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      A Step-By-Step Checklist To Inclusive Hiring in 2022

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      Many HR departments are attempting to create a diverse workplace in today’s world, but you can’t have diversity without inclusion.
      To construct a diverse team and a modern and attractive workplace culture, HR staff must create an environment that welcomes all individuals and fosters equal engagement and representation.
      In recent years, there has been a significant effort in the UK to fight for equality, to the point that employers are instituting quotas based on gender, BAME, disability, and even sexual orientation.
      There are two significant types of diversity in today’s workplace:
      First, inherent diversity is concerned with qualities such as race, gender, and age. Education, experience, beliefs, skills, and knowledge are all aspects of acquired variety.
      Natural HR has set out to explore our top ideas for making a diverse and inclusive recruitment process a standard element of your people talent strategy in this article.
      What is the definition of workplace diversity?
      It is critical to remember that workplace diversity is defined as when a company understands, accepts, and values differences between people of different races, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, disabilities, and sexual orientations, as well as differences in personalities, skill sets, experiences, and knowledge.
      What are the benefits of diversity and inclusivity recruitment?
      Having a functional diversity and inclusion strategy that is incorporated into your recruitment workflow will provide your company with various benefits, including:

      Hiring better talent.
      Being able to make more informed business decisions.
      Increasing the performance of your teams.
      Accelerating innovation by allowing different mindsets to collaborate.
      Gaining more decadent customer satisfaction due to high-quality staff.
      Improving company culture with improved employee satisfaction.

      The inclusive hiring in the workplace checklist
      The tutorial below will walk you through the whole recruitment process, from bringing on a new team member to crafting a job advertisement and interviewing qualified candidates. It will include critical considerations to ensure that diversity and inclusion are prioritized at each stage.
      1. Audit your job adverts to remove bias:
      When it comes to inclusive and diverse recruitment, you can’t look forward without looking back. As a result, the first step you must take is to assess your whole recruitment pipeline to identify faults and begin implementing improvements that will address diversity and inclusivity concerns.
      When reviewing historical job advertisements, you may find a propensity to employ more masculine or feminine language in job advertisements, which may discourage particular groups from applying for specific roles. Based on the findings of this analysis, you may then retroactively apply new conditions to the recruiting procedure to reduce biases in future recruitment drives.
      2. Target sources where diverse candidates are focused:
      It is now easier than ever to recruit applicants from a large skill pool with the Internet’s strength. To that end, sourcing individuals from several sources is a terrific method to diversify your recruitment pool.
      Rather than relying solely on traditional job boards or recruitment agencies, look for chances to diversify candidates through alternative sources such as educational institutions, government agencies, and even rehabilitation centers.
      You might also communicate directly with organizations that focus on specific areas; for example, for a technology post, you could interact directly with women in technology groups to connect with suitable female applicants.
      3. Encourage your employees to utilize their network:
      If you want to hire more of a specific group of under-represented people, reach out to some of your current team members who fall into that category.
      Creating an internal applicant recommendation program is one approach to accomplish this. You will be able to connect with similar candidates from varied backgrounds by utilizing your existing internal pool of diverse workers.
      4. Offer internships targeted at underrepresented groups:
      Offering internships to folks with specialized credentials is a terrific approach to foster up-and-coming talent in your sector. To accomplish this, you may form collaborations with education and community organizations in your area to provide an opportunity to groups that may struggle to take the first steps into the roles you’re recruiting for.
      5. Develop an employer brand that showcases your diversity:
      When developing a brand identity, don’t overlook the significance of diversity and inclusivity. You should encourage employees from various backgrounds to share their experiences with your organization, which you should then incorporate into your employer and recruiting branding.
      Having these stories in place and actively pushing them in your applicant sourcing is a terrific approach to ensure your diversity recruiting strategy is working properly.
      6. Utilize blind recruitment:
      Blind recruitment is one of the most popular trends in the industry. To reduce bias during the first recruitment stage, it takes steps to blackout essential information such as name, age, education, and candidate photos. The idea here is to avoid further discrimination in who you choose to interview.
      7. Rethink what factors you screen for when hiring:
      When determining what your ideal recruit looks like, it is vital to ensure that your possible candidates exhibit the characteristics that your firm values. Throughout the recruitment process, examine how you’re screening candidates and yourself to see whether you’re directing the outcomes towards specific types of people owing to potential bias.
      Chris Bourne is Head of Marketing at Natural HR. Natural HR is a cloud-based HR software for small businesses and organizations looking to improve staff management and pay. 
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      Why AI Recruiting is Key to Growth in 2022

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      Business priorities in 2022 have all shifted to center around talent. Primarily, finding it. The Great Resignation, or the Great Reshuffle, or the Big Quit — whatever you want to call it — continues to dominate headlines and highlight the ongoing shortage of labor. But companies need to understand that the skewed supply and demand ratio for talent is here to stay. One study even predicts a global human talent shortage of 85 million workers by 2030.
      Despite this trend seeming to look like old news at this point, many organizations’ hiring programs were still completely caught off guard over the last year. In a report by Hiretual, 61% of recruiters said sourcing talent was their biggest challenge in 2021. At the end of 2020, when asked about their biggest anticipated concern, sourcing talent didn’t even make it to the top three.
      That same report found the second and third biggest challenges for recruiters surveyed went to candidate engagement and employer competition, respectively. Again, when recruiters were asked the same question the year before, neither of these obstacles was high on the list.
      What these responses signal is a shift in priority from inbound to outbound recruiting. That is, rather than relying on workers to go out and find jobs, companies are now having to sell available jobs to workers — and doing so at scale is proving difficult. While companies and recruiters may be beginning to understand this, the amount of LinkedIn posts we’re still seeing from leaders exclaiming, “We’re Hiring!” — expecting qualified prospects to go out of their way and click through to a boring careers page — shows not many have adapted to compete.
      As organizations around the world refine strategies for the future, now is the time to commit to growth, and adapt to achieve it. Companies that do will stand to benefit from a final post-pandemic jolt to productivity, setting themselves up for a more sustainable future. But with more jobs available than there are workers to do them, those that fail to change their recruiting strategy will see their workforce — and success — atrophy.
      Getting More Human With AI
      The pressure is on for talent acquisition, but changing priorities brought on by the pandemic will require recruiters to do more than fill jobs. Going forward, recruiters must offer opportunities that meet heightened needs from talent (such as more inclusive cultures and more flexible work schedules) and align with refined company objectives (like scaling skill sets and leading product innovation).
      To do that effectively, recruiters need to be able to spend more time doing the more human aspects of the job, to provide a better experience to candidates, and better qualify talent for the needs of the business — now and for the future.
      If 2021 investment data is any indication, talent acquisition tech stacks are getting reevaluated. In fact, 62% of companies increased their investment in talent acquisition technology last year, according to Aptitude Research. Because something has to give, more companies than ever before will look to AI recruitment technologies to give themselves a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways AI will help companies address key recruiting challenges in 2022.
      Revealing Blind Spots
      Not all talent is accessible in the same places, and many recruiters are looking for candidates with too narrow of a view into the available talent pool. Usually limited by a handful of disparate job boards, with limited search functionality or candidate profile visibility, talent acquisition pros end up missing access to a large share of qualified talent.
      AI recruiting tools will broaden the scope of available talent. By pulling candidate profile data from multiple talent pools, hiring teams can access significantly more of the total talent population and search from a single source. Some platforms are approaching access to almost a billion candidates. Companies that need to scale growth will have more options, and more opportunities to hire.
      In addition, AI will help recruiting teams remove limitations to how they find talent by mitigating unconscious bias from the process to make more equitable hiring decisions. This works by automatically matching candidates based on the skills relevancy of what a recruiter is looking for, rather than focusing on any other candidate’s features. For example, blind searches can be conducted to remove attributes like gender or race, or even education, to help remove bias and lack of diversity in the hiring process.
      By managing diversity in the outbound phase of the recruiting process — as opposed to scrubbing data in ATSs or CRMs — organizations can take a more proactive approach to make equitable hiring decisions.
      Meeting the Need for Speed
      To reach goals for scale, hiring teams need to shorten the time it takes to bring the right jobs to the right people. With AI, organizations will begin to automate more of the transactional and respective aspects of the hiring process. This will give recruiters more time to focus on building relationships by engaging prospective talent in meaningful ways.
      Without the right technology, recruiters will spend less time adding value to the process. Automation will free up the time it takes for recruiters to facilitate communication by removing manual tasks like bulk outreach, scheduling, and managing candidate pipeline data, so they can spend more time consulting with talent to place them in roles that best fit their interests, ambitions, and experience.
      Teams leveraging AI will encounter fewer obstacles with potential candidates in misaligned job expectations and broken feedback loops, resulting in faster time to hire and smoother onboarding experiences.
      Establishing a Foundation for Growth
      For many candidates, contact with a recruiter is the first moment of exposure they have with an organization. That first impression has the potential to create interest by offering the candidate valuable and relevant experience. It also has the potential to diminish the brand in the eye of prospects and their peers.
      With the help of AI, organizations will set up hiring teams to showcase their brand to candidates in the best light and build a workforce that better supports company objectives for the long run. By engaging talent with a more inclusive approach, increasing the speed and ease of the hiring process, and broadening the scope of talent they see and consider, only organizations leaning on AI will overcome today’s hiring challenges to build workforces that grow.
      Shannon Pritchett is Head of Community at both Hiretual and Evry1 (which she co-founded in 2021). 
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      Hired Candidate Spotlight – David Achee

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      Congrats on your new role! How did you first hear about Hired? I actually first started using Hired as a hiring manager for a startup. I enjoyed the tool so much I decided to use it when I started the job search process myself. How did you use Hired for getting a job?  I applied […] More

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      How to Embed Diversity and Inclusion into Your Recruitment Policy

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      The ‘S’ (social) in ESG campaigns is integral to any business, a lack of diversity can negatively impact growth and stifle creativity. Diverse teams generate almost 20% more revenue than those that are lacking in this area.
      Thinking carefully about the specific language used in job adverts, using blind CV assessments, and employing inclusive interviewing techniques can all help businesses embed diversity and inclusion into their recruitment policies.
      With almost one-third of jobseekers and employees have said they would not apply to a company where there is a lack of diversity among its workforce, it’s time that businesses start to scrutinize their recruitment policies.
      Think about the job advert
      Pay attention to the nuances in recruitment communication to ensure what is written is inclusive and unbiased.
      Job adverts should avoid phrases such as “competitive nature” and “aggressively determined” in favor of truthful descriptions of competency, these phrases are also typically ‘male-coded’, so might deter female applicants from applying. Similarly, complex jargon and specialist terms can also overwhelm applicants. Adverts should be as simple and to the point as possible.
      The use of equality and diversity statements in job adverts can aid in creating an inclusive atmosphere from the very start of the recruitment process. One study found that job adverts with an empathetic diversity statement left 71% of potential applicants with a positive impression of the hypothetical employer.
      Similarly, awards such as ‘The Times Top 50 Employers of Women’ can be mentioned on job applicants to reassure minority applicants that they are welcome to apply.
      Blind CV assessment
      The Department for Work and Pensions sent out applications to 1,000 job vacancies with 2/3 containing names typically associated with a certain ethnic group. Results showed that ethnic minority applicants needed to send out 74% more applications in order to generate the same success rate as those with White sounding names.
      Removing names, ages, genders, and postcodes from CVs before they are assessed can remove opportunities for bias to enter the recruitment process. A number of top employers adopt this technique, including the UK’s Civil Service.
      Championing diversity and inclusion is not just about CV blind initiatives. It’s a complex and multifaceted agenda.
      Keeping an eye out for opportunities to learn more about diverse talent pools should be a priority. At Totum Partners, we host a series of successful diversity and inclusion webinars, such as: ‘How to create the most diverse firm in Britain’.
      Inclusive interviewing
      Once a candidate is at an interview, the best way to minimize bias is to combine a number of efforts, there is no magic bullet approach.
      Standardizing the interview questions in a structured manner will allow the employer to focus on the candidate’s skills that will determine their ability to perform the job. Unstructured interviews are difficult to compare, making it more likely that personal factors will infiltrate the hiring decision.
      Sometimes called a “mental shortcut”, affinity bias is common. This means we gravitate towards people who we feel are similar to ourselves. Training modules and workshops are a good way to generate self-awareness of your own biases.
      The importance of succession planning
      Employees should be able to see diversity all the way up an organization. Last month it was reported that 2 in 5 Black employees have left their job because of a lack of diversity.
      Initiatives that only focus on entry-level recruitment leave BME employees without anyone to look up to. Since 2018, among the Fortune 500 boards, of the 974 seats filled by new directors, 80% were by White directors, this is an example of bad succession planning.
      Organizations should consider lateral workplace diversity when looking at how to progress talent internally. Firms that ignore this form of conscious inclusion, will soon be left behind, especially considering the escalating numbers of employees quitting their jobs in the UK in recent months.
      Accountability
      Having awareness of the benefits that diversity brings to the workplace is important, but actions speak louder than words.
      As a recruitment firm, Totum is committed to questioning candidate lists that show a lack of diversity. Feedback on a BME candidate that reads “something was not quite right” needs to be followed up for factual feedback. Too often this behavior goes unquestioned.
      This is embedded into the Race Fairness Commitment that Totum is a part of. The Commitment pledges all members to engage in activities to ensure equal access to opportunities for all candidates.
      Calls for diversity and inclusion will grow louder in 2022. Deloitte’s 2018 Millennial Survey demonstrated that diversity is integral to workplace loyalty, with candidates saying they are more likely to stay with an employer for over 5 years if there is diversity in the workplace.
      Employers must be aware of how to entrench diversity and inclusion into their recruitment policies, or both their business and colleagues will suffer. CV blind assessments, inclusive interviewing, and succession planning should be a staple in any recruitment process in 2022 if businesses want to take this agenda seriously.
      By Deborah Gray, Director at Totum Partners.
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      Hired Sales Candidate Spotlight – Simon Asraf

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      Can you share a little bit about your educational background? What led you to pursue a career in sales? I have a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from UC Irvine. I never really thought about a career in sales when I was in school, but the first job I got out of college was an entry […] More

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      Hired Candidate Spotlight – Andrew Yee

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      Hi Andrew! We’d love to hear about your background! What has made the biggest impact on your tech career? I believe the biggest impact is from the companies I’ve joined. They’ve steadily pushed me to greater heights in my career. I went the traditional path of getting a Computer Science degree at a four-year college […] More

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      Are Remote Tech Jobs Here to Stay?

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      What You’ll Learn What’s changed recently in remote work A review of the types of remote work including definitions What to expect in the coming months and years for remote roles What data tells us about global remote hiring What to look for or do to best support remote teams About this eBook Among the […] More

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      The 6 Core Values to Attract Applicants

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      It’s no secret that UK firms across multiple sectors are struggling to find the right candidates. There are many reasons for this, including long-term skills shortages, but something that firms can do to stand out from their hiring competition is understand what motivates candidates and make sure their recruitment messages communicate what candidates want to know. What was important to employees previously is less so to many now. Our recent (November 2021) Monster Survey found that support and care for employees is the number one criterion for choosing and remaining with an employer in the UK, and we believe that the pandemic is at least partly responsible for this focus.
      Our study shows a positive and caring working environment is more important to candidates than higher pay to UK jobseekers. Quality applicants are discerning, assessing each company according to six core values. Businesses that can show they care and provide a stimulating environment have a competitive advantage in the battle for top talent. Those who fail to act, or communicate effectively, are at risk.
      The pandemic has changed priorities and fundamentally altered our relationship to work, according to the Monster survey. A healthy pay packet may have been the priority in the past, but today, organizational values are now most important to employees of any age. An incredible 60% of employees want to know what a business stands for before applying for a role.
      The accelerating economic recovery has intensified recruitment urgency, and employers must act. Our research suggests that what you say to potential candidates, how you say it, and when will significantly impact your success at attracting and retaining talent.
      In the post-pandemic world, a larger pay packet isn’t enough. Companies must learn to communicate effectively and authentically, creating a positive employer brand for their business that employees can believe in.
      Six core values to attract applicants
      Our study ranked the six workplace values that candidates use to judge current and future employers. These are the questions applicants want answers to before they take the first step.
      As an employer, ask yourself, are you doing enough?

      Care. Is it clear you care for your employees as well as your customers? Do your benefits and workplace culture show that you support your workforce and go above and beyond to make sure you have a healthy and vibrant workplace?
      Interest. Do you offer a stimulating, interesting work environment matched with innovative employment policies and procedures? How does what you do add value to society?
      Social. Does your employment atmosphere promote teamwork and camaraderie? Do people collaborate on cross-departmental projects? Does the company host social events and family days?
      Economic. Economic values are more than just salary. Is your business financially secure? Is your pay competitive? Do your benefits offer value?
      Development. Do you invest in upskilling your employees, recognize their achievements, and provide opportunities for career enhancement? Are there clear paths to promotion?
      Application. Can candidates use their skills and knowledge to contribute to the company beyond their job description? Are employees encouraged to bring ideas in an open forum? Is innovation rewarded?

      These values apply across generations, with care being the most important factor for Gen-Z, Millennials, and Gen-X. Boomers, approaching the end of their careers, are understandably motivated by money, but care comes a close second.
      Working environment, employee experience, and employer engagement are critical factors for workers of all generations in deciding whether to apply for a new job – or stay where they are.
      Be vocal about values
      In a market with over a million open UK vacancies candidates have a wider choice of roles than ever before, it’s too late for employers to leave discussion of essential issues until selection starts. In today’s economy, candidates are in the driving seat.
      Applicants want to know the attitude of potential employers to these criteria before they will even consider working for them, but employers are failing. Many aren’t living up to the values and practices employees want to see and are unable (or unwilling) to communicate what they are doing authentically and effectively.
      Our study has demonstrated that the problem isn’t necessarily with the business but the employer brand.
      Your company’s actions must embody your values, and your employer brand must express them. Monster research has found that 69% of job candidates say they would not take a job with a company with a bad reputation – even if they were unemployed.
      Employers must positively promote their culture and values. Communicating with them must become a core part of the recruitment process and a strategic priority. Why? Because job seekers are consumers. Faced with several businesses saying the same thing, they’ll seek our brands with shared values.
      The survey results establish that authenticity is key. A strong employer brand needs to be more than virtue signaling. In a world where businesses and brands are increasingly keen to take an active social stance, just 42% of staff felt employers should share a public viewpoint on an issue, with 58% preferring a neutral approach. Polarising topics such as Brexit have caused significant societal friction, and it’s perhaps understandable that employees prefer businesses to remain silent.
      Your employer brand can humanize your company. Stripping out the corporate messages and communicating your core values will make the difference.
      Putting it into practice
      Monsters Chief Human Resources office, Claire Barnes summarizes the key issues, what employers can do, and what steps Monster has taken.
      “The Pandemic has, of course, been hugely stressful with much uncertainty for many people. People have had very different work experiences. From frontline workers who worked the whole way through to those furloughed for months at a time. Many being able to work from home and, of course, those who lost jobs due to redundancies or businesses closing. It’s no surprise that people’s experience, how work made them feel, is shaping their attitudes. It is a valid question for candidates to ask of a company “how did you support your employees during the pandemic?”
      One of the vital lessons we must learn from the pandemic is that we can’t assume we know our employees’ feelings. Instead, we must recognize a gap between what we, as leaders, believe and what we know.
      We’ve faced the same challenges in engaging existing employees and attracting the best talent at Monster. So we’re putting wellbeing at the center of our human resources strategy and approach. In practical terms, we’re offering employees the freedom and flexibility to work how they want. We’ve changed our benefits and policies to support the shift and focused on the importance of self-care for everyone.
      We’re a business and brand that lives its values, but we’re always searching for ways to improve what we do and how we do it. In the battle for the best talent, we’ve reviewed, refreshed, and refined our brand to appeal to jobseekers – and we recommend other companies should consider doing the same.
      By Rod McMillan, Marketing Manager, Monster UK
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