) says “When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become a wiser, more inclusive and better organisation”.
We need to understand that the companies which succeed in their diversity initiatives are also the most productive, creative, innovative and impactful.