In August, a record 4.3 million people quit their jobs, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), opening the door for companies to double down on their recruiting efforts which Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, told CNN means we are in the “golden age of the American worker.” Candidates have bargaining power in the recruiting process as they look for work life balance and focus on their quality of life and looking for satisfaction in their careers through what is dubbed “covid clarity” – employees realizing their company’s culture and mission aren’t aligned with them in the wake of the pandemic. This trend known as ‘Great Resignation,’ a term coined by Anthony Klotz, associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, isn’t something that should hinder a company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices. In fact, this is an opportunity to enhance them and stand out from the crowd.

Expand What DEI Means

Diversity hire leader, Arthur Woods, writing in the Harvard Business Review says that the ‘Great Resignation’ is an opportunity for companies to really evaluate their diversity hiring. For his book Hiring for Diversity, Woods studied over 100 organizations and found that fewer than half (47 percent) accounted for disabilities in their diversity hiring practices and only 11 percent accounted for hiring on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. As Woods writes, “To make real progress on diversity, we need to start with a more holistic and inclusive definition of diversity in the first place.” Expand your company’s reach, take a note out of Ernest & Young and start recruiting for talent on the autism spectrum.

Look In Your Backyard

Expand your hiring practices to include those with an “unconventional talent profile” that includes nontraditional careers or educational paths. As Woods writes, “try to abandon any thinking around what the ‘cookie cutter candidate profile’ you must recruit.” Look at hiring from smaller, rural schools and connecting with a career services office and tapping into the local community through a community college. Oftentimes, the best talent is right in front of you. To do this, Woods suggests removing high degree requirements from job postings, breaking away from focusing on recruiting from only prestigious universities, and removing specific qualifications from a job teams often are looking to hire a good fit, someone who can quickly learn, and someone who can bring new ideas to the team/company. Looking outside of the traditional candidate can bring diversity of lived experiences to your company.

Evaluate Your Job Postings

Take a step back and analyze all your recruiting efforts, from your website, job postings, and outreach. Ensure the language in your job posting is inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community and that the photos of your company showcase a diverse pool of individuals both racially, ethnically, by gender, body size, etc. Additionally, to reach candidates with a disability, do a review of your career page and job application to make sure people with a disability can apply and ask if candidates require specific accommodations. If you want to expand your reach, make sure it’s accessible to everyone.

Empowering employers to find the right candidate on their own terms, Symplicity Recruit helps companies expand their DEI recruiting initiatives and adapt to the changing employment landscape. On Recruit, companies can build a path towards positive outcomes to increase connections with candidates by building trust, enhancing company branding, integrated workflows to control what jobs and employers come in, increase the number of employers and opportunities, and, finally, enhance the recruiting experience for everyone. Bringing their expertise with them, Recruit’s client managers support employers on best practices and expand a company’s DEI initiatives.

Symplicity Recruit is the place to discover, connect and engage with entry level talent. With our exclusive network of institutions and over 4 million active candidates, we help employers stay connected to top applicants by enabling them to create and post openings directly onto school job portals or set up campaigns to have qualified talent delivered directly to recruiters and hiring managers. Want to learn more? Sign up to create your own Symplicity Recruit account, or e-mail us at info@symplicity.com.