Create a Diversity Recruiting Strategy That is Strong

The January 2020 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that more job openings in the current job market are available than people searching for work. As a result, businesses in all industries face the tightest labor market in nearly 50 years, requiring employers to adapt.In addition to a shortage of applicants, rapidly changing workplace demographics have been a struggle for many businesses. Workplace demographics continue to evolve fast, and they won't slow down anytime soon. In addition, experts predict that people of color will become the majority in the next few decades, making workplace diversity and the development of a diversity recruiting strategy critical.

What Is a Diversity Recruitment Strategy and Why Is It important?

A diversity recruitment strategy attracts, engages, assesses, and hires a diverse and talented workforce. Companies that invest in improving their DE&I to benefit from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. A well-defined diversity recruitment strategy creates and defines goals, actionable items, and measures of success.Often, a diversity recruitment strategy is part of a larger plan of inclusion that ensures that the company workforce reflects the communities they operate in and serves the needs of their customers. Many leading companies recognize the business benefits of workplace diversity and its effect on job satisfaction, community impact, and innovation.With a rapidly shrinking labor pool, workplace diversity is more important now than ever before. Talented job candidates have more options than ever and can search out companies that proactively promote inclusion. Trends in populations by age, sex, race, and ethnicity create a challenge for many businesses that require direct, measurable actions that a diversity recruitment strategy provides.

How To Get Started

A diversity recruiting strategy, like many business plans, is a constantly evolving process. When creating or revising your strategy, it is essential to carefully consider factors outside of your business and how they will affect your recruiting efforts.Current events in the news, such as pay equity, the #metoo movement, and BLM, affect employees directly and create reasons for a company to be deliberate about diversity and inclusion. It is also critical to consider your competition and how your diversity initiatives compare to evaluate your strategy and success efforts.As part of a larger plan to foster inclusion, your diversity recruiting strategy is related to how your company will respond to advancing technology, the skills gap, training and development, and career planning. While pay and benefits were once the primary motivation for job seekers, talented applicants today are also concerned with company culture and employee resources. These factors can affect how your brand is perceived, impacting diversity, recruiting, and retention.

Define your Goals

Once you have examined these factors, present them to crucial decision-makers for input and develop a shared starting point and vision to ensure support. Your diversity recruiting strategy should align with your company's mission and goals and reap the business benefits that come with addressing the needs of a workforce that includes men, women, people of many ethnic backgrounds, veterans, young, old, and more.As you work with your key people to define and set your goals, establish and record the main objectives of your diversity recruiting strategy. Define your specific goals utilizing the company and job seeker data to reduce the gap between what's important to potential employees and the company. Meeting the expectations of job seekers concerning diversity will place you at the forefront in many applicant's job searches.

Create and Execute Your Diversity Recruiting Action Plan

With well-defined goals established and the support of your leadership team, it's time to create and execute your plan. Examine each phase of your process and determine what steps are required and who is responsible for implementation. As you begin to execute, consider your hiring processes and policies and tailor them to job applicants' values. When creating and managing your plan, there are several vital things to consider.

Attract

Examine how your company defines diversity and how that definition equates with job seeker expectations. Position your brand to reflect a commitment to diversity by clearly communicating this message throughout your organization, in public forums, and in your marketing efforts to attract a diverse pool of talented applicants.

Engage

Your recruitment communications should be as diverse as your potential candidates, with unique messages targeting specific demographics. Choosing the right message and channel of communication can help you increase brand awareness and reach a diverse group of qualified applicants.

Sourcing

Often we fall into the habit of doing things the same way we've always done it, which can be costly. As the workforce has evolved, so have the resources that potential candidates use to search for jobs. Ensure that your efforts enable you to source from the most desirable applicant pools.

Screening

To attract the most qualified candidates, you should write your job descriptions in a way that attracts a diverse group. In addition, be aware of unconscious bias during the screening process by utilizing technology to keep your talent pool diverse.

Interviewing

To remove any possible bias during the interview process, develop standardized interview questions. Additionally, your hiring team should reflect the diversity of your company. A properly trained hiring team is capable of effectively interviewing applicants from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Assess

Different assessment types are suitable for diversity. Moreover, one assesses with a standardized evaluation, created with a focus on eliminating subconscious bias. When communicating with applicants, use the communication form that their demographic group prefers.

Offer and Hire

After narrowing down your choices, it's time to present your candidate with an attractive offer. This includes employee benefits that are attractive across demographic groups. Additionally, your proposal should consist of employee resources that will help your new hire acclimate and succeed.

Measuring Success

Measuring the success of your diversity recruiting strategy is crucial to its effectiveness. One of the best ways to measure the success of your plan is to define key performance indicators or KPIs. By tracking KPIs monthly or quarterly, you will begin to notice a correlation between company-wide KPI progress and diversity metrics.Join us for our daily webinar to learn more here. You can also learn more about Diversity recruitment in this blog.