Inclusive Hiring – how can we all up the ante?
I am proud that our approach to candidate acquisition at Trace has always been open minded and, hopefully, inclusive. For various reasons I believe we operate ethically but it’s sometimes hard to communicate without it feeling a little trite.
- We operate across sectors and company size, so attract candidates from commerce, financial services, and the public sector
- We have a process to shortlisting which considers more than just skills and qualifications
- We have always had the luxury of wide-ranging media, and we cover both specialist and generalist online advertising platforms
- Internally we are appropriate and give candidates a chance
- We always try to provide a diverse shortlist
After totting up some activity over the past 18 months 48% of placements have been female and 44% BAME or non-white ethnicities.
How can we do our bit better?
- Remove Gendered Wording from Adverts
- Advertise roles through new media
- Target non-traditional education backgrounds
- Challenge our internal culture and unconscious bias
- Push back on clients to adapt their process and consider alternative candidates
- If our workforce is diverse that will have a knock-on effect to our service
How can we advise clients?
- Review anonymised CVs
- Eliminate as much inequity as possible by standardizing the interview & assessment process
o Have a diverse panel
o Blind skills challenges
o Structured Questions and Scoring System
- Offer more flexibility to encourage more part and job-sharing opportunities
As the Founder of Trace, I am keen to keep evolving our practices, how we advise our clients at the briefing stage and conduct our search and selection processes.
This brings up back to the key question. Inclusive Hiring – how can we all up the ante? We are about to run some internal training on unconscious bias, removing barriers to underrepresented groups and building on our non-judgemental processes.
If you would like to be part of this conversation, please get in touch.
andy.lee@tracerecruit.com
Andy Lee – Founder, Trace Recruitment
