Diversity and inclusion are one of the top priorities for many executives and talent professionals when it comes to the workplace. While the pay gap is narrowing and underrepresented groups in leadership groups are growing, there is still a lot that can be done. Every employer has a responsibility to ensure that they hire a diverse group of talent for their workplace.

To ensure that your company isn’t stuck in a revolving door of candidates and employees from underrepresented groups, you must have an inclusive company culture. By gathering feedback, you can improve your culture and make your company more welcoming and attractive. You can use what you learn through the feedback for your branding materials, website, and social media. These are proven ways to attract and hire diverse talent when setting your business up for success in this arena.

1. Goal Setting for the Recruitment of a Diverse Workforce

Goal setting is made to get things done. By taking stock of where you stand regarding inclusion, diversity, and equity, you can set goals to find areas of improvement. You could start by proactively sourcing candidates from underrepresented groups for every open position within your company.

Another great way to diversify your workplace is to have all of your employees undergo unconscious bias training. This helps make employees aware that unconscious bias exists and can help them reduce the likelihood that bias will impact any decision-making. This training can teach employees to manage their biases, change their behavior, and even track their progress when done correctly.

2. A Structured Interview Process Needs to be Utilized

Another great way to ensure diversification within your workplace is having a structured interview process. To level the playing field, each candidate should follow the same procedure and be asked the same interview questions. This will ensure that biases don’t creep in and that you are creating the same conditions for everyone as you recruit diverse talent.

You will also want to create pre-employment assessments of candidates that evaluate their personality traits and cognitive abilities within specific scenarios. This could include holding faux sales calls to better understand how each candidate would be able to make an impact on the company.

3. Job Descriptions Need to be More Inclusive

Job descriptions are one of the first things a future candidate will know about your company. By ensuring that all of your job descriptions are inclusive, you are building a good rapport with every person that applies.

When writing job descriptions, you will want to make a clear distinction between must-haves for the job and would-be-nice-to-have abilities so that candidates are fully aware of their requirements. When writing your description, avoid writing a laundry list of requirements and instead focus on the role’s actual tasks. You don’t want to discourage applicants from applying by giving off the impression that your company is challenging to work for. It’s also wise to include an equity statement encouraging people from all backgrounds to apply if their experience matches what is required to do the job well.

When writing your job descriptions, another thing to keep in mind is to use gender-inclusive language such as you in place of he or she. This will make all feel welcome to apply for your open position. You can also run your written job description through apps such as Gender Decoder, Textio, or Applied to ensure the use of neutral language in your ads.

4. Conduct Blind Resume Reviews

Unconscious bias can happen during the resume reviewing process as recruiters can make opinions of a candidate based on name, address, age, gender, or educational background. To stop this from happening, remove any unnecessary information from resumes before screening when recruiting for diverse talent.

5. Set Diverse Interview Panels

By setting up diverse interview panels, you are helping to ensure that candidates are being fairly evaluated and that tremendous potential isn’t mistakenly weeded out at any stage in the hiring process. A diverse group of interviewers is also better suited to identify the unique characteristics that would, or would not, make each candidate an excellent employee. Aside from that, it can also help candidates feel more at ease during the interview to know that they would not be the only employee from an underrepresented group at your company.

It’s important to get diverse talent into your hiring pipeline but even more crucial to have them join your team and build a diverse and inclusive company. You have to be intentional in the way you set your hiring process up and track conversion rates between each step. This will help you make informed decisions and continue to progress toward your organization’s inclusion and diversity.