7 Ways to Improve Your Diversity Recruiting Strategy

What does it take to create an innovative workforce that’s more creative, collaborative, and achieves better results? It starts with your diversity recruiting strategy.

When you get your diversity recruiting strategy dialed in to attract a broad range of candidates with a mix of education, work, cultural, and life experiences, your collective mind power is greater than any single high-performer.

Wondering how to improve your diversity recruiting strategy to build a more robust workforce?

Here are some things you can do:

1. Audit your current diversity recruiting strategy

Are you actively looking to build a diverse workforce? Or, do you let the chips fall where they may when you post a job, interview candidates, and make an offer?

If you don’t have a diversity recruiting strategy, now is always a good time to create one. 

In a nutshell, your diversity recruiting strategy should help you create an eclectic workforce of employees with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. 

Some organizations like to use gender, socio-economic status, race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation to help make hiring decisions to broaden the collective mind of their team.

2. Post jobs where you’ll find a diverse candidate pool

If your diversity recruiting strategy audit and current staff reveal some gaps, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at where you’re posting jobs and recruiting candidates.

• Are there other places where you’ll find a more diverse group of candidates looking for work?
• If you’ve been using the same job boards and listing services to post jobs, are there a few others you could add to the list to broaden your reach?
• Are there local/regional organizations that represent untapped populations you could reach out to about job opportunities?

One simple change to your diversity recruiting strategy like this could be enough to help you attract a broader pool of candidates to build your team.

3. Ask your employees for referrals

Does your organization have team members who represent one aspect of diversity you’d like to improve? Reach out to those people and ask for referrals. Chances are great that they know like-minded people with skills and talents that would benefit your organization. 

Invite them to share your job openings with their network, and make it easy for them to do so using email, social media, and even text messaging.

You may also want to give your employee referral program an upgrade, and spell out details for referring a candidate that helps you build a diverse workforce.

It’s a great way to show your team and potential candidates you value diversity.

4. Create internship opportunities for specific groups

Another innovative way to upgrade your diversity recruiting strategy is to create internship opportunities for specific groups.

If you audit your workforce diversity and discover a gap, creating internship opportunities for specific groups can help you fill that gap.

You can even coordinate or tailor your internship opportunity to meet college requirements, so your interns get credit for participating in your program. 

Or you may offer a paid internship program or apprenticeship for specific groups. 

By doing this, you’re demonstrating your commitment and value for diversity. And some of your interns will be the perfect fit for open positions. It’s a win-win.

5. Improve your branding to showcase diversity

Take a closer look at all the collateral you use for recruiting. 

Does it represent a diverse workforce or seem to show more of a “you need to be like us to work here” message?

• If you’re positive about showcasing a diverse workforce in your messaging, keep up the good work.
• If you come up short, take a closer look at your website, videos, PDFs, print materials, and all your other resources. And give these things an upgrade to match your diversity recruiting strategy.

6. Use a blind recruiting process

Want to remove or limit biases from your recruiting process?

Blind resume: There’s a growing trend to invite candidates to apply for open positions without providing their name, schools, date of birth, location, etc.

It’s voluntary and/or kept confidential. So when a candidate applies, the only thing your recruiter might see is something like: 

• Candidate 1 + work experience/qualifications. Nothing else. Just a blind resume.

Blind interview: Another approach is a blind interview process...at first. You can start with questions via text message or email that ask about skills and experience...without disclosing any diversity-related information you might get during an in-person meeting.

Artificial intelligence: There’s at least one more way to eliminate bias to help you implement your diversity recruiting strategy. Use artificial intelligence software to filter out all diversity-related information before it’s handed off to recruiters.

7. Pay attention to employee turnover

Employees come and go. And that means the demographics of your workforce change too. 

Depending on your turnover, evaluating your workforce and diversity recruiting strategy every quarter, six months, or once a year might make sense. Consider it a work in progress that’s never really complete.

This helps you keep your finger on where you’re at so you can adjust your recruiting efforts to align with your diversity recruiting strategy and the goals of your organization to create a talented and diverse workforce.

When you actively work on developing a diverse population of employees, you’re raising the bar for your organization’s level of innovation, creativity, and success.