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Diversity & Inclusion Recruitment Strategies to Help You Find and Attract Underrepresented Talent

Source | business.linkedin.com | Glen Cathey

Globally, 77% of talent professionals say diversity will be very important to the future of recruiting. They recognize the integral role they’ll play in helping companies stay accountable to their commitments to diversity and inclusion. And that starts with sourcing a diverse pipeline of candidates. 

“My sense,” says Melissa Thompson, the head of global talent acquisition at Nielsen, “is that one of the biggest myths is that diverse talent is not available. Not true. It doesn’t matter whether it’s African Americans or Hispanics in the engineering/technology space or it’s diversity for senior leaders.” She calls this excuse “bullswanky.”

And, of course, she’s right. To identify overlooked and untapped talent pools, you need to adjust your sourcing strategies — because if your go-to tactics haven’t produced diverse candidate slates in the past, they’re unlikely to do so in the future. The goal here, of course is still to hire the best possible person for the job. And an expanded talent pool gives you the best shot at finding them. With that in mind, here are my foundational sourcing strategies for attracting and locating underrepresented talent on LinkedIn:

Attracting underrepresented talent: Think carefully about the language and requirements in your job descriptions — and about where you post the job

Posting open positions on targeted job boards is perhaps the easiest way to attempt to attract underrepresented talent. But it should only be the first step if you want to build a thoroughly diverse talent pool. 

If you rely largely or solely on posting jobs on diversity-focused sites, such as Diversity.comBlack Career NetworkHispanic/Latino Professional Association, or Pink Jobs, you are only exposing your jobs to the talent from underrepresented groups that happen to be looking for a job at that time and visiting those specific sites. There may be just as many — if not more — job seekers from these groups on large sites like LinkedIn. So, it’s worth experimenting to see which approach yields the best results for your company. 

No matter where you post your job description, you need to ensure that the language and content won’t turn talent from underrepresented groups off and keep them from applying. That makes it critical to use inclusive language. There’s no shortage of advice on this topic, including posts that focus on attracting women and others that show you how to unroll the welcome mat. There are tools on the market, such as Textio and TextMetrics, that can help you fine-tune your job descriptions. 

Source
business.linkedin.com
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