Getting Recruitment & Retention Right in 2022

Since technology, sales, and engineering roles are primarily white and male-dominated, the focus on diversity hiring in these areas has never been more important.

As a result, the competition for underrepresented talent and for women in typically male-dominated domains has never been tougher. To keep up, companies not only have to speak the language of those they want to attract but also have to expand their networks and meet jobseekers where they already are. 

The Gap Between Jobseekers and Traditional Recruiting Tactics

Traditional sourcing activities and recruiters’ tactics, unfortunately, have only worsened gender and talent gaps. 

For example, the most effective resources male jobseekers use to find a job include personal networks and connections. While women also leverage personal networks and connections, their more limited professional networks have reduced their ability to get a job. At the end of the day, employees tend to network with and refer jobseekers who look like them. As a result, if the workplace in general is not very diverse, it's highly likely that the pool of potential referral candidates will mirror this. 

Despite this fact, according to survey respondents, two of the top resources for sourcing underrepresented jobseekers were LinkedIn and employee referrals. 

In fact, 24% of respondents cited LinkedIn as a top sourcing resource, and 21% said employee referrals were a top resource for sourcing underrepresented talent. Here’s the catch: LinkedIn found that women are 28% less likely than men to have strong networks. 

Payscale also found that “white men are at least 12% more likely to be hired through a referral than any other group — and get a much bigger bump in salary because of it.” 

Male jobseekers' relative ease with touting their own accomplishments — an important skill for jobseekers throughout the hiring process, in the digital presence they convey to hiring managers and beyond — has only worsened the gap. To emphasize the true impact of this point, the Harvard Gazette states:

According to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, women consistently rated their performance on a test lower than did men, even though both groups had the same average score. Where men on average gave themselves a 61 out of 100, women gave themselves a 46 out of 100. Even when told that an employer would use their self-evaluation to decide whether to hire them and what to pay them, women still self-promoted less than men. 

Organizations can combat these discrepancies through diversity referral programs. Yet, survey respondents reported less than one in four companies claimed to have diversity employee referral programs.

Luckily, companies don’t just have to rely on employee referrals, candidate pipelines, or traditional sourcing platforms. Targeted diversity communities like Fairygodboss for women, HBCUs for Black talent, and DisabilitySolutions for people with different abilities are great places to reach underrepresented talent. 

But, when asked in 2021, only 46% of companies said that they were using targeted employer branding or recruitment marketing platforms to source and engage underrepresented talent. In 2022, this number ticked up to 68%. 

What About Targeted Diversity Sourcing?

As an alternative, some companies turn to targeted diversity sourcing to attempt to hire more women and underrepresented talent. The first problem with this approach is that talent sourcing only works — and is only worth the money spent — when companies are looking to fill highly skilled, specialized roles.

Given the labor-intensive and high cost of sourcing, it only makes sense for recruiters and sourcers to reach out to passive candidates when they are filling roles with very narrow job descriptions and specific job requirements, like senior leadership roles or those requiring special security clearance or technology skills. Otherwise, the cost for each sourced applicant is simply too high given the lean recruiting team resources and teams that most employers have. 

Sourcing is also narrow by design — it works best when you work with narrow requirements. But, to attract diverse candidates, you need to broaden your requirements. You’re most often not going to find a diverse candidate with 10 years experience in niche technologies because it wasn’t possible for them to break into that field 10 years ago.

Another huge problem with targeted diversity sourcing? To find diverse candidates on sourcing platforms, you typically either have to make assumptions based on candidate names, or rely on “inferred” demographics provided from those platforms. This is, at best, a perpetuation of existing biases and hardly a best practice for organizations seeking improved equity and inclusion. 

At the end of the day, companies can’t effectively use sourcing to generally attract more women or underrepresented talent — it’s simply too expensive, and it is, by definition, contrary to the natural behavior that recruiters and sourcers are incentivized to use when filling specific roles on a short timeline. 

Employer Branding’s Edge

Employer branding, on the other hand, is highly effective at helping companies attract and engage women and underrepresented talent at scale — and over a more meaningful and practical time horizon for achieving diversity outcomes. 

Research shows that employer branding plays a big role in helping companies attract, engage, and hire talent. When done right, employer branding and recruitment marketing help companies tell their story to specific underrepresented jobseekers and meet talent where they are most engaged. 

While diversity-focused sourcing may continue to play a role in a company’s overall talent attraction strategy, employers should understand its limited scope — and results — and invest in other ways to more broadly reach women and talent from underrepresented groups. 

How Fairygodboss Can Help

Partners like Fairygodboss can provide that greater reach through recruitment marketing. By giving jobseekers an authentic look at the lives and work of individual women thriving at your company, you can help jobseekers overcome the confidence gap that often prevents women from applying to open roles. 

Recruitment marketing content and storytelling can also amplify your existing sourcing efforts, empowering sourcers with compelling content to share with candidates contacted for specific roles — and enticing them to accept the offer.

Candidate nurturing, which can take the form of focusing on candidates that are already in your pipeline, offering mentorship and guidance, and suggesting what other jobs they might be a good fit for, is another best practice that Fairygodboss’ partners have implemented successfully. 

For more information on diversity hiring strategy in 2022 and how your organization can attract, hire, and retain more women, contact Fairygodboss to schedule a diversity consultation today.