International Women’s Day: Ultimate Guide to Recruiting Women

Focusing on gender diversity at your company is necessary to grow your business. In 2019, 57.4% of women were working, making up almost half of the entire workforce. If you’re not focusing on attracting female talent to your business, you’ll be missing out on a large section of available candidates.

But how do you focus on attracting women candidates to your business to create a diverse workforce?

Keep reading for a few tips on attracting and retaining women for your business.

Address Unconscious Biases

Unfortunately, everyone has some unconscious biases that they use to make sense of the world. However, these biases can also be problematic, especially when applied in a recruiting process.

These biases could lead recruiters and hiring managers to decide not to hire a woman for a particular role.

While it can be hard to get rid of these biases, there are certain things that recruiters can do to address them. That’s why you should focus on education. It can be hard to change a behavior if you aren’t even aware of it, so your organization should train all your recruiting staff.

You may even want to find sourcing software to help you uncover unconscious biases. Recruiter.com’s AI software allows you to source talent from an unbiased source and then decide based on a clean data pool.

Make Inclusive Job Postings

Another area to focus on is the job descriptions of the role. Even if you’re not aware of it, specific language may turn off female applicants, causing them to skip over the role altogether even if they would be a great candidate.

You should make sure that you don’t have any language that seems aggressive. Your job titles and descriptions should also be straightforward to understand.

If you use the word “aggressive” in your job posting, 44%  of women said that they wouldn’t want to apply to that job. Instead of using this type of language, try focusing on the facts of the job and what requirements are necessary.

If you include a laundry list of qualifications, many women will feel discouraged if they don’t meet all of them and keep searching for a job that they do meet all the qualifications for.

Know Where to Advertise Job Postings

When you have polished job ads ready to post, you’ll need to know where to advertise them. For women candidates, you should meet them where they are. According to some research , 57.8% of women look for jobs on digital job boards.

So you should focus most of your attention on finding niche job boards that more women might be on. For example, if you’re looking to fill a recruiter role, search for niche job boards geared towards recruiters.

However, you can cast a wider net as well. Look for a women’s employment website and local organizations to network or find jobs. You may even want to look at college fairs and events at women’s colleges.

Even groups on social media are dedicated to helping women find a particular role. There may even be niche groups, like for women in tech. So you should find out where they’re looking and then start advertising there.

Some people might argue that this would exclude men from applying, but you’ll still get plenty of male applicants when you advertise on LinkedIn, job boards, or your careers page. However, by promoting your job in these women-focused groups and places, you’ll also have a higher number of women applying.

Foster a Woman-Friendly Culture

If you want to attract diverse candidates, you’ll need to ensure that you have an excellent recruiting process and a way of retaining women employees. One way to do that is by developing a fantastic woman-friendly company culture.

It would be best if you focused on a culture that invigorates employees, accepts everyone, and creates a great environment to work in for men and women. For example, when hiring in a male-dominated field, like engineering, female colleagues could feel intimated working in that environment. You can attempt to fix that by updating your company culture.

You should ensure that all of your employees have diversity and inclusion training so that you can foster that good culture.

Keep in mind that most women will read reviews on what it’s like to work at your business before accepting a job offer or interview. If you have a great culture, that could be reflected in your reviews and draw in even more talent. However, if the reviews are negative, you’ll need to remedy that.

Be Transparent About Pay

While some states require employers to post the salary in the job description to help close the gender pay gap and promote gender equality, you can show initiative and post the pay scale in your job posting. Even if it’s not required, it can help show that your business is committed to being transparent about pay.

This transparency is essential because, according to Pew Research , in 2020, women earned 84% of what men earned. If women feel like they won’t get equal pay at your company, they may not even apply. When you’re transparent about pay upfront, this is a signal to women that you’re committed to paying everyone fairly.

Foster this transparency even after hiring a new female candidate by explaining their salary and how their benefits factor into that. If an employee ever has questions about their salary even after they’re hired, be as transparent as possible to address their concerns about pay.

Offer a Flexible Work Schedule

While the 9 to 5 schedule has worked for some companies, many women are looking for more flexibility that allows for an excellent work-life balance. You can attract more female candidates by offering a hybrid or remote work schedule, an asynchronous schedule, or even part-time positions.

This will let women know that they can work different hours as needed to handle any problem that might come up. According to one survey , mothers were 40% more likely than fathers were when it came to children having a negative impact on their careers.

If you have the technology to allow remote work or hybrid schedules, you should do so. This could help other women manage their careers and families while still meeting deadlines and finishing projects. All kinds of tools will allow you to let your employees work remotely, so if you haven’t already, you might want to consider making the switch.

If you show your female employees that you trust them enough to get their work done on their schedule, they’ll feel greatly appreciated and motivated to stay at your company.

Start Recruiting Women Today

While these are only a few tips that you can use to recruit women, there are a few other strategies you can try as well. One approach could be to outsource your recruiting process.

At Recruiter.com, we have recruiters on-demand that are here to augment your hiring process and help you find the best talent. We also have tools like specialized job boards and an AI-powered sourcing tool that will find the best female talent out there.

If you’re interested in our recruiting solutions, contact us today  to determine which one is best for you!