People manager guide: Inclusive recruitment

Managers have a crucial role in supporting inclusive recruitment. Recruitment is about getting the most suitable candidate into a role, and it is critical for employers to deliver their goals, as well as for employees to find jobs that suit them. However, it is not always clear what makes a candidate ‘suitable’, and there is potential for bias to creep in when making these decisions.

Nobody is immune to bias. Even those of us who strive to make fair and objective decisions are affected by implicit biases, and increasing awareness of the biases that affect recruitment is unfortunately not enough to reduce their impact. Instead, recruitment processes should be redesigned to reduce the influence of bias.

This guide provides actionable steps to attract diverse candidates and ensure an unbiased and inclusive recruitment process. We provide recommendations for the four main stages of recruitment, including: role design and the job advert, attracting diverse candidates, the application process and how candidates are selected.

In larger organisations, some of the actions described may be the responsibility of HR, while in smaller organisations they may fall to the line manager. This guide covers all of the relevant actions so that managers are aware of the rationale behind these and can contribute to inclusive recruitment as relevant.

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What is equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)?

Definition

Equality, diversity and inclusion go hand in hand, but the concepts have important differences.

Equality ensures that every individual has equal opportunities, regardless of their background, identity or experience.

Diversity refers to the representation and recognition of people with different characteristics.

In the UK, it is against the law to discriminate against someone with a ‘protected characteristic’. These include: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. In addition to protected characteristics, employers may also wish to consider diversity of other characteristics, such as socioeconomic background, as well as considering intersectionality, wherein people may have multiple, overlapping identities that can impact their experiences.

Inclusion is about going beyond representation and recognition, to valuing these differences and enabling everyone to thrive at work. An inclusive workplace is one where people feel they can perform to their full potential, and that they belong in the organisation without needing to conform or mask their identities.

The CIPD guide to Building inclusive workplaces provides detailed insights on the value of inclusivity in the workplace and how it impacts employers.

Practical actions to ensure inclusive recruitment

There are practical, evidence-based actions that can be taken that are aligned with international standards for EDI and the CIPD’s manager behavioural framework. The key behavioural areas that will assist you are:

Being open, fair and consistent, which will help you bring respect and openness, consistency, kindness and fairness to the recruitment process.
Building and sustaining relationships, including taking an interest in candidates as individuals and interacting with them in a friendly and sociable way.
Providing knowledge, clarity and guidance, including demonstrating understanding of your own and employees’ roles, clarifying expectations and providing clear feedback during the recruitment process.

Exercise 1, Exercise 4 and Exercise 5 offer advice on how to develop these behaviours.

In designing the role and advertising it, managers should seek to provide knowledge, clarity and guidance by setting clear expectations, providing guidance where appropriate, and by understanding their own and employees’ roles.

Person requirements

Make the role requirements clear, specific and behaviour-based

When outlining role requirements, use specific behaviours and competencies that can be evidenced (see Table 1 below for examples), rather than broad character traits. Have as few requirements as possible and ensure they are absolutely necessary for the role. When advertising for existing roles, assess the needs of the role as it stands today, rather than relying on previous adverts or specifications. Listing the job requirements in terms of specific behaviours helps applicants understand what a role will involve and what is expected of them without inside information. Women and ethnic minority candidates are more likely to apply for roles where the requirements are expressed as behaviours rather than character traits.

Table 1: Preferred language of behaviours and competencies

Instead of…	Try…
You are a natural leader.	You have held people management responsibilities.
You are a gifted communicator.	You have presented your findings to clients or at conferences.

Related manager behaviour

Providing knowledge, clarity and guidance. Exercise 4 offers advice on how to develop these behaviours.

Remove biased language from job adverts

Use language decoders (which are freely available online, and are very quick to use) to identify biased language, including:

stereotypically masculine language (for example words such as ‘ambitious’, ‘hierarchy’, ‘decisive’)
stereotypically feminine language (for example words such as ‘compassionate’, ‘cooperative’, ‘empathetic’).

It is not always obvious to us which words are masculine-coded; using a language decoder can be worthwhile. Biased language in job adverts may lead to women or older people assuming they are less likely to fit into a team.

Managers with responsibility for drafting or reviewing a job advert should run adverts through a decoder to reduce the number of masculine-coded words. Feminine-coded words, in contrast, do not affect the willingness of men to apply for a role, making the removal of masculine-coded words a greater priority than striving for balance.

Caution: Avoid a requirement for ‘cultural fit’ or ‘person-organisation fit’

People managers should use objective criteria for hiring instead of selecting based on how well a candidate would ‘fit’ in their team. Using ‘culture fit’ or ‘person–organisation fit’ as criteria in recruitment usually involves assessing how well a person’s values align with those of the company or team. However, in practice, it often means how similar candidates are to existing employees.

‘Fit’ can be taken to mean how similar a candidate is to the current members of a team, in terms of their experiences, how they present themselves, or what they enjoy doing outside of work. This can worsen an employer’s inclusion and diversity, as it replicates the existing workforce.

Job specification

Offer flexible working by default

When designing a role and drafting a job advert, be careful not to assume that it needs to be full-time because it was before. Advertise jobs with specific flexible working options, such as part-time or job-share, wherever possible. Ensure applicants and new starters know that flexible working is available from day one, rather than requiring a certain amount of time to be spent on the job before these requests are considered.

Flexible working increases workplace diversity by making roles accessible to those with caring responsibilities (primarily women), disabled staff, and both older and younger workers. It is particularly important to offer part-time options across all seniority levels, as part-time workers often get ‘stuck’ due to a lack of quality part-time roles – this is a key driver of the gender pay gap.

See our flexible working case study in our Guide to inclusive recruitment for employers.

Make salaries non-negotiable

Pay should be non-negotiable, although people managers may not be able to influence this policy. If pay is negotiable, this should be clearly communicated to candidates, and outcomes from negotiations should be monitored to ensure that marginalised groups are not unfairly penalised.

Making salaries non-negotiable supports inclusion, as both women and ethnic minority candidates tend to be penalised when they negotiate. If salaries are negotiable, stating this in the advert increases the chances that women negotiate. However, companies should ensure that women and other marginalised groups are not unfairly penalised when they do negotiate. Additionally, stating salary ranges on adverts helps level the playing field, since marginalised groups are less likely to have connections with existing staff who could give them information about the actual salary on offer.

How can you attract diverse candidates?

Building and sustaining relationships with employees begins with showing concern and consideration for candidates, particularly those from marginalised groups.

Target marginalised groups to apply

Using targeted ‘word-of-mouth’ referrals with your team may be justified as long as vacancies are advertised using a range of methods and on multiple platforms.

Encourage your team to share vacancies with underrepresented groups in their networks. This could take the form of challenging members of your team to share a vacancy with a certain number of people from a marginalised group (for example sharing a job posting with five women they know) to boost referrals.

Hiring through word of mouth or personal recommendations remains popular, despite being criticised as ‘anti-diverse’. Targeted referrals can help alleviate this by reaching marginalised groups, but there needs to be a sensitive balance. The Equality Act 2010 permits employers to take proactive steps to address disadvantage or underrepresentation among protected groups. However, only using a targeted approach aimed at increasing equality or diversity may inadvertently disadvantage others, increasing the risk of legal claims. Any action to target marginalised applicants must be proportionate to the level of under representation. Place job adverts where they are more likely to be seen by a wider range of applicants as well as using a targeted approach to attract candidates from marginalised groups.

Related manager behaviour

This relates closely to the behaviour area Being open, fair and consistent. Look at Exercise 1 for advice on how to develop this area.

Make outreach efforts transparent and focused on marginalised groups

Outreach can involve visiting a school or university and hosting events, offering work experience or internship opportunities, as well as more general career support such as providing help with CV writing and interview preparation. Many people managers offer these opportunities through informal networks, and it’s useful to consider how best you can support marginalised groups when doing so.

Outreach programmes have been associated with increasing the numbers of candidates from marginalised groups who apply to roles, and eventually rise to management positions. While the evidence doesn’t tell us if the outreach programmes were a key factor in increasing inclusivity, or whether they are more likely to have been undertaken by companies that had other programmes in place to support marginalised groups, outreach efforts are likely to support an employer’s overall inclusivity goals.

Related manager behaviour

Exercise 5 offers advice on Building and sustaining relationships.

Make the recruitment experience inclusive

Provide candidates with clear expectations, timelines, and communications

Throughout the recruitment process let candidates know as much as possible about the next steps. For example, outlining the stages of an interview at the beginning, when decisions will be made, and how soon they can expect to hear back after interviews.

An employer who is seen as being timely is more attractive to candidates. Setting clear expectations can also support candidates with caring responsibilities or unpredictable work hours, who may have less time to prepare for interviews, as well as relax candidates during interviews and recruitment tasks.

Related manager behaviour

The behavioural area that is particularly important in this context is Providing knowledge, clarity and guidance. Exercise 4 offers advice on how to develop these behaviours.

Proactively ask applicants if they need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process

Instead of waiting for applicants to request reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process, explicitly and proactively ask all applicants if they would like to request any once applications have been submitted. One approach could be to send a survey with a checklist of options as well as an open-text box for any adjustments that are not captured by the options provided (see below).

Offering reasonable adjustments can support a more diverse range of candidates to participate in the recruitment process. Although this has not been studied, we believe it is good practice to promote inclusivity. In larger organisations this is likely to be the responsibility of HR, but managers should understand which reasonable adjustments have been agreed and ensure this fits in with the interview plan.

Example reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process

Do you require any of the following adjustments to the interview process?

extra time during tasks or video applications
sharing questions asked on screen
assistance if the test or assessment is on a computer, such as closed captions
option to interview without the camera on
have an accessible car parking space reserved
hold the interview at a specific time of day [please suggest]
a British Sign Language interpreter
Anything else – please describe:

Application process

Application form

Maintain the anonymisation of applicants

Anonymising applications, which involves the removal of identifying information, extending from name and contact details to ‘cues’ such as schools or universities attended, can support inclusivity in recruitment. People managers should take care to support this. Getting in touch with candidates or looking at CVs too soon in the process can compromise these efforts. During the interview, focus on understanding what skills the applicant can demonstrate, rather than, for example, where they went to university.

See our case study on anonymising job application in our Guide to inclusive recruitment for employers.

How using CVs can get in the way of inclusive recruitment

Selection Process

When it comes to selecting candidates, people managers have a critical role to play in ensuring they are being open, fair and consistent to the candidates in order to support getting the right person into the right role.

Sift

Caution: Avoid using social media to sift applicants

Avoid looking through candidates’ social media profiles prior to the interview. This can include looking at their Facebook or Twitter profiles, or going through their LinkedIn profile before interviewing or shortlisting them (even if these profiles are listed in the CV or application). If needed as a pre-employment check for safeguarding or other reasons, this search could be undertaken by an external agency and after an offer has been made.

Incorporating social media searches into the screening process undoes any efforts taken to anonymise the application process. This can result in candidates from marginalised groups being screened out. Employers looking at candidates’ Facebook pages while screening applications, for example, led to marginalised applicants of foreign origin receiving far fewer call-backs for interviews.

Interviews and assessments

Make scheduling interviews easy, accessible, and flexible

Offer interviewees a range of dates, to accommodate them with earlier or later slots than the typical working day if needed, and offer reasonable adjustments as required. As far as possible, the person arranging the interviews should not be on the interview panel and should keep these arrangements confidential. Candidates may have different needs depending on the space and equipment they personally have available, or their other responsibilities. Offering both in-person and remote interviewing options, for example, could increase access. However, there is a risk that in-person interviewees may be inadvertently favoured if both options are offered, although this has not been studied. Employers should monitor outcomes to look for any evidence of bias.

Related manager behaviour

Exercise 4 offers advice on Providing knowledge, clarity and guidance.

Use structured interviews

Structured interviews involve asking a predefined set of questions, in the same order, to all candidates. Candidate responses are then scored using consistent criteria against a set of pre-agreed criteria for each question. For example, a question might test whether a candidate is knowledgeable about the risks of a particular process. They could then be scored based on how many risks they identified, whether they covered key stakeholders in their risk assessment, or similar factors.

Using structured interviews is an effective way to minimise bias and ensure there is a level playing field for candidates. They make it easier for the panel to make direct and fair comparisons between candidates, using objective criteria.

Related manager behaviour

This relates closely to the behaviour area, Being open, fair and consistent. Look at Exercise 1 for advice on how to develop this area.

Elements of a good structured interview

A structured interview should incorporate the following elements:

Develop a set of questions and scoring criteria for use in the interview. During the interview, ask all candidates the same questions in the same order and score responses according to the objective criteria. This makes responses comparable and makes it less likely that decisions will be based on personal biases. Some evidence suggests that using a rubric which sets out the scoring criteria and how to judge each response increased the likelihood that black women will be selected for a role by 21%.
Conduct interviews using a panel rather than a sole interviewer. Having multiple interviewers in the same interview has been shown to lead to fairer and more accurate results than having multiple interviews with only one interviewer.
Prepare interviewers for consistent interviewing. Provide them with the questions and criteria ahead of time, and highlight the need for consistency in the interview. Encourage the panel to meet in advance to assign questions to individual members and take independent notes.
Interviewers should assign scores to each candidate response independently before discussing them as a group. Discussing the candidates before this point means interviewers are more likely to be influenced by other interviewers’ opinions, and potentially by the opinion of the most senior person there. Agree and check understanding of scoring (ie what a score of 5 looks like) before the interview.

To learn more: How to run structured interviews – An implementation guide.

Use skill-based assessment tasks in recruitment

Skill-based assessments are a form of assessment that assess skills and abilities relevant to the role the employee is applying for. They can include sample tasks, situational judgement tests, simulation exercises, or assessment centres. Skill-based assessments should resemble real tasks in the job as much as possible.

Skill-based assessment tests have been found to be better predictors of performance on the job when compared with traditional approaches such as tests, reviewing job experience, education, or unstructured interviews. There is no difference in scores between men and women on skill-based assessment tasks. However, care must be taken to design them well or they will result in an ethnicity gap. To reduce the ethnicity gap, use a number of tasks to assess a variety of skills and abilities and closely simulate a real-life situation on the job.

Designing a skill-based assessment

Use tasks that assess a mixture of skills, for example technical skills and people management skills. This makes it more likely that a single task does not disadvantage some groups, while helping others.
Using tasks that simulate real-life situations makes it more likely to select candidates who go on to perform well and reduces the ethnicity gap.
Encourage candidates to reflect on why they want to apply for this role to improve performance. A randomised control trial with a UK police force found that prompting applicants to reflect on why they valued becoming a police constable led to a 50% increase in the probability of passing a situational judgement test for ethnic minority applicants and closed the gap with white applicants.

Examples of work sample tasks

For a customer-facing role, role-play a situation that requires the candidate to resolve a challenging customer interaction.
For a role that requires data analysis, ask candidates to analyse a dataset and pull out key summary statistics and trends.
For a role that requires stakeholder management and communication skills, ask candidates to write a brief email to a potential client.

To learn more: How to use skill-based assessment tasks – An implementation guide.

Evaluate candidates

Make decisions about candidates in batches

Review multiple candidates in parallel, rather than one-by-one, comparing them with each other before making a decision about an individual. For example, score all candidates’ applications and then compare applications and scores to decide who will be invited to interview, rather than deciding whether to invite each candidate as individual applications are reviewed.

Batch evaluation may help reviewers to compare candidates according to objective criteria and their actual performance, rather than comparing them with stereotypes (such as gendered stereotypes).

Related manager behaviour

This relates closely to the behaviour area Being open, fair and consistent. Look at Exercise 1 for advice on how to develop this area.

Use calibrations for hiring decisions

Calibration involves having multiple decision-makers come together to jointly review hiring decisions. For example, after a recruitment round, everyone involved could participate in a wash-up meeting to discuss each candidate and the different scores managers assigned to them. This helps to ensure that managers’ assessments are standardised. Make sure that no 'group think' is introduced where less confident/more junior staff feel obliged to agree or change scores.

Calibrations can help overcome bias by standardising and calibrating manager responses across employees. They create accountability because managers review each other’s decisions and ask for justifications for them. When individuals know their decisions may be reviewed by others, they ask for more information to base their decision on, and make less biased decisions.

Post-offer

Share and collect feedback from all candidates

After a recruitment round, provide all interviewees with timely feedback on their performance. Make sure this follows a standardised format that aligns with the key objective requirements for the role. Make feedback as specific as possible. If you continue to interact with candidates after the interview, collect feedback on the recruitment process through an anonymous survey and ask about inclusion.

While this has not been studied empirically, providing clear feedback after interviews is likely to increase accountability for hiring decisions. Collecting feedback anonymously would help to identify and resolve problems in the recruitment process, including inclusion challenges that may not have been obvious otherwise.

Proactively support any reasonable adjustment requirements for new joiners

All new joiners should be offered reasonable adjustments to meet their individual needs. While reasonable adjustments (see Box 6 below) should be prioritised for disabled staff, non-disabled employees could also benefit from such job modifications. People managers have a crucial role to play in supporting arrangements that have been agreed with employees and ensuring their needs are met.

While adjustments would benefit most employees, UK legislation only requires employers to do so for disabled staff. Reasonable adjustments are particularly important for increasing the recruitment and retention of disabled staff.

What are reasonable adjustments?

Reasonable adjustments are workplace and job modifications that support disabled employees to perform their job roles.

Reasonable adjustments provided by employers in the UK can include (but are not limited to):

making adjustments to workplace facilities (for example accessibility ramps)
allocating some duties to another worker
enabling flexible working
allowing absences for rehabilitation, treatment, or assessments
purchasing specialised equipment (for example assistive technology)
providing a support worker to assist
providing transport to the workplace
adjusting working hours
phasing a return to work.

There is no set definition for ‘reasonable’. Employers can conduct a health assessment that will give them an overview of individual staff members’ needs.

Encourage candidates to reapply

When a candidate narrowly misses out on being appointed, encourage them to reapply the next time there is a suitable vacancy. For example, following each recruitment round, call or email appointable candidates to specifically let them know how well they did and encourage them to reapply to other relevant roles.

Women are less likely to reapply for roles, particularly for senior roles, when compared with men. If candidates were close to being successful, they are likely to be highly qualified already, and encouraging reapplications is a cost-effective way to boost inclusivity in the next round of recruitment.

See our case study on encouraging unsuccessful candidates to reapply in our Guide to inclusive recruitment for employers.