Diversity Hiring Mindset
Age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics that are unrelated to the job performance can all bias our judgement in the hiring process.
We are just touching the tip of the iceberg here. What we see above is just the inherent diversity. Simply put - things you do not control.
Acquired diversity touches upon the factors such as education, experience, values, skills, and knowledge. Think of an organization only employing people from specific schools or Universities in the event when the same knowledge is acquired by students in other Universities.
Workplace diversity is defined as understanding, accepting, and valuing differences between people of different races, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, disabilities, and sexual orientations, as well as differences in personalities, skill sets, experiences, and knowledge bases.
Diversity & inclusion is an important factor for 67% of the workforce.
So how do we improve the hiring process to welcome the diverse pool of candidates:
Review your language overall: let the peer interview you as a test ( tip - select a peer different to your age/gender/background/religion etc). Check with them how the process went for them and make the adjustments from there.
A study on job postings found those using masculine-type words like “ambitious” and “dominate” were less appealing to female applicants.
Have a deep hard look at the questions you are asking. Are some of those suggestive of areas of inherent diversity?
Support of policies: McKinsey’s research found that the #1 company cultural value that women are most attracted to is a flexible schedule. A PwC survey found that compared to older generations, Millennials place more importance on a company culture that emphasizes work/life balance.
Re-write your Job Ads (this time more carefully): the majority of job ads will blissfully generalise the culture of your company and will not be representative of the strongest points of your talent.
Make sure to present the information well and give examples of how it is like to work in your organization. A notion.so or a Canva glazed PDF summarising all the insights from your team would work very well.
Link your Job Ads to your website and give your diverse talent a voice: on your website and in communications - are you giving a spotlight to different people or are you favouring one group in particular?
Rethink referrals: One of the reasons why candidate pipelines can be a bottleneck for diversity is a reliance on hiring through referrals. McKinsey’s research on the diversity found that when men are asked about their professional networks, 63% of them state it’s comprised of “more or all men” vs. 38% of women who state the same. We tend to mingle with people that are similar to us - be conscious of that.
Diversity in the long list: instead of shortlisting you can ask your talent partner for the longlist of candidates (so instead of recommending the 2, the recommendation is made for 10 for instance).
Research featured in the Harvard Business Review found that when the final candidate pool has one minority candidate, he or she has virtually zero chances of getting hired.
However, a “two in the pool effect” represents a promising method for reducing unconscious biases and increasing diversity in the workplace.
If there are at least two female candidates in the final candidate pool:
the odds of hiring a female candidate are 79X greater
If there are at least two minority candidates in the final candidate pool:
the odds of hiring a minority candidate are 194X greater
