DEI Hiring Practices: Strategies to Build a More Inclusive Workforce

Organizations are hiring diverse workforces to attract and retain top talent in all areas. According to a DEI study, a diverse workplace leads to better business decisions 87% of the time.

In this post, we’ll explore the best DEI hiring practices to make modern businesses more diverse and better equipped to attract and hire top talent and maintain productivity and retention. Companies that want to stay competitive and implement fair, effective, and representative DEI hiring practices are directly linked to long-term success.

From internal paradigm shifts to external recruitment strategies, you’ll learn actionable practices and tools to help reduce bias, support underrepresented talent, and build a workplace where your employees feel seen, heard, and valued for their contribution.

What is DEI Hiring?

DEI hiring strategies refer to intentional applications of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles throughout the hiring process. While traditional hiring often focuses on culture fit, DEI hiring emphasizes values beyond culture, such as perspectives, lived experiences, and the ability to challenge the status quo in the most effective way possible.

To understand how DEI works, let’s break down the terms:

• Diversity in hiring refers to the presence of differences within the workplace. It encompasses diverse aspects, including race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, education, veteran status, and many more.
• Equity ensures that all candidates are treated equally and have access to similar opportunities and resources, regardless of their background or potential barriers that undermine them.
• Inclusion is all about creating a culture where everyone feels included, heard, respected, and empowered to contribute their full efforts to the mission.

From job posting to onboarding the candidate as an employee, DEI strategies help remove systemic barriers to ensure fairness throughout the process.

Why is DEI Hiring Important?

Organizations that prioritize diversity and inclusion aren’t only doing the right thing ethically and making smart business decisions that directly impact revenue. Not only that, but a growing body of research also indicates that companies with DEI practices outperform in terms of productivity, innovation, and employee engagement— key aspects that are foundational to rapidly growing workplaces.

Here are the main reasons why you should prioritize DEI hiring practices:

1. Better Business Outcomes

Companies with diverse workforces perform better. According to McKinsey & Company, the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in the management department was 35% more likely to achieve financial returns above its industry’s average.

2. Increased Innovation

When teams comprise individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, they generate more creative ideas and overcome challenges productively. DEI in hiring has become a key driver for innovation that fuels motivation to work and to create a recognizable impact.

3. Access to Wider Talent Pools

Organizations that adopt inclusive DEI hiring practices gain exclusive access to a broader and more talented pool of candidates who are often excluded as top performers due to non-traditional backgrounds. Limiting access can put you at risk of stunting your organizational growth.

4. Improved Employee Retention

Employees are more likely to stay at a company where they feel heard, seen, and valued. Hiring for diversity and building an inclusive company culture can officially lead to lower employee turnover rates and higher morale.

5. Building Employer Brand and Reputation

Your employer brand matters more than you think. According to a leading study on employer brand statistics conducted by LinkedIn, 72% of the world leaders agree that employer branding is a primary driver of impactful hiring. Therefore, candidates today are increasingly socially conscious as they seek out companies that value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their recruiting processes.

What Are the Most Common Barriers to DEI in Hiring?

Despite the benefits, many organizations face challenges in scaling their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring efforts. These barriers often operate in the background and are embedded within everyday hiring habits, systems, and mindsets.

Let’s explore the most common barriers to DEI in hiring:

1. Unconscious Bias in Hiring

Unconscious bias in hiring refers to the automatic judgments made about others based on stereotypes and latent beliefs. This is often done subconsciously and can manifest in ways such as:

• Favoring candidates with similar backgrounds or personal interests.
• Prioritizing resumes with names that fall outside the demographic norm of the given culture.
• Giving more chances to candidates from elite schools or well-known companies.

Bias can become an unnecessary driver in every stage of the hiring funnel, from resume screening to interviews and final selection. If this issue is left unaddressed, you may limit the diversity of thought.

2. Lack of Representative Leadership

When leadership lacks perceptible diversity, it can deter candidates from underrepresented groups. Many candidates aim for representation as a sign of commitment to inclusion and upward mobility. A lack of diverse leaders signals to candidates that they may not have opportunities for career advancement and growth.

3. Overreliance on Internal Referrals

Employee referrals are a powerful tool for recruitment. Although that may be true, it can reinforce homogeneity, especially if your existing team needs diverse systems. When people tend to refer others from similar racial, educational, and social backgrounds, it leads to replicated workforce demographics, resulting in stunted growth toward real inclusion.

4. Culture Fit vs. Culture Add

Hiring managers often prioritize a candidate’s “culture fit” as a subjective benchmark. However, this can be a false facade for hiring people who act, think, and look like the existing team. To mitigate this issue, DEI hiring practices promote the concept of “culture add,” seeking candidates who bring unique perspectives that challenge the company’s status quo and expand on the fundamentals of the company culture.

5. Inaccessible Job Descriptions or Platforms

Job descriptions filled with unnecessary words, overly formal language, or gendered terms can discourage candidates from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, hosting job postings on platforms that are attuned to specific demographics can also limit your visibility.

A well-versed and diverse hiring policy should ensure job ads that are:

• Written in plain, easy-to-understand language
• Free of unnecessary qualifications
• Posted on job boards that are attuned to reach the marginalized communities
• Optimized for accessibility

6. Unstructured Interview Process

When interviews are unstructured and subjective, they become susceptible to biases. A lack of standardized questions and evaluation metrics makes it easier for personal preferences to influence leadership’s hiring decisions.

7. Data Gaps in Hiring Outcomes

It’s impossible to identify core biases or areas of improvement without tracking key diversity metrics across your hiring funnel. A data-driven DEI recruiting strategy ensures you are backed with effective analytics to measure representation at each stage, including application, interview, offer, and hire.

What Are the Best DEI Hiring Practices?

Now that we’ve understood the potential challenges in DEI hiring, the next step is to implement these best practices, which combine paradigm shifts with structural and procedural changes.

Here are the top strategies organizations can use to build more inclusive and equitable systems through DEI hiring best practices:

1. Craft Inclusive Job Descriptions

Language matters, and so does your job description. Avoid gendered terms or slanting the job description toward a specific personality type, which can lead to a more saturated and narrow resume bank.

To mitigate this risk, you can use various tools available in the market to identify and rectify biased narratives. Let’s explore some best practices in crafting inclusive job descriptions:

• Focus on the necessary skills for the role and eliminate non-essential qualifications.
• Include a diversity and inclusion section for greater exposure.
• Use gender-neutral job titles that include all genders.
• Avoid acronyms or company-specific jargon for diverse visibility.

2. Use Diverse Hiring Panels

Initiate a well-trained team to form diverse interview panels that reflect candidates from different identities and experiences. This promotes a straightforward narrative for candidates, indicating that inclusion is a priority in this organization, which helps minimize individual bias in the evaluation process.

Here are some of the strategic benefits you can reap by hiring diverse hiring panels:

• Gaining a broader perspective on a candidate’s potential.
• Increased fairness and moral ethics in scoring.
• Improved candidate experience, especially for underrepresented applicants.

3. Provide Training to Mitigate Unconscious Bias

One of the most successful DEI hiring practices is providing proper training for hiring teams to recognize and mitigate unconscious biases in the hiring process. This practice should be a regular part of your recruitment process.

The focus areas for providing unconscious bias training include:

• Resume screening bias
• Affinity bias during candidate screenings
• Anchoring bias in candidate scoring during the recruitment process

4. Standardized Interviews and Scoreboards

Another effective practice is to conduct structured interviews using a standardized set of questions for each candidate. You can utilize tools like evaluation scoreboards with predefined criteria directly tied to the job responsibilities. This ensures that every candidate is evaluated equally on performance rather than relying on the typical ‘vibes’.

To initiate standardized interviews and scoreboards effectively, here are some of the best practices:

1. Establish what a strong answer looks like. Having structured and expected answers to all the questions will help you better evaluate the candidates.
2. Train interviewers on how to utilize scoreboards.
3. Debrief with interview panels on prioritizing objective data and not subjective impressions.

5. Focus on Skills-Based Assessments

While traditional hiring often focuses on credentials such as degree, job titles, or years of experience, these metrics don’t always reflect a candidate’s ability to perform. DEI hiring practices emphasize a paradigm shift toward skill-based hiring through assessments that evaluate candidates based on what they can do, rather than where they’ve been on record.

Strategic skill-based assessments' benefits include:

1. Reduced bias tied to educational background or pedigree.
2. Level the playing field for self-taught, non-traditional, or career-switching candidates.
3. Actual performance is prioritized over resume keywords.

You can implement these by using real-world tasks, job simulations, or take-home projects relevant to the role. Blind reviewing work samples before interviews, in addition to using widely available administrative tools, can also be effective.

6. Making Job Posting Accessible (Language, Format, Location)

Accessibility in job postings extends far beyond mere ADA compliance. To attract a truly diverse talent pool, you must ensure your posts are in a universal format, inclusive of language, syntax, and reach. Let’s briefly understand each of these aspects:

Language:

1. Use plain and simple language that is easy to understand for non-native English speakers.
2. Remove idioms, slang, and unnecessary words that may sound esoteric or unfamiliar.
3. Avoid ableist terms or phrases with unintended bias, for example, “energetic” or “must have a personal car.”

Format:

1. Ensure all postings are screen-reader compatible for visually impaired users (role-specific).
2. Use proper HTML syntax for headings and bullet points when needed.
3. Provide alternative text (alt text) for any images or graphics included in your job posting.

Location:

1. Post roles on a wide range of platforms, especially those that support underrepresented communities.
2. Include remote options and flexible working conditions whenever possible. This helps accommodate candidates with disabilities, caregivers, or those in geographically remote areas for those specific roles.

7. Avoid ‘Culture Fit’ Biases and Prioritize ‘Culture Add’ Goals

Hiring for “culture fit” is one of the most common and problematic filters in the recruitment process. While it may seem like a way to preserve team cohesion, the term is often used to hint at hiring people who resemble, express, and behave like existing employees. As exclusive as it sounds, it stifles diversity and reinforces existing uniformity.

To retaliate against a culture fit bias, here are some of the practical tactics you can use to implement culture add goals in meaningful ways:

1. Redefine the candidate evaluation criteria to look for qualities such as adaptability, innovation, empathy, and diverse life experiences.
2. Encourage hiring managers to inquire about the new perspectives the talent is bringing to the company rather than asking questions like “Would you enjoy having lunch with this person?”
3. Train teams to challenge the concept of “gut feeling” while evaluating, and see how often it stems from unconscious bias.

Best DEI Recruitment Strategies That Work Effectively

DEI Recruitment strategies are designed to complement internal hiring reforms, attract diverse talent, and eliminate harmful biases within the organization. These DEI recruitment strategies go beyond tokenism to foster authentic engagement with underrepresented communities. Here’s how:

1. Use Niche/Diversity Job Boards

Mainstream platforms, such as LinkedIn or Indeed, are beneficial but often fail to reach candidates from marginalized backgrounds. Posting jobs on niche and diversity-focused job boards can help you connect with highly qualified candidates who are otherwise overlooked.

Some popular platforms include Diversity Jobs, HBCU Connect (for Historically Black Colleges and Universities), LatPro (for Latinx Professionals), Ability Jobs (for Professionals with Disabilities), and Veteran Job Boards (for former military personnel).

These job boards not only expand your reach but also demonstrate your commitment to meeting candidates where they are listed.

2. Partner with Minority-Serving Institutions and Community Groups

Building a long-term partnership with diverse communities can serve a much greater purpose. We highly recommend partnering with minority-serving institutions and community groups, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges, and nonprofits focused on job placement for refugees and immigrants.

The unfair advantage of approaching these communities is that it’ll help you connect with emerging talent before they even enter the job market. Consider sponsoring job fairs, offering internships, or hosting workshops to designate your organization as an inclusive employer of choice.

3. Leverage Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

Your current employees are often your best recruiting ambassadors. ERGs are a voluntary, employee-led group initiative that supports shared identities. They help you identify barriers in your current hiring process and refer qualified and diverse candidates from their communities.

Credit where the credit is due. You’ll be surprised by your employees’ intellectual resources, so we highly recommend giving your Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) a formal role in shaping your recruitment strategy and rewarding their contributions to DEI progress.

4. Tap into Social Networks with Inclusive Branding

Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and even Meta offer great potential for organic employer branding. But posting a Black History Month graphic once a year is not enough.

To leverage the power of social networks for inclusive branding, you can feature stories of real employees from underrepresented backgrounds, share behind-the-scenes content about their inclusive workplace initiatives, use panoramic narrative and visual representation in all posts, and, most importantly of all, be yourself to reflect the brand ethics you’re striving to build.

5. Create Inclusive Employer Branding Across the Hiring Funnel

From your website’s career page to job descriptions and interviews, candidates should see you fully commit to every DEI step. To create inclusive employer branding, you must include DEI statements that go beyond legal requirements, feature testimonials, ensure interviewers are well-trained in inclusive communication, and avoid using gendered or ageist language in recruitment marketing materials.

Your employer brand is your DEI commitment in action. Make sure it is reflected in your process.

6. Offer Flexible Work Policies to Serve Diverse Needs

Flexible work isn’t just a perk; it’s a vital equity tool. It helps you retain talent from different life stages, abilities, and diverse backgrounds.

To promote flexible work policies and inclusivity, consider offering remote and hybrid options, non-linear work schedules for caregivers or employees with neurodiversity, floating holidays to accommodate diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, and mental health and wellness days.

When people can show up with their optimistic selves, their contribution to work is immeasurable.

How to Measure the Impact of DEI Hiring

We strongly believe in foundational tracking. While improving DEI hiring practices is the first step, measuring their historical impact and effectiveness must be done simultaneously.

Here’s how we go beyond surface-level metrics and dig into what really matters:

1. Track DEI Recruiting Metrics

The fundamental variables in tracking DEI recruitment metrics include:

• Percentage of applicants, interviewees, and hires from underrepresented groups.
• Time-to-hire and pass-through rates for different demographics.
• Source of hire by group, for example: How many diverse candidates came from niche job boards discussed earlier?
• How effective are tools such as the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or diversity dashboard in helping you track progress over time?

Finding answers to these questions will not only help you build the foundational knowledge of your hiring funnel but also fast-track your recruitment process into a scalable strategy that directly impacts your business.

2. Monitor Employee Retention and Promotion

While hiring diverse talent is the first step, employee retention and advancement reveal the true story of growth.

The vital indicators in employee retention and growth monitoring include retention rates by race, gender, disability status, and other relevant factors. Promotional timelines compared across demographics and the vital feedback obtained from exit interviews are also the most impactful variables.

3. Conduct Regular DEI Hiring Audits

Impactful DEI policies are often a result of regular hiring audits. Conduct regular audits by reviewing job descriptions for biased language, checking whether hiring panels are diverse, and ensuring the scoreboards and evaluations are standardized for scalability. Impactful audits can be performed internally or by third-party consultants to bring fresh, unbiased perspectives to the table.

4. Gather Candidate Feedback on Inclusivity and Experience

Gathering candidate feedback is a crucial part of the employee experience. Post-interview surveys can reveal whether candidates felt respected and valued, if the interview process accommodated their needs, and saw your commitment to DEI in action. It’s a goldmine for continuous organizational improvement as you make space and act on it.

How Revaluate180 Supports DEI Hiring

Revaluate180 offers advanced tools and insights that bring data and accountability to DEI hiring initiatives. Our comprehensive method for diverse organizational goals includes:

Identify Bias with Data-Driven Insights

Using AI-powered analytics and tools, Revaluate180 helps organizations:

• Detect unconscious bias in job descriptions, screening questions, and interview feedback loops.
• Highlight disparities in hiring outcomes across demographics.
• Benchmark DEI hiring metrics against industry norms by utilizing our curation and change management models for maximum ROI.

Customize Hiring Strategies Aligned with DEI Goals

Revaluate180 tailors recommendations based on your unique goals, such as:

• Improving early-stage candidate equity through structured interviews and bias-free screening.
• Optimizing conversion by improving candidate experience for diverse applicants.

Final Thoughts

DEI hiring practices aren’t a one-and-done initiative, but rather a meticulous commitment to work ethics and inclusion fueled by cutting-edge innovation. By investing in inclusive job design, data-driven recruitment strategies, and transparent accountability, organizations not only attract diverse talent but also build the foundation of long-term growth.