Imagine asking Gordon Ramsey to cook a five-star meal with only all-purpose white flour for ingredients. He’d probably put your head between two pieces of bread and call you an idiot sandwich.

You need more than one ingredient to bring a dish to life and create something with vibrancy and impact. And so it is with building an organization—you need skilled talent from a variety of backgrounds to create a vibrant and impactful workplace.

Diversity isn’t  just a moral obligation to promote equity; it also gives your company a competitive advantage. Championing diversity recruiting best practices gives you access to more diverse perspectives by reducing biases. Hiring underserved but brilliant talent will in turn help your company innovate and drive your products and profits to new levels.

Why diversity in recruiting is so important

Recruiting talented employees from all backgrounds is a win for underrepresented candidates and your company. Promoting DEI in the workplace is a part-to-whole process that starts with how and who you recruit to join your company. Simply put, you can’t achieve equity and inclusion without first having diversity.

The people you welcome into your organization is where the rubber meets the road for DEI. Prioritizing diversity in hiring shows your employees and the world that DEI is more than lip-service. And, as Dr. Janice Gassame Asare writes in her book Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace, challenging systemic workplace suppression of minorities has to start by giving minorities a voice in the room. 

DEI initiatives have also been shown to increase cultural intelligence and create a stronger sense of community and belonging among all employees. The intersectionality of identities creates more diverse perspectives and a deeper understanding of the world based on lived experiences in contrasting cultures. Simply put, when you raise up one person or group of people group, the entire team operates more effectively (also referred to as the curb-cut effect). 

1. Set Data-Based Diversity Goals for Hiring

There is a large discrepancy between how leaders in organizations view their diversity efforts and how their employees feel. Dynata reports 60% of managers believe their DEI initiatives are a success, while only 41% of non-managers feel leadership has created a culture of belonging. 

Being a passive participant in promoting diversity is not enough. Diversity goals should not be based on tokenism, or simply a couple of “diversity hires” but require measurable systemic change. This change requires a closer look at where your company stands with diversity - not just in talk but in practice.

Conduct a DEI audit of your talent acquisition cycle to identify where you can improve diversity in your hiring models. In your Applicant Tracking System (ATS), look for :

• What percentage of prospective candidates are minorities

• What percentage of talent that applies and gets interviews are minorities

• What criteria did the hiring and recruiting team use for hiring or rejecting each candidate (and hold your hiring team accountable!*) - is it skills based or based on biases?

*According to LinkedIn research, 47% of talent professionals say hiring managers are not held accountable for interviewing a diverse pool of applicants.

In your employee database, look for:

• What percentage of your current employees are minorities

• What the retention rate is among minority groups compared to others

• Are pay scales equitable and based on qualifications

With this data in mind, set qualitative and quantitative goals to improve diversity. For example, a qualitative goal may be to increase a sense of inclusion in the workplace through regular celebrations of diverse cultures. A quantitative goal would be to increase the representation of specific minorities in the C-suite by a certain percentage.

Whatever hiring goals you set, regularly survey your employees to gauge their sense of belonging. Employees should be allowed to submit anonymously, but give them the option to indicate their background. Then, when results are in, segment responses by background to gauge whether you're building an inclusive culture for everyone.

2. Educate your team to improve diversity awareness

Inclusive hiring can't start and end with your Human Resources (HR) team.Diversity will not endure if cultural change doesn’t come with it. Achieving diversity goals starts with making employees aware of their biases and providing education on how they can be an advocate and ally in the workplace. Train hiring managers and supporting staff alike; DEI must become a company-wide cultural mindset.

Shifting the hiring culture towards increased diversity requires proactively cultivating a culture of awareness and humility surrounding unconscious bias. Some of the ways you can do this include:

• Bringing in DEI educators and speakers to build awareness around bias and how to create psychological safety for everyone in the workplace

• Give written guidance on how allies can best support minorities in the hiring process and the workplace

Invite Employee Resource Groups (ECG) and affinity groups to participate in formulating job descriptions and interview questions to lend context based on their lived experiences Note that some employees from underrepresented backgrounds may not want to be a representative of their affinity group. Be sensitive to their needs, not just the organization’s.

3. Remove barriers to application

Everything from your job postings to the images and language you use on your careers page significantly affects whether a candidate will apply or self-select out of applying for a role. Look closely at what might be blocking potential candidates from applying to build a more representative workforce. 

A few things to consider as your work to remove these barriers are:

ADA Compliance

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) outlines the rights of those with disabilities to not be discriminated against, including—but not limited to—the right to effective communication. Comply with ADA in your hiring process by making sure your application submission and interview process is accessible for everyone. For example, you might provide alt text for images on your career page so visually impaired people can use a screen reader. 

Inclusive Language 

Many organizations think inclusive language means just including a DEI statement on their career website and in job descriptions. And while this step is certainly important, inclusive language goes deeper than a DEI notice. It also includes eliminating biased phrasing—such as sexist, ableist, ageist, or racist language. 

Avoid using:

• Gendered pronouns (i.e., he/him vs. they/them)

• Words rooted in systemic racism (i.e., blacklist, cakewalk), 

• Connotative terms (i.e., using “high energy” to describe an ideal candidate in hopes of deterring older applicants)

To avoid unconscious bias or terms you may not recognize as offensive, use a tool like Textio to check language for biases.

Focusing on Skills vs. Certifications

According to research by LinkedIn, one of the greatest barriers to diverse hiring is getting talent from underrepresented groups to apply in the first place. The simplest way to address this problem is cutting unnecessary job requirements that would cause minorities to self-select out of the application process.

Minorities and candidates from underprivileged backgrounds may have all of the skills you need in a role, even if they didn’t attend a fancy school or work at a large, well-known company.a person may not have had the opportunity to attend a 4-year university, but they still have a wealth of knowledge and skills  from running their own business. 

To determine what the job description should include, consider whether a requirement is just a “nice-to-have” or a “must-have.” Is it a must-have for a candidate to have a four-year degree from an Ivy League school, or is that just a preference? If it’s not critical to the job being done or a technical requirement to practice in a specific field (i.e., medical professionals), then list it as a “nice-to-have” or remove it entirely.

Diverse representation 

The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” still rings true. If a candidate can’t see themselves in your employer branding, chances are they won’t want to apply.  Say you only have pictures of white men in suits in your company imagery. Candidates will likely assume that this group dominates your organization. 

So carefully choose how you represent your company and culture. Conveying a sense of diversity through the images you use in your company branding and marketing (career-centric or otherwise) conveys a sense of belonging that everyone craves. 

4. Create objective candidate evaluations 

We all have biases; it’s simply the way our brains work. According to NeuroLeadership Institute, biases are shortcuts our brains build over time to evaluate the world around us and speed up decision-making. 

While biases aren’t inherently wrong, they can cause us to make inaccurate judgments. So how do you fairly evaluate a candidate for a role? 

Start by evaluating your current hiring practices through the SEEDS Model™— a framework for evaluating assumptions we make in decision-making based on five types of biases our brains use:

1. Similarity Bias - “We prefer what is like us over what is different”

2. Expediance Bias - “We prefer to act quickly rather than take time”

3. Experience Bias - “We take our perception to be the objective truth”

4. Distance Bias - “We prefer what’s closer over what’s farther away”

5. Safety Bias - “We protect against loss more than we seek out gain”

When you face a decision, check your judgment against these categories of bias and create systematic hiring processes to guard against them. For example:

• Standardize interview questions and evaluations

• Make sure there is more than one person— and people with diverse perspectives— a part of evaluating each candidate

• When your initial reaction is to reject an idea or a candidate, check your bias by asking yourself, “so what?” as Gail Tolstoi-Miller suggests.

With these checks and balances, you can safeguard your hiring decisions against unconscious biases.

Covey: Your key to building a diverse talent pipeline

Covey takes the busywork out of the sourcing and recruiting process so you can focus on the important things—like promoting diversity in your organization. 

With custom AI sourcing, Covey searches large data sets with a narrow scope to curate a talent pool of diverse candidates. But wait, it gets better – Covey then automates a nurture campaign to encourage underserved talent to apply. This automates your time, energy, and resources while still bringing you the best candidates 🙌. 

Book a demo now to learn more about how Covey helps companies like Daily source large pools of highly qualified and diverse talent!