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Prioritize “culture add”
84% of hiring managers look for “culture fit” when they’re hiring. Now, one of the problems with this framing is often when you are hiring for a fit for people who are already there, inadvertently you are perpetuating bias. As we know, the majority of organizations — and especially as you go up the ladder here in the United States — close to 85% of organizations at senior manager level and above, are run by white men. And so, when you’re thinking about hiring for “culture fit,” when you really dive into what you mean by hiring for “culture fit,” often you’re hiring other white men like yourself. And so, being very intentional in the language that you use when you are making hiring decisions can really help change the framing of who you hire. We need to be very deliberate and intentional in adding to the culture. Who is missing today in terms of demographic representation in your team or in your organization? And being very deliberate about expanding that.
One of the ways that we can inclusively hire is having a candidate pool that is diverse and ensuring that you don’t actually move toward interview or next steps until you actually have a diverse candidate pool. One of my clients found great success in being very deliberate. They decided that they would prioritize diversity and inclusion. Rather than hire quickly for “culture fit,” like they often did — which meant everyone on their leadership team was a white man — they slowed down their hiring process a little bit. They refused to move towards interview until there was a diverse candidate pool, making sure that were very deliberate about hiring for “culture add,” not for “culture fit,” as they had typically done in the years past.
Conduct an inclusive search
It is very, very difficult to disrupt some of our longstanding biases by just putting in one token woman or one token person of color. When we are reviewing resumes or when we are moving to interview, at least 50% of the candidate pool that we are considering are non-male and non-white. Research has looked at what words attract or repel female candidates from applying for jobs. These little tweaks can make a big difference in hiring more women or at least getting more women to apply, but actually don’t have a material impact on whether men apply or not.
So, in all ways, it is a better idea to create a more inclusive job listing, use the right words, be more deliberate, because it doesn’t impact who applies in terms of men applying less. Some of the words that research has found can really help with bringing in more women is not using word that really connote a very dominant style of behaving in the workplace. Words like, “analytical,” or “aggressive,” or “dominant.” And instead using words like “collaborative,” “empathetic.”
Another intervention which is really important is ensuring that a job listing has an equal opportunity statement, making sure that you very deliberately state, no matter who you are, no matter your race, your religion, your gender, we are not going to discriminate against you. All are welcome to apply.