Diversity hiring practices & strategies for success

We’ve all read those corporate diversity articles that seem as if they were written by a robot trying to pass a compliance test. If you want to truly build a great team and an inclusive workplace, you need to look beyond the buzzwords.

We speak to managers every day who want to change their hiring habits, but don’t know where to start. Let’s look at what diversity hiring means in the real world, and how you can make it work for your business.

What are we talking about here?

Diversity hiring isn’t about checking boxes or trying to meet quotas just to look good on LinkedIn. It means ensuring your hiring process provides everyone with an equal opportunity, while creating a team that authentically mirrors the real world.

You are deliberately mixing people of different backgrounds, personalities, life stories.

Here’s how to think about it: Diversity generally falls into two buckets.

• What you’re born with – this is natural diversity. It has things like race and gender and age and so forth.
• What you acquire along the way – this is acquired diversity. It’s the things you earn over time. Your education, your specialized skill sets, your previous jobs, your values.

Mix both types and you get huge competitive advantage.

Why Diversity Hiring Really Matters 

If everyone in your office grew up in the same town, went to the same college and thinks just like you, your business will stagnate.

You’ll fall into “groupthink,” revert to old habits and totally miss what your customers really want. When you intentionally build a diverse team, everything gets better:

You solve problems faster. People from different backgrounds see challenges differently. You get better answers. Someone’s going to see a blind spot you totally missed.

People actually stay in their jobs. When employees feel they can be their true selves at work, they stay. That means lower turnover and less money spent on constant backfilling.

You understand your customers. A team with different backgrounds can relate to a much wider range of customers, which directly improves your products and your marketing.

8 Diversity Hiring Strategies You Can Act On

So, how do you actually do this? You need actionable diverse hiring practices, not just a mission statement on your website. Here are eight simple diversity hiring practices you can start using today:

Reword your job descriptions

Get rid of the corporate and biased language. Keep it simple so you don’t accidentally scare off great candidates.

Expand your search

Don’t just post on the same two job boards. Find niche networks and community groups where you can find underrepresented talent.

Use blind hiring

Have your team review resumes with identifying info such as names, photos and graduation dates removed. That’s the easiest way to get rid of unconscious bias.

Train your interviewers

Ensure that your hiring managers are trained on how to conduct a fair interview and are aware of their own biases.

Focus on skills, not elite university degrees

Think about someone’s skills and ability to grow, not where they went to school.

Provide flexibility

Hybrid working, flexible hours and so on will make your company a much more attractive proposition to parents, caretakers, and people with different life arrangements.

Set real goals

Create a clear plan with measurable goals so your team knows exactly what success looks like.

Bring in the pros

Let’s be honest, this is tough work to do alone. If you are struggling to find the right talent, outsourcing can be a game changer. Getting good employees is only half the equation, but retaining them is what completes the equation.

If you hire a diverse employee base, but have a traditional corporate culture, you’re going to lose a lot of those employees in a few months.  If you are looking to grow your business or organization quickly through diverse hires, an RPO services provider can assist with many aspects of your recruiting efforts.

RPO services can help you fix your current hiring process with a wide network and resources, analytics and tools.