Recruiting with Diversity: Top Tips
At the recent Wired Sussex Skills Summit, Gavin and I presented Cogapp’s equality and diversity policy, and shared how we incorporate those values into our recruitment. In case you missed the talk, here are our top tips…
Make your organisation a nice place to be
It’s fine being able to write an advert that attracts more diverse applicants, but before you even post that ad online for the world to see, you need to create a space where your talent no matter from what background or experience can flourish.
Ways to do this include:
- Recognise each other as people rather than resources
- Give opportunities such as training, time to work on other projects or attending conferences
- Support one and be interested in each other not just professionally but personally
- Trust people to do a good job, and guide them when they need it
- Listen to one another and allow everyone to be heard.
Publish a policy. Believe in it. Live it. Review it.
Our equality and diversity policy was a collaborative effort from the whole team — not just something put together by senior management — and it’s something we all believe in.
We don’t just have a policy that sits on our website and does nothing. We put it into action, primarily through our diversity working group (more on that below).
Potential over experience
When hiring, we used to ask for agency experience and university degrees. This made us less accessible and narrowed our pool of applicants, and there was a risk of becoming homogenous.
We heard at the Skills Summit about Groupthink — when you all have similar beliefs, hobbies, backgrounds etc. “That person reminds me of myself” suggests a hire that will make you less diverse, that you will be challenged less, and that creativity may suffer as a result.
So we changed our approach.
We started to hire for potential, not just qualifications/experience, and we haven’t looked back.
Some of our most brilliant colleagues are self-taught and/or taken non-traditional routes to be with us. There’s so much value in having a variety of life-experience in the studio. Three of them talked us through their stories in the very first Cogapp Podcast.
Access to Work
At the Skills Summit, we learnt about the Government’s Access to Work scheme from Adam Hyland & Emma Turner of Diversity and Ability. It provides funding for people who need extra help in order to be able to do their job, or start a job. This includes:
- Mental health
- Physical health
- Disabilities
It’s definitely worth looking into. Find out more at https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work
Think about your language
When writing a job advert:
- Be yourself, not your company
- Look for personalities, rather than wizards
- Check genderedness of your writing — http://slowe.github.io/genderbias/
Spell out your principles
Adding “We particularly welcome applications from under-represented groups in the tech industry” to our adverts (at the top and in bold) is something that has proved popular with applicants and is often commented on in the interview process.
A secondary benefit of this upfront message is it’s likely to weed out anyone who doesn’t agree with our values. You can see the full advert and the language that we used here.
After the Skills Summit we updated our ‘work at Cogapp’ page too:
…and we’re going to look into advertising positions on Evenbreak as well. Evenbreak is for job posters who are serious about looking beyond applicants disabilities to identify what skills they have to offer.
Have a cuppa
So, the job ad is published and applications are coming in. Here’s what we do next.
We like to initially meet an applicant by inviting them for a coffee or to have a short phone call.
This helps to break the ice and see if they are bright and keen which is important to us.
When I was applying (which was fairly recently) this gave me a chance to see if they were friendly and if it was somewhere I’d like to work.
We aim to meet all candidates who identify as belonging to an under-represented group in our industry.
Why?
Reduces the cost and time of a formal, hour-long interview by flagging up any mismatches straight away.
It’s cheap and easy to arrange and can help you to make ‘friends’ or contacts with someone who may not be right for the role now, but could be in a year or two. We tend to stay in touch with lots of our unsuccessful applicants.
For them
It gives your applicants a chance to practice their sales pitch without preparing for a formal interview.
For us
It quickly allows us to identify if they are a good candidate and expand our network without the overhead of formal interviews. It also helps us prepare applicants for a formal interview or presentation.
Join the Diversity Working Group
About 5 years ago we set up a Diversity Working Group that any Cogapper could join. Now we’re extending the invitation to anyone working in digital.
What is the Diversity Working Group?
It’s a group of people who want to make change. Anyone can join the regular meetings that we hold.
In the internal Cogapp Diversity Working Group we set a list of tasks for us all to work through and actions that have come from this so far include;
- Working with Codebar to get underrepresented people into programming
- Setting up introvert friendly silent brainstorms to help make quieter members of the team feel heard and respected
- Supporting staff in becoming mentors for people in under-represented groups, encouraging them to get into digital and potentially get them to a stage where we can hire them.
The first meeting of the external Diversity Working Group is Wednesday July 24th at Wired Sussex. Get your free ticket now.
We’d love to see you there, and to hear from others about how you build diversity into your recruitment and organisation.
