3 D&I strategies from Lyft’s talent team

2 mins, 34 secs read time

According to McKinsey, diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform homogeneous ones. Additionally, Harvard Business Review states that diverse organizations are 70% more likely to capture new markets.

Besides being the right thing to do, establishing diverse and inclusive workplaces has tremendous business ROI. Recruiters are on the frontlines of diversity and inclusion, yet in order for them to have long-term impact, they must be a company-wide effort. As a talent professional, how do you go about conducting a company-wide concert focused on diversity and inclusion?

In partnership with Teamable, we created a guide to help you embed D&I; into your efforts, to ensure your company is building a diverse and inclusive workforce.

You'll learn how to :

1. Align your org around D&I; initiatives

2. Mitigate bias in your interview process

3. Drive a diverse applicant pool

We put together a sneak peek at the eBook for you, specifically around optimizing your interview process for diversity and inclusion through structured hiring.

Strategy: Optimize your interview process for diversity and inclusion by building a structured hiring process.

If your current hiring process has resulted in underrepresentation of certain groups in your company, you may have found the real culprit behind your diversity issues. Guide your hiring managers throughout the recruitment process to reduce bias and establish inclusive hiring.

When you clearly define which traits will lead to someone being successful in the role and how you’ll assess this, you ensure the most qualified candidate is selected—regardless of characteristics like race or gender. Here are four tactics to implement structured hiring:

Tactic: Hold a kickoff meeting with a hiring manager.

Understand and agree on exactly what you’re looking for so you’ll evaluate each candidate on the same criteria. Create a scorecard with these characteristics that will be used to assess each applicant.

Tactic: Create a transparent, consistent, and objective process for hiring.

Communicate and share your hiring process with everyone. This establishes buy-in and empowers everyone to play their role. Additionally, integrating blind resume and take-home test reviews into hiring can help eliminate bias.

Tactic: Build a strategic interview panel.

Panels should include a diverse group of employees from different levels, teams, and tenures. While interviewing with team members and managers is key, think beyond this. Who will the candidate work with cross-functionally? Who would do a strong job of assessing if a candidate embodies the company’s values? Not only does this give the candidate a full-picture view, but it engages the entire company in hiring.

Tactic: Hold an interviewer kickoff meeting.

Get the entire interview team on the same page regarding the skills and values you and the hiring manager are looking for. Offer training on basic interviewing skills, unconscious bias, how to submit objective feedback, and what’s illegal to ask in an interview.

Want to learn even more strategies and tactics for embedding diversity and inclusivity into your hiring efforts, like how to source for diversity and earn access to communities you want to engage? Download this eBook: The Talent Maker’s guide to inclusive hiring.