Why Hiring for Diversity Should Be Your Top Priority — And How to Make it Happen

Hiring for diversity is an essential part of any modern recruitment strategy, and it’s about much more than simply making your brand seem forward-thinking. Companies around the world are discovering that diverse hiring is the 21st-century edge that can help to boost your team beyond the competition. 

There are real, tangible benefits that companies can gain when they focus on hiring for diversity, ranging from greater innovation to increased profitability. Plus, in a global hiring market, an emphasis on diversity is a strong way to appeal to a broader range of potential team members. 

The future of work is global. The workforce is well-versed in collaborative technologies ranging from video calls to digital whiteboards and more, making us more interconnected than ever. Businesses are capitalizing on this digital fluency to expand their hiring perspectives.

Now, companies can recruit talent from across the seas as easily as they can hire someone who lives a few streets away. These changes to the status quo make it possible to connect with talent in your industry from around the world.

Plus, the Great Resignation is impacting businesses in ways that are likely to stay for the long-term. The move towards flexible, remote work is enabling people to seek out jobs they truly love. It also makes taking international positions more attainable than ever before — which also means hiring diverse, international candidates is becoming the norm.

This new era of interconnected work is making it possible to ramp up the diversity, equity, inclusion, and representation of our teams, and for companies to reap the benefits this brings. Hiring diverse candidates is the key to staying competitive in a global market.

So, how can diverse hiring practices benefit a company with a global perspective? More importantly, how can you make this happen for your team? In this article, we’ll break down some of the best hiring practices for diversity. We’ll also explore some steps your team can take to make recruiting diverse candidates a seamless part of your talent acquisition process, and how partnering with Intrax Global Internships can help you hire for diversity.

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What Exactly Is Diversity in Recruiting?

You may be wondering: What is diversity recruiting? Hiring for diversity means focusing on creating a team made of people as varied as the world around us. These practices seek to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DE&I.

So, what qualifies as a diversity candidate? Emphasizing DE&I in hiring practices means striving to represent all demographics on your team, such as:

• Age
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Religion
• Disability

Representing and welcoming diverse people onto your team might seem like a no-brainer, but without intentional efforts to achieve it, diversity is often lacking. Just look at Fortune 100 companies. 26 of them have no ethnic diversity in their high-level executives, and 6 have no ethnic or gender diversity. Each of these positions represents a hiring decision that lessened that company’s DE&I. 

Now, consider this statistic in reverse. It tells us that 94% of Fortune 100 companies have found success through having gender diversity among their top executives, and 74% are flourishing with an ethnically diverse team.

Diverse viewpoints are critical to a company’s success, and focusing your hiring efforts on diversity can help these numbers trend towards 100% in the future. One of the key hiring practices for diversity is to shift your focus to attracting candidates from a global talent pool.

Going Global: The Diverse Future of Work

Your workforce is no longer limited to the candidates nearby. Collaborative technology and the advent of remote work have made it not only possible, but easy to work together across the world. As such, global hiring and recruitment is becoming the norm, allowing forward-thinking companies to reap the benefits of a diverse talent pool.

Over 70% of companies report they struggle to find the right candidate to fill positions. Now, imagine the impact that expanding recruitment efforts to a global scale could have on this problem. Thinking global for recruitment can simultaneously increase the size of your talent pool and enhance your company’s diversity. 

‍When it comes to diversity hiring, recruiting best practices include efforts to broaden your search to include global candidates. Global hiring opens you to a huge range of candidates who can bring unique perks to your team, like:

1. Speaking multiple languages
2. Providing unique perspectives on your industry
3. Raising your company’s cultural competence and awareness

With the Great Resignation showing no signs of slowing, workers are seeking jobs that fit the lifestyles they want. For many, this means remote work. With the number of people seeking work-from-home positions at an all-time high, the global market is poised to increase diversity in hiring faster than ever.

Remote candidates aren’t limited to full-time employees, either. Remote internships are helping companies of all sizes find top talent in their field.

Adding global interns to your team can help to meet your DE&I goals while also filling important roles in your company. These positions can connect you with emerging talent from the world’s top colleges, universities, and training programs.

The future of work is global, and embracing this change can aid your organization in recruiting the best talent in your field. However, this is far from the only reason to focus your initiatives on hiring for diversity. Let’s take a look at a few of the ways a diverse team can change your company for the better.

Why Recruiting Diverse Candidates Can Help Improve Your Company

Recruiting diversity candidates can add value to any team. There are inherent benefits to having diverse team members. A broad range of people on your team means you’ll have access to more unique perspectives through their:

1. Varied background
2. Wide skill sets
3. Range of life experiences
4. Education and work experience

Each different perspective that becomes part of your team will strengthen your company. It takes collaboration between diverse viewpoints to successfully bring your goals to fruition in a global marketplace.

But the differences that diverse candidates can make extend far beyond the planning stages. Research has shown just how concrete some of these differences are. For example:

• Companies with gender diversity are 15% more likely to outperform their competitors
• Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors
• Inclusive teams outperform their homogenous counterparts by 80%
• Companies with diverse teams took in more cash flow per employee on average

So, how do diversity hiring practices lead to these gains? The answer is deceptively simple: innovation. Diverse teams are more likely to innovate and find creative solutions than homogenous teams. 

Consider the sparks that fly when a dynamic group of people with a range of experiences, knowledge, and skills work together. It makes sense they’ll achieve innovations that extend beyond those of a company composed entirely of one type of person.

Diversity hiring initiatives are particularly impactful in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, as we strive for economic progress on a global scale, diversity in the times of COVID-19 may be more important than ever before. The innovations born from collaborations between diverse teams are already proving to be indispensable to the world’s economic recovery.

Another benefit of hiring a diverse team is the opportunities for cultural exchange it creates. Your team members will be able to learn from each other, bringing their heightened sense of cultural awareness to each project they tackle in the future. 

Plus, having a global team makes expanding your company a natural progression rather than a distant dream. Opening a new branch in London or signing a deal with a client in Shanghai starts to seem much more attainable when you already have team members on location. When you turn your focus to the global stage, it’s easy to find ways to expand onto it.

The global marketplace is as diverse as the people in our interconnected world. Bringing diverse, global team members on board can help you understand, target, connect with, and design solutions for a diverse world. Reflecting that diversity in your team is a powerful path to finding success.

Starting a High-Impact Diversity Hiring Initiative

A systemic, top-down approach to increasing your team’s diversity can have lasting impacts on a company’s success. Wondering how to increase diversity in hiring? Let’s take a closer look at the diversity hiring process and how to ensure diversity in your hiring practices.

Firstly, make a conscious effort to take any bias out of the recruitment process. For example, you can start by making sure your application process is equally accessible to all candidates, including those who may use accommodative technology like a screen reader. 

Additionally, be sure to keep the applications you receive anonymous. Although we can make pointed efforts to overcome it, we all carry subconscious bias with us. These simple steps can have long term impacts in keeping these biases from impacting your company’s hiring decisions.

A strong diversity hiring policy is to involve the diverse team members you already have in the recruitment process. Work to understand their values and priorities in finding a new coworker, and aim to show them their voices are being heard.

One of the most impactful diversity and inclusion hiring practices is to focus your recruitment efforts on global candidates. Working from home and collaborative technologies make this easier than ever, and can even provide unique benefits by spreading your team out across the world.

However, you can also focus on recruiting international candidates who are willing to travel to join your team. If you decide bringing an international candidate to the United States is the right choice for your company, be sure to explore the Department of State requirements for your new employee or intern. 

For example, international interns traveling to the U.S. will need a J-1 visa sponsor to participate in their program. Our team at Intrax Global Internships can help you find the right global intern to help meet your company’s diversity hiring goals.

When designing a diversity hiring plan, it can also be helpful to keep in mind the goals of hiring for diversity in the workplace. Remember DE&I initiatives seek to remedy an existing gap of underrepresentation. In addition to strengthening your team with a broad range of skills and viewpoints, prioritizing hiring diverse candidates is also an important path to closing these gaps. 

When looking for hiring practices that promote diversity, consider getting right to the core of the matter by striving to champion diversity in the workplace. Establishing diversity as a cornerstone of your business will make it clear to your current employees and prospective candidates that you value the unique contributions each individual can bring.

Lastly, reflect inwards on your company to ensure it is a welcoming place for diverse talent to work. Encourage your staff, and especially the management team, to practice cultural responsiveness, awareness, and consideration. This doesn’t mean they need to know everything about each diverse culture or background represented in your company. Instead, it means fostering a climate of mutual respect and understanding for the differences and strengths each person adds to the team.

If you’re wondering how to hire a diverse team, begin by making your team one that diverse candidates would be eager to join. Prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in your hiring practices can in and of itself show prospective employees that you put people first, and are actively working to establish a more equitable and representative workplace.

With your goals established, the next step is to find diverse candidates to add to your team. The hiring marketplace is truly global, and more diverse candidates are seeking international jobs and internships than ever before.

Direct Diverse Talent to Your Team With Global Interns

Diversity in the hiring process extends beyond only the full time employees you recruit. Think globally when looking to add interns to your company as well.

International students and early-career professionals are eager for the chance to join engineering firms, tech companies, startups, and more. Internationally-focused internship roles can create amazing opportunities for these fresh new candidates while also helping to build your team’s diversity initiatives.

Interns, and especially international interns, bring unique benefits to the companies they join. For example:

• Interns are often a cost-effective hiring solution
• Their positions can lead to full-time employment in the future
• Interns bring a great deal of passion and energy to your projects
• They tend to be more flexible and creative than professionals who have become “set in their ways”

Plus, connecting with a global network of interns can help you form a global talent acquisition funnel. By cementing your place as a company that welcomes global interns in the early stages of their careers, you can lay the foundation to direct diverse talent to your team for years to come. This proactive approach to recruitment can help you find qualified candidates in advance rather than scrambling to fill a position as quickly as possible.

If your company decides to start an internship program to attract diverse talent, one of the first steps is to decide how your new interns will join your team. Like many other types of work, internships are increasingly finding solutions to make remote work a strong option. This makes it possible for more companies to add diverse interns to their teams. 

Of course, you can also bring global candidates directly to your offices to join your team. If you decide an in-office intern is the right solution, Intrax Global Internships can help get your new teammate ready to jump in.

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Add Diverse Interns to Your Team with Intrax Global Internships

Intrax Global Internships is a Department of State-approved J-1 visa sponsor. This means we can help your internship candidates through the process of getting a J-1 visa for participating in a cultural exchange program. 

Our goal is to make it effortless to add global interns to your team. To achieve this, we work with you through the entire process of finding and recruiting interns from around the world who will be the right fit for your company. We also help to ensure they meet all requirements set by the Department of State, and will work with them throughout the entire process of obtaining a visa for a J-1 internship.

When it comes to onboarding global interns, we’re experts. Our customers include companies like Robinhood and Omnium. We’ve helped universities, engineering firms, fintech companies, startups, and more add diverse interns to impactful roles. We strive to help you find the ideal candidate for your internship opportunities that can help your company continue to thrive.

"I have a great J1 partner, and that is rare in this space!"

• Amy Jennison, Program Manager, Global Mobility at Robinhood

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The People-Driven Heart of Finding the Right Candidate

Your team is a huge part of what makes your company great. Focusing on improving your team’s diversity is a powerful way to show your people-first values while still moving towards your goals. Diversity in hiring is essential for reasons like:

1. Diverse teams are more fiscally successful
2. DE&I initiatives are helping to repair long-term inequities
3. Diversity leads to greater innovation
   

If your team is wondering how to hire for diversity, start by expanding your perspective to the global talent pool in your industry. This can immediately help to diversify your team, especially if you decide to start bringing diverse interns on board.

These early-career professionals are excited, eager, and knowledgeable. Global interns can also bring unique benefits of diversity to your team like increased cultural competence and awareness. 

Intrax Global Internships can help you reach your hiring goals by creating a worldwide internship program. We’ve worked with thousands of companies to fill important roles in key projects with global interns. Contact us or request information to learn how we can help you create diverse hiring solutions to keep your team moving forward.

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