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Updated Aug 21, 2024

Upping Your Diversity Game: Tech That Enables a More Diverse Talent Pool

Digital tools can help ensure a diverse talent pool when recruiting and hiring.

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Written By: Erin DonaghueContributing Writer
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There’s no doubt that a diverse team makes a company stronger. But finding the right pool of candidates can be challenging. Subconscious bias during resume review can be one stumbling block when it comes to diversity in hiring, but how you write job descriptions can impact the candidates who apply.

The good news is that technology is here to help. From primary-skills recommendations to artificial intelligence (AI) resume review, a diverse talent pool is closer than you think.

Diversity hiring tools for more diverse talent pools

Removing bias from the hiring process can be challenging. Corporations have tried to combat subconscious bias by creating diversity training programs. Still, critics and some studies say that traditional diversity training is the least effective means of removing bias from hiring.

Thankfully, technology offers several solutions to help remove bias — at least from the initial application. Many of these tools allow hiring managers to focus on a candidate’s skills instead of their name or demographic information. Consider the following three types of tools that can help improve your hiring and recruitment process by ramping up diversity.

Did You Know?Did you know
After the hiring process, businesses must still strive to create a culture of diversity and inclusion within their organizations by creating safe spaces for all employees and encouraging open and honest feedback.

1. Diversity hiring tools to remove bias and focus on skills

Several applications allow companies to find candidates based solely on skills, helping remove subconscious bias from the hiring process. Here are a few examples: 

  • Skills-based testing tools: Software applications like Toggl Hire allow applicants to take a skills-based test. Those who score lowest are weeded out of the pack of potential hires before anyone can make assumptions about gender or race. Those with better scores are forwarded to hiring managers.
  • Soft skills assessments: Tools like Pymetrics use online surveys and quizzes without demographic information attached. Pymetrics combines neuroscience games and AI to match people with jobs, focusing on soft skills vs. hard skills. After roughly 20 minutes of playing behavior-based games, the AI matches the results with a position profile. If there’s a match, the applicant moves on to the next round.
  • Anonymizing tools: Applied is an example of a hiring product that anonymizes applicants by removing names and images. Instead, it focuses on assessments relying on situational judgment testing to predict how applicants will perform in on-the-job scenarios. Hiring managers can develop their own scenarios or choose from Applied’s situational judgment test library. According to the company, 60 percent of people hired using the tool would have been missed on a traditional resume review.

2. Diversity hiring tools to counter racial, name-based bias

Blind reviews can remove the temptation to make assumptions about candidates’ demographics based on names and other identifying characteristics and let their in-demand career skills shine through as the most essential piece of their resume. Here are two examples:

  • TalVista: TalVista is a tool that enables blind resume review. The company’s redacted resume screening tool hides elements from the resume, such as name, gender and other identifiers, leaving only an applicant’s skills and experience for employers to review.
  • Pinpoint: Pinpoint is another tool that offers blind recruitment software, allowing for anonymous applications and resumes as part of its applicant tracking system. The tool automatically redacts identifying information like names, emails and ages to ensure hiring managers evaluate candidates based solely on their experience and skills.

3. Diversity hiring tools to counter job description bias

Resume review isn’t the only place where bias can enter the hiring process. Even how a job description is written can influence who applies. For example, using words that appeal to a more masculine audience — like “challenging” or “aggressive” — can skew your applicant pool.

Thanks to predictive analytics and plenty of examples of successful and unsuccessful postings, you can adjust your job descriptions to encourage a more diverse pool of candidates to apply.

For example, Textio reviews job postings for gender or culture bias. The platform reviews more than 10 million job posts a month, as well as their outcomes and uses that data to improve its algorithms. It then suggests ways to change the wording of your post to achieve better results.

Did You Know?Did you know
Applying for jobs online can frustrate job seekers because the application process is often lengthy, their application can easily be missed, they may not hear back from the employer and automated responses can be disappointing.

More ways to improve diversity in your talent pool

Tech tools can help businesses expand their candidate pools and recruit a talented, diverse workforce. However, diversity hiring technology can be supplemented with additional strategies to ensure a positive company culture all job seekers and current employees will appreciate. Consider the following ideas: 

  • Use a professional employer organization (PEO): Contracting with a PEO to assist you with human resources can help with diversity hiring and employment practices. The best PEO service providers prioritize diversity initiatives and can guide your business toward hiring best practices. Read our TriNet review to learn about this PEO’s robust recruiting and hiring features, including skills assessments and interview guidance.  
  • Use several recruitment sources: Interview job applicants from several sources instead of focusing on candidates from only one platform. Diversifying your recruitment efforts will organically bring you a more diverse range of candidates.
  • Hire diverse interns: Create an internship program that prioritizes diversity. You’ll meet and train a more diverse lineup of young professionals who you’ll be able to transition into full-time roles in the future. 
  • Make diversity part of your company culture: Diversity efforts don’t end after the hiring process. Focus on making diversity part of the fabric of your business by incorporating pro-diversity policies and anti-discrimination rules in your employee handbook and company mission, vision and values.
  • Involve more people in the hiring process: To minimize hiring bias, involve a diverse range of people in your hiring process. The more people involved, the more likely your hiring team will be to identify potential biases.

Making the most of your technology and working collaboratively on the hiring process will help you create more diverse hiring practices. And a more diverse team, of course, is a more effective one.

TipTip
Diverse and inclusive companies like Kaiser Permanente, Lenovo and Mastercard seek and act on their employees' diversity and inclusion feedback, recruit anonymously and prioritize diversity and inclusion training programs.

What the research says about diversity in hiring

Unfortunately, bias has long been prevalent during the hiring and recruitment process, especially when it comes to reviewing resumes and is still an issue. A candidate’s name or location can affect whether or not they’ll be chosen for an interview. Consider the following research:

  • A 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that applicants with ethnic-sounding names must send out 50 percent more resumes than candidates with more traditional Caucasian names. 
  • A 2021 University of California, Berkeley study found that job applicants with seemingly Black names received callbacks from large employers 10 percent less often than other applicants. 
  • An updated analysis of the Berkeley data found that the number rose to 24 percent among the worst offenders, with auto dealers and retailers of car parts ranking as the industries least likely to call back Black applicants.

Skills-based hiring has increasingly become a popular way to combat this kind of bias. According to a TestGorilla survey of 1,500 employers and 1,500 employees, 70 percent of respondents said all forms of skills-based hiring are more effective than reviewing resumes. Many employers report using skills-based hiring to improve diversity. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents said skills-based hiring positively impacted diversity and 23 percent said it had a very large impact.

Did You Know?Did you know
Job candidates who are Black, Latino and otherwise nonwhite often face hiring challenges based on their names alone.

Commit to ramping up diversity in hiring

While technology is an excellent tool to increase diversity in your talent pool, there’s no substitute for committing to diversity as a core value for your organization. As a leader, you should consider incorporating a diversity, equity and inclusion section into your company policies or mission statement. Talk to hiring managers and team leaders to let them know they should make diversity a priority when it comes to hiring.

Diversity initiatives shouldn’t stop after new employee onboarding. Ensure your company provides a welcoming environment for people from all cultures, faiths and backgrounds and prioritize inclusive communication efforts. When your team members feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work, they’ll be able to focus on contributing to company goals better.

Dawn Kuczwara and Max Freedman contributed to this article.

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Written By: Erin DonaghueContributing Writer
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