Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire
How To Recruit For Diversity and Boost Inclusion

The Recruiting Reel Episode 13: How To Recruit For Diversity And Boost Inclusion

In the 13th episode of The Recruiting Reel, Kelly Dingee from Staffing Advisors explores how organizations can start building a strategy to recruit for diversity and boost inclusion. Here’s the transcript:

Josh TolanMy name is Josh Tolan and I’m the CEO of Spark Hire, the leading video interviewing platform used by thousands of organizations around the world.

And this is The Recruiting Reel, a video series in which we discuss real recruiting challenges with prominent recruiting experts to provide you with actionable tips you can apply to your own recruiting.

We are honored to have today’s featured expert on the show, Kelly Dingee. Kelly is the Director of Strategic Recruiting at Staffing Advisors, a search firm helping organizations with their recruitment needs in every functional area and nearly every career level.

She has 20+ years of recruiting experience, is a blogger on Fistful of Talent, and is consistently recognized as one of the most influential HR and recruiting experts.

Diversity and inclusion are huge buzzwords in today’s business and recruiting world. This episode will offer tips on how to best recruit for diversity and boost inclusion.

Take it away, Kelly!

Kelly Dingee: Hi everyone! Kelly Dingee here. I am the Director of Strategic Recruiting for Staffing Advisors and a blogger for Fistful of Talent. I am here today to weigh in on a couple of questions regarding diversity and inclusion.

First off, what roles does diversity and inclusion play in business success? Well, to me, it’s everything. It’s vitally important for all levels of management and your employee pool to be diverse to best address the needs of your internal and external customers.

Second of all, how can companies best recruit for diversity? That’s a challenging question because I really think you should focus on the skill sets and qualifications of any job, but there are places that you can post and search when you’re looking for diverse candidates.

Normally, those are niche business and professional associations and organizations and quite often, they have meetings and conferences. You can search for names, directories, and rosters so that’s a great place to start. They often have job boards that you can post to as well.

Beyond that, I would take a look at social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Both of those sites allow for groups. You can join and post to those groups. This makes sure you get the opportunity to engage and meet candidates who are diverse in nature that can better address your initiatives at your organization. So I hope that helps as you move forward with your diversity and inclusion strategies!

Josh Tolan: Awesome tips, Kelly. Thanks so much for that. When it comes to diversity and inclusion, I feel like many organizations just don’t know where to start.

Tapping into sources like Kelly mentioned is a great way to connect with a diverse group of candidates.

Once you have the ball rolling on places to connect with diverse talent, the next step is to build a strategy around how to attract these candidates.

This should involve your marketing team along with other folks from your organization to ensure your employer messaging is inclusive and clear about what it’s like to work there.

A big time thank you to Kelly Dingee for coming on the show today. Head over to staffingadvisors.com to learn more about the services Kelly and her team provide. Also, follow Kelly on Twitter @SourcerKelly and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Thank you for watching The Recruiting Reel and stay tuned for more episodes. For additional HR and recruiting content, head over to hr.sparkhire.com and subscribe. Also, follow us on Twitter, @sparkhire. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to know about the newest episodes of The Recruiting Reel.

Thanks again for watching and happy recruiting!

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan is the Founder and CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform used by 6,000+ customers in over 100 countries.

1 comment

  • The way we talk about diversity hiring matters. To offer “you should focus on the skill sets and qualifications of any job” gives life and energy to the already too-prevalent notion that diverse candidates somehow get in on some kind of quota system and aren’t really qualified for the roles they fill.

    Language has power. How we language our discussions of diversity and inclusion has very real impacts on how our diverse hires are treated when they come aboard.

    Just an observation.