Rebuilding diversity: 5 ways to prioritize DEIB in talent acquisition right now

We’ll make no bones about it: Maintaining diversity isn’t solely the work of the talent acquisition team — it involves the effort of the whole organization. Talent acquisition plays just one part of a broader long-term shift that involves transforming key internal processes and mindsets to be more inclusive. It’s about driving long-term progress, not perfection.

But there are some key things talent acquisition can do to drive this effort forward, and get their proverbial house in order as diversity moves up the priority list again. Running an analysis of your data, previous efforts, and baselines for diversity is a great place to start.

Personal data is among some of the most sensitive data your organization holds. But collecting it is no easy task. With data protection laws differing from state to state and across geographical borders, identifying which types of data you can compliantly track and measure (and those you can’t) is essential for establishing your starting point.

Start by running a diversity data audit across all of the processes and tools within the recruiting funnel (and broader employee lifecycle, as needed):

• What diversity data are you collecting about candidates across different geographies and funnel stages? As an example, race, gender, veteran status, and sexual orientation.
• How accessible is this data?
• How are you recording consent to store, manage, analyze, and process this data?
• Are there any instances where data collection requires additional layers of consent? If so, how is this managed?
• Can you identify any discrepancies in your current data that compromises your ability to make decisions or run an effective analysis?
• Are there any other instances of data collection outside of tooling (for example, candidate satisfaction surveys) that may involve diversity data?

Once you have a sense of your diversity data starting point, you’ll want to look at what you can actually track and measure right away, based on what you have already. This involves running a gap analysis on your data, and identifying any discrepancies and inaccuracies.

For example, an organization operating both the US and in the EU will face different legal challenges and requirements that govern what diversity data can be collected, and how it can be used. As such, your team will need to map talent data across all of your hiring regions to identify where your gaps are, and if these can be addressed by collecting additional data — for example, by launching a Self-ID campaign that collects consent directly from employees.

Next, you need to see how your organization is actually doing in terms of talent diversity. Evaluate your current pipeline talent data, and if possible, use your ATS to segment your data by hiring stage, quality of hire, offer acceptance rate, and other key metrics. This will help you identify if and how your current processes are failing to reach candidates from underrepresented groups.

You’ll also need to understand your organization’s overall retention of different employee populations to identify whether or not specific groups are having a different experience to others. This can highlight downstream, systemic challenges with supporting and developing underrepresented talent that may need addressing.

Use the following questions (and build on them) as a guide:

• What is your current candidate and workforce composition? How does this change at individual contributor, manager, and senior levels?
• Which segments of the population are you struggling to reach?
• How are key metrics including such as time-to-hire, offer acceptance rate, and candidate drop-off rate? For example, what are your pass through rates from TA screenings, segmented by gender or race?
• Are there candidate groups that are more likely to withdraw from the recruiting process?
• Does your organization have active referral programs? How do these impact diversity?
• What are your current goals with regard to increasing talent diversity?

Setting DEIB targets and baselines is all well and good — but when was the last time you evaluated your sourcing channels with diversity in mind? Building a diverse workforce starts with understanding who is able to find and apply for your roles. And if you’re only posting open roles on channels like LinkedIn and Indeed, you might not be reaching the right people — meaning you’ll have to do more to create an equitable state of play.

Analyzing your hiring data by sourcing channels will help you identify which channels are performing well overall. However, segmenting this data by different dimensions of diversity such as gender, educational background, and ethnicity, gives you insight into the application behavior of different types of candidate — as well as your visibility to those groups.

You might find that you’re struggling to reach Latinx candidates on LinkedIn, or that Black representation in your entire pipeline is low.

Identifying community groups online is a solid first step — but to truly build a more equitable pipeline, you may need to take your search offline to remove barriers to access. Attendance at college job fairs or conferences can help source candidates on the ground, while talent marketing campaigns and face-to-face meet-and-greets can help source candidates from the local community. 

To know how your diversity initiatives are paying off, you need to be able to measure and track their progress. First, start by evaluating the success of any previous initiatives with a retrospective. What have you already put in place to increase workforce diversity — and what were your near-term and long-term outcomes?

For example, if you made a change to your interview process to include a more diverse panel, understanding how this contributed to candidate behavior and hiring outcomes is critical. Did it increase pass through rates at each hiring phase? Did it result in fewer candidate drop-offs? Did you switch up sourcing channels? Make a change to job descriptions to ensure the language is more inclusive? How did that impact your candidate conversion rate?

With each new initiative, regularly review your progress by collecting qualitative and quantitative data (such as candidate satisfaction surveys), and use it as a guide to adjust your strategy as needed. Use your data to set goals and KPIs that feel realistic to your team — whether that’s reducing candidate drop-offs, increasing underrepresented candidate pass through rates, or improving candidate satisfaction.

While talent acquisition may be seen as the first step on an organization’s DEIB journey, the reality is that TA’s actions represent just a fraction of combined effort needed to truly move the needle, and build inclusive, diverse companies. To work, change needs to be systemic, organization-wide, and long-term.

However, as the first point of contact between a candidate and the organization, TA teams can have a significant impact on creating more equitable processes for candidates from underrepresented groups. But while TA teams might be feeling the urgency to make changes here, teams should start small, and focus on building the right foundations that lead to measurable, impactful changes. Building a full picture of your current state of play will help you establish where you can make inclusive improvements to your end-to-end recruiting process, and help you implement realistic goals and initiatives that lead to long-term change.