Hi Penny!
This might be more detail than you need. I got a bit carried away!
We were really aware that we needed to make changes encourage different candidates to apply at the same time as trying to remove bias from our recruitment process so we made changes to encourage both things at the same time.
We added some inclusive wording to our job ads (with the help of our B Corp forum friends!) with the hope it would encourage people of different backgrounds to apply. We landed on “We celebrate different perspectives. We’re committed to creating an equal, inclusive, and diverse workplace. We know we do better work if we have a diverse mix of people on our team. “
We also review each ad for bias language before putting a job ad live. We’re lucky to have an inhouse content team to do this.
In our job application we ask what pronouns the candidate would like us to use.
We also worked on telling the story of our diverse team publicly in the hope it would make people feel comfortable to apply.
Blind CV’s don’t work too well in our industry. A CV or candidate profile pretty quickly links out to someone’s online design portfolio or public code profile. So we decided that wouldn’t work for us. We decided to focus on the outcome we were trying to achieve and have regular conversations about it to keep it top of mind.
We started talking about our hiring goals internally at the start of a hiring process, with our internal team and with recruiters. Often asking our managers to look at the make up of their current department/team and how we can make it more representative of NZ. We have some hiring goals based on a D&I survey we did with our team which we used to identify where our team wasn’t representative of the NZ population. We talk about those goals before the team starts reviewing CVs to make it top of mind. It also helps us talk about how we can target those candidate markets when advertising.
At the hiring kick off we also think about how we can make an inclusive interview team to help remove bias when reviewing CVs and at interview stage. We try to have a balance of gender in the team reviewing CVs and a balance of ethnicity if possible. Then the same at the various interview stages.
We’ve tried to stop saying ‘Culture fit’ and say ‘Culture add’ instead.
Plus one for Unconscious bias training. We asked Diversity Works to come in and do a Workshop for a big chunk of our team. We’re chipping away at putting everyone through that training.
We’ve tried a few different types of Recruitment agency and job boards with mixed success over the last few years. This is my next one to investigate https://ahujobs.maori.nz/ and Te Matarau. Also Workbridge are a great resource.
Some Resources for you:
Excerpt from this blog ^^
Recruitment
We’re actively working on how we recruit new staff members and are always developing our process to ensure a fair and unbiased approach:
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Extending our reach: we try to extend adverts into as many communities as possible, by posting in Māori and Pasifika spaces, working with recruiters who find placements for disabled people, and reaching out into women led spaces.
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Using unbiased language: we avoid using words such as ‘ninja’ and ‘rockstar’ as research shows these can imply an overly masculine and aggressive work environment, so their use is very gendered and can be off putting to women. We also made an active choice to refer to ‘primary caregiver leave’, as opposed to ‘maternity’ or ‘parental leave’, to be more inclusive of different family structures.
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Restructuring our job ads: we now lead with information about Springload and what we can offer potential new recruits. This decision was based on research into how we could make our ads more appealing to Māori and Pasifika communities, where strong community and a supportive work environment are highly valued.
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Examining our interview criteria: to encourage diversity of thought, it’s important to realise that viewpoints outside of the dominant group bring value to a team. This is why we’ve been changing the way we think about how people will work at Springload — it’s important to avoid only hiring people who will be a ‘good fit’. We’ve learned that the concept of a ‘culture fit’ can be damaging in this space as it implicitly enables biased thinking about who can work well here.
Hope this helps!