Recruitment Blog

How to leverage technology to boost diversity recruitment methods

Guest Author

Recruitment Expert

Many HR professionals are keenly aware of the need for diversity, especially as the workplace evolves with rapidly changing times and diversity recruitment methods expand.

As champions of both employees and businesses, the HR practitioner sees the benefits of diversity from two perspectives.

First, diversity allows businesses to be more inclusive to minimise and eliminate any existing prejudices faced by potential employees in the workplace.

Second, it enables businesses to succeed in a competitive economy. Businesses with a more diverse workforce increased their revenue due to innovation by up to 45% — a significant difference compared to companies with below-average diversity. More innovation translated to better financial performance, which meant that having people from different backgrounds onboard led to greater success.

Therefore, HR and talent acquisition professionals must ensure that they attract and nurture a more diverse pool of applicants. There are various strategies for boosting diversity recruitment methods, and leveraging technology plays a major role.

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Software for neutral language

There is a false belief that certain occupations are gendered and should be filled as such. This has infiltrated the language used by talent acquisition professionals in vacancy postings, job descriptions and even during interviews.

Fortunately, this is changing as in-house HR work to build a more inclusive and diverse workplace through using gender-neutral language.

Writing software like Textio address this with algorithms that remove biased language from job postings to combat sexism, ageism and ableism.

This is not limited to gender pronouns; the tech gathers data on which words are typically more attractive to different genders and ensures the language used is as neutral as possible.

By removing any chance of bias in the language, HR professionals can attract candidates from various backgrounds who can bring a more diverse set of skills and competencies to the table.

Screening with AI technology

Biases will always be present in interpersonal relationships and can stunt diversity in the workplace. Whether it’s in the form of race, gender, age, or ability, having some level of bias is unavoidable, even for the most seasoned HR professionals. Being truly objective is an ideal many talent acquisition teams strive for, and AI technology helps to achieve this.

AI reduces bias across all aspects of the recruitment process, from time constraints to interview fatigue and unconscious preferences for graduates of certain schools.

This technology can process a larger pool of candidates and assess them through measures like their capabilities, skills and experience, without being influenced by demographic characteristics.

However, AI is not impervious to biases when it comes to its design, so software developers also play an important role in ensuring objective algorithms and questionnaires.

Screening applicants this way makes it possible to select objectively, encouraging a more reliable recruitment process on the whole for a diverse selection of candidates.

There are many ways that talent acquisition professionals across different companies and industries are making a difference by placing a focus on diversity. Leveraging technology can help make this process easier while eliminating biases, ensuring that nobody gets left behind.