Tech & Tools: September/October 2022
IN FOCUS: Using data and technology to improve ED&I
Taking a more data-driven approach to improving equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) is a recurring theme in Recruiter’s 11 Most Influential In-house showcase (see pp18-23, Recruiter September-October 2022). As organisations strive to build workplaces that better reflect their customers, they are using data analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to support their strategies and gain more visibility into their recruitment processes.
Nicky Wright, managing director of Diversity Jobs Group, a suite of nine ED&I job boards, said since its launch two years ago it has seen a positive upturn in the number of clients engaging ED&I managers and directors, as well as robust ED&I strategies coming to the forefront of people and organisational plans.
The company says that it isn’t a lack of enthusiasm for diverse candidates that sometimes gets in the way but rather a lack of understanding on how to find and engage with them. And this is where technology and data can help.
“The explicit data that is now available online highlights where underrepresentation still exists and enables us to connect with these communities,” says Wright. “Significant ED&I thought leaders across platforms like LinkedIn share lived experiences, research and statistics that have made an impact.”
A number of recruitment technology companies are building tools into their platforms, which claim to improve fairness and drive diversity recruiting forward. Arctic Shores uses a combination of psychology, cognitive neuroscience and data science to remove unconscious bias from key points in the recruitment process and measure natural behaviours so employers get a truer measure of a person’s potential.
Its behaviour-based assessments helped engineering and manufacturing company Siemens increase female final stage representation by 100%, doubling the number of women that progressed to the final stage of the process.
HireVue expanded its partnership with the global Science of Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (SODI) to drive more equity in hiring last year. It aims to embed learnings from the partnership into customer journeys and ensure that they can be applied at scale in its end-to-end hiring platform, which incorporates video interviewing, assessment and an AI chatbot.
Use of the word “at scale” is significant; giving recruiters practical tools that make it easier to broaden candidate pools by extending reach and access goes a long way to improving diversity. HireVue’s tools are designed to make it easier to interview candidates from anywhere in the world and interact with a higher number of candidates from diverse backgrounds by offering video interviews in more than 30 languages.
Richard Matthews, head of talent and resourcing at the Co-operative Bank, said it has used HireVue to interview and assess as many candidates as possible in a fair, consistent and open way, to streamline and accelerate its processes. “One of the biggest benefits that the business saw was around reducing unconscious bias. HireVue has helped reduce bias by 90% from the hiring process, which has contributed to achieving a 50/50 hiring split for gender across all levels of the business so far in 2021.”
Meanwhile, end-to-end talent acquisition suite provider Jobvite has developed an online analytic tool that can be used to review job descriptions and highlight areas that are ripe for improvement to create more inclusive job postings. The new tool uses artificial intelligence, data analytics and benchmarks combined with ED&I best practices to analyse job descriptions and identify requirements, experiences and language that may restrict an applicant pool.
Executive talent acquisition and leadership performance business inbeta is aiming to build a new model for recruitment “that fights unfairness and inefficiency at scale”, said CEO and founder James Nash. It uses an advanced aggregation of data and human science to surface diverse, high-calibre candidates in real-time with the “objective potential” to perform in a specific role. Having surfaced a huge amount of intelligence on an individual candidate and generated an in-depth report, inbeta seeks to go a step further in a bid to ultimately improve retention and performance. If the client decides to hire the person, the reports are passed to a team leadership coaches and the new hire undertakes a tailored programme to ensure a successful transition into the organisation.
“Organisations like the lack of a black book, the breadth and volume of data and also that we’re not just surfacing the data but doing something with it,” says Nash. “They appreciate getting full visibility of the landscape very, very quickly, compared to several weeks using a traditional recruitment process.
“inbeta is also helping to demonstrate fairness and transparency in recruitment processes, supporting organisations in areas that can sometimes be hard to move the dial when it comes to diversity. For example, the selection process for a plc chief financial officer might traditionally surface a white, middle-aged male, but it is possible to take a different lens by going beyond the widely discussed characteristics and instead measure individuals on their cultural drivers. This way, we can show someone on a scale of cultural intelligence, how they may engage with people who are different from them, promoting diversity of thought,” explains Nash. “This means the company can feel very comfortable that not only have they been rigorous in their selection but that their processes can stand up to external scrutiny.”
In brief
Language additions support diverse hiring
Video-interviewing and pre-hire assessment company Modern Hire is adding more languages to its Automated Interview Scoring (AIS) technology. It will be available in 23 languages, including dialects across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and more to support ethical and diverse hiring across the globe. Its on-demand interview technology uses advanced AI models to evaluate candidate responses and provide hiring teams with recommended scores.
Assessment specialist teams with ATS
Psychometric assessment specialist Arctic Shores is integrating with the employer branding and applicant tracking system (ATS) Teamtailor. Hiring managers embed the Arctic Shores assessment in the recruitment process to gain greater insight into candidates. An overall score of the candidate’s fit against the key success criteria for that role will then be shared with hiring managers, who can progress candidates to the next stage of the process.
Controlling job board spend
Firefish has introduced job board credit management functionality that enables agencies to limit the amount recruiters can post on job boards on a monthly or weekly basis from within the platform. Firefish says as prices around the world continue to rise, it wants to help its clients to control costs while still achieving results so has upgraded the functionality of its job board multi-poster to give system administrators a higher level of control from one central point.
Creating more agile hiring teams
iCIMS is introducing new job advertising, internal mobility and customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities to help recruiters optimise and automate hiring processes and increase the agility of hiring teams. Recruiters can build and launch advertising campaigns to thousands of global job boards from within the iCIMS ATS, while the Digital Assistant tool allows them to automate job matching directly within an AI-powered recruitment chatbot.
Image credit | iStock
