Attracting Diverse Talent

Acquiring top talent can lead to unprecedented business success, which is why recruitment is such a critical process for any organisation. When you’re building a team, however, it’s important to look at the unit as a whole, as well as at individuals.

To achieve your commercial objectives, you don’t just need talented individuals; you need a workforce that’s comprised of diverse talent. By using executive searches to find the right candidates, you can ensure that your business is being run by a diverse team of professionals, which inevitably leads to better performance.

What is Diverse Talent?

There are numerous ways to look at the term, ‘diverse talent’. For example, you can focus on improving inclusivity in the workplace by hiring top marketing professionals from diverse backgrounds. For companies who want to create a more inclusive corporate culture, attracting candidates from underrepresented communities and demographics can be a top priority.

Secondly, attracting ‘diverse talent’ can refer to the range of skills, competencies, and characteristics your leadership teams and workforce has. Put simply, if you need to hire two digital marketing assistants, there’s little benefit in acquiring two new starters who are proficient in SMM but have little experience in PPC, when you could hire two individuals whose skills complement one another and create a more well-rounded team.

Ultimately, acquiring diverse talent, in either form, can be beneficial for businesses. By widening the scope of your executive searches and increasing diversity within your organisation, you can benefit from a broader range of experiences, backgrounds, skills, and specialisms.

To learn more, take a look at these top tips for attracting diverse talent now:

1. Remove Barriers

Often, companies inadvertently put barriers up when they’re searching for new talent, without even realising. When you define the type of candidate you’re looking for, be wary of inadvertently overlooking diverse talent or ruling them out of the running.

If you’ll only consider candidates with an MSc in Digital Marketing from a top ten university for a role as your Head of Growth Marketing at a HealthTech firm, for example, you’re going to prevent many potentially suitable and talented candidates from being considered.

While these candidates may have the drive, competency, and commitment to undertake an MSc at a top university, many minority groups are underrepresented in this environment. As a result, you’re automatically discounting diverse talent and, therefore, missing out on potentially valuable growth marketing leaders.

If you’re aware of these barriers, it’s easier to recognise and remove them. When we begin implementing The Acquire Method on behalf of our clients, we start by hosting a briefing with all stakeholders. This enables us to learn which competencies, responsibilities, and objectives are most critical to the position and establish a clear brief of who you’re looking for. As part of this process, we can help to ensure that your brief attracts diverse talent.

2. Take Your Time

Recruiting the best people is vital to your company’s success, but it doesn’t always happen overnight. If you want to hire an executive, like a Head of Performance Marketing, who can drive change and triple global sales, it’s worth taking your time to find the best person for the job!

Although some recruiters claim to fill vacancies quickly, they typically use a contingent recruitment strategy to do this. However, this approach doesn’t necessarily attract diverse talent; nor does it work with the market as a whole. Instead, contingent recruitment essentially pre-qualifies CVs based on a limited set of criteria and only sources applicants who are actively looking for new roles.

In contrast, an executive search using a retained recruitment strategy allows you to diversify your team and attract the best talent. By creating a comprehensive brief to establish who and what you’re looking for, we put your company’s needs first. From here, we scour the market to identify suitable candidates, regardless of whether they’re currently actively looking for a new position.

While a retained search approach does take a little longer than contingent recruitment, it’s typically far more effective, particularly when it comes to hiring top-level execs, like FinTech Marketing Directors or Heads of Growth Marketing. What’s more – retained searches are generally far more cost-effective for businesses too.

3. Expand Your Network

If you’re only searching for candidates from a limited pool, you aren’t going to get the most diverse range of applicants. To evolve into a more diverse and inclusive company, it’s vital to expand your network when you’re looking for leaders. Whether you’re hiring in London, New York, or anywhere else in the world, you’ll want to rely on a global network to help you create a diverse and talented leadership team.

At Acquire, we proud to have an established network of more than 23,000 Digital & Growth Marketers. Whether you’re launching a startup, ready to scale up your business, or exploring new routes to market, such as D2C, our extensive network can help you to find the candidates you need to optimise to your success.

4. Work with a Specialist Recruiter

Your leadership team and your workforce are your biggest assets, which is why recruitment should be a top priority for every organisation. Without the best industry talent on board, you’ll find it hard to lead the market and outperform your competitors, so it’s worth investing your time and resources into building the most diverse and successful teams.

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on in-house recruitment to diversify your executive team or attract the best talent. In fact, very few organisations have the in-house expertise or resources to manage this, as it wouldn’t be cost-effective to maintain an entire department devoted to executive recruitment. By working with a specialist recruiter, you can access the knowledge, connections, and experience you need to attract diverse talent and retain your new execs.

Start Building Your Team Today

To learn more or to start diversifying your leadership team today, contact Alex Marriner (Founder & Leadership Search Consultant) on +44 (0) 7583 648 612 or email [email protected]