Jeanette Maister — June 11, 2018 It hasn’t been long since well-known, industry-leading tech giants came under fire for a lack of underrepresented people in their hiring initiatives. With a spotlight illuminating such issues, more and more organizations in all verticals and sizes are challenging their own diversity programs. This case study will follow the efforts of one such mid-sized company who knew growing diversity required a better hiring process.
The Company
While the mid-sized organization did have diversity and inclusion policies that their teams were expected to meet in talent acquisition processes, there was still a pressure to ensure representative diversity within the office. The talent acquisition team knew, in order to see that happen, they would need to find ways to identify and attract diverse talent groups without bias causing obstacles. On top of the potential to skyrocket overall performance, candidates are watching the habits of potential employers. One sign of things amiss and top talent will not only avoid applying but will talk about it with their peers. Of course, the organization’s HR and recruiting leadership knew recruiting and retaining diverse workforces required more than just a new technology.
They needed a solution that would dive deeper than supplying diverse job seekers. They wanted a recruiting program that supported diversity every step of the way and naturally fit their values and the values of their hires. As with any great diversity hiring strategy, their solution would have to change the way their entire team approached talent acquisition.
The Problem
Though the company had a solid recruiting program, the recruiting team knew they needed to be more focused on their diversity hiring initiatives. The recruiting team knew they had difficulties achieving a balance in gender and noticed that the ethnic mix of the workforce did not align with the business pledges. The director and his team needed, at a minimum, a way to identify diversity talent in their talent pool without breaching a candidate’s right to data privacy. They also wanted to deliver a better candidate experience to those applicants. The team knew data and predictive analytics would be crucial to this in addition to all future improvements. Though the program would be expanding responsibilities, the team itself would remain the same size, for now, so the tools they settled on would have to be budget-friendly and keep administrative burden low.
WCN Diversity Solution
After exploring various options and technologies, the Talent Acquisition Director found that WCN has an offering that could integrate into its established program and completely change, reinvigorate and organize hiring, especially when it came to diversity talent. Using WCN Diversity, the company not only strengthened their talent pool with more diverse talent, but also provided data-backed insight into what was and wasn’t working with their current recruitment strategies.
The solution includes two WCN products: Event, which simplified the challenges of planning recruiting events and Engage helping to amplify the relationship with personalized recruitment marketing content that connects with a specific candidate.
With all the technology working in tandem, the company was able to focus their attention on the events that produced the right diversity and high-quality candidates, more easily schedule attendance and better organize the talent they connected with while there. With intelligent attraction, they were able to analyze real-time web analytics to understand the best recruitment advertising positions on websites and then optimize spend on the ones providing the best quality diverse applicants — save 40% of spend this way. Understanding attraction points based on what content is seeing spikes in suitable candidates applying and then prioritizing spend here means the business can constantly, track and monitor the content that appeals to diverse candidates the most and expand pools of talent by giving them more of this type of content throughout the cycle until they start the job.
The Discovery
After using WCN Diversity, the organization began connecting with more diverse talent that actually wanted to work with their workforce. The hiring team began collecting data and adjusting recruitment tactics to connect with and engage more diversity talent. The real-time data dashboards ensured efforts were dynamic and suitable for the audiences they were focused on recruiting. And, because the program organized the process in an easy and collaborative way, internal engagement increased, encouraging advocacy for these diverse hires. Here’s what some of the end results were:
- Using blind reporting, the company was better able to identify where gaps were in their recruiting campaigns and program. This allowed them to build recruiting campaigns that appealed to key demographics and worked to fill gaps.
- With the event tool, the company could run more thematic events designed to link diverse groups with employees that share passions and more visibly showcase value propositions held by the organization.
- The event tool also included linking with charities and trade bodies related to the company’s area of business so any level of candidate would be aware of the business’ approach to diversity.
- Digitization and content were also improved, offering more content that resonated with the behavior of candidates in the recruitment process. This leads to significant spikes in candidates spending time on careers pages and becoming brand advocates. This was boosted internally by having mentors/ambassadors/buddies on tap.
- With the use of this solution, the organization saw an increase in female and underrepresented ethnic candidates. They even received industry recognition for strides in diversity.
Though the company did introduce more technology into various areas of their recruiting program, implementation wasn’t overwhelming. In addition to their dedicated account manager, WCN’s support and service team worked to provide strategic and tactical advice every step of the way.
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