Optimize Your Diversity Recruitment Strategy to Remove Bias and Find Highly Skilled Talent

Partner with a diversity staffing agency to implement diversity recruiting best practices at your organization.

Diversity recruiting involves taking a more inclusive approach to hiring job seekers from groups that are often underrepresented in many businesses, such as:

Individuals with diverse backgrounds with regard to race, ethnicity, and/or national origin
Military veterans
Women
Members of the LGBTQ+ community
Older workers

The overall goal of this outreach method is to remove hiring obstacles and biases so that candidates are considered equally for employment opportunities.

U.S. businesses must follow the hiring guidelines set forth by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The law makes it illegal to discriminate against applicants based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. However, following the letter of the law is different from diversity hiring, which seeks to address both conscious and unconscious biases that can impact hiring decisions.

Expanding recruitment efforts to diverse pools of talent provides organizations with significant business advantages, including:

Increased profitability, with highly inclusive organizations generating 2.3 times the cash flow per employee and 1.4 times the revenue1
Stronger brand image
Tapping into the skilled workforce of the future
Strengthened company culture and boosted employee morale
Increased employee engagement and reduced turnover

As a certified LGBT Business Enterprise by the NGLCC, Sparks Group is a diverse supplier and staffing agency dedicated to the unbiased placement of high-quality job candidates. We work closely with employers to strategically meet their staffing and supplier diversity needs in alignment with their business growth goals. If you want to increase workforce diversity, fill out the form on the right, and we can help.

Building a Supplier Diversity Program? Read our white paper to learn more about how Sparks Group can help as a Certified LGBTBE Staffing Agency.

Read our diversity statement and learn more about Sparks Group.

What Are the Benefits of Diversity Recruitment?

1. Increase Profitability Through Gender and Ethnic Diversity

According to McKinsey’s Diversity Matters Even More report, businesses with executive teams in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity were 39% more likely to experience above-average profitability than those in the fourth quartile.2

To help strengthen inclusion and the benefits it brings, McKinsey recommends businesses:

Increase diverse representation in executive, management, technical, and board roles
Promote transparency to prove promotions and pay processes are fair
Foster an environment that encourages individual expression and acceptance

2. Earn Work Opportunity Tax Credits

The federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) provides incentives for employers who hire people who face employment challenges. Individuals within those targeted groups include:

Qualified veterans
Residents within empowerment zones and renewal communities
Summer youth employees
Qualified long-term unemployment recipients

Employers who certify they hired an approved group member can claim the credit to offset Social Security taxes.

3. Attract Skilled, Diverse Workers

As past generations age out and a new generation enters the workforce, younger skilled workers will play an essential role in future recruitment opportunities. More than 40 million Millennials made up the U.S. workforce in 2023 compared to under 20 million Baby Boomers; Generation Z is predicted to have the highest percentage of workers around 2040.3

These younger workers are more diverse than their predecessors, making it more critical than ever for businesses to remove hiring barriers and promote inclusive recruiting practices. According to College Group, 46% of Millennials and 50% of Gen Z are multicultural.4

Download the report: Millennial Workforce Engagement

4. Strengthen Company Brand

Workplace diversity strengthens a company’s brand equity with consumers and prospective employees. Businesses with more inclusive recruitment processes build a reputation they value and include broader perspectives and backgrounds, which helps differentiate them from companies that don’t. Job seekers from different cultural backgrounds will recognize this and may be more likely to work at your office than a competitor’s.

Companies should focus their efforts on the following key elements of the talent acquisition process to eliminate bias in hiring and begin building effective diversity recruiting strategies.

Building an Effective Diversity Recruiting Strategy

1. Update Job Descriptions

Job posts may reveal unconscious biases that recruiters fail to recognize. To improve diversity recruitment, be aware of the language in job ads and descriptions. Eliminate wording bias that may lower the job’s appeal to a diverse range of candidates. Examples of unconscious bias would be listing job titles with a “man” ending instead of “person” (such as with “salesman” or “chairman”) or using gendered descriptors like “guys.” Both of these examples can deter non-male job seekers from applying.

2. Remove Job Requirements That Unnecessarily Limit the Candidate Pool

Hiring managers promoting inclusive recruiting practices should analyze their organization’s job requirements, as this can limit the diversity within the job applicant pool.

Companies should consider hiring candidates without specific undergraduate or graduate degree requirements or who took gap time. Employers should also consider a variety of school experiences, including online and community college degrees, instead of limiting searches to in-person or Ivy League establishments.

Background checks, drug screenings, and credit screenings can unfairly exclude diversity. Organizations should consider removing these requirements since these practices may unfairly disqualify a skilled worker, such as with a misdemeanor a decade ago or a bankruptcy filing during economic hardship.

The federal government, along with many state/local governments, has legislation restricting specific screenings and interview questions. These requirements can block upward mobility, disproportionately impact job seekers from certain ethnic backgrounds, and invade privacy.

3. Enhance Training Programs

It’s important that hiring managers, recruiters, and team leaders throughout the organization receive diversity and inclusion training to help employees recognize, understand, and combat bias that affects hiring decisions. A thorough, focused, and mandatory training course works best to change attitudes and behaviors and improve organizational diversity and inclusion.

4. Upgrade Company Policies & Procedures

The policies and procedures employees follow may impact one group of employees more than another. Review your company’s policies and procedures, not just hiring or diversity initiatives. Also, policies and procedures governing parental leave, scheduling, and dress code should be checked to determine whether they impact one group more than another.

5. Partner With a Diversity Staffing Agency

A staffing agency helps support diversity recruitment initiatives throughout an organization. Well-versed in monitoring and combating recruiting bias, staffing professionals can access the tools for data-driven, unbiased candidate selection.

A staffing agency also assists your company with eradicating bias in the resume screening and initial selection processes. From the start of the hiring process, they help elevate and broaden applicant diversity.

Hear from One of Our Partners

“We have come to rely on [Sparks Group’s] service, as they have grown to understand our business and understand our culture and needs.”

– Project Manager at an Information Technology Solutions Provider

Promote Diversity Recruiting With Sparks Group

Sparks Group is a leading staffing and recruiting firm certified by the NGLCC as an LGBT Business Enterprise. Our expert recruiting teams are dedicated to the diverse recruitment of high-quality job candidates for temporary, contract, and permanent positions. We are vested in building relationships with nationwide organizations that drive equal employment opportunities.

More than a staffing firm, Sparks Group helps employers strategically meet staffing and supplier diversity needs in alignment with their short and long-term business growth goals. As a consultative partner for companies, we help analyze job descriptions for unconscious bias and review candidate reporting metrics to identify non-inclusive roles.

Our recruiters can help you staff roles in the following areas: