If you want to increase diversity, don’t recruit with an ideal candidate in mind

We have written before that in our line of work we see a lot of Position Descriptions that aren’t worth the paper they are printed on (or the kilobytes they take up). They are jargon heavy, or woefully out of date, or simply a long list of tasks and activities or, worse still, all three. In short, they don’t tell us much about why the role exists or what the person is expected to deliver.

Even worse, when it comes to Diversity we experience hiring managers and in-house recruiters outline their preferences for people from certain companies, with specific levels of experience and certain types of degrees, etc. which is really saying bring us more people who are like us.

By starting with a picture of an ideal candidate, the goal of increasing diversity through the recruitment process is effectively set up for failure because the recruiter will, in order to ‘keep the customer happy’, build a shortlist based on superficial requirements and keywords.

Focus on the work to be done

If you want to increase diversity through recruitment, get clear on the work to be done. Use the following five questions to get started:

1. What is the Purpose of this role?
2. What are the two to three priority challenges, deliverables or outcomes of this role?
3. What does ‘a day in the life’ of this role look like?
4. What types of accomplishments or experiences would indicate a candidate could deliver at the level required by the job?
5. What technical qualifications or accreditations are required?

Keep the process simple and devoid of jargon and buzz words (read biases) that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to do the work. By starting with the work first, your recruiter is free to identify candidates with a background in any industry or organisation, or with any education and experiences who could be successful in the role you are recruiting.

If you are genuinely trying to increase diversity through your recruitment process you must engineer out the biases of hiring managers. For example a most common bias we experience is a when a hiring manager says ‘candidates must have 10 years’ experience’. Our immediate push-back is ‘would you hire a great person with eight years experience?’ When the hiring manager says yes, then that 10-year requirement is redundant.

Increasing diversity through recruitment requires a mindset shift.

Every time you go to market for a role you have an opportunity to increase diversity, or not, to upgrade talent levels or not, to push back on conscious and unconscious biases or not. But you must be willing to start with a mindset that there are many people who could do the job. Let your recruiter help you increase diversity by simplifying your position descriptions, and focusing on the work to be done, not the person you are trying hire.

We have a template we use every time we take a brief on a role. It includes the questions above plus a few more. If you’d like a copy of it get in touch.

Likewise, if you would like to have an open-ended discussion on how you might improve the performance of your talent acquisition process in any way, feel free to get in touch. We are always happy to help our clients and potential clients think through options and opportunities. We never charge for brainstorming. Through a free-flowing discussion of ideas we will find out whether or not there is a good fit between what you need and what we do well or not. If there is, we can keep talking so that we bring you good choices. If not, we will be the first to say so.

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Justin Miles

Manager Partner, Melbourne at Generator Talent

Justin is the Managing Partner of our Melbourne office, an outcome focused leader with a track record of driving business performance through proven talent and organisation development practices. Justin’s methods and skills have been shaped by working with performance oriented leaders in great companies including PepsiCo, The Campbell Soup Company, Diageo, Rip Curl, Fonterra and Wesfarmers, in Australia, the USA and Latin America.