8 Ways Companies Can Make the Hiring Process More Equitable
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers!
Today’s Question: What advice would you give to companies looking to recruit employees with equity in mind?
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.
1. Dig Deeper Into Your Candidates’ Backgrounds
Understand that many of the standard metrics for recruitment exist to limit mobility for marginalized populations. Instead of prioritizing education and experience, use an in-depth interview process to identify candidates who are willing and able to grow with your company based on their life experience. You’ll find that this opens your business up to a far more diverse hiring pool. — Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy
2. Diversify Your Outreach Channels
If you are really focused on building a diverse team, then make sure you don’t just keep looking in the same place. Opt for different avenues to reach different people and build a pool of diverse candidates. — Maria Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Reflect on Your Current Hiring Practices
The first step to building a more diverse workforce is always reviewing the hiring strategy you currently have in place to identify ways you can improve it and do better. Reflect on your current processes, looking for places where bias may be getting in the way of hiring fairly. — Jared Atchison, WPForms
4. Actively Seek Out New Talent Pools
Your candidate pool will only be as diverse as your recruiting efforts. A lot of companies don’t want to go outside of their normal recruiting channels to diversify their applicant pools, but that’s the only way to do it. It takes time and effort to reach out and build bridges. You can’t rely too heavily on inbound recommendations or hiring from your network. You have to go out on job boards and invite people from other communities to apply. — Kaitlyn Witman, Rainfactory
5. Recognize That Talent Can Come From Anywhere
This question is very important to me, as someone who has written a great deal about the importance of diversity in the workplace. I always come back to the simple principle of recognizing that talent can appear at your door in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Stick to that guiding notion and you should start moving in the right direction. — Tyler Bray, TK Trailer Parts
6. Invest in Unconscious Bias Training
To recruit a diverse workforce, leaders and hiring managers must be open to considering all candidates. Unfortunately, unconscious biases often get in the way. To create a company culture that prioritizes and embraces equity, all employees should receive unconscious bias training on an ongoing basis. — Jonathan Prichard, MattressInsider.com
7. Keep the Hiring Process Consistent for All
Make sure that the hiring process looks the same for each individual candidate. You can’t pick and choose which candidates are given fair treatment as this will seep into the company culture and tarnish its reputation for diversity. It’s crucial to promote justice and fairness across the board to set a high standard for your team. — Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
8. Standardize the Interview Process
To ensure a more equitable interviewing process, standardize it. Develop a thorough plan for interview scheduling, methods of interviewing, and interview questions. This will ensure all candidates receive the same interview conditions and experience. — Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker
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