Impactful daily actions for the inclusive talent team

December 9, 2020

 

iCIMS Staff

14 min read

It’s tough to pinpoint candidates that thrive in your organization. It’s even tougher to find candidates who see your organization as somewhere they could feel a sense of belonging. 

In the coming year, job seekers’ expectations will be less about performance and compensation and more about a flexible work-life balance, benefits, and an empathetic culture.  

As you pull candidates in through recruitment marketing to assess their skills,  they’re also actively assessing you. Are you the employer that’s the best fit for their goals? They look for tangible examples of how you create a sense of belonging for people of all lifestyles, experiences, abilities, cultures, and more. 

When you think about your talent team, are you prepared to attract these candidates in a meaningful way? It all starts with a commitment to inclusive hiring.  

Ready to hit the ground running? Get the full list of inclusive hiring tactics within your recruiting software now, or read on to learn more about daily habit changes to promote diversity. 

Here’s what inclusive hiring means to today’s leaders: 

When Mark Cuban hired Cynthia Marshall to “save” the Dallas Mavericks’ culture, she expressed, “This is about their lives; this is to make sure they get to have a career that they chose.” 

Read Cynthia Marshall’s full game plan here. 

Our customer, FedEx, takes the approach of, “We’ll do whatever it takes to show people you can have an opportunity at FedEx, and we’ll meet you right where you are.” 

Internally, our talent team has been reflecting and improving, with guidance from the associate director of culture, belonging, inclusion, and diversity of iCIMS, Chinor Lee. Chinor says, “Every perspective matters, every voice deserves to be heard, and everyone should be included and feel as if they belong – and as individuals, we can help make inclusion a standard for workplaces around the world.” 

As you can see, each approach has its intricacies. Your organization will ultimately define what belonging means to your teams and how that translates into the process you use to hire talent who enrich your culture.  

The commonality among these leaders is that they defined the inclusion strategy for their organization while keeping in mind the various complexities their teams face.  

The complexities hiring teams face around inclusive, virtual hiring: 

• Candidates want to know the why: Candidates want to see how you support employees—and it’s not as simple as pointing them to your public pledge for diversity and inclusion or remote work perks. 
  Candidates look to recruiters and hiring managers for authentic conversation about why diversity matters to them. 
• Not all talent pools are diverse: Despite your best efforts, some specialized roles like those within STEM or nursing attract less diverse applicants due to the nature of the role’s gender imbalance in the past. This year, our system data showed that women make up only 26% of tech applicants.
  Get ahead of the imbalance with AI recruitment tech to point job seekers to relevant roles based on their skills and experience rather than wait for them to apply on their own. Without a suggestion to apply for a more technical role, career site visitors may never get to see their potential at your company.
• It’s harder to build intentional connections: When hiring shifted from high touch to virtual, the focus became how to show culture through people and online interactions. Bringing the voice and visuals of diverse employees onto your career pages is a start, but don’t discount the interview process as an opportunity to highlight culture. Candidates look for diversity among each person they encounter during the process to assess a sense of connection. 
  Remember: diverse images and career site testimonials can’t match live conversations with actual people. Let your various interviewers show who they are and why they work for your company while video interviewing.  
• It takes time to be intentional about inclusive hiring: You can’t rush new recruitment marketing platforms to expand the talent search or mitigate bias in the process. As employers get started on inclusive hiring, it can’t be just about metrics like time to fill. You need to lean in and focus on your inclusive hiring strategy to attract the best qualified talent. 
  While the pace may slow to get the right people in the door, the people you do onboard are the ones who will grow into your organization and accelerate the business in the long-term. 

How to bring inclusivity into your day-to-day: 

1. Give the why AND the how: Recruiters need to have active conversations about the company’s commitment to diversity with everyone that comes through the hiring process (including current employees). 
   Why: The why refers to the reason inclusive hiring matters to your organization beyond the productivity of diverse teams. You have a fantastic opportunity to share how your corporate promise continues beyond the job descriptions and share examples of how you include all employees. That way, you attract talent who not only want to feel like they belong on a team but want to share your mission with the community you serve.  
   How: Make sure candidates can see and hear from more diverse panelists of interviewers. Even as someone comes in as an employee referral, a diverse group of team members ensures the hire would be a good fit culturally and skill-wise — without bias from the reference. 
2. Get honest with talent: Candidates don’t want to hear that you’ve figured out diversity and solved the world’s problems. Don’t be afraid to be honest about what you’re doing to grow stronger. It’s just as impactful to share that your organization actively seeks out a culture of belonging, and new hires help shape that.
   Honesty also means showing the human side of your culture. Take away the corporate zoom backgrounds and show the kids running or the dog jumping on your leg. Candidates will feel a sense of ease that you welcome these everyday aspects of life, and the stress of interviewing will dissipate as they see you’re a company that values their real life as much as their work life. 
3. Look at the person, not the role: You may be talking to an incredible candidate in interviews but end up losing him/her if the experience doesn’t stack up to the position he/she applied to. The same thing can happen if a candidate’s transferable skills show a great match, but you’re hung up on a degree requirement. Your talent search becomes more diversified when you look at skills through a broader lens. 
   Take time to share that candidate’s information with hiring managers who may have relevant roles upcoming and add the candidate’s email to a campaign to keep the candidate informed and excited. While competing employers may dismiss that individual, you provide an expanded path to employment.  
4. Hire intentionally but efficiently: To build a connection with talent, you’ll want your recruiters focused on those critical moments of conversation or live interactions. For the quick updates and interview confirmations, lean on automation.
   The automated capabilities of a candidate relationship management tool help you build strong and inclusive pipelines over time. The time you spend attracting diverse candidates will continue to benefit your team even if you don’t hire that person. Each month, it’s easier to search your candidate base, send tailored communications, and host virtual hiring events to build relationships.  

Interested in learning more about inclusive hiring best practices? See how technology can support you with our inclusive hiring at every stage infographic.