4. Inclusive Advertising
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Inclusive Advertising
You’re not the only person asking, “how can we find more diverse candidates?”
This is the number one question I hear from B Corps.
We think about this in two parts:
- Make sure you show jobseekers that your jobs and your company are inviting to candidates from underrepresented groups.
How to do this: write excellent welcoming job ads & create an inclusive careers page. - Make sure people from underrepresented groups hear about and see your jobs.
How to do this: use inclusive networking and post on the right job boards.
We’ve already covered job ads and careers pages in previous posts. Today we’re going to dig deeper into networking and job boards.
Networking: Monoculture Maintenance or Bias Buster
Networking is a great way to find candidates you can trust. You probably already know great people you’d love to work with.
However, networking can unintentionally lead to a team that look and think a lot like you. Even if our friends and connections look different than we do, it’s likely a high percentage of the people we know have similar opinions to us, share religious or political views, economic status, life situation, etc. At its worst, networking can perpetuate our own view of the world and create monoculture at work.
At its best, networking can be an excellent source for diverse candidates. In Y Scouts’ Built On Purpose Podcast,* Patty McCord – former chief talent officer of Netflix gives an excellent example of how to use networking to increase the number of qualified women in your network.
The company in question told Patty that qualified women weren’t walking across their desk. Patty encouraged them to proactively use their networking to target excellent female candidates. You can do the same.
Another active recruiting opportunity is to attend job fairs that target underrepresented groups. In the US, a great list of schools to start with is the HBCU – Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Another benefit of attending these events or specifically networking with people from underrepresented groups is the message you send to your applicant pool and company. You’re showing diversity is a real priority at your company – which is critical when female or minority applicants are considering whether they will accept your job.
Job Boards: Big vs. Niche
Job boards are an easy way to get your positions in front of hundreds and thousands of jobseekers. Even if you’re doing a great job of networking, posting on job boards can be a meaningful way to increase the diversity of your candidate pool.
We divide job boards into two main types:
- Big Boards – like Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster, Craigslist and many others that have a huge footprint in the job market and attract all types of jobseekers.
- Niche Boards – like the B Corp Jobs Board, Idealist, Stack Overflow, Diversityworking.com and many others. These job boards focus on jobseekers that have a shared value or identity.
If you want to reach diverse jobseekers it would be easy to think that reaching out to job boards that target underrepresented groups would be the best way. This might be working well for you. In our experience, we’ve seen success for companies that are targeting formerly incarcerated jobseekers and new immigrants through local agencies that serve these communities. However, we have found that diversity focused job boards have had very little success at increasing the diversity of our applicant pool.
What has worked well for us is posting an inclusive job ad on the big boards. This gets the job in front of as many different types of people as possible and if you have a job ad that is clearly welcoming of all people, your job is going to stand out to candidates who face increased barriers to employment
Has your experience been different? Have you found job boards that are better for building a diverse candidate pool? We’d love to hear your ideas. Post them in the comment section below.
*The Built On Purpose podcast is an excellent resource put together by the B Corporation Y Scouts. The whole interview with Patty McCord is full of great insight into recruiting. Don’t stop there. The rest of the podcasts have Brian Mohr interviewing the leaders of the purpose economy, providing with you great insight how to replicate their vision of using business as a force for good in your own company.
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