How can you ensure that your talent scouting tools are diverse?

To ensure diversity in talent scouting tools, I prioritize inclusive practices such as defining criteria based on skills, updating job descriptions with inclusive language, and leveraging diverse sourcing channels. I incorporate blind recruitment and utilize AI tools for unbiased screening. Ongoing diversity training for recruiters, tracking metrics, and engaging diverse interview panels contribute to a comprehensive strategy. Regular audits and candidate feedback are key for refining and optimizing tools to promote a fair and equitable recruitment process.

Ensuring diversity in talent scouting tools is more than rhetoric; it's about tangible outcomes. Evaluate your tools by consistently providing a diverse slate and, ultimately, recruiting a diverse workforce. It's not just about speaking well on diversity and inclusion; it's about measuring success based on the composition of your team. Regularly assess if your tools facilitate the recruitment of a diverse workforce, making your commitment to diversity evident in the outcomes you achieve.

in order to understand that your tools of scouting are diverse you should be sure that relevant candidates come from different sources, ways of sourcing - boolean search, linkedIn, chats etc. Create sourcing strategy before starting a particular vacancy and be sure that your sourcing tools are diverse.

Knowing where you are to begin with is vital. This is needed to make any improvements. I would also rank the things you are about to assess before assessing them. This way you can then weigh up where to start.

Understanding the industry you work in is crucial for effectively attracting a diverse candidate pool. Candidates from different backgrounds and industries often have distinct preferences for certain job boards or tools. It's important to recognize that industry-specific tools and platforms can play a significant role in reaching a wider, more varied range of candidates. This approach ensures we connect with individuals who bring a multitude of perspectives and experiences, vital for fostering diversity in the workplace.

Speaking to recruiters that know about diversity is also paramount. They can handle a lot of this for you - but find out what they are actually doing, and the talent they have access to. It’s all well and good making comments, but what are they doing to achieve their outcomes.

I speak about this a lot, as I think this actually has a negative effect on what you are trying to achieve. To increase diversity a conscious bias is needed, so taking out the bias altogether and getting a machine to search for specific skills and experience won’t help this, it will actually limit your talent pool more. People from underrepresented backgrounds are exactly that - underrepresented - and often have been given less opportunity and exposure, so this is something to be extremely careful with.

I would agree with Zach to some degree and organisations should really firstly focus on creating an environment that is inclusive. Hiring diverse talent won't have a positive result if internally there isn't a sense of belonging. However from a ta perspective tools are useful especially ones that make the process fair without elimination of the human. The human is important as you need to have a culture where your hire will thrive. I would focus internally first on values, culture, belonging, training, processes ect. I would then make sure the ta team is making sure they are doing everything they can to reach a wide talent pool.