Malcolm Forbes defines diversity as “the art of thinking independently together.” Having diverse teams allows an organization to benefit from new ideas and the different experiences and perspectives needed to succeed.
A recent study by Mckinsey found that companies with “the most ethnically/culturally diverse executive teams – not only in terms of absolute representation but also of the variety or mix of ethnicities – are 33% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability.” Diversity recruiting is often talked about, but it can be challenging to know how to execute. The right tool can be a valuable ally in sourcing diverse talent.
Include is a company committed to helping diverse tech talent find jobs and advance their careers while being visible and valued. Job seekers can register and connect with companies committed to building diverse teams. Include offers employers a range of services from simple job postings to access to resume databases and support staff.
SeekOut is a social aggregation sourcing tool that allows you to apply diversity search filters while searching through their more than 600 Million candidate profiles. Compared to more traditional resume databases or professional networking tools, SeekOut pulls in candidate information from public profiles, GitHub, Expert profiles, and 37 other social networks to provide more candidate profiles than Indeed and LinkedIn combined.
In addition to diversity tags, SeekOut also offers a blind hiring mode that allows both recruiters and hiring managers to reduce unconscious bias by masking candidate pictures and names. This feature helps to showcase candidate skills and experience during both sourcing and initial review. While it is difficult to eliminate all biases, SeekOut is continuously innovating and applying client recommendations back into their tool.
As a bonus, they offer built-in talent pool insights, marketing drip campaigns, ATS/CRM integration, candidate contact information, custom search filters, AI/ML sourcing with AI matching, and a live chat for customer service.
As a bootstrapping startup myself, I certainly understand the value of a free resource. Thankfully, there are many free tools and resources available to aid with diversity sourcing, and I have had success with using all of these in my business.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics can help narrow a search using demographic data, including unemployment rates, diversity statistics, average income, and more. While this website can be overwhelming at first, they provide helpful guides and easy to use data tools to help you start.
Justicemap.org is a visual data resource that provides the diversity breakdown on a national and county level. Click anywhere on the map, and you’ll get a visual representation of the demographic percentages. Knowing where candidates are located will help to frame your search.
US News’ Campus Ethnic Diversity Breakdown can help with providing data around diverse college populations. This article takes undergraduate data from colleges across the US and ranks them from the most diverse to the least. This tool can be used to strategically target historically diverse colleges and universities in a given area.
Finding Diverse Talent Is Hard… Engaging With Diverse Talent Is Harder
A Deloitte survey revealed that 83% of millennials feel empowered and engaged in the workplace when they believe their company is authentic in their pursuit of an inclusive and diverse culture. In that same survey, Deloitte emphasized that those results will become even more critical in the future since, by 2025, Millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce.
When reaching out to potential candidates, keep in mind that people value different things, but ultimately, they need to visualize themselves in the role. Hewlett-Packard did an internal survey to investigate why fewer females were in senior leadership roles than males.
They found that female employees mostly applied for promotions when they believed they met 100% of the job description qualifications. In comparison, male employees mainly used for similar promotions when they felt that they met at least 60% of the qualifications required.
The lesson here is to thoughtfully consider whether all of the job description requirements that are being shared with potential candidates (found using the resources shared earlier) are necessary to do the job. Making that subtle change could significantly impact opening the talent pool to candidates that are qualified but may not have applied in the past.
To further improve the candidate engagement rate, make sure to proofread the outreach message itself to ensure it is inclusive. Professors from the University of Waterloo and Duke studied how male and female-gendered words in a job description impacted the number of female applicants. The study showed that masculine worded job descriptions significantly impacted female applicants’ belief that they weren’t a fit.
In contrast, feminine worded job descriptions had no impact on male applicants. I could not find a credible study of the effects of neutrally coded job descriptions on non-binary candidates. Still, recruiters can continue to educate themselves with articles like this one from the Washington Post on how to be both engaging and inclusive with language. If you use SeekOut, they offer a subject line scoring tool to maximize the message open rate.
Companies will benefit from prioritizing diversity with the result of talent attraction, retention, and profitability. They need to be innovative in where they post, source and attract talent.
