No company wants to think that they aren’t fostering diversity in their workforce. But bias — whether you know it’s there or not — could be getting in the way of your diversity efforts. Unconscious bias is something that every company has to face, and it’s not something that can be eliminated overnight. In order to create a truly diverse workforce, you have to first create a hiring process that embraces diversity on every level. From the moment a candidate enters the funnel to the final decision, your hiring process should be optimized to recognize and reduce these biases.
So how do you start building a recruitment process focused on diversity? Here are seven practical tips to combat unconscious bias in recruitment.
1. Expand the Talent Pool With AI Sourcing
Diversity hiring is about more than CV screening and interview evaluation. It starts from the moment you draft your job description and start outreach to locate ideal candidates. The bottom line is simple: If you’re not drawing from diverse sources, you won’t pull diverse candidates. This is an area where AI can help. Intelligent solutions can help you search job boards and other online platforms to find the perfect match for the job position, using factors like skills, predicted performance, and corporate fit.
Doing this process manually isn’t just time-consuming. When recruiters search the same platforms each time — with the same assumptions in mind — you’re less likely to get a diverse candidate pool.
2. Refine the Wording of Job Descriptions
The wording of your job description may be more important than you think. Biases can creep into the language we use every day — job descriptions are no exception. Even subtle word choices can have a powerful impact. Research shows that “masculine-coded” words like “active,” “confident,” “driven,” or “competitive” can discourage women from applying. Using excessive business jargon, over-the-top description, or unnecessary long words can also deter applicants from underprivileged backgrounds.
When writing job descriptions, consider language carefully. Use gender-neutral terms, keep the job requirements straightforward, and highlight your brand’s commitment to diversity. Certain software programs can help reduce the possibility of human bias, flagging gendered terms to help you attract a diverse candidate pool.
3. Automate the Screening Process
When we leave candidate screening up to manual human labor, it’s easy for biases to trickle in. Demographic characteristics like name, gender, or address are all factors that can lead to unconscious bias, either in favor of a candidate or against them.
Software algorithms allow you to cut through these biases, instead building an assessment of each candidate based on qualifications, attributes, and experience that make them right for the job. The key, however, is to ensure that these algorithms don’t reproduce discriminatory patterns — look for AI systems built with diversity in mind.
4. Use Skills-Based Assessments to Test Candidates
Many aspects of the application process are subject to bias, from cover letters to interviews. However, there’s a way to fairly evaluate candidates and level the playing field: A skills-based test.
A skills-based test offers a chance to compare candidates in a clear and objective way. It removes factors that could lead to biased decisions and instead hones in on a single question — how will this candidate perform on the job?
5. Standardize the Interview Process
When it’s time to start interviewing your top candidates, it’s important to standardize the interview questions. It can be tempting to allow interviews to become casual and unstructured. Many hiring managers favor this interviewing strategy to get a better feel for the candidate, from their experience to their personality. But unstructured interviews may lead managers to make decisions based on first impressions or a gut feeling, rather than an unbiased look at the candidate’s capabilities.
That’s why standardized and structured are so important. Stick to a series of defined questions and assess all your candidates against the same benchmarks.
6. Make Data-Driven Hiring Decisions
Even if you’ve carefully checked for potential biases in every step of the Recruitment Funnel, they can still influence your final hiring decision — even if you don’t realize it. Instead of letting emotion or gut feelings drive your decisions, let the intelligent data insights guide you instead.
Thanks to the development of new AI technologies, this is easier than ever. From skills assessments to candidate profiles, AI solutions can draw upon all the information you’ve collected so far to make an unbiased candidate evaluation. With all the objective benchmarks in front of you, making a fair hiring decision becomes much more straightforward.
7. Optimize the Strategy After Every Hire
The work isn’t over once you’ve found the right fit, extended an offer, and welcomed your ideal candidate into the workplace. Now, it’s time to assess your strategy. What worked and what didn’t?
This is another area where recruiting software can help. By tracking the right Diversity Recruiting Metrics, creating regular reports, and setting a diversity recruiting benchmark, you can continue to improve your strategy year after year. Bias is something you can’t ever completely eliminate, but you can continue to optimize your process to put diversity front and center in your organization.
Putting Diversity First In Your Recruitment Process
Creating a more diverse workforce takes a real commitment. But the results can be well worth the effort. A more diverse workforce isn’t just better for your employees — it can improve your company’s productivity and even boost your bottom line.
With all that being said, it takes more than promises to strive for true diversity and equity in the workplace. To overcome unconscious biases, you need to equip your team with the tools they need to make diversity a priority in every stage of the hiring process, from Diversity Sourcing to interviewing.
If you need a diversity recruitment solution for your workplace, Oleeo is here to help. Track the success of your diversity efforts, build comprehensive reports on your recruitment process, and use AI-powered software tools to make every part of your hiring funnel more equitable. Learn more about our diversity recruiting platforms or Book A Demo With Us today.
