7 Effective Tactics to Attract a Diverse Workforce

January 11 2021 - Companies that embrace workforce diversity are undeniably more competent and profitable as compared to their competitors because different genders, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds often accompany innovation, a wide range of experiences, fresh ideas, and new skills and insights.

Making your company diverse is crucial to building a successful business but for that to happen, workplace diversity must start with the process of recruitment. So, here are 7 surefire methods for recruiting a diverse workforce that can help your organization realize its full potential.

1. Create a Culture that Values Diversity

An open minded and accepting company culture that attracts a diverse crowd. So ideally, recruiters must consider revamping their company policies to accommodate a wide variety of perspectives, cultures, sexual orientations, backgrounds and religions.

This can be done by adopting LGBT-friendly policies, granting holidays on important days of diverse religions, offering paid parental leaves, and celebrating different festivals.

2. Go Creative with your Candidate Screening Process

Present your prospective candidates with a workplace problem that involves a diversity challenge and ask them for a solution. Their answers will give you different ideas and perspectives when they try to find a solution to the problem. You will also gain you insights into their diverse backgrounds, their values, abilities, and also determine if they are a culture fit.

3. Use a Strategic Approach to Tap Diverse Talent

When it comes to diversity recruiting, it is important to determine the ultimate goal of the recruitment process. Marketing can play a major role in diversifying your employer brand on the digital landscape.

Career pages and social profiles of the company can be used to showcase a cultural mindset that welcomes and supports different perspectives and work experiences. This will attract candidates who bring their uniqueness and creative skills to your company and give it a competitive edge.

4. Tie up with Schools

You can build interest among targeted communities and groups through educational institutions. An easy way to do this is to approach local schools and partner with them for internships and programs. This will give you easy access to a diverse population and help you build a long-term talent pipeline.

5. Leverage Your Internal Network

There is ample data to substantiate the fact that a diverse and inclusive workforce is not only engaged and satisfied but also aligned to improving the organization’s productivity and profits. So involve diversity and inclusion in everything.

Employee resource groups are a great way to capitalize on the social networks and alumni associations of your team. Start by making the existing diversity of your organization a part of your recruitment process. Involving employees in your talent acquisition activities will make it much easier for you to attract more diversity.

6. Showcase Your Support for Inclusion in Your Job Description

Job descriptions are the quickest and the easiest way to create a buzz. Don’t let your potential employees wonder if your company values diversity. Say it in your job descriptions and take the guesswork out of the recruitment process and encourage your potential employees to apply.

7. Tap Non-traditional Talent from Multicultural Groups

There are several regional and national diversity associations, immigrants and minority groups where you can build your employer brand through professional events, thought leadership, and sponsorships. This will not only help you cut recruitment costs but also help you tap a wider pool of non-traditional talented people.

However, revamping the recruitment process is not enough. Recruiters and talent acquisitions leaders need technology to implement a system to effectively and objectively increase diversity in the workforce. You can automate the candidate screening and shortlisting process with applicant tracking software which uses AI for screening candidates and eliminate the unconscious human bias.

Combining HR tech with these tips will enable you to hiring a diverse workforce that adapts with evolving industry standards, drives innovation and contributes to company success.

About the author

Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager for Jobsoid - Applicant Tracking System. She is responsible for leading the content and social media teams at work. Her expertise and experience in the filed of HR enables her to create value-driven content for her readers - both on Jobsoid's blog and other guest blogs where she publishes content regularly.

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