What Is a Job Board’s Role in DEI Hiring Practices?

The number of job openings in the US declined by 1.1 million from July to August (the most recent months for which data is available). But that doesn’t mean it’s now easy for employers to find talent – far from it.

Casting a wider net often helps bring in more qualified applicants. That’s why so many companies rely on job boards. Another way employers can cast this wider net is by adopting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruitment strategies that attract applicants from various backgrounds and encourage them to apply.

But for these strategies to work, job boards need to appropriately highlight the information that employers want to share. Here, we’ll explore how job boards might do that and what goes into executing a successful DEI hiring process.

DEI Recruitment Strategies Start with Employers

DEI hiring initiatives start with employers, but that doesn’t mean every employer innately knows which DEI hiring practices are best. To provide some clarity, we’ve outlined several evergreen strategies that can help employers attract a wider, more diverse talent pool.

1. Include salary in job listings. Black women make 62 cents for every dollar white men make. Featuring salary in job listings levels the financial playing field for all job seekers. Not just that, but if employers want to stand out, they’ll start including salaries before it’s mandated by law.
2. Offer hybrid or remote work (when applicable). Remote work has empowered disabled employees to work from home, where they can more easily manage and regulate their environment. Flexible arrangements also help disabled employees find work – and employers find qualified applicants – more easily.
3. Write job descriptions with gender-neutral language. If companies use examples like “The ideal candidate will have X years of experience. He should also possess…” it’s time to swap that “he” for “they” (e.g., “They should also possess…”). Of note: “they” is also better than “he / she” or “he or she,” as both those options ignore the existance of nonbinary and gender expansive applicants.
4. Ensure the role’s mandatory requirements are just that – actually mandatory. Studies show women are less likely than men to apply for jobs when they don’t meet every qualification. Employers can help support gender parity by re-evaluating “mandatory” qualifications (years of experience, degrees completed, etc.).

But these strategies aren’t the only components necessary for effective DEI recruiting. After all…

Job Boards Help Take DEI Recruitment Strategies to the Finish Line

Once an employer has solidified its DEI recruitment strategy, it’s up to job boards to help set that plan in motion. Below, we’ve identified several tactics job boards can use to reach a larger, more diverse pool of applicants:

• Feature salaries prominently. More than 60 percent of job seekers say that including salary information would persuade them to apply for open roles. As a job board, your task here is clear: make it easy for employers to highlight salary information prominently.

• Use job tags to indicate whether a position is remote, hybrid, or onsite. Searches for remote work have increased by 300 percent over the past year. As with salaries, make it easy for clients to highlight that they offer remote or hybrid work.

• Apply and stay up to date with WCAG standards. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines help ensure websites present content accessibly, whether it’s by creating enough contrast between text and backgrounds or properly using headings.

• Optimize your site for mobile. Not every job seeker has a computer at their disposal, but nearly 90 percent of Americans have a smartphone. Consider whether your job board makes it easy for applicants to upload resumes via smartphone or even save jobs to their profile.

In short, a good job board acts as a partner to its clients and creates a site that can highlight the information that job seekers want to see and employers want to share.

The Right Job Board Software Amplifies DEI Hiring Strategies

Whether you have a job board or intend to create one soon, the best first step you can take to support employers’ DEI recruitment strategies is finding the right software.

Spoiler: JobMount, our job board software, offers all the DEI hiring capabilities captured above and more.

What does that “and more” look like? Chances are you’ll need jobs to populate your job board. By working with JobMount, you get easier access to web scraping services and organic backfilling via our JobsIndex. That means you don’t need to vet other providers or attempt to upload various job XML feeds to your site on your own. We can do it for you.

Working with an all-in-one job board solution also means that you see DEI best practices implemented across the board. In other words, we’ll highlight remote or hybrid work with job tags for every applicable job posting. We’ll format every listing to comply with WCAG. We’ll help more applicants see clients’ listings by optimizing them for Google for Jobs. We’re even developing a tool that helps identify gendered language in job descriptions.

DEI Is Growing More Important for Job Seekers

Younger generations are making DEI a priority in their job searches. And as these Millennial and Gen Z workers make up a larger portion of the workforce, adopting and enabling DEI recruitment strategies won’t be a perk – it’ll be an expectation.

That’s a good thing. Diversity is a strength. It doesn’t just help pad bottom lines, either. Creating an inclusive environment for an increasingly diverse talent pool is also the right thing to do.

Curious how you can support DEI hiring strategies with your job board? Reach out! We offer free month-long trials of our products.