The best candidates want an inclusive environment, here's how to land them
Hey Everyone!
This is my second post on inclusion. If you havenât already, you should go back and read last weekâs post about why corporate diversity programs feel so empty. People seemed to like it!
This week Iâll be writing about how you can model inclusivity in your hiring process. Candidates and employees alike will love you for it.
As always, thanks for reading!
Ben
Last weekâs post was all about how inclusion is the foundation of any successful diversity program.
This week my goal is to define the inclusive values you can model in your hiring process to attract the best candidates.
Any investment you make in inclusion has a pretty great return, both financially and emotionally - so doing this work is well worth it!
With that, letâs get started.
Defining Workplace Inclusion
So what are the hallmarks of an inclusive workplace?
Openness â it is safe to express thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Equality â there is a perception of fairness, an equal chance for all employees to succeed. Belonging â employees share a positive connection to each other and the organization.
Those all sound pretty good to me.
Not to be outdone, Deloitte has a slightly different take:ÂČ
Authenticity - Employees can be themselves and use their unique strengths Flexibility - Employees can determine, for themselves, where and when they get their work done. Purpose - Employees can make an impact and understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.
To put these values in my own words:
Inclusive work environments are places where employees can be their authentic selves, have autonomy over their work, perceive their rewards as fair, feel heard by their colleagues, and understand how their work impacts the organization.
How to signal inclusion in your hiring process
Knowing what we know about inclusion, letâs list the factors that must be present in an inclusive hiring process.
Authenticity
Autonomy
Equality
Openness and Transparency
Now letâs discuss these factors in greater detail.
Authenticity
Demonstrating to a candidate that your organization values their authentic self starts with understanding that, as a hiring manager, you are in a powerful and privileged position. Therefore, the burden is on you to be authentic first.
Being honest about the role and what it entails, discussing your organizations strengths (and weaknesses), and being open about your own abilities signals that itâs OK to be vulnerable as long as you seek solutions.
Demonstrating authenticity isnât about âsellingâ a candidate. Rather, itâs about having an honest conversation as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is for you, the interviewer (and person with all the leverage), to lead the way.
Autonomy
In my experience, this is the one factor that managers value the least and employees value the most. If you can create an environment where your employees feel empowered to hit their goals, then you will never lack high-quality hires.
The best way to signal this value during the hiring process is to tell the candidate how they can âwinâ at their desired job. If itâs sales, give them their quota (and better yet, tell them how many reps hit quota last quarter); if itâs operations, tell them their production goals, etc.
I am shocked at how few organizations can articulate what a âwinâ looks like for any particular role.
And, for the record, the definition of a win needs to be as objective as possible - it should be measurable, not subject to corporate politics, and intellectually honest.
Equality
If you tell a candidate how they can succeed at their job and the methods you use to define a win is quantifiable and objective, youâll be practicing equality almost by default.
During the hiring process, you can further communicate this value by explaining what traits and skills youâre looking for, why you value them, and how you measure them. Again, itâs essential to be as objective as possible here. The more objective your criteria the more equitable your process.
Openness and Transparency
Congrats, if youâre doing the top three things, then youâre already being open. Itâs a âbuy three, get one freeâ situation!
The Inclusive Hiring Checklist
As always, thank you for reading. As a special thank you, I put together this checklist that you can use to ensure that your hiring process is inclusive.
See you next week!
1 Itâs important to note what the dimensions donât say. Being inclusive doesnât mean that an employee can express ALL thoughts, ideas, and concerns - for example, Bob from Accounting doesnât get to tell Linda from HR that heâd like to sleep with her. It doesnât mean that ALL employees will succeed, just that each employee will have an equal chance to. And âpositive connectionâ doesnât mean youâll be lifelong friends with everyone you work with.
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