An important early step to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in your organization is to review how your recruiting and hiring is done—from how job advertisements are written to which candidate sources are mined for talent to what interview questions are used and which recruitment partners are chosen.
Most of us have work to do and we wanted to share a few suggestions and articles that may help you consider opportunities to improve DE&I in your organization.
Rethink how your job postings are written
There is so much written out there on how to remove bias from your job descriptions. There is even some technology that helps you choose more inclusive words for you! While you don’t necessarily need to go and purchase this technology, you do need to consider how language may be either discriminating or limiting your candidate pool from even applying. In our experience, and we think you may agree that job postings need some work in general. Katrina Kibben may be one to follow for some tips and tools to consider as you change how traditional job posts have been written.
Diversify Your Recruitment Sources to Improve DE&I
We had an incredible conversation around this topic at our last HR Roundtable as we discussed how to retain our current talent and attract new talent to the STL region. Diversity, equity and inclusion is paramount for our region moving forward. Site selectors examine this closely when choosing where to start or expand their businesses.
One HR leader shared an organization called Insight St. Louis. InSight St. Louis is a non-profit organization dedicated to recruiting the best graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other undergraduate institutions to the St. Louis region to live and work. Each year Insight St. Louis also hosts a unique experience aimed at helping current college students get to know the St. Louis Region and the dynamic career opportunities that exist in our corporate community. If you want to read the rest of the discussion highlights from this roundtable, you can find it here.
Consider how your interview process or questions could be more inclusive
If we want to improve inclusive hiring practices, we need to go beyond a candidate’s past experiences – which can reflect culture and circumstance, and do a deeper dive into ability, potential and capacity to do the job both today and in the future.
Here are some ways you can adjust your approach to behavioral interviewing to ensure it truly surfaces the best candidate – not the most privileged. This article really got our team thinking and we are modifying our interview approach. We hope it is helpful for you too.
Ensure the support is in place to foster belonging (and retention)
To better ensure our diverse team members can fully contribute and want to stay, our workplaces and region need to create a culture of “belonging.” Research shows a strong correlation between sense of belonging and retention and there is an even a greater correlation for underrepresented groups. Here is an interesting article that talks about the importance of belonging in business today.
Start somewhere!
Take some time to evaluate what makes the most sense for your organization but don’t let over planning stop you from taking a first step. You don’t have to have it all figured out to start. Any step you take to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in your organization is a step in the right direction and you can always learn along the way.
As always, we are here to help plug into your process wherever you need us to help create and deliver the experiences that support your organizational values and exceed the expectations of your candidates.
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