Diversity Sourcing: 7 Tips for Expanding Your Talent Pools

How do you build the most talented, creative, and productive team possible? You pull together people with a diverse range of viewpoints, experiences, and strengths — all focused on achieving the same goal. The real question is: Where do you find these people, and how do you get them to stay?

Employers and recruiting teams are still trying to get their feet underneath them as they navigate changes in transparency laws, shifting demands from job seekers, and a fierce competition for talent. Past strategies for recruiting may not be effective anymore. No matter whether you’re sourcing engineers, hiring college faculty, or rebuilding a frontline team, talent acquisition teams need to attract and retain the greatest variety of qualified talent possible. And that’s not possible if their organization is not seriously committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Now, it’s important to note that DEI in the workplace is a multifaceted conversation that doesn’t respond well to half-measures. If you’re going to put effort and resources into sourcing candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, you’ll also want to make sure you’ve created a culture where they’ll want to stay. That means providing support well past onboarding — with benefits, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and safe spaces like employee resource groups (ERGs).

A major key to developing a strong sourcing strategy is offering frequent learning opportunities. Your organization probably already has an annual inclusion training — but it may not be enough to move the needle. 

Learning pathways can help tie theoretical scenarios to daily organizational challenges. LinkedIn Learning has courses curated for teams that are eager to become more inclusive, no matter where they are in their journey.

• The learning paths DEI for HR and Recruit Diverse Talent and Promote Equitable Hiring are unlocked until June 2, 2023. 

• The course Creating Diverse Slates and Retaining Diverse Talent, which is designed especially for TA teams, is also unlocked until June 2 and provides insight into how to think about sourcing, hiring, and onboarding inclusively for any career level.

So, while it’s not the only factor, sourcing new talent is imperative for organizations to meet their DEI goals and their broader workforce-building aspirations. If you want to broaden and diversify your talent pool, here are seven proven strategies for recruiting well-qualified candidates:

1. Recruit in all the right places

If you’re not sure where to start your search, you’ll find that many educational and professional development organizations have a wealth of highly qualified candidates. In the United States, for example, you can hold recruiting events at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and women's colleges. 

But that should just be a first step. The U.S. Department of Education reports that about 9% of Black college students attend an HBCU while 53% attend a predominantly white institution, or PWI in educational jargon. There are many organizations, such as Reaching Out, Inroads, Consortium, and Grace Hopper Celebration that can help you reach talented students at a full range of schools.

You might also consider starting an internship program for candidates in certain majors at any of these institutions. Doing so can help encourage students to choose majors that they might not otherwise feel represented in.

Similarly, you could also create recruiting campaigns by partnering with relevant professional organizations and associations. Try refining your search criteria with Boolean searches. You can, for example, list networking organizations for parents, women, or people of color and add in the skills you’re looking to find.

2. Don’t overlook your existing talent

A commitment to DEI doesn’t stop after onboarding. People from historically marginalized groups often are even less represented at higher levels of organizations. To truly make a lasting difference in both retention and inclusion, professional development is critical. Consider sending employees to development and networking events like AfroTech, Latinas in Tech Summit, or one of the dozens and dozens of other targeted professional conferences.

Of course, while internal mobility is vital to retention, it’s not the only way your team can help you diversify your candidate pool. Ask your existing employees and organizational alumni for referrals. They’ll often be able to recommend the perfect person for the role based on their understanding of your company culture and what you’re out to accomplish.

3. Get your ERGs involved

If your go-to recruiting methods are still yielding a homogenous group of candidates, you might think about leveraging your ERGs. David Clark, an HR strategy professional, writes: “Since ERGs often engage their members through a variety of professional networking and social events, their members tend to be more aware of the different professional opportunities that target their specific ‘identity dimension.’” 

Actively recruiting and engaging candidates (as well as existing employees) through these organizations reinforces your company’s interest in inclusive hiring practices. It also gives your current employees a sense of ownership and a higher stake in the outcome.

4. Rethink your job descriptions

The language you use in your job descriptions may be undermining your DEI efforts. Your talent acquisition team should review your postings for any examples of subtly biased or coded language. For example, words like “dominate,” “rock star,” or “aggressive” are considered male-coded, while “committed,” “patient,” and “loyal” tend to be associated with women. Masculine-coded terms often dissuade women and nonbinary candidates from applying for these roles.

Gender-coded language isn’t the only type of bias to look out for. Terms like “high-energy environment,” “fast-paced,” or “recent college graduate” can subtly discourage older applicants, people with disabilities, or those from disadvantaged backgrounds. It’s a good idea to rotate the people responsible for reviewing your job posts — several heads are better than one. You can also use tools like Textio or Textmetrics, which will scan your descriptions to screen for bias.

In addition to language, take a hard look at the skills and qualifications section of your posting. Is your list made up of must-haves or nice-to-haves? Specifying a certain educational level or certification may be excluding all but a narrow range of individuals. You may even want to include a disclaimer on your job postings that encourage those with “some or all” of the qualifications to apply. Women, in particular, are less likely to apply for roles when they don’t meet 100% of the qualifications. While you could encourage people to reach out regardless, it’s also a good idea to make sure your must-have criteria are really just that.

5. Create a returnship program

If you’re wondering where all the qualified talent in the labor market is, you might try looking on the sidelines. Employees with a career gap of more than three years often have a hard time getting a first interview, let alone landing a new role. Many of these individuals are caregivers who have had to step away from the workforce to provide support to their families — and a large number of those caregivers are women.

If you’re struggling to fill skilled roles, your organization should consider starting a returnship program. These are similar to internships, but intended to provide skills and experience for people returning to the workforce after an extended time away. Often set up as “contract-to-hire” roles, these positions can be a win-win for both the candidate and the employer.

6. Anonymize your candidates

Once you’ve begun to understand how unconscious bias can get in the way of a recruiting strategy, you may want to put a few other ideas into action. If you’re sourcing through LinkedIn, you may want to try removing names and photos from your candidate search. 

Anonymizing applications makes it significantly easier for minority, women, and nonbinary candidates to make it through the hiring process. In an analysis published by Harvard Business Review, women’s applications were significantly more likely to be accepted once first names were removed and nearly twice as likely when the resume was fully anonymized.

7. Throw out the rule book

Perhaps the most important rule to remember when creating a candidate sourcing strategy is that there is no rule book — there’s no reason that the way you’ve done things in the past has to stay the same. Even staples of the recruiting process aren’t necessarily immutable.

For example, many companies are experimenting with ditching resumes altogether. From an inclusion standpoint, resumes don’t just list skills — they provide names, graduation dates, college or fraternal affiliations, and other information that can indicate demographic information. Eliminating resumes can create a greater reliance on skills-based hiring, giving the best-performing candidates a chance to shine. In fact, for many companies looking to create neurodiversity hiring programs, getting rid of resumes and traditional interviews in favor of skills assessment and training is a crucial first step.

For similar reasons, you might consider completing background checks only after the candidate has accepted an offer. This can avoid introducing any bias based on age, address history, prior employment, socioeconomic background, or any other factor that might be hinted at through these records.

And if your work environment is still stuck in the “way you’ve always done things,” you might benefit from a critical look at your employee experience. Flexible work arrangements go a long way toward attracting and retaining working parents, caregivers, people of color, and employees with disabilities.

Consider other benefits to create a more supportive workplace for a broad array of people. Weigh what paid parental leave, floating holidays, family planning benefits, childcare subsidies, and gender-affirming healthcare might do for your inclusion efforts. 

Final thoughts

Unconscious bias — by its very nature — is difficult to pinpoint, address, or even identify. That’s why it’s critical to make DEI an ongoing conversation across your organization and your talent acquisition team. To help do just this, you may want to encourage employees and teammates to check out LinkedIn Learning's nine DEI learning paths, which are unlocked through June 2 and arranged by the different stages of an individual’s DEI journey and role at your company.

If they haven’t already taken it, your employees might benefit from taking Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT), which can indicate the presence of unconscious bias. It’s possible that the candidates you’re looking for might be falling through a gap of unconscious bias.

This can happen in very subtle ways. So, crisscross strategies and you’ll create a much broader net (and catch that many more people whom you might otherwise miss). After all, to get results you’ve never had before, you’ll likely have to do things that you’ve never done before. And that’s not a bad thing. 

Research has proven that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives benefit the entire organization — directly and indirectly. The innovation and thoughtfulness needed to create a strong DEI sourcing strategy is the same energy that’s needed to help a company thrive.