Creating an Inclusive Hiring Process

Women consistently outperform men in leadership Yet they are more likely to get negative feedback* The language we use shapes our reality: Men are "direct" → women are "rude" Men are "passionate" → women are "emotional" Men are "leaders" → women are "bossy" These aren't just words They matter They tear down confidence before it has a chance to grow Companies with female leaders: ↳ Are 25% more likely to outperform financially ↳ Have higher employee engagement scores ↳ Report higher levels of innovation Yet despite these impressive metrics, women: ↳ Make up only 25% of C-suite leaders ↳ Receive 37% more criticism in performance reviews ↳ Are 1.4x more likely to have their judgment questioned Real Change Starts With Recognition Next time you hear these labels, pause and ask: "Would I use the same word if the gender was different?" "What behavior am I actually observing?" "Am I applying an unconscious filter?" Share your experiences in the comments 👇 How have you seen these dynamics play out? ♻️ Share to help end these biases in 2025 🔔 Follow Anna Findlay 🔑 Career Coach for more on career growth & women's careers 👇 Subscribe to my FREE 6-day email course for career growth, confidence & job search strategies https://lnkd.in/gBxCz_zW 

I once got feedback that I was “intimidating.” I took it to heart. I spent the next few years trying to be as approachable, warm, and agreeable as I could be. I assumed this was a character flaw that I needed to fix. But years later, I realized something: this feedback wasn’t about me. It was about the system - one that judges women more harshly and polices their personalities more than their performance. And the numbers back this up. 👇🏽 🎯 Women are 7x more likely to receive negative personality-based feedback than men. 🎯 56% of women have been called "unlikeable" in reviews (vs. 16% of men). 🎯 Harvard Business Review found that 76% of “aggressive” labels in one company’s reviews were given to women (vs. 24% to men). This Is the Leadership Double Bind: Speak up? You’re “too aggressive.” Stay quiet? You “lack confidence.” Show ambition? You’re “unlikeable.” Ask for a promotion? You’re “too pushy.” And here’s the kicker - it’s worst for high-performing women. This is why women... ↳  Hesitate to showcase ambition. ↳  Are reluctant to ask for opportunities. ↳  Are leaving workplaces faster than others. So, what can we do? Here are 3 ways we can start changing this narrative today: ✅ Check your language. Is the feedback about personality or performance? If you wouldn’t give the same critique to a man, please reconsider. ✅ Challenge vague feedback. “You need to be more confident” isn’t actionable. Women deserve the same clear, growth-oriented feedback as men. ✅ Support women’s ambition. If certain leadership traits (ex. being assertive) are seen as strengths in men, they should be seen as strengths in women too. Have you ever received unfair feedback? What’s one piece of feedback you’ve had to unlearn? 👇🏽 ♻️ Please share to help end unfair feedback. 🔔 Follow Bhavna Toor (She/Her) for more insights on conscious leadership. Source: Textio 'Language Bias in Feedback' Study, 2023 & 2024 #EndUnFairFeedback #IWD2025

Research indicates that women only apply for jobs that they think they met all the job requirements and men when they meet 80%. His advice to the women in the audience 👉Apply even if they only meet 80% of the job requirements. I wasnt going to let that comment pass 🙄 My question to him and hiring managers, if we know this research, if we know the barriers 💙what would we and our organization do to change the way we advertise for the jobs to remove this barrier? Would we 🥏Redesign the job description between must have and nice to have 🥏Change the language to include transferable and learnable skills versus experienced skill 🥏Include invitations to apply even if don’t meet all the job requirements 🥏Encourage hiring managers to focus on core competencies rather than rigid criteria. 🥏Avoid overly specific terms that might discourage potential applicants. 🥏Use gender-neutral language to ensure that job descriptions appeal to a diverse audience. 🥏Train hiring managers and recruiters on unconscious bias and the impact of rigid requirements. Help them recognize the value of diverse perspectives. Because The responsibility of inclusion lies with those who have the power to change the system. Agree?

Please stop telling your recruitment partners that "it'd be great if you could find a woman for the team". ❌ Instead, start doing the following... ✅ Evaluate your sales culture. If it's feels like a "boys club", it is. Fix it. ✅ Analyse the language you are using. Gendered wording of job advertisements signals who belongs and who does not. "Masculine- worded ads reduced perceived belongingness [among women], which in turn lead to less job appeal, regardless of one’s perception of their personal skill to perform that job." - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, January 2011 - (🔗 Link in comments.) ✅ Provide workplace flexibility A 2023 study conducted by the University of Oxford’s Well-being Research Centre found that when it comes to fostering a positive working environment, reducing stress, and boosting employee resilience, flexibility is one of the most effective elements required to create a healthy work-life balance. The findings correlate with a separate study which found that post-pandemic, 72% of women are prioritising purpose and balance at work, and are looking for the flexibility that facilitates this. (🔗 Link in comments.) ✅ Build an infrastructure and culture of coaching and support. The opportunity to be coached by other women (both internal and external) goes a long way in not only developing existing staff members, but also in attracting new talent. (Bonus point: ensure your interview processes are as gender diverse as possible. You can't be what you can't see.) ✅ Implement gender-neutral and diversity-inclusive policies. Offer gender-neutral parental leave policies to prevent issues like absence visibility, project loss, and early return pressure. In my experience, the Nordics lead the way in gender-equitable parental leave policies, for example. ✅ Address any existing gender pay gaps. It's 2024... This shouldn't even have to be a point. I'm a recruitment & search professional. I'm not a DE&I specialist. But I really hope one day the conversation changes from "it'd be great if you could find us a woman" to "we have awesome diversity in our team because...". Women in sales & those of you in gender diverse businesses - what else would you add? LP ✌️ Pack GTM | SaaS Sales Recruitment in Germany #sales #hiring #careers #startups #recruitment 

Are your job descriptions unintentionally turning away diverse talent? 🤔 In many organizations today, a recurring issue persists despite the company’s commitment to diversity: job postings aren’t attracting a diverse pool of candidates. While the leadership may be determined to ensure the company’s workforce reflects the diverse audience they aim to serve, hidden barriers within their hiring process may be unintentionally hindering progress. 🚩 🚩 Here is a list of phrases that should not appear in your job descriptions: 1️⃣ Rockstar” or “Ninja These terms can come across as masculine-coded or overly aggressive, potentially alienating women, nonbinary individuals, or those from cultures where such language is not common. 2️⃣ Native English Speaker This phrase can exclude candidates who are fluent in English but do not consider it their first language. Instead, use “proficient in English” if language skills are essential. 3️⃣ Must have X years of experience Rigid experience requirements can deter highly capable candidates with transferable skills but fewer formal years in the field. Focus on competencies instead. 4️⃣ Work hard, play hard This phrase might suggest a high-pressure, workaholic culture, which can alienate candidates seeking work-life balance, caregivers, or those prioritizing mental health. 5️⃣ MBA required or similar academic credentials Requiring advanced degrees when they aren’t truly necessary can exclude candidates with nontraditional educational paths or valuable real-world experience. 6️⃣ Fast-paced environment While common, this phrase can feel overwhelming or exclusionary to candidates with disabilities or those seeking more structured roles. Be specific about the nature of the work instead. 7️⃣ Culture fit This vague term can perpetuate unconscious bias and favoritism. Use “aligned with our values” or “culture add” to highlight the importance of diverse perspectives. 8️⃣ Strong verbal and written communication skills While valid in some roles, this phrase might dissuade neurodivergent candidates or those for whom English isn’t their first language if not clarified. Specify what kind of communication skills are truly needed. ✍️ By replacing these terms with inclusive, skill-focused language, organizations can craft job descriptions that not only attract a broader and more diverse pool of talented candidates but also align more closely with the diverse customer base they aim to serve. #InclusiveRecruitment #DiverseTalent #HRInnovation #InclusiveWorkplace #AttractTopTalent ________________________________ 👋 Hi! I am Luiza Dreasher, DEI+ Strategist and Facilitator. Looking to create meaningful change within your organization? I can help you implement successful and long-lasting DEI strategies that foster inclusion, attract diverse talent, and drive innovation. Let’s connect to explore how we can achieve your goals together!

Important new study by professor Katherine Coffman and colleagues finds that in "male-typed domains, qualified women are significantly less likely to apply than similarly well-qualified men." Importantly, this was more likely to occur when the job ad contained vague guidance about the qualifications. When clear guidance was provided about the required qualifications, women were much more likely to apply for the expert job. The takeaway is that to encourage more qualified applicants to apply companies should: ✅ Avoid vague descriptions of qualifications. ✅ Be as clear as possible about the experience and skills required such as stating the specific number of years of experience or specific types of skills needed for the role.

Lately, I’ve been attending a lot of industry events, and there has been one recurring theme: a glaring lack of women speakers! Far too often, the only woman on a panel (if any) is the moderator—which, let’s be honest, does not really count as equal representation and the panel would still count as a ‘manel.’ And please, don’t tell me there aren’t female professionals in this or that field. There are talented women out there, bringing expertise and fresh perspectives across every sector. It’s time we move beyond tokenism and make sure women are not only present, but actively participating as thought leaders and experts. YOU can do something about it: 🔴 As a speaker, recommend, introduce and advocate for women co-panelists. 🔴 As an event organizer, audit speaker lineups and actively seek out female experts, or hire someone to do that for you. 🔴 As a sponsor or partner, support events that prioritize gender balance and hold others accountable for their choices. Equal representation doesn’t happen by accident—it requires intentional action from each and every one of us. When we create space for all voices, we enrich the conversation with diverse voices and inspire the next generation of leaders; and it is time for our event lineups to reflect that! #representationmatters #womeninleadership #diversityandinclusion #publicspeaking #genderequality #socialimpact

Language matters. The language we use with girls and women around their achievements matters. It matters because people with access to constructive feedback progress faster in their careers, earn more, and have more leadership opportunities. My mother handed over my school reports to me recently. Interest soon turned to irritation. Through the years, teachers described my excellent results as "pleasing". "Good girl" language has an undertone of approval seeking rather than achievement. It rewards compliance, effort, and being pleasing rather than recognising intelligence, ambition, or leadership. It’s a quiet kind of conditioning, shaping expectations for what success should look like for females: nice, respectable, and never too disruptive. Too much of that language still lingers today in the way we assess women in work. Have we just upgraded pleasing to collaborative? Conscientious to a safe pair of hands? What if school reports were written differently to say a girl is impressive, that she should be ambitious and proud of her achievements? Modern, workplace-friendly language tells women they are "collaborative," "supportive," and "team players", all words that sound positive but often mean not too pushy, not too demanding, and not too threatening. Meanwhile, men get strategic, decisive, and bold. Their results aren’t pleasing, they’re impressive. Research supports this, according to a Textio study of 23,000 performance reviews: 88% of high-performing women received feedback about their personality, compared with just 12% of men. This isn't a men's problem, the research showed that both men and women are showing the same bias towards women. If language shapes reality, what kind of future are we building when we call women's personalities ‘pleasing’ and men's achievements ‘impressive’? This is the language that is training AI. #women #dei #womenleaders #language Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow me Holly Joint I write about navigating a tech-driven future: how it impacts strategy, leadership, culture and women. All views are my own.

Let's stop allowing people to say…. ⛔ "we would love to have a better gender balance in our team but no women applied" ⛔ "theres no women out there interested in our role" ⛔ "tech isn't that appealing to young girls" ⛔ "Financial services isn't flexible enough for women" ⛔ "women don’t want to come back after children" These phrases are said daily in board rooms, in decision rooms in promotion rooms, in redundancy rooms. They excuse inaction at best, and they actively discriminate and exclude women from careers at worst. My talent equity list is a newsletter style email companies receive twice a month showcasing female and nonbinary talent. It was created to address the gender imbalanced visibility in the recruitment process. Shortlists should never be one demographic alone, whatever the job in fintech and financial services technology. The talent equity list gives you fair visibility of who is actually looking for work and directly tackles the problems that many firms face when hiring. Many women are looking for work. Many women would love to work for a company that will support them after having babies. Financial services technology can be a more flexible industry to work in. The podcasts I share with you today are the evolution of my work in making the invisible people looking for work, talented and highly skilled invisible people looking for work more visible. 👏 Created in 2020 and called the 17% list to reflect the % of tech roles held by women in the UK. I launched the program with this podcast. 👏 In 2022, I renamed it the 19% list - here is the podcast I recorded with the brilliant Georgia Richardson talking about the successes. 👏 Last year I shared the campaign with other recruitment agencies so we can all upskill and be responsible for addressing this gross misrepresentation of society at the shortlist stage. This is when I called it "the talent equity list." Reach out to receive it - talk to me about how we can amplify and expand it Let's commit to actions, don't leave it for someone else to say something Let's listen  Let's learn  Let's walk the talk #WalkTheTalk #InclusionIncludesYOU #Careers #GenderEquality #BiasShortlists

If you're losing brilliant women at the final stages of hiring - this might be why... Let me talk you through a recent example where a company had a disproportionately high number of women dropping out at late interview and offer stage for their tech roles: They were offering great salaries. Flexible working. A decent benefits package. So what was going wrong? We took a look at the data. Out of 2 billion data points, a few things stood out: → Diversity is non-negotiable. Women in tech rank it 31% higher than the average candidate. If they don’t see representation in leadership, they won’t apply → Flexible hybrid work wins, because structure matters. Demand for remote-only roles is 11% below average, while core hours and in-office collaboration rank higher → Family-friendly policies trump flashy perks. Fertility leave (+41%), job sharing (+33%), and parental leave (+19%) are the real differentiators But then we dug deeper; and that's where it got really interesting: → Women in data roles showed a higher demand for in-office work - mentorship and access to resources mattered → Women in engineering & development wanted mission-driven work and career progression above all else → Women in product roles prioritised culture and flexibility more than any other group The company checked their employer brand. Their careers page talked about “great culture” and “exciting opportunities.” But it said nothing about what actually mattered to the people they were trying to hire. They weren’t losing candidates because of the salary or the benefits. They were losing them because they don't know what their target talent groups actually want. The companies getting this right aren’t guessing. They’re using data to shape their employer brand - so they attract the right people, with the right message. Download our women in tech report to access more of these insights: https://lnkd.in/enYcGpeW And tell me if you've turned down a job offer for similar reasons? #WomenInTech #Hiring #EmployerBranding #FutureOfWork #DiversityMatters