We live in a beautiful world of some 1,500 ethnicities and over 7,000 languages spoken by people of different ages, abilities, and genders.
Yet, a quick look at a Fortune 500 leadership page suggests only one particular type of person can succeed in the corporate world. Yep! White, middle-aged men have been unjustly favored in the hiring process for decades. It’s time to change that.
In the UK, the FTSE Women Leaders Review has set a recommendation that FTSE 350 companies have at least one woman in one of the four key roles by the end of 2025. The new EU Pay Transparency Directive also requires companies with a gender pay gap of above 5% to take immediate action.
Moreover, many companies are taking voluntary steps to improve diversity hiring. Because they know the hard facts:
Companies that value diversity have a 6.8% higher stock price, 4X higher employee engagement rates, and 3.3 lower staff turnover.
Culture Amp
If you, too, believe that bringing more voices to the table is better for business (and by proxy for the societies it operates in), here’s your primer on how to build a case and implement diversity hiring practices in 2025.
What is diversity hiring?
Diversity hiring is the process of correcting conscious and unconscious bias in the talent acquisition process.
Even the most experienced recruiters might unconsciously privilege certain candidates based on their socioeconomic background, prior experience, or educational credentials. Diversity hiring neutralizes biases related to age, ethnicity, religion, disability, and gender in hiring decisions, giving equal opportunities to every candidate.
“Diversity hiring” doesn’t mean hiring someone because they tick a specific box,” clarifies Lauren Daly, Founder of Networkher UK. “It means giving every talented individual a fair shot at opportunities they may not have considered simply because the door hasn’t felt open to them.”
Sadly, many candidates felt left on the “porch.” Female candidates are less likely to apply to advanced, high-paid open roles because they’re worried about not meeting all qualifications, according to Katherine B. Coffman, an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. Including more precise requirements in the job description (a skills test passing threshold in the case of Coffman) drove 29% more female applicants.
Women, and disproportionally women of color, also face higher occupational segregation. According to UN data, 62% of women work in the services industry, and only 4% of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies identify as female. Similarly, 63% of LGBTQ+ people have dealt with some form of discrimination during their career, either being excluded from a promotion or treated with prejudice by colleagues.
The purpose of diversity hiring is to ensure that companies hire people for the right skill sets, not ‘convenient’ or ‘conventional’ character attributes.
Diversity vs. inclusion
Browse an HR blog or two, and you’ll quickly see the words diversity and inclusion (DEI) often go together. There’s a reason for this, but the two terms don’t actually mean the same thing.
Diversity hiring refers to the processes and tools we use when building a diverse workforce. It’s a strategic approach to the recruitment process, not an overarching theme for all areas of business organization.
Inclusion is an ongoing task that extends beyond the goal of recruiting diverse candidates. Inclusive companies develop policies and processes that contribute to cultivating diverse teams. For example, they might schedule work events to celebrate different cultures or implement cultural competence training.
That said, you can’t practice diverse hiring and then neglect workplace inclusion. People who feel alienated, misunderstood, and otherwise “passed over” in daily work will not be productive or stay with the company for long. 60% of Canadian employees would quit their jobs for benefits that are more inclusive of their colleagues’ diverse needs.
To nurture an effective workforce, human resources professionals need to apply DEI tips all across the workforce cycle.
Diversity hiring vs. diversity hire
Another key distinction is between diversity hiring and diversity hires. Superficially, the two terms are almost identical, but they refer to different workplace concepts.
Diversity hiring is a systematic process that applies unbiased candidate assessments to source candidates with the skills companies need.
A diversity hire is an individual recruited to improve diversity metrics or tick HR boxes. They may have the required skills and suit the organizational culture, but without the right policies in place, a “diversity hire” usually happens more by accident than design.
Diversity hires also tend to face additional challenges in the workplace. Employees from different backgrounds might feel under increased pressure to deliver and feel more like a statistic than a human being — hardly a recipe for productivity and employee retention.
Diversity hiring helps leadership teams avoid this situation. A good diversity and inclusion hiring strategy means thinking beyond the quotas and focusing on systematic changes in talent acquisition, pay grading, succession planning, representation in management, and wider cultural transformations.
Benefits of building a diverse workforce
Diversity hiring assumes major changes to your recruitment and selection process. Orchestrating change is tough, especially when you lack leadership buy-in.
So, it’s important to understand why diversity and inclusion are critical parts of business success and communicate that data to others. Here are several statistics that we find particularly persuasive:
- Companies with high ethnic and gender diversity on executive teams economically outperform less diverse organizations by 39%. [McKinsey]
- Financial companies with above-average gender diversity outperform less diverse competitors by 8.3%. In healthcare, the figure is 9%, while real estate companies see an 8.2% dividend [Morgan Stanley]
- Companies that prioritize DEI increase employee happiness by 31% and motivation by 25%. Happier, more productive staff delivers better business outcomes. [BCG]
- Employees who strongly believe the organization doesn’t value diversity are more than three times more likely to leave within 12 months. [Culture Amp]
The takeaway from these figures is simple: diversity delivers financial and organizational gains, and many companies are already capitalizing on these benefits.
More likely to outperform competitors
Hard evidence from the US and the UK points towards a strong correlation between leadership diversity and company performance and profitability.
David P. Daniels, a Professor at the National University of Singapore Business School, and his colleagues studied the stock market and investment trends to find the causal relationship between better financial outcomes and gender diversity.
The majority of investors they spoke to believe that low diversity numbers would trigger a negative stock price reaction. High figures do the opposite. They’re also likely to support diverse firms more due to their perceived creativity, ethicality, and lower legal risks.
Respectively, a 1% increase in gender diversity among major tech firms like Google and eBay could increase their valuation by $152 million, researchers concluded.
McKinsey data also confirms this: ethically and gender-diverse companies outperform their peers year over year by as much as 39%.
Makes organizations more attractive to skilled professionals
In the age of remote work, top talents hail from every corner of the world. Employers who know how to attract and nurture diverse talent pools are less likely to suffer from skill shortages and ultra-high employee hiring costs.
3 in 4 job seekers see workforce diversity as an important factor when applying for positions. As part of this, 64% of candidates expect job postings to include compensation data — and 44% chose to not apply when this data wasn’t public over the last 12 months.
Inclusive hiring becomes even more important as the workforce demographic shifts.
77% of US Gen Z workers want to work for a company that cares about diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as prioritize social and environmental responsibility. To attract the new generation of talents, you’ll need to blend better representation in employer branding with fair hiring practices.
Brings a wider range of perspectives and approaches
Nine in ten employees have a positive experience working with and learning from colleagues of different backgrounds and perspectives. Such experiences neutralize groupthink and encourage more people to challenge the status quo, which is great for business.
Korn Ferry research shows diverse teams make better decisions than homogenous ones 87% of the time, and are 70% more likely to succeed in new markets with new products. By reinforcing collective intelligence with different voices, companies can minimize uniformity in thinking, leading to bolder, more creative, and more impactful business ideas.
Contributes to a fairer and more equitable society
Companies are increasingly held responsible by stakeholders, shareholders, and societies at large for their actions. And most have a massive platform to do good (rather than just pretending to with different washing campaigns).
As part of its commitment to DEI, Heineken decided to challenge the stigma faced by female football players and fans. Its marketing team launched a ‘social swap’ experiment, asking Jill Scott MBE and Gary Neville to swap their social media accounts and post as one another.
Although Gary posted on Jill’s account, she received five times more negative and sexist comments. The experiment turned into a marketing video, generating over 1 billion impressions, 7 million views, and crucial conversations about gender bias.
We have the opportunity of such broad reach, as a long-standing sponsor of UEFA, to use our platform for good and challenge with initiatives like the Social Swap, all with the aim to refresh perspectives.
Pascale Throne, Global Diversity & Inclusion Head at Heineken
3 common challenges HR professionals face when implementing diversity hiring
Although diversity is a great investment, human resources teams often struggle to push through with their DEI initiatives.
Why? Many companies lack data to justify investments. Only 15% of companies connect their DEI progress to business outcomes such as increased profitability or productivity.
Those who do get a green light often face internal resistance due to ingrained unconscious bias. “We all tend to seek out comfort and familiarity,” says Francesca Gino, Harvard Business School professor. “And this often translates into choosing to work with those who are like us.”
That’s why your organization always ends up with the same candidate pool, limited to a very homogenous group of people without the skills you need. To change that, consider addressing the following problematic areas.
1. Unconscious bias
Unconscious biases are perspectives we have about certain people that form outside of our conscious awareness. For example, you may think a younger employee is less experienced than an older one. Or prioritize candidates from the same Alma Mater as you.
The problem with unconscious biases is they’re subtle. But they also cause major havoc in the recruitment process. Many rule-based resume screening tools automatically discard or down-rank candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. So, interviewers fail to choose the best candidate 42% of the time due to bias.
To fix that, DEI leaders adopt new practices, such as:
- Adapting interview formats (47%) to suit differently abled candidates
- Building more diverse hiring teams (45%)
- Using blind recruitment techniques (33%).
Blind recruitment tools exclude data that can lead to biased thinking from candidates’ resumes, such as their age, gender, name, or college degree. New interview formats like async video interviews can be more convenient for candidates with special needs (e.g., busy working parents or people dealing with social anxiety).
2. Difficulty attracting diverse candidates
“Diverse candidates simply don’t apply to our company.” I’m sure you heard that rant on LinkedIn. And most won’t unless you make a targeted effort.
A 2024 survey by the UK Recruitment and Employment Confederation found that 44% of employers don’t use inclusive language in job descriptions, 61% don’t have diverse interview panels, and 75% don’t name blind CV submissions.
In other words — they do nothing to attract diverse candidates.
Candidates from minority groups already struggle with confidence and a lingering fear of discrimination. They seek out workplaces with high psychological safety and acceptance levels. To attract them, your job promotion strategy must send a clear message: Everyone is welcome.
Get inspiration from the best job descriptions to improve your candidate value proposition. Include information on your DEI policy and a call to action to encourage submissions from every type of candidate, regardless of age, ability, or background.
Avoid ambiguous language in job postings. A simple change of wording from “we seek experienced sales managers” to “we welcome people with 2+ years of experience in B2B software sales” can already reduce your candidate pool.
3. Resistance to change
Old habits are hard to shake off. When hiring managers and people teams don’t see problems in the hiring process, they don’t rush to fix them. Unfortunately, many people lack awareness about the pitiful state of diversity in their organizations — that is until they face the court of public opinion.
Conduct a diversity audit to get the real numbers on gender and ethnic representation across your workforce.
Just like Levi Strauss, you may realize that representation reduces the closer you get to the top. While the company’s frontline workforce is wonderfully diverse, with 37% white, 28% Hispanic or Latinx workers, 18% Black, 10% Asian, and 5% other BIPOC, its corporate and even more so top management teams aren’t as diverse.
In 2020, this revelation triggered a greater focus on diverse hiring and better succession management practices.
Tips for building a diversity recruiting strategy in 2025
Many people believe that DEI can positively impact recruitment and retention. But 70% also say their company lacks a proper framework. If you’re in that camp, start by applying the following tips.
1. Get buy-in from leadership
Diversity requires commitment at all levels, but most importantly from leadership. You’ll face resistance at every level if your executives aren’t on board.
Use the power of data to reason with other stakeholders. Articulate your business case by showing how investments in diverse hiring practices can address lingering problems like long time-to-fill, skills mismatches, or low workforce productivity rates.
Link quantifiable DEI benefits to organizational goals.
For example, if the leaders are concerned with profitability, showcase how diversity hiring can reduce time-to-hire for new roles and help with skills acquisition. If retention is the problem, bring out cases of how a more equitable culture improves employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.
When trying to secure buy-in for diversity, Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of The United States Hispanic Business Council, likes to start with a series of questions: “What does the employment market look like in your industry? What does the future employee look like for your brand? Does your leadership team — this is where a lot of companies fall short — reflect the markets you serve?”
Businesses whose products and solutions are more aligned with the culture and experiences of the markets they serve will consistently beat out organizations that don’t represent their customer bases well.
2. Get creative with candidate sourcing
Let’s start with one of the core ideas of diversity hiring: If you can’t reach diverse candidates, you won’t ever be able to promote diversity in your workplace. Therefore, candidate sourcing is where diversity recruiting starts.
Switch from using only general job boards like Indeed and Monster to more inclusive ones like Pink Jobs or Diversity.com. If you’re doing campus recruitment, add new universities to your mix, serving more diverse groups of students.
As part of its Inclusive Futures program, Lloyd’s launched an early-careers talent pool designed to engage black and ethnically diverse candidates from partnering universities. The company aims to develop an ‘executive pipeline’ to bring more diverse groups from the classroom to the boardroom.
It also helps to attend recruitment events that attract diverse attendees. These events could be in person, but groups like Work Without Limits also run virtual recruitment fairs — a great way to attract those with disabilities.
Companies can also establish mutually beneficial links with diversity advocates or community groups. For instance, Lady Bird Talent runs Hire Women Week in January and promotes careers for women and non-binary folks all year round.
Leverage internal resources to attract diverse talent and build a diverse talent pool for future hiring initiatives. Existing employees from diverse groups can help you access peers from their network. Generous employee referral programs provide employee incentives to mine their friend lists, easing the load on recruitment teams.
3. Try blind hiring tools
Another critical task when hiring diverse teams is removing sources of bias. Not an easy task, but a feasible one with the right blind recruitment tools for candidate screening.
Blind recruitment software anonymizes candidate information during the hiring process. HR professionals may unwittingly pass judgment when seeing ethnic names, gender identifiers, age, or other personal identifiers.
By removing these from the beginning of the candidate screening process, you shift the attention to skills and qualifications.
Mobile startup, Listonic was tired of inviting the ‘wrong’ candidates for interviews—people who looked good on paper but lacked the necessary competencies. So Emil Krzeminski decided to try something new — remove resume screening from the hiring process and use skill assessments to recruit new sales partners.
“I knew that if I look at resumes, I will unintentionally start judging candidates by certain characteristics,” Emil shared. “Toggl Hire’s screening tests helped us assess candidates objectively and focus only on the most qualified ones.”
4. Check the language in your job descriptions
Read through some of your past job descriptions, ideally for recruitment processes that failed to deliver diverse employees. Do they contain biased terms like “hard-hitting” (which could sound excessively macho) or “dynamic” (which could deter older applicants)?
Use inclusive language to describe core job requirements. Foreground necessary skills and qualifications for job performance. Setting the bar too high deters less confident people — a huge diversity hiring snafu.
As the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report shows, more women respond to job offers with clear qualification requirements.
Writing an inviting and inclusive job description doesn’t add much overhead to your HR team.
- Balance the gender tone. Use a good mix of masculine-tone phrases as feminine ones to attract a balanced mix of candidates. Phrases like “Prove you can crush deadlines” or “ someone who thrives under pressure” have a more masculine undertone versus female counterparts like “Showcase your ability to meet goals” or “someone who excels in dynamic environments.”
- Remove arbitrary candidate requirements. Information like college major, graduation year, GPAs, location, or even full years of experience in a particular sector is largely irrelevant for most jobs. When describing candidate requirements, focus on the skills and competencies you seek. You can leave some of these in a “nice-to-haves” section to encourage more applications.
- Add a diversity statement. In the US, employers are legally obliged to include an EEO Policy Statement in all job descriptions. In other jurisdictions, it’s not mandatory but much recommended. Briefly summarize your commitment to providing diversity and equality opportunities to every candidate.
5. Implement skills testing
Skills-based hiring progressively replaces traditional hiring approaches. It lowers the time and cost to hire while increasing candidate quality and workplace diversity.
Testing eliminates bias from job candidate evaluations. Fully or semi-anonymized skill assessments provide recruiters with concrete evidence of the candidate’s aptitude for the role. As one of the screening methods, tests also benchmark one candidate against another based on their performance in different areas.
For example, knowledge of Android app development or remote work readiness. This way, you can fairly compare people’s abilities without focusing as much on their ‘clout’ or some other (un)favorable characteristics.
From our experience with hiring remote employees across 40+ countries, skills assessments act as a great competency filter for shortlisting candidates faster and without bias.
6. Develop a diverse employer brand
Poor brand reputation can deter people from diverse backgrounds. Think of some inappropriate remarks by your leadership or public complaints on Glassdoor from current employees.
Candidates constantly form opinions about companies based on stories or (in the worst cases) scandals they see online — and those are plenty.
Roblox came under public scrutiny after its current and former staffers came forward about the company’s lackluster diversity efforts. The C-suites reportedly had very ‘lax’ attitudes towards the problem, like a VP saying that he was working on hiring more women but wasn’t sure if it ‘counted’ if they were all of East Asian descent. 🤦♀️
Uber, in turn, had to issue hasty apologies after (its now-former) Chief Diversity Officer hosted DEI sessions titled “Don’t Call me Karen”, which many BIPOC employees found very diminutive and offensive.
If you don’t want to repeat the same employer branding mistakes, you’ll need to practice listening to your employees and using their voices both to address root problems and showcase your progress to others.
Uber made amends by finding a better executive to lead their DEI and working with its staff to ensure similar issues won’t reoccur. The company has since launched a Global Self-Identification (GSID) program and thought leadership series designed to explain how the company uses DEI data to advance our workforce, workplace, and even marketplace goals.
Follow the lead and start sharing stories (no matter how big or small) about how your company aims to build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. Showcase positive stories about the achievements of diverse employees.
Let candidates know if you engage with diversity charities or advocate groups. Shout about your training programs and promotion pathways. There’s so much branding potential, and let’s face it…the way you tell stories matters in a social media-driven recruiting world.
7. Use a diverse interview team
Fact: homogenous hiring teams produce homogenous results. Diverse recruitment teams are more likely to consider potential candidates of different backgrounds.
Take a look at your hiring panels. Do they reflect the diversity within your organization? Are you bringing a wide enough outlook?
Diversifying hiring panels makes a big difference. Heineken wants to see 30% of senior management roles occupied by women in 2025. To do so, the company has created an internal Global Commerce Talent Committee, which now ensures at least one female candidate is shortlisted for every senior sales vacancy. To avoid bias, all company interviews also have a gender-diverse panel.
Sometimes, organizations struggle to diversify panels due to a lack of resources. In that case, training recruitment staff to understand the roots of unconscious biases is essential. Recruitment policies should also define neutral interview processes that treat all candidates equally.
8. Stick to structured interviews
DEI teams create standardized interview guides to promote fair assessments. During the first round(s), favor a structured interview process over an unstructured one to give all qualified candidates an equal opportunity.
A structured interview includes a list of predefined questions and a standard scorecard for all applicants. Each interviewer then provides a score, and the team decides on progression based on the cumulative score.
Structured interview questions should be role-related. Look for evidence of candidates’ skills and competencies rather than focusing on how they acquired these. Situational interview questions are handy. They ask candidates to role-play relevant scenarios, providing valuable information about how they would respond to workplace challenges without dwelling too much on their background.
Avoid generic interview questions. Too vague (e.g., What’s your personality like?) or oddly specific questions (e.g., What did you dislike at your last job?) can confuse and alienate many applicants. The feedback they generate is also hard to evaluate fairly. Stick to strategic interview questions that assess core competencies and rate candidates based on predetermined criteria.
How do you retain diverse talent?
Diverse hiring is the first step of a wider DEI journey. You also need to build an environment of inclusion and diversity to retain the new hires. People who witness or experience discrimination, bias, or disrespect are nearly 1.4 times more likely to resign. That’s the last thing you want.
To cultivate and retain a content, diverse workforce:
- Offer diversity training programs to managers. Bias and cultural faux pas often come from a lack of awareness. Coach your senior staff to adapt their behaviors to a wider range of employee needs. To improve its DEI efforts, Ingka Group (parent company of IKEA) had over 1,400 senior managers complete the program. This helped the company achieve a 50/50 gender balance in management positions (all levels of management) and improve its inclusion score to 80%.
- Create better career progression paths. Employees quit jobs when they see no opportunities for advancement. Diverse candidates hit the ‘glass ceiling’ more often due to the lack of visible representation at higher positions and prejudiced succession planning programs. 20% of BIPOC employees see racial identity as a barrier to career growth, and 35% suspect this but are not certain. In contrast, only 10% and 12% of white employees feel the same way. Review your workforce planning strategy to ensure you’re giving equitable opportunities to advance people of different backgrounds, genders, and abilities.
- Create affinity groups. To cultivate a greater sense of belonging, create internal communities where employees with similar identities or interests can connect for support, mentorship, or just some casual chit-chat. Nike runs several employee-led networks for members and friends of the LGBTQ+, veteran, BIPOC, indigenous, and disabled communities.
Retention should be as important as diverse hiring. Without driving deeper cultural transformations in your company, you’ll fail to gain tangible benefits diverse teams can bring.
Is diversity hiring legal?
Yes, diversity hiring is legal in most jurisdictions, provided companies adopt the correct procedures and respect local labor laws.
Although critics may not agree. For decades, recruiters drifted towards affirmative action to solve racial or gender disparities. HR teams set quotas and created training programs for underrepresented groups.
Critics often accused recruiters (and still do) of hiring minority employees at the expense of others (generally middle-aged white men). The idea of ‘reverse discrimination’ argues that employers favor groups or special interests, skewing their recruitment processes to meet social or political goals.
A June 2023 Supreme Court case struck down “race-based admissions programs” to US colleges. Soon after, 13 attorney generals wrote a letter to Fortune 100 CEOs. The AGs stated that companies “must overcome…underlying bias and treat all employees, all applicants, and all contractors equally, without regard for race.”
Global regulators argue for a simple principle: Employers cannot hire people from protected groups solely based on their ethnic origins or other personal characteristics. They need a robust justification based on the role and skill requirements. Anything else is discrimination.
To make sure your diversity hiring program doesn’t cross any red lines, you need to design it in compliance with these laws. 👇
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) manages a suite of laws that seek to prevent discrimination at work. EEO includes the hiring process, workplace compensation, promotion, and assigning workloads.
Under Equal Employment Opportunity laws, companies cannot discriminate against individuals based on:
- Race
- National origin or ethnicity
- Gender or sexual orientation
- Age
- Disability (physical or mental)
- Religion
The consequences of ignoring EEO legislation are severe. In 2021, Wal-Mart received a $125 million fine for discriminating against an employee with Down Syndrome.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
The Americans with Disabilities Act has protected disability rights since 1990 and extends protected status to those with physical and mental disabilities (listed as conditions that “substantially limit one or more major life activities.”) Employers must avoid discrimination when hiring and take reasonable steps to accommodate disabled employees at work.
Employment Equality Directive
The EED is the European Union’s version of EEO. As in the USA, European employers must accommodate all employees and create and apply policies to prevent victimization, harassment, and discrimination.
Racial Equality Directive
The EU’s Racial Equality Directive (RED) complements the EED. The RED prohibits discrimination based on race and mandates support for victims of racial discrimination or harassment. Companies also need to quickly remedy any instances of victimization, whether individual or systemic.
Gender Equality Directive
The Gender Equality Directive (GED) prohibits gender-based discrimination across the EU. Candidates should be treated equally during recruitment, promotion procedures, or everyday work, regardless of their gender.
The GED includes provisions to enforce gender-neutral wording and imagery in job advertisements. It enforces neutrality throughout the recruitment pipeline — another good reason to create a diversity hiring strategy that minimizes bias at every stage.
How to measure the effectiveness of your diversity recruiting efforts
The purpose of diverse hiring is to eliminate systemic inequalities from your hiring process to judge candidates based on their merit, rather than personal attributes. But to solve the problem, you first need to diagnose it.
“Data serves as the compass that guides our efforts towards achieving equality within our organization,” shared Salesforce Chief Equality Officer Lori Castillo Martinez. “It enables us to pinpoint the areas where we need to direct our focus and resources for maximum impact.”
Salesforce data suggested a low representation of Black leaders in the US on VP levels and above. So, the company launched several equality and leadership development programs to support career growth among employees in this group.
To ensure your efforts are directed at the right targets, you should track the right DEI metrics at the hiring stage. Namely:
- Interview-to-hire ratios for candidates of different backgrounds and gender to ensure they’re moving through the recruitment pipeline.
- Offer acceptance rates to understand if applicants align with your culture and working environment. They can also diagnose pay inequality among different groups of people.
- Sources of hire. Measure which channels bring a more diverse range of applicants to optimize your promotion strategies.
- Retention rates by demographic groups. Benchmark employee retention rates among different groups to identify potential retention issues with diverse hires.
Also, keep track of the workforce composition at different company tiers. Measure what percentage of people from diverse backgrounds are present at each level — frontline, management, executive, and board. Set targets if necessary, but don’t just hire to meet those targets. Stay focused on objectively measuring candidate competencies regarding the open role.
Make diversity a core value, integrated into every aspect of your business culture. Share metrics with employees. Gather internal feedback and ask for suggestions to further refine your strategies.
Examples of diversity hiring goals
Just like any other hiring initiative, diversity hiring has to be backed by a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (aka SMART) recruitment goal.
For example:
- Diversify recruitment channels. Set targets for trying alternative recruitment channels and strategies for candidate sourcing. Slack got ahead in DEI by recruiting many of its tech staffers from coding boot camps that trained underrepresented talent.
- Address pay equity. Gender pay gaps persist in many companies and have recently become a governmental concern. New salary transparency laws across the EU, the US, and APAC force employees to disclose salaries during recruitment and, in some cases, report gender pay gap statistics publicly. To address this, conduct an internal compensation review to ensure you offer fair, competitive compensation to new hires and current employees.
- Improve the quality of hire. Quality of hire is a composite metric that reflects the value of new employees. It can be measured through turnover rates, job performance, employee engagement, and cultural fit with a 360 rating. By removing biases from the hiring process and using skills-based assessments, you’re more likely to attract strong matches.
Remember, diverse hiring goals don’t have to be ‘moonshot.’ Small, targeted improvements across the entire recruitment cycle create a compounding positive net effect over time.
Build diverse teams with Toggl Hire
Diverse companies are resilient and profitable. Organizations that incorporate different perspectives excel in talent acquisition, employer branding, workplace productivity, and ultimately—financial metrics.
However, to make huge strides, you’ll need to upgrade your recruitment process.
Toggl Hire helps companies build a more diversity-focused recruiting strategy with skills-based hiring. Tailor tests for different roles to find candidates with the right competencies without using bias-prone measures like ‘age’, ‘tenure’, or ‘college degree’.
Give everyone a fair shot without overwhelming your recruitment teams with cheat-proof responses, automated grading, and data-driven candidate insights.
Meet your diversity hiring goals
See how Toggl Hire’s skills tests and other fair hiring-focused features can help you create a diverse workforce.
Elena is a freelance writer, producing journalist-style content that doesn’t leave the reader asking “so what." From the future of work to the latest technology trends, she loves exploring new subjects to produce compelling and culturally relevant narratives for brands. In her corporate life, Elena successfully managed remote freelance teams and coached junior marketers.