Why diversity and inclusion is no.1 in graduate recruitment. Build an outstanding business!

All companies are keen to hire the best talent possible. But what if your recruitment process is unintentionally excluding diverse talent? Diversity, inclusion and equality should be the cornerstone of your selection process, to ensure fair access to opportunities and every efforts should be made to strip out bias throughout the process.

Conscious and unconscious bias, as well as inconsistencies in your recruitment process could deter a wider pool of applicants, which means you’d be missing out on the right talent for your company. Systemically ensuring diversity in selection benefits your business, as well as your employees. Here’s why.

Diversity boosts company performance as true talent is identified

If you are designing and promoting a product or service, you want to reach as many customers as possible. However, with a uniform team, your ideas will likely be more limited. You may miss important input from employees of different backgrounds. Employing a diverse talent pool will help you reach a wider target audience.

Studies have shown that companies with a diverse workforce generate more profit than their competitors.You will be building engaged teams full of talented individuals who are able to support the changing needs of the business.

With all of the technological advances that are happening, it is likely that employees will need significant upskilling as the years’ progress. Recruit teams of diverse talent that meet your company culture and who are adaptable to change. We’re talking about true talent as well, not just because you feel the need to fill a quota. Any hiring should be without bias and based on ability, culture fit and the best potential for the business. Start identifying those talented individuals with an anonymous selection process.

Employee and client satisfaction

Both professionals and customers are becoming increasingly aware of the lack of diversity and representation across all industries. They are now looking for companies at all levels to champion these issues and be the drivers of change. By systemically ensuring diversity in selection, you will boost employee satisfaction and increase your credibility to potential customers.

But don’t just make it a performative action – make it your priority to become aware of the issues in your industry and actively try to fix them. If you want to hire the best graduates and attract them to your business, you need to ensure that you are presenting yourself as a thought leader in this area.

Differentiate yourself from the businesses that are creating sound bites and focus on how you can be the change. With a genuine focus on identifying true talent without bias.

Best practices for diversity equality and inclusion

Attracting a diverse pool of applicants should be your priority at every stage of the process. Don’t think about the hiring process from your company’s perspective. Try to put yourself in the applicant’s shoes and think of how your advert and hiring process comes across to them.

here are you sending them to find out more about your business? How do you talk about your employees, your best assets? Include details on your commitment to identifying candidates on talent alone – exactly how it should be. What is your commitment to ensuring that you are removing any chance of bias in your recruitment process?

Here are our best practise suggestions to ensure an inclusive recruitment process:

• Your job advert should be inclusive - make sure that the role and requirements are clearly stated and easy to understand. Avoid using too much company jargon, job details and expectations should be straightforward
• Get creative in your search – Don’t limit yourself to traditional routes! You can advertise the role on traditional job searches, but you may have better luck attracting diverse applicants via social media ads and networking groups. Try not a cv for our anonymous application route – ensuring that no bias creeps in right from the start of your recruitment processes
• Create an inclusive application process – everything from your initial advert to the recruitment systems should be friendly, easy to navigate and inclusive. Don’t forget to highlight your inclusion and diversity policy, as this will encourage applicants from all backgrounds
• Eliminate bias in your shortlisting process – ensure that the recruiters shortlisting the applicants make their decisions solely based on experience and qualifications. It may be worth hiding details like names, nationality, education, and other criteria that could trigger conscious or subconscious bias
• Remote working widens the talent pool. If you are able to offer a role that is mostly remote, can you now open up your graduate recruitment to employees who live further away from the office who may have been precluded before because they couldn’t afford to move closer to the office or the travel costs? You could achieve this through anonymity in candidate matching
• Allow enough time for the interview – carefully prepare for each interview to give yourself the best chance of getting to know each applicant. Allow enough time between the interviews to ensure you are not rushing through and get your questions ready, as well as learning the information about them ahead of the interview. Ensure that you meet each individual candidate’s needs for interview. The interview is the graduates chance to shine but they aren’t the only ones being interviewed.

Attracting top graduate talent

Through building a diverse and inclusive workforce you are supporting your EVP (employee value proposition). Communicating it effectively, you will attract more of the top graduate talent to your business. If you are struggling to identify a way to stand out to graduates during this busy “milk round” season look at the many ways in which you can effectively communicate who you are and what your business stands for.

Graduates are more in tune with how a company’s values fits with their own. Recruit an effective and engaged workforce and let the power of work of mouth do the talking for you.

If you are looking for an easy online platform to help you to prescreen graduate applicants and identify the right talent for your business, first time, take a look at Not a CV. We’re the platform built to strip away bias and to allow graduate hiring teams to seamlessly match the best potential talent that fits your culture.

Our anonymised platform includes a personality test, so you can get a better understanding of these potential hires. A low risk option with no fees until you have identified those candidates who match. When you are dealing with large scale recruitment, it can be easy to miss those candidates who have the potential to take your business on to great things. So don’t miss out!

Build a talented diverse workforce and take your business to the next level. Start using the Not A CV platform today.

Make a better choice! Not a CV is clever tech built by recruiters for fast-moving employers. We take the headache out of recruitment through our job psychometric, whole person view and machine learning. Why not join us on Twitter: @notacv and LinkedIn: Not a CV.