12 Apr Best Inclusive Hiring Practices—and How They Can Benefit Your Business

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Inclusive hiring practices are a non-negotiable part of business operations today. There are a few reasons for this: first, a diverse team means that you’re more likely to have a variety of different perspectives at the table, which in turn can increase innovation and creativity. Inclusive hiring practices also signal your company’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to the wider world, which can bolster your business’s reputation. And finally, inclusive hiring practices are good for business—a handful of studies have shown a connection between diverse teams and higher performance.

How To Hire Inclusively

Still, figuring out how to improve hiring practices for diversity can be a daunting prospect for some business owners, particularly if you’re new to DEI or business ownership (or both). Here, we’ll outline the essential principles of inclusive hiring, as well as actionable steps you can take to implement those concepts in your own business:

1. Acknowledge Your Biases. We all have blind spots, and becoming aware of them is the first step to addressing them. Take a look around at your current team and see if you notice any patterns that might hint at a DEI problem. Are they mostly male? Mostly white? If so, that’s a sign that your unconscious biases might be affecting your hiring processes. Consider taking a test to evaluate any implicit biases, or working with a DEI consultant to develop an inclusive hiring strategy.
2. Rewrite Your Job Description. Take a close look at your job descriptions—are you using any terms or jargon that might potentially alienate women, people of color, LGBTQ+ candidates, or individuals from non-traditional backgrounds? Do your job postings include reasonable accommodation language?
   
   One of the first steps you can take to make your job postings more inclusive is to pare them down to the essentials. There’s a well-known study that found that men are likely to apply to a job if they meet about 60% of the requirements listed, but women will only apply if they meet 100% of the requirements. If you must list non-essential requirements, be sure to explicitly identify them as “nice-to-haves” rather than “must-haves.” Try to also stay away from highly specific requirements (eg, “Seven years experience in an executive role” or “Graduate-level degree in xyz”) unless they’re absolutely necessary. Instead, focus on language that emphasizes transferable skills and performance objectives.
3. Standardize Your Interviews. To give candidates an equal playing field, make sure you’re conducting interviews the same way across the board—same questions, same order, same scoring system. Avoid the common pitfall of favoring one candidate because they look like you, and be sure that your hiring committee is made up of diverse individuals as well. 

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