Equality, Diversion and Inclusion is a huge topic across the world, and in a time where it’s more difficult than ever to attract the best people, we are seeing companies who put EDI at the forefront of their recruitment strategy succeeding where most are failing. As a business, one of the most important things you can do to attract a diverse range of candidates is to remove recruitment bias.
It’s no secret that in software development, which StackHire specialises within, that women are massively under-represented. Whilst a major part of the problem is not enough women entering the fields at an early age, once they are in the industry, the barriers don’t get much better.
We have put together a useful guide to remove recruitment bias, and help attract the best female talent for you team:
Check your adverts and job descriptions for gender-biased wording
As a Recruiter, it was eye-opening to me the first time I ran one of my adverts through a gender-bias text checker. Unconsciously, I was using words like ‘driven’, ‘leader’ and ‘strong’ in my adverts to attract the best people. What I didn’t realise is that these words where seen as ‘masculine’ words, and were putting women off from applying for the jobs.
Knowing whether a word is seen as feminine or masculine can be tricky, so thankfully there are some fantastic tools available for free to help you create adverts and job descriptions which are unbiased. If you want guidance on the best ones, get in touch and we’ll show you the ones we use!
Use ‘encouraging’ wording in your adverts
Research suggests women are far less likely to apply for a job if they don’t feel they meet the exact list of requirements. There are two things you can do to encourage more females to apply:
- Only list the absolutely essential skills for the role in your advert. By going overboard with a long list of requirements, you’ll put off most potential applicants, but in particular, women.
- Encourage people to apply even if they don’t meet all of the skills required. This will broaden your talent pool, and means that you won’t let any with the majority of the skills slip through the net.
Advertise your salary bracket
This is a no-brainer, and should be done regardless of who you are trying to attract. Adverts with a clear salary bracket get significantly more applications!
At StackHire, we hear two main reasons for not advertising salaries. The first is we don’t want our current team to find out what we’re paying. The only reason for doing this is you are paying them less. If this is the case, the solution lies with paying the rest of the team what the market-rate is.
The second is that they don’t want to miss out of talent who are looking for more than the bracket. If you can afford to pay more for the best people, then incorporate that into your bracket. If you can’t then you wouldn’t be able to attract somebody looking for more, so you don’t need them to apply anyway!
Ensure candidates meet a diverse range of people in the recruitment process
Recruitment processes should be as quick as possible, without sacrificing them being thorough. Getting the opinion of a diverse range of people will help you make the right choice. It will also show potential employees that you have a diverse workforce.
Wherever possible, you should have a mixture of both males and females reviewing CV’s and interviewing. This will minimise the risk of missing out on somebody great, and give you the most complete viewpoint.
Make positive changes internally
There’s no point in doing the above, hiring fantastic women into your business, then not having measures to ensure they stay! We are seeing a large amount of companies offering things like menopause support groups, flexible working schemes and female leadership training to really help both their female workers, and the success of the business.
At StackHire we are passionate about promoting women in both technology and science. If you are hiring for the very best people to join your team, then contact us to find out how we can help you remove recruitment bias, and attract the best selection of people for your team.
