Diversity Equity & Inclusion Hiring, Recruiting, & Sourcing

Explore how individual and systemic biases shape the selection and offer stage within the recruiting and hiring process, and review key subcategories involved in choosing and offering roles.

Identify how unconscious bias appears in recruiting, especially in offering and hiring decisions, through assumptions about income, lifestyle, appearance, background, or school.

Identify common unconscious biases in hiring and interviewing, such as anchoring, stereotyping, similarity bias, confirmation bias, and availability heuristic, and learn to mitigate them.

Disrupt bias in the hiring process by outlining the five recruiting steps, highlighting common biases, and equipping you with tools to apply diversity, equity, and inclusion in every stage.

Explore the attack stage, focusing on branding, marketing, and attracting talent through brand perception and online presence. Examine mindful language and the difference between a required skill and a nice-to-have.

Learn to craft brand perception that attracts diverse talent by using inclusive imagery and showcasing DIY dei efforts like employee resource groups on websites and social channels.

Explore how inclusive language in job descriptions attracts diverse talent by avoiding culture-fit signals and stereotypes, and by reframing requirements to distinguish must-haves from nice-to-haves.

Distinguish required from nice-to-have qualifications to broaden applicant pools and reduce bias affecting historically marginalized groups, where women apply only at 100% and men at 60%.

Integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into branding and marketing with inclusive language and diverse imagery. Write inclusive job descriptions, limit must-have skills, and highlight a diverse workforce to amplify voices.

Explore insourcing as the next step in recruiting, expanding sourcing beyond limited networks, casting a wide net through social media and partnerships, and avoiding similarity bias to build diverse teams.

Identify diverse talent sources beyond LinkedIn, including social media, affinity groups and conferences, and colleges like HBCUs, HSIs, and PWIs, plus referrals and interns.

Explore barriers to referrals, including limited networks and similarity bias, especially for historically marginalized groups, and recognize that referrals rely on personal connections rather than cold outreach.

Explore a Glow Forge case study on using referral bonuses to boost referrals, especially for people from marginalized communities, by offering a larger incentive to broaden networks.

Explore how partnerships and sponsorships advance inclusive hiring by actively elevating diverse talent, and distinguish sponsorship as active advocacy over passive mentorship.

Learn strategies to source historically marginalized talent beyond traditional platforms, diversify networks, and build sustained partnerships and sponsorships that foster long-term inclusive hiring.

Navigate the screening stage in diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring. Examine resumes, phone and video screens, and tests; learn how biases and an applicant tracking system affect a diverse slate.

Identify conscious and unconscious biases that influence resume reviews and separate relevant qualifications from irrelevant details. Recognize similarity bias and groupthink at the screening stage to improve fairness.

Explore common resume biases and stereotypes, including name and address effects, education and university biases, and age or gender assumptions, to improve inclusive hiring decisions.

Recognize biases in phone and video screens, balance extrovert bias and introverted communication, value multilingual skills, avoid irrelevant or illegal questions, and not penalize for background or bandwidth.

Apply strategies to screen a broad, diverse candidate slate by focusing on skills and qualifications, masking identifying information to reduce bias, and tracking progress via an applicant tracking system.

Explore the interview stage of the recruiting process, contrast unstructured vs structured interviews, emphasize a diverse interview slate, and present solutions for a better hiring process.

unstructured interviews lack a rubric and structure, making them subjective and biased, with inconsistent measurements and the thumb on the scale in hiring decisions.

Define hiring team roles and leadership, ensure diverse panel participation, and align on required skills. Design interview questions and a scoring rubric, schedule rounds, and convene to discuss outcomes.

Create a structured interview process for roles, standardized questions and a scoring rubric, include bias reminders like similarity bias, turn cameras off, and debrief with a diverse hiring team.

Explore the select and offer stage of hiring, from selecting candidates to extending offers and onboarding, while identifying barriers to a broad candidate pool and strategies for equitable final selections.

Maintain a broad candidate pool by upholding defined qualifications, avoiding biases, resisting time pressure, and using pay bands for equitable compensation.

Align selection criteria with a clear rubric to reduce bias, track hiring data, and conduct regular pay equity checks and retrospectives for equitable outcomes.

Assess your current hiring practices, identify biases at each step of the five-step process, and implement practical solutions starting tomorrow to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in hiring and recruiting.