16 HR Quality Checks to Ensure You’re Recruiting With Equity
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers!
Today’s Question: How do you ensure your recruiting process is truly equitable?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization composed of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs.
Taking a skills-based approach can help reduce systemic and unconscious biases. Skills-based recruitment technologies extrapolate skills from resumes and produce lists of the top candidate matches based on candidates’ skill sets. This information can help drive significant diversity and inclusion in your workforce.
— Sean Hinton, SkyHive
Many companies are using digital screening tools, video interviews, and assessments to avoid bias. These tools provide reports that explain why someone was rejected or hired, which can really help make sure that HR pros and recruiters are doing their jobs without discrimination.
— Piyush Jain, SIMpalm
Data is a powerful tool, and it doesn’t lie. Check the data about the diversity of your talent pipeline. If it doesn’t reflect the diversity of the candidate market, look into why. For example, 35 percent of STEM students in the UK are women, so if you’re in a STEM-focused industry and based in the UK, you should be working toward 35 percent of your workforce being women.
— Thomas Smale, FE International
Paying attention to the local demographics of your talent sources can help keep hiring equitable. The goal is to identify potential inequalities where a segment of the population may not be equally represented in your hiring pool. The conscious attempt to correct these inequalities can help overcome the unconscious biases that may have prompted them in the first place.
— Reuben Yonatan, GetVoIP
Studies have shown candidates’ names and personal information can trigger unconscious biases in hiring decision-makers. To avoid that, implement a program that removes names and other identifying information from resumes for a first review. This practice is called “blind hiring,” and it allows recruiters and hiring mangers to focus on a candidate’s relevant skills.
— Duran Inci, Optimum7
We practice transparency in every job opening. We share details like the applicant list, reasons for declining an applicant, applicant heat map, and sources of applicants. We also record all calls or interviews with our applicants. Having these records and being transparent about them helps us ensure equity in hiring.
— Daisy Jing, Banish
Although it’s important for your hiring committee to be equitable, it’s equally important that you encourage applications from a diverse range of job seekers. Be sure to include in your job ad a note welcoming self-identification from applicants who belong to marginalized groups or those living with a disability.
— Amine Rahal, IronMonk Solutions
Hiring can easily be tainted by personal bias. It is human nature to have a fairly specific person in mind when starting the hiring process. If we recognize this bias, we can guard against it by developing objective hiring measures and putting a team in place to review those objective measures.
— Ryan Meghdies, Tastic Marketing Inc.
In general, it’s important to ensure that turnover is minimal, because it carries huge costs for an organization. When turnover rates are significantly high, that’s an indication that something isn’t working in the recruiting process. Take a look at how hiring is being done to ensure your teams are properly following internal guidelines.
— Kelly Richardson, Infobrandz
It is best to have a handful of employees vet each candidate. That way, you get multiple perspectives. Review what your employees have to say about each candidate. Pay close attention to any common themes that arise in their feedback.
— Matthew Podolsky, Florida Law Advisers, P.A.
Your best bet to make sure you’re hiring with equity is to start with your HR department. Work toward creating a diverse team there, and you’ll have equity checks built right into the hiring process.
— Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
Most companies use HR software for the first-level screening of applicants. As a result, you might miss some great candidates because they’re not good at writing resumes with the right keywords. Review your screening parameters by getting input from people in similar roles to ensure you’re using the right keywords and phrases. Include some nontechnical keywords, too, to ensure coverage across a wide range of candidates.
— Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
It shouldn’t be up to HR alone to decide who is the best fit for the company. Your employees should also have a say, as they’re the ones doing the work and can determine if someone is a good fit or not. Even if they don’t have the final say, your employees can offer some vital feedback. Ask your employees what makes a good candidate and go from there.
— Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
Every employee should be an asset to your company. If the HR team did a good job in screening and gauging the compatibility of the new recruit, your new hire should be able to perform at the expected level. Whether you’re investing in real estate or employees, the output (units of production, sales, etc.) should be higher than the input (cost, time, space).
— Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz
It’s important that someone is surveying the interviewees as they come in. It’s best to get a hold of candidate feedback at an early stage so you can hear about potential issues before they become bigger problems.
— Nicole Munoz, Nicole Munoz Consulting, Inc.
There are companies people actively want to work for, and candidates will seek out specific positions just to be part of those companies. You want your company’s reputation to be so good that you barely have to lift a finger to find high-quality candidates. Companies like Google and Amazon receive tons of applications based on word of mouth alone.
— Jared Atchison, WPForms