The goal of inclusive hiring is to create a culture that truly values differences, diverse perspectives. It also embeds inclusive behaviours across the entire recruiting lifecycle.

Inclusive hiring is the practice of designing recruitment processes that actively recognize and embrace diversity.

This is diversity across backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. It goes beyond compliance.

It is the conviction to create equitable opportunities for all candidates. This practice ensures that hiring decisions are based on skills and potential rather than biases or stereotypes.

Here are 4 Ways to Improve Inclusive Hiring

1. Accountability and Culture

Leading firms tie inclusive hiring to manager accountability and company culture. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella championed inclusion as a core priority. Microsoft saw its percentage of women in core tech roles rise after embedding an inclusive hiring culture.

Meta publishes annual diversity reports showing hiring and representation gains. In the United States, their diversity report shows year-over-year percentage of Black and Hispanic hires was increasing steadily.

GE has long integrated D&I into its talent reviews. This ensures diverse candidates are considered for each leadership opening, which drives behaviour at the hiring level.

A positive example in best practice comes from Apple’s “Inclusion & Diversity” report. For example, Apple achieved global gender pay equity. They have steadily increased the hiring of women and underrepresented minorities each year.

Many companies highlight stories of diverse employees on their website to show candidates that representation is valued.

2. Expand the Talent Pool

A big part of improving inclusive hiring is casting a wider net beyond traditional recruiting pools. Apple has proactively built pathways for diverse talent.

In the United States, Apple HBCU Scholars program and the Apple Developer Academy provide training and internships to underrepresented students. This creates a pipeline of skilled, diverse candidates who are already familiar with Apple.

Apple also removed strict degree requirements from many job descriptions, focusing on skills and potential rather than pedigree.

By doing so, they opened roles to people with non-traditional backgrounds. This move that can significantly increase diversity in candidate pools. 

Microsoft similarly has programs for recruiting veterans and people with disabilities, recognizing these as under-tapped talent pools.

For instance, Microsoft’s Neurodiversity Hiring Program offers a specialized hiring process for autistic candidates. This resulted in 100s of neurodiverse hires and a model now emulated by other firms. 

GE emphasizes a balance of global and local hiring needs. They intentionally hire local leadership in different regions to ensure cultural diversity and understanding of local markets.

Expanding recruiting outreach – via diversity career fairs, sponsoring coding bootcamps for women are common tactics that have paid off. . Google has done this with “Mind the Gap” for female engineers), or referral incentives for diverse hires.

3. Ensure Inclusive Process (Reduce Bias)

Top companies embed inclusion into the hiring process itself. One best practice is using inclusive interview panels. 

Apple implemented diverse interviewer panels as a standard practice. This means any candidate will be interviewed by a mix of genders, ethnic backgrounds, etc. This reduces the likelihood of unconscious bias influencing decisions and sends a positive signal to candidates about inclusivity. 

Amazon in 2021 started requiring that its interview slates include at least one diverse candidate (a policy akin to the “Rooney Rule” from the NFL) for many roles. 

Meta also adopted an inclusive hiring approach, requiring that at least 30% of candidates presented to a hiring manager for certain roles come from underrepresented groups. To back this up, companies train interviewers on unconscious bias and structured interviewing (focusing on job-related criteria). 

Google built an entire toolkit (re:Work) on structured interviewing and has interviewers take calibration sessions to ensure fair evaluations. Using standardized rubrics and scorecards helps minimize bias and allows tracking of pass-through rates by group.

If data shows, say, that minority candidates consistently score lower in one interview segment, the company can investigate if that interview is itself biased or if the sourcing needs adjustment. 

4. Inclusive Hiring Practices

Microsoft’s global “inclusive hiring” initiative ensures that interviewers worldwide are trained to reduce biases and evaluate candidates on true competencies.

This not only helps diversity but also improves quality by making sure the hiring process finds the best talent everywhere, not just those who fit a narrow mould.

Microsoft saw positive results in EMEA quality from this – more successful hires from non-traditional backgrounds filling tech roles, performing on par with their peers, thereby enlarging the talent pool without sacrificing quality.

You May Also Like

Job Intake & Kickoff →
The recruitment process begins with an intake meeting between the recruiter and the hiring manager.

Sourcing & Attraction →
In the sourcing stage, recruiters cast a wide net to find and attract potential candidates.

Screening & Shortlisting →
This is about identifying the most qualified candidates from a large pool to decide who moves forward to interviews.

Interviews & Assessment →
In this stage, the shortlisted candidates undergo rigorous evaluation through interviews and specialized assessment.

Selection & Decision →
Here, the hiring team analyses all the input from interviews and assessments to determine which candidate to hire (if any).

Offer & Hire →
In the final stage of the process, the company formally extends a job offer to the chosen candidate and negotiates terms as needed.