Increasing Female Applicant Ratio in Sales

by Glance Technology

Over the last 3 months we helped a local sales company, RevGen, revamp their recruiting process. Glance is incredibly data focused and one data point we are proud of is the 44% female applicant ratio for the entry level business development representative role.

Below we will show how we were able to increase this ratio and provide some take aways you can use in your organization.

Prior to Glance helping out the female applicant ratio was in the low 30%.

The first goal we set out to accomplish was to rewrite the job description to ensure the listing was inclusive and encouraged applicants from a diverse background to apply.

For this, we used Textio and immediately recognized the job listing used previously was rated a 34 (out of 100). The listing leaned heavily towards masculine phrasing and unintentionally deterred females from applying. We quickly updated the listing and raised the rating to a 96 (out of 100).

A Textio score is derived from a number of factors that take into consideration like time to hire, use of industry jargon, and how well it appeals to candidates from diverse backgrounds.

Textio provides an incredible graphic to demonstrate how important the wording in a job listing is to the outcome of the position. We aimed to make our listing balanced so it appealed to people of many different backgrounds.

Prior to Glance the listing used was much like the first example above.

Without the use of Textio, the recruiting team would not have seen an increase in the diversity of the applicant pool.

This directly ties into the decreased attrition at the company and increased hiring class sizes.

Over the last 3 months we have seen an incredible increase in diverse applicants applying to the opportunity and are excited for what the future months hold on this trend.

In addition to 44% female applicant ratio we have a 42% female ratio in our new hiring classes. This is best in class around the Triangle for entry level sales hires and we are excited to try to raise this ratio even more.

Next we are going to research how we communicate the job opportunity in job interviews to ensure we are not losing candidates based on our own verbiage. Expect a blog post about this in a few weeks.

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