JobAdder shares three ways to foster more diversity in your recruitment practises

The workplace, as we know, is changing. With a new generation comes new challenges and expectations, one of which is a real, evidence-based effort to have more diversity.

The tech industry is one of Australia's largest and quickest growing sectors, generating $167 billion for our economy in 2020–21.

And according to the Export Council of Australia, technology is already the equivalent of our fourth-largest export sector.

The issue is that the industry’s professional, managerial, and executive labour forces are overwhelmingly white and male, putting it under pressure to diversify its labour force. And while many companies publicly spruik their commitment to diversity, in reality, much still has to be done to see tangible results.

Expand your candidate pool

We believe that the key to improving diversity is tackling the issue at the beginning of the hiring journey by expanding the talent pool of candidates. The tech industry has a unique opportunity to expand its reach with workers who might not have considered tech as a potential career.

Taking steps to cast a wider net enables companies to find candidates who might not otherwise apply. This means that instead of heading straight to LinkedIn and scouring your existing network, consider sponsoring an event or conference aimed at reaching the demographic you want to attract, such as people from minority or disadvantaged groups.

You may also look into local organisations focused on diversity and inclusion in tech, and partner with them.

Introduce bias interrupters

There is enough information highlighting the need for tech companies to radically shift the way they hire if they are to attract more diverse candidates.

This can start right at the beginning of the hiring process by altering the ways in which job positions are advertised, worded and assessed. Bias interrupters are evidence-based ‘tweaks’ to basic business systems (hiring, performance evaluations, assignments, promotions, and compensation) that correct implicit bias in the workplace, often without ever uttering the word ‘bias’.

Examples of effective bias interrupters include scrubbing name and gender from job applications. Other examples include varying the language used in job ads.

Wanting to investigate whether women are less likely to negotiate their salaries than men (which contributes to the pay gap between the sexes), US researchers Andreas Leibbrandt and John A. List posted two versions – one which said nothing about the salary, and the other which said “salary negotiable” – of announcements for admin assistant jobs in stereotypically masculine businesses: NASCAR, football, and basketball.

They found that the “salary negotiable” language significantly closed the pay gap between female and male hires by 45 per cent.

Collect, count, and compare

You can’t know the scale of a problem until you set up ways to collect and analyse data. By setting up a system focused on collecting data on diversity, over time a picture will emerge, hopefully clearly illustrating where the gaps are. The onus is then on the company to commit to doing something with this data.

Many businesses set goals, collect data and examine change over time (by directly comparing themselves to their competitors and other industries). Why not apply this logic to diversity and inclusion?

If a company sets a goal of, say, hiring 50 per cent of candidates in a given year from diverse cultural backgrounds, it sets off a chain reaction whereby the data is collected, tracked and released to stakeholders. Over time, paying attention and following through with data collection and analysis helps to not only inject diversity, but also to change company culture.

If goals are officially embedded within a company’s KPIs, it creates accountability and transparency, too.

Michael Osmond is the head of people at recruitment management platform JobAdder