Six steps to effective diversity in recruitment.

Diversity in recruitment is certainly a hot topic and one that causing plenty of organisations to rethink how their recruitment practices and the actions of hiring managers impact candidate prospects.

Like most areas of workforce practice, effective use of data is enabling organisations to get an ever-better picture of how intentions are working in practice; and how to refine practices to better achieve intended outcomes such as ensuring workforces better reflect an organisations customer base or society as a whole.

In many cases this isn’t driven by principal alone, organisations that embrace workforce diversity consistently outperform their less enlightened peers and statutory reporting requirements such as gender pay gap reporting are placing pressure on organisations to review how they perform.

While data capture enables organisations to capture what is happening, ensuring candidates are aware of the efforts taken to ensure fairness in the hiring process can have a distinctly positive impact on the volume and quantity of applications.

At the heart of ensuring objectivity in hiring processes, is a crystal-clear focus on the required skills and competences. Back this up with robust scoring mechanisms ensures hiring decisions are completely objective and not swayed by interviewing managers unconscious biases.

So how should organisations reconcile this relentless march towards scientific objectivity with the human need for personal relationships to underpin how we work with each other? And how well can your organisation answer the following questions with respect to its impact on recruitment diversity?

1.       Where are we searching for candidates?

2.       Are we using the right language?

3.       How are recruitment activities perceived by different candidate groups?

4.       How objective are hiring managers?

5.       How much emphasis is placed on rapport versus objective measures?

6.       How well can we demonstrate that diversity in recruitment is taken seriously?

Melius works with clients to create talent acquisitions strategies that maximise workforce diversity. For an informal conversation about how to improve your organisations recruitment practices, get in touch with Melius.