According to a Fortune/Deloitte poll, 96% of CEOs believe diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to be a “personal strategic priority.” On the other hand, Gartner reports that DEI is the top personnel management objective for CEOs.

Although businesses are focusing their attention on diversity, the first hurdle is recruiting varied people to diversify their talent pool.

Businesses are utilizing technology to recruit diverse personnel to address this issue. Jumpstart, a US-based HR Tech firm attempting to establish greater equality using a balanced and fair recruiting process, has seen 3 times revenue increase in 2020 compared to 2019. Further, it closed a $20 million fundraising round.

Overcoming Unconscious Bias

One of the key problems about diversity and inclusion is unconscious prejudice and bias. Preconceived notions foster biases such as confirmation bias, similarity bias, and the horn effect, which can influence the talent recruitment of a diverse population.

For example, the job description is the initial step in recruiting talent. Unconscious bias can be reflected in job advertisements, restricting different individuals from accessing the talent pool.

Shaswat Kumar, Senior Vice President of Global Customer Success & Delivery, Darwinbox, discussed using technology to minimize unconscious bias in job descriptions to attract diverse talent. He mentioned tools and artificial intelligence that can run analyses to identify the use of biased language in order to develop an inclusive job description.

Similarly, Deepa Param Singhal, Vice President at HCM, Oracle Asia Pacific, talks about utilizing AI to recognize implicit bias. She states, “I think today, deep technology and AI really help organizations identify subconscious biases in the process. Any human intervention process will have some amount of subconscious bias, and you can leverage AI to catch these incorrect behaviors in your organization.”

Rapid Shortlisting and Identification

After recruiting talent, the next stage is shortlisting and identifying the candidate’s skills. With human interaction, there is a risk of biases emerging, which might negatively affect the selection of diverse candidates.

Furthermore, manual candidate shortlisting is a time-consuming procedure that might result in human mistakes.

Kumar emphasized the swift ability of contemporary Application Tracking Systems (ATS) to track and categorize resumes free of bias while discussing them.

Acutely Personalized Recruiting Procedure

Employee engagement is becoming a priority for businesses. It begins with the recruitment process. Candidates desire tailored experiences, and AI can assist HR departments in accomplishing that.

Singhal underlined the need to create campaigns using technology based on diverse talent content consumption while discussing how businesses can develop customized experiences through content analysis. All to attract diverse talent.

Further, social media is fast becoming the new instrument for luring talent in the digital age. It brings another perspective on technologies that provide access to an individual’s online presence.

Kumar specified, “When we talked about reaching a vast, and hence inherently diverse, pool of candidates, recruitment tech that enables you with features like direct social sharing of job posts, integrations with third-party job portals, LinkedIn listings, and so on, gives you the tools you need.”