Industry Research: 5 Diversity Mistakes You Should Avoid

If you ask us, there’s no better time than the present to start working toward a better, more equitable future. As member of the HR industry, you are in a unique position to help implement the most impactful diversity efforts for your organization. With a greater understanding of your employee base, as well as the talent landscape, organizations will begin to look to your team to lead the way. But where to begin? 

Putting the right plan in place can be challenging for a business of any size. If you’re looking to step up your diversity recruitment and hiring, it’s important to be aware of some common diversity hiring hurdles. Here are some common diversity pitfalls and how you can overcome them with ease.

While rebuilding your workforce happens at every level of the employee experience, you can make the most impact at the top of the recruitment funnel. Capturing diverse talent from the start of the hiring process, over time, evens out the playing field. But often when thinking about diversity, the top of the recruitment funnel is the last place many teams tend to improve. 
 

Understand that recruitment is an evergreen challenge. You’ll always be asking yourself, “how do we get the best talent?” and “how do we find them in the first place?” That’s why it’s important to adopt a diversity-focused approach to recruiting as soon as you can. An effective diversity recruitment plan can help you move beyond the usual recruitment avenues—specific websites, job boards, job fairs, school events. Thinking beyond the usual spaces can help you reach candidates you might not have found otherwise. Maybe the right candidates aren’t checking your go-to job posting spots, or maybe reaching out to community or cultural organizations can help you find people who wouldn’t otherwise have had your job on their radar.

And while we’re on the subject…

One of the biggest mistakes in recruiting for diversity is one that you probably don’t even realize you’re making—having an unconscious bias for or against someone based on perceived characteristics. Few people set out to be biased in their hiring and most people would never think that they would exclude a candidate based on things like a name, perceived culture, or socioeconomic background. Still, studies have shown that something as simple as a name on a resume can unintentionally prompt bias, even if the reader doesn’t think about it consciously.

The best way to combat unconscious bias is to educate everyone in your organization about it. Educate your staff about what unconscious bias is and how to spot it. Review your job descriptions: Do they contain language that might exclude good candidates because they don’t feel like they would fit in? Use inclusive language whenever possible. And you should do everything you can to standardize your hiring process—create checklists and very clear criteria upfront for interviews so that there’s less chance for people to insert personal biases. There are so many HR tech tools out there in the space can help you remove the bias and reach your goals. 

New reality for the world: everything is being done remotely right now, including recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. It’s a Zoom universe now. However, you shouldn’t assume that everyone’s ready to jump on a video interview with ease. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 58% of Black respondents and 57% of Hispanic respondents said they owned a desktop or laptop computer, with just 66% of Black respondents and 61% of Hispanic respondents reporting that they have reliable internet access.

When it comes to interviews, be as flexible as possible. When feasible (and safe, from a public health standpoint), accommodate in-person interviews. Offer alternatives. And in all cases, provide detailed information about how all candidates can access the right software and tools to interview virtually. Tech can be such an efficiency booster when it comes to diversity recruitment, but if it’s excluding people from the process altogether it’s not as helpful as it seems.

Internships are a great way for someone to build experience in their field. They’re also a luxury and suited for people who have other means of support and don’t necessarily need to have a paying job to make ends meet. People who worked their way through school or who come from a background where they don’t have a financial safety net may have to take a pass on your company altogether because they can’t afford to work for free. To build a strong diversity recruitment plan, you should absolutely consider paying your interns.

Diversity is an investment, and your interns are no different! Your company will continue to grow and thrive with a variety of team members. Paid internships not only make your company more competitive, but they also bring in a wealth of candidates who can offer a bigger variety of backgrounds and perspectives. There are very few (if any) organizations that reach the top of their field and stay there by doing the same thing, with the same people, ad infinitum. Committing your organization to being more diverse and inclusive now and putting processes in place to make sure you continue to bring in diverse talent, means you’re creating the right environment.

Diversity goes so much deeper than physical attributes. As you polish up your diversity plans, make sure you have space for those within the candidate pool that think differently.

When you have the same people in the room, day after day, you start to fall into patterns. It becomes a feedback loop for existing ideas and perspectives. When you bring in people who haven’t been working on the same problems in the same ways, with the same eyes and the same experiences, you gain a fresh perspective. Studies done by Forbes Insights have uncovered workforce diversity and inclusion as key drivers of internal innovation. Other studies, focusing specifically on problem-solving, have also found that diverse problem solvers outperform high-ability problem solvers. This doesn’t demean talent but does show that getting different views in the room can help push past complacency and inefficiency.

Amanda Nuñez is a Digital Marketing Coordinator for PandoLogic where she is responsible for the planning and execution of all content marketing efforts for the organization. Passionate about diversity and inclusion, she hopes her curated diversity content will help open doors for all underrepresented communities. Amanda is a graduate of Rutgers University where she focused her studies on Journalism, Media Studies, and Psychology. Connect Amanda Nuñez Follow @PandoLogic