Let’s Tackle Female Unemployment

Are you set up for success to combat female unemployment? As a recruiter, you know that placing any candidate to fill vacancies is not good enough anymore. For the amount invested in on-boarding and training, building up relationships and networks, along with transparent attrition rates, companies want and need loyalty from staff.

With in-house recruitment teams and the company’s reputations at stake, applicants with a role profile match and decent covering letter won’t always cut the mustard. Recruiters have a responsibility to drive and attract a diverse candidate pool, not only for best practice recruitment, but as practitioners of avoiding unconscious bias, it’s your responsibility at the first stage of assessment through to the end.

What is critical is to keep diversity targets front of mind in recruitment because it has been proven to be a commercial success where implemented, as well as supporting a better functioning business when teams reflect a variety of perspectives.

So how do you attract, hire and retain diverse candidates? WORK180 have designed a roadmap recommended for a successful and holistic strategy. The steps outlined all need to be taken in conjunction with each other. Just by doing one or two, your brand won’t be fully positioned for cementing your reputation for successful diverse and inclusive hiring and workplace practices.

Seven Steps to Diversity Success:

1. Attract diverse candidates: By partnering with organisations, such as ours, who can offer a diverse candidate pool they can drive a wider variety of applications for your vacancies
2. Get accredited: Becoming an Endorsed Employer gives candidates a sense of reassurance that you are implementing best in class diversity and inclusion practices and offer a culture of inclusivity – you’re not just saying that you are. Here’s how you can do this.
3. Stand out from the crowd: Highlight your flexible working policies on your job ads – show that you walk the walk and therefore assure candidates that they’re able to discuss working flexibly upfront at the interview stage.
4. Avoid gender bias: Take advantage of AI tools such as JobAd180 that automatically review job ad content to identify any gender biased language and provide suggestions on how to improve it. By avoiding gender biased language employers will appeal to more candidates, increasing the number of women who apply for a job. See how it works in this short explainer video.
5. Improve your employer brand: Content shared by employees receives 8 times more engagement than content shared by brand channels so build a network of D&I ambassadors, use storytelling to evoke interest from passive candidates and supercharge your recruitment efforts.
6. Inclusive Hiring Workshop: Workshops are designed to improve the conversion of your job ads to attract more women with some previous attendees going from zero female applicants to hundreds for the most niche roles. Our records to date are a 4 times increase in female applicants in 1.5 weeks after a company has changed their job ads!
7. D&I Strategy Consultation: Customised to suit your stage of development in diversity and inclusion policies and tailored to deliver on your individual business needs. This service has a strategic focus, assisting you in identifying key areas of development and providing a framework for implementation.

If you want to hear more about WORK180 and how their approach has worked for clients, take a look here or get in touch with Kate kate.bushell@work180.co directly to set-up a free 15 minute consultation.