Workplace diversity and inclusion are key to any organization’s success. Setting diversity goals during the hiring process can save a lot of hassle on the back end while promoting equity and reducing the costs of recruitment. Finding a way to meet your DEI goals is now easier than ever—but with more options, choosing the right method that both works and fits your budget, can be tough. Here are a few important hiring best practices, as well as cost-effective ways to implement them into your recruitment strategy.
Take Internal Mobility Into Account
When looking for a candidate to fill a role in your company, sometimes the best place to look is right next to you. Leveraging the various skill sets of your current employees can streamline the hiring process. Building your recruitment pipeline and allowing for promotion can improve inclusion; increasing incentives and showing appreciation for skill acquisition will also raise the value of each employee to the organization.
Use Data-Driven Recruiting
Utilizing available data during the hiring process is a hiring best practice that can save countless hours. Finding which aspect of your hiring strategy needs addressing, and changing your next plan accordingly, requires proper use of data. To progress your organization towards equity, this practice is absolutely crucial.
One option you can use to gather data is a diversity audit. This can take the form of an anonymous survey, an overview of the organization’s diversity number and comparing them to industry benchmarks, or another fitting form of evaluation. Performing an audit in regards to your current recruitment plan can determine which facets of that system are falling short. Utilizing artificial intelligence software (AI)—such as an AI chatbot—can help to filter candidates reliably without bias, as well as provide personal conversation to candidates that a simple Q&A page cannot.
Update Your Job Listings
Keeping your job listings up to standard is a crucial hiring best practice when it comes to improving diversity in the workplace and acquiring talent. Rewording your advertisement might make the job appear more approachable to potential applicants, and the tone you adopt should be tailored to the ideal candidate as opposed to one demographic. Expanding the outreach of your listings is equally, if not more important. Programmatic recruitment software, such as pandoIQ, can increase the number of job boards your listing is advertised on autonomously and improve your outreach to all possible applicants.
Implement Candidate Screening Software
The screening stage is arguably the portion of hiring where human bias can make the biggest impact. Fortunately, this problem is easily solved by at least partially removing people from the equation. Using available tools like AI recruitment screening software can remove layers of prejudice in the recruitment process. Data like name, age, race, and gender are not taken into account when the software weeds out certain candidates that just aren’t right for the job, further clearing the recruitment pipeline.
Artificial intelligence evaluation software isn’t limited to running through resumes. It can be used at nearly any stage of the hiring process:
- Initial review of applicants’ resumes
- Screening applicants’ social media
- Aptitude testing candidates pre-interview
- Assessing the talent during the active recruitment phase
Striving towards equity and inclusion in both hiring and work culture is difficult—but taking the first step can be simple. Implementing hiring best practices into your recruitment plan can drastically improve diversity over time, and can elevate your org to the standard of the new decade.