Diversity in Recruitment: Build an Inclusive Team for Explosive Results

What Is Diversity in Recruitment?  

Workplace diversity is the idea that the people on your team match the makeup of the society around you. In short, your staff should have representatives from various people who come from different backgrounds and experiences.

Diversity recruiting is all about finding candidates through an unbiased process. It’s still merit-based and works to discover the best person for the job, but it provides every applicant equal opportunity to get the position regardless of their background.

There are two categories of diversity: Inherent and Acquired.  

Inherent diversity is based on characteristics that are natural to who someone is as a person. These traits include:

• Race
• Age
• Gender
• Socio-economic level
• Sexual orientation
• Religion

Acquired diversity is based on characteristics that are more fluid and can evolve over time. These traits include:

• Education
• Experience
• Values
• Skills
• Knowledge
• Religion

(We included religion on both lists because religion can be inherent if a person was born into a religion and chose to continue practicing that religion. Or it can be acquired if a person decides to convert to a religion later in life.)

How Can Diversity in Recruitment Improve Company Culture and Work?

Diversity recruiting directly impacts your workplace by increasing performance, innovation, and productivity. By hiring the best people for a job, regardless of their background, you’re opening the door to collaboration with new minds who look at the world differently.

You’ll also have access to a broader range of skills, experience, and problem-solving methods on your team. You’ll receive a better sense of language and cultural awareness so you can bring in more clients from all demographics. Plus, your HR team will have more extensive candidate pools from which to hire new team members.

With a diverse team, you’ll be able to solve problems more efficiently because you’ll eliminate the echo chamber. With different mentalities putting their heads together, your brainstorming sessions will be bursting with more creativity and innovation!  

If you’re more of a numbers person:

• BCG reported that companies with diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues than those with homogenous management teams
• Diverse workforces are 1.8 times more likely to be change-ready and 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their industry
• McKinsey found that gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their competitors and ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors
• PWC stated that 85% of CEOS claimed to have a diverse workplace improved their bottom lines
• Catalyst Research showed that gender-diverse companies statistically outperform their competitors in the long run
• According to Glassdoor Analytics, 67% of job seekers consider diversity an important factor when deciding whether to apply for a company

And most importantly, hiring without bias is the right thing to do.

How to Think About Diversity and Your Own Staffing Needs

When you’re gearing up to hire someone, you’re looking for the “right” person to fill the spot. But we need to define our idea of “right” explicitly, and in some cases, this means redefining it altogether.

The “right” candidate isn’t the one who is exactly like every other member of your team. Harvard compares diversity recruiting to finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle: The missing piece complements the whole but is still unique and adds something that the greater picture lacked.

Especially in today’s culture, it’s crucial to be aware of your personal biases, whether they’re conscious or unconscious. Understanding your own biases will help you overcome them so you can hire the best person for the job. For more information about implicit biases, visit Project Implicit.  

To find the right person to join your team, you have to know what qualities you’re looking for in that missing piece. Evaluate your current workforce. What are their strengths, and how can you build on them? What are those challenges, and how can you address them?

When you have a better idea of who the person you’re looking for is, you’ll have an easier time finding them!

Tips to Hire More Diverse Teams

Rethink the Requirements

Be intentional about the requirements you put on your job listings. Before you add something to your “must-have” list, take a moment to evaluate whether the right candidate really must have X trait.  

For example, many job postings will say that applicants must have X years of experience in the industry. But do they really need to have worked seven-plus years within the industry to be an asset to your team?

A Hewlett-Packard study reported in the Harvard Business Review showed that many women only apply for positions when they feel as if they’ve met 100% of the criteria. In contrast, men will apply if they think they meet 60% of the requirements.

Being intentional about your job requirements is essential because you may accidentally turn away the right person for the job for something that doesn’t actually matter.



Use a Boolean Search

Instead of perusing LinkedIn profiles, you can use a Boolean search to find qualified and diverse candidates.

Boolean searches enable the user to filter profiles using key phrases. For instance, you could search “women in tech,” and it would provide you with a compilation of the women who use that phrase on their profile.

Expand Your Talent Pool

If you only post your job listing on one site every time, you aren’t reaching as many people as possible. Consider expanding your reach by posting about the opening on multiple job boards or sending the information out to groups that match your ideal hire.  

If you take the initiative to help more people find your company, you’ll end up with a more diverse workplace.

Use an Applicant Tracking System

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) eliminate bias in the candidate search by doing their part to find the best people. Modern companies utilize ATS to manage their diversity and hire more diverse candidates.

As companies work to improve the diversity among their ranks, an ATS can be the tool that makes the process significantly easier!  

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