Having employees with diverse experience from a variety of cultures, industries or genders can offer many benefits in terms of innovation, skills and the way problems are tackled.
Being an equal opportunity employer
Ensuring equal opportunity as a recruiter can seem like a vastly complex problem and many recruiters often look at the issue from a defensive, legal and compliance position instead of viewing it as a way to improve a workforce.
It’s extremely easy in this day and age to look at diversity as being the laborious task of having to ensure x amount of this type of candidate is seen and x amount of those types of candidates are interviewed. Whilst it is important as a recruiter to make sure you do get a good cross-section of society in regards to ethnicity, culture or gender, diversity shouldn’t be viewed in such a negative way and should be taken as an opportunity for you to acquire the best candidates from all areas of society.
Diversifying your portfolio and risk negation
Having employees with diverse experience from a variety of cultures, industries or genders can offer many benefits in terms of innovation, skills and the way problems are tackled. It can also be of great assistance in terms of expanding your business to a broader audience, using differing approaches that will tackle problems from a variety of angles.
There is still a need to ensure discrimination and stereotyping play no part in the recruitment process. But it is also important to ensure that the people you recruit have a diversity of ideas and skill so your recruitment pool can tackle problems from a variety of viewpoints and with a range of different styles. Think about it. If everyone in your workforce has the same opinion and tackle problems in exactly the same way, then the result of any work they produce will be inflexible and only relatable to those of a similar mindset. It may seem to them that what they are doing is fantastic but with no other opinions available the outside world may not agree and you may end up producing something that pleases only a small proportion of like-minded people.
To prevent this type of stagnation, you need to ensure that recruitment practices include diversity in terms of ideas and abilities, and is not just based on skin colour or some social characteristic. That’s not to say you can’t find people within each social group that display a variety of skills. You most certainly can. But, as a recruiter, your first job is to ensure the candidates you bring to an employer are qualified for the job regardless of their background and ethnicity.
Not just a skin deep decision
A recruiter’s decision should first and foremost be based on acquiring a diverse range of skills. If you recruit with this aim then the recruit’s backgrounds in terms of culture, gender, religious views etc will only further increase their value and allow a variety of experiences to be brought to the table. But at the same time any diversity, regardless of how that diversity comes about, shouldn’t come at the expense of the overall team you are hiring for and their ability to work together effectively.
United we stand stronger
There is no doubt that diversity is beneficial to an organisation and studies have clearly shown that an increase in a workforce is directly related to improvements in collaboration and team-based structures. Furthermore, evidence also shows that companies that effectively recruit and manage a diverse workforce have a clear competitive advantage over those that cannot.
As a recruiter it can be difficult to track recruits and ensure your pool of potential employees has the required range of skills and backgrounds required. This is where Recrur can give you an advantage as it helps you track recruits and perform administration tasks that will give you more time to concentrate on the important things. Give it a try and see how hiring smarter will benefit your business.
WRITTEN BY
Meery Reisi
Recruiter and client success manager. Meery’s experience in organizing talent across different industries has helped many employers and businesses improve their recruitment and hiring.
