Common Mistakes while Hiring Diverse Candidates
1. Biasness in Job Advertisements and Descriptions: Unconscious bias can easily infiltrate job posts, descriptions, and offers, significantly affecting an organisation’s image regarding diversity. This can include gender-specific language, ageism, and a lack of consideration for people with different abilities. It is crucial to review your job listings and recruitment communications for these biases.
2. Understand the Required Requirements: Diversity is not a straightforward policy implementation but an ongoing process to promote equity, inclusion, and belonging within your organisation. A recruitment policy aimed at attracting and hiring diverse candidates will fail if the new hires do not feel safe and welcomed in the workplace.
3. Setting Goals Based on Data, Not Guesswork: Like all hiring processes, diversity hiring benefits from the use of available data and the setting of realistic goals for accountability. Instead of relying on guesswork and hoping for results, recruitment teams should utilise employee and candidate data to devise a hiring strategy that aligns with their overall objectives and allows for measurable outcomes. For instance, a company might aim to reflect the diversity of the local population in their workforce using population data or use compensation data tools like LaborIQ to ensure that their offers are competitive and equitable.