Top Diversity Hiring Tools — March 2021
Everything you need to know to launch a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) strategy so you can attract and retain more diverse talent, build high-performing teams, and grow revenue
Top diversity and inclusion technology will assist your company to create a workplace that empowers people from all different backgrounds. A Diverse workforce is good for society, and good for your business in a way that your CFO will appreciate. According to a study by McKinsey & Co., “companies with more diverse workforces perform better financially.”
Diversity hiring ensures that you have a fair and balanced hiring process, bringing in applicants from all communities. That is the easy part, and diversity hiring tools make it even easier. The challenge is taking those hiring efforts a step further to also focus on inclusion and equity — i.e. making sure that the diverse workforce you build also provides fairness and equal opportunity for all employees regardless of background.
Getting all of this right is a process. To help you get started, we created this guide on diversity hiring tools, inclusion and equity best practices, and more, so you can uplevel your DEI strategy to build an equitable workplace and high-performing company.
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. Most of the vendors featured on our site have no commercial relationship with us, we want to feature the best software for our readers regardless. Learn more
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Featured in
Top Diversity Hiring Tools
Why we love it
:
Textio helps your company understand its hiring biases so you can learn and grow as an organization.
Textio is an easy to use tool that will allow your company to write job descriptions that are not overly biased towards any given group. They've used machine learning to understand words and phrases that may be overly masculine, turn off people of color, etc. By using their tool, you can help ensure that you are not at risk of losing diversity candidates at the top of the hiring funnel.
Textio
Customers
- McDonald’s
- Johnson & Johnson
- eBay
- Slack
Textio
Stats
- Ranks 50,000 global companies for effectiveness of their hiring language.
- Customers saw 30% increase in the number of candidates who qualified for an assessment
Textio
Pricing
Textio does not provide pricing details. You must get in contact with a sales representative.
Best For
Textio is the right choice for any company trying to remove bias from their hiring process and boost their recruitment marketing efforts.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Jopwell helps companies with employer branding and DEI initiatives by providing access to a large talent pool of diverse job seekers.
Jopwell's mission is to advance the careers of Black, LatinX and Native American professionals which they accomplish through their community The Well. For employers, it's a great place to build your employer brand with these populations, and also source high quality applicants.
Jopwell
Customers
- Job board for diverse candidates
- Events
- Resources and advice
- Employer branding tools
- Analytics and insights
Jopwell
Stats
- Goldman Sachs
- Spotify
Jopwell
Pricing
Jopwell is free for job seekers with an account.
Jopwell Pro is the partner program for employers. By joining Jopwell Pro, your company gets access to recruitment marketing and employer branding tools. You must contact Jopwell about pricing.
Best For
Companies looking to source diverse talent to bolster their DEI initiatives and build out their employer branding.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Fairygodboss is an awesome place to directly find female talent, which also provides resources to educate employers and job seekers alike.
FGB is kind of like Glassdoor, but for women. They've zeroed in on key issues that female job seekers care about such as maternity leave. They've also built an engaged audience by offering female specific career advice. All this means employers have a great channel to show off why they should be an employer of choice for women.
Fairygodboss
Customers
- Deloitte
- Apple
- HP
- Dick’s Sporting Goods
Fairygodboss
Stats
- 9 million active female job seekers
- 150+ featured companies
- 160+ partners to reach diverse female talent
Fairygodboss
Pricing
Fairygodboss is free to use with an account for job seekers.
For employers, there are three plans:
- Silver: Features employer profiles, unlimited job posts, dedicated customer team, customer articles, email features, and social promotion.
- Gold: Features all of the Silver tier features, and adds virtual career fairs, a dedicated email, job board advertisement, and a webinar or Instagram takeover.
- Platinum: Features everything from Gold and Silver, but adds job board takeovers and podcast speaking opportunities.
Contact Fairygodboss for a quote.
Best For
Companies looking to empower female workers and build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Valence makes it easy to discover, hire, or connect with Black talent in different stages of their careers, from entry-level to c-suite.
Valence is a tech platform and community for Black professionals that is built around four key pillars: mentorship, career opportunities, professional development, and access to capital. Companies who are aligned with their mission can use Valence to attract talent through job posts, direct outreach, and company profiles. The company is very focused on authentic conversations, and so there are also opportunities to build your employer brand through mentorship and events. Definitely check out Valence when thinking about how to grow the representation of Black professionals across all levels in your business from up and comers to the c-suite and board.
Valence
Customers
Valence
Stats
- Raised $2.5 million in funding
Valence
Pricing
Valence is a free social job networking website. You just have to request access to join the community.
Best For
Valence is best for Black professionals looking to connect with a community to pursue career opportunities, build mentorship relationships, and be a part of high-impact events.
Worth Checking Out:
Looking for an HR Tech consultant to help out?
We've hand picked a shortlist of consultants who can help with vendor selection, implementation, strategy, and more
Benefits: Why Use Diversity Hiring Tools
Inclusion work is critical for business success. Companies that are hyper-focused on growth can sometimes forget about growing culture alongside headcount, which can lead to toxicity and increased employee turnover. According to Sarah Castle, Manager of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) at Toast, inclusion comes down to four key areas:
- Voice: Do employees feel like they have a voice that’s actually heard/respected/valued
- Opportunity: Do they feel like they’ve been given the resources and opportunity to grow (things like constructive feedback, performance reviews, and open communication with manager)
- Fairness: Do they feel like the company is making fair and fact-based decisions
- Belonging: Do they feel like they’re a key part of the organization
Getting the right Diversity and Inclusion strategy in place is a no-brainer. And, technology can help!
You should use diversity hiring tools if you want to improve your diversity recruitment efforts and hire across all communities, including those that are underrepresented, like women, Black, Latino, Native American, and LGBTQIA. Here are a few other key benefits of diversity hiring technology:
- Increase Number of Diverse Applicants: With direct sourcing tools, you can conduct outreach to more diverse candidates and attract more diverse applicants. For example, companies that use Fairygodboss see up to a 50% increase in applications from women.
- Fill Hard-to-Fill Positions: Since the tools mentioned below include job sites where you can post your openings, you can get more applicants for open roles, including hard-to-fill positions like technology and enterprise sales.
- Improve Employer Branding: Show off your company as a diverse and inclusive workforce. Specific employer branding opportunities are outlined in the Features section below.
- Improve Skills-Based Hiring: Look beyond the resume and pedigree of your candidates and focus on actual skills and qualifications. In other words, can a given candidate get the job done regardless of where they studied, who they’ve worked for in the past, or what they look like?
- Improve Job Descriptions: You might not realize it, but how your job descriptions are written could be turning away certain applicant communities — for example, if they’re overtly masculine, you might not get a lot of applications from women. Fortunately, diversity hiring tools can help you improve the copy so this doesn’t happen.
Considerations & Common Mistakes
The gist: diversity hiring tools only go so far. You can make your hiring process “blind” and source candidates from job sites that specialize in diversity, but that doesn’t completely eliminate bias. Not only that, bias shows up differently in different companies and for different people. With that said, diversity hiring tools come with their share of challenges and considerations, including:
- Think about the entire hiring process: It’s not just about sourcing diverse candidates. You want them to have a positive interview and onboarding process as well.
- Don’t forget unconscious bias training: This includes training for recruiters and hiring managers, any employees who will be conducting interviews, as well as the entire workforce.
- Higher cost-per-hire: Don’t be surprised if you see that your cost/hire for under-represented candidates is higher than what you’re used to. The cost difference is similar to how cost/hire increases when you’re looking for harder-to-find candidates like engineers or managers.
- Full employee lifecycle: It's not just about hiring. Human resources teams and companies in general have to think hard about how they are fostering an inclusive culture where each individual feels welcomed.
Benefits and ROI of Using Diversity Hiring Tools
At the end of the day, building a diverse and inclusive workforce will lead to happier employees, improved company operations, and increased revenue. You’ll attract better talent and bring in better ideas from those you end up hiring. While it’s not an exact science (i.e. hiring diverse candidates doesn’t automatically increase your bottom line), there is something to be said about the value of a diverse workforce. Just look at this chart from McKinsey & Co.:
To get a sense for your ROI here, look at the number of hires you get from using these tools and the value you assign each hire. Beyond the numbers, there is a moral imperative to build a diverse workforce to reverse the impacts of institutionalized racism, sexism, and agism. Each organization doing their part creates a better tomorrow for these groups, as well as society as a whole through a more friendly and productive business environment.
Pricing of Diversity Hiring Tools
Pricing for each specific tool varies a lot depending on the size of your company and your specific DEI goals. That said, you can get a sense for how much to budget based on your industry and desired outcomes — and this report from DiversityBestPractices.com has some great intel:
- Diversity-department budgets at Fortune 1000 companies averages $1.5m per year
- Range for diversity-department budgets was $30,000 to $5.1 million
- When diversity was housed in HR, the average annual diversity budget was $239,000
- Diversity and inclusion education, training, and e-learning are generally the largest upfront costs, with outreach and/or recruiting a close second.
Of course, these numbers are for large companies (which makes us think they may not be high enough!). For smaller organizations, you can get a lot of value from a smaller investment to update job descriptions, invest in blind hiring, unconscious bias training, building our employee resource groups, etc.
Various Feature Sets Across Diversity and Inclusion Technology
Diversity and inclusion tools allow you to bring more exposure to your job openings — and your DEI efforts — so you can attract, engage, and convert more candidates. Depending on the tool you use, you can expect the following features:
- Job Listings/Job Boards: Niche job boards that are designed for a given demographic will allow you to build your employer brand with traditionally represented people. More Black, LatinX, female, etc candidates in your hiring funnel means a more diverse workforce assuming the right hiring process.
- Dedicated Company Page: This is essentially your company “feature” — an employer branding page where you paint a holistic picture of what you do and why someone would want to work there. Give an overview, highlight culture and DEI stats, list company benefits, share employee stories/reviews/testimonials, etc.
- Recruiting Events & Career Fairs: Participate in a variety of events to get your company/job openings more visibility.
- Company Rankings & Reviews: Current and former employees can leave reviews and actually rate their experience.
- Custom Sponsored Content: Develop custom content specifically designed to attract diverse talent. This is usually an extension of your company profile page where you do a deeper dive on a certain subject, like your diversity initiatives, for example.
- Augmented Writing: Optimize job description text to remove any phrases or words that might deter a certain minority group/community from applying.
- Blind Hiring: Look at resumes and applications that only show skills and experience — i.e. information like gender will be hidden so you can conduct a hiring process that’s more inclusive (and has less unconscious bias).
- Video Interviews: Conduct video interviews with diverse interviewers so your applicants can get a first-hand look at your company’s diversity.
Demo Questions: What To Ask During Demos
Before investing in one or all of these tools, make sure to schedule a demo so you can get a feel for the platform and actually see how things work. And ask questions to help you really understand what the tool will do for you and how you can use it most efficiently. Here are some questions to start with:
General questions related to third-party tools:
- How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack and therefore what integrations do I need?
- How will others in the organization use this solution?
- What are the key features I want to ask about?
- What are the things that would make me nervous about buying this sort of solution
Questions specific to diversity hiring tools:
- Do you target a specific under-represented demographic?
- What other changes to my hiring process do I need to make this effective?
- How does your tool help brand my company as a best place to work for diversity candidates?
- Does your tool help with a specific level of hire?
- How will this impact the metrics in my hiring funnel?
Implementing Diversity Hiring Tools
Many of these tools are easy to get started with and probably familiar (especially job boards which we've all used before). But a key piece of the implementation puzzle here is on your overall DEI strategy — i.e. not just diversity hiring, but how you’re building a fair and inclusive workplace that attracts AND retains top talent.
- Partner with Internal Stakeholders: Work directly with VPs, SVPs and other team leads to learn more about their strategy (including both their business strategy and their people strategy). You want to be a team’s key partner for all HR-related needs, especially as it relates to driving business. Understanding who they want to hire as well as what they need to make existing employees happy is key.
- Conduct an Internal Audit: Find out exactly where you need to focus your diversity and inclusion efforts — i.e. is it on hiring, unconscious bias training, employee benefits, etc. There are a number of ways to do this. You can conduct anonymous employee surveys, look at your company ratings on Glassdoor or Comparably (the latter of which actually shows a rating for how inclusive your company/culture is), or engage an outside firm to handle the research and analysis.
- Update Employer Branding: There are ways to subtly and overtly show your diversity and inclusion efforts in your employer branding — from showcasing diversity in leadership positions (for example, with headshots on your About page), highlighting diversity investments and data on your job site and individual job postings, or adding language like “... and allies” to your messaging, for example.
- Appoint or Hire A DEI Manager: As you probably know by now, creating a DEI-friendly workplace is not as simple as uploading job postings on diversity hiring websites. There’s the entire hiring funnel to think about, and an inclusive culture to build - it can be a long and hard journey. As your team grows, consider appointing or hiring someone whose sole focus is on building out, executing on, and continuously improving your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy.
Diversity Hiring Tools FAQS
What is diversity and inclusion?
Diversity is a person’s unique qualities, while inclusion is the creation of a welcoming environment. Together, they are initiatives to make people from all different backgrounds and experiences feel comfortable in the workplace.
What are diversity and inclusion hiring tools?
Diversity and inclusion hiring tools are solutions designed to remove hiring bias, connect diverse talent with hiring managers, and create a more inclusive hiring process.
What are the benefits of using diversity and inclusion hiring tools?
The benefits of using diversity and inclusion hiring tools include increased number of diverse applicants, filled hard-to-fill positions, improved employer branding, improved skills-based hiring, and improved job descriptions.
What are some other important considerations to think about when using a diversity and inclusion hiring tool?
When considering using diversity and inclusion hiring tools, there are a few things to consider. Think about the entire hiring process. Don’t forget unconscious bias training. Cost-per-hire will likely increase. And finally, think about how diversity and inclusion affects the whole employee lifecycle, not only hiring.
Next Steps
As Sarah Castle at Toast put it, "Think of your company culture as a garden. It’s going to grow whether or not you have a gardener and weeds will grow. Those weeds are your toxicity.” So, don’t hire diverse candidates just for the sake of having a diverse workplace and think you're done. Instead, be intentional about also creating an inclusive culture where people feel welcomed, do good work, and help grow the diversity of your workforce.
There is a lot of nuance to inclusion and what makes a person leave because of organizational toxicity. For example, things like fairness and sense of belonging are perceived differently by women vs. men vs. LGBTQIA vs. different races and ethnicities. There are just a lot of layers to it. To try to better understand these layers within your organization and accurately identify areas of toxicity that need fixing, keep open lines of communication with your employees (even if just through anonymized surveys), turn to outside consulting firms that specialize in inclusion (like The Collective, A DEI Lab), or other organizations dedicated to inclusion and accountability (like Project Include).
And, of course, schedule a few demos with companies here that seem like a good fit for your organization.
Best Diversity and Inclusion Software
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