DE&I is a hot topic across all areas of recruitment right now, and rightly so. More and more businesses are starting to understand the benefit of a diverse workforce, but if you’re not creating equity in your recruitment practises through an inclusive process, you are not setting yourself up for success when it comes to hiring diverse talent.
We will be publishing more content on DE&I in coming months, but to start, below is a simple guide to creating a more inclusive recruitment process:
- Extend your timescales to find talent – give your talent teams and recruitment partners more time to go beyond their immediate networks to find diverse talent for your business. Trying to do things at your usual speed, especially in today’s market, won’t give enough time to do a broader search than usual.
- Be open with salary bandings and benefits – being open about salary will allow talent in the market to determine if your role is right for them and reduce wasted time on both sides. In addition, you should be speaking about your inclusive benefits to attract a diverse candidate base – for example, what is your parental leave policy? What flexibility do you offer? Do you offer benefits to working parents? Do you offer health, mental health and wellness benefits? Make sure these are openly known!
- Interview process – is your interview panel diverse? Do you have more than one person screening CVs and at interview? Have your interviewers received unconscious bias training? Is your interview structured and based on competencies to remove personal bias and screen based on skillset and experience? If not, review this, as you may not be creating an inclusive environment.
- Your D&I agenda – is this something you and your interviewers can talk confidently about? Is it on your careers page and website so it is easy to find? Can you include talking about your D&I strategy, your goals and objectives to candidates at interview?
- Feedback – do you have a robust feedback process in place? Do you score candidates against technical competencies and not just “culture fit”? Are you making sure that detailed feedback is provided to every candidate each time? If not, review this and put it in place.
- Accessibility – have you considered making sure your application and interview process is accessible to all? Do you give candidates the chance to raise any accessibility needs? If you don’t, investigate implementing this, to drive a more inclusive process.
If you’d like to discuss your DE&I strategy further, please reach out to our Managing Director, Lucy Morgan, on lucy.morgan@pod-talent.com