Recruiting for diversity with Gem

Diversity is increasingly a priority for companies—perhaps now more than ever, as organizations are realizing that diversity isn’t just about meeting quotas; it’s about lives. Around half of recruiters and talent leaders we speak with say they have formal diversity hiring initiatives in place at their organizations that account for both gender and racial diversity, alongside other considerations: age, disability, veteran status, and LGBTQ+ identifications. But how do you measure progress toward success once those initiatives are in place?

Our goal at Gem is to help teams attract, track, and analyze diversity across the board, in all the ways that word is meaningful for their respective organizations.

We know that the strongest diversity hiring initiatives begin at the top of the funnel, before prospects even apply. After all, the earliest stage of the funnel is the only place you can influence the makeup of your pipeline. Channels like inbound applications and referrals are inherently less diverse; so if teams aren’t actively sourcing and nurturing diverse talent pools, they won’t see a diverse pipeline, a diverse set of interviews, and ultimately, a diverse team. This means sourcers and recruiters have perhaps the most important role to play in the “D” of a company’s DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives... but you can’t assess the effectiveness of diversity-focused hiring strategies unless you can measure diversity in the hiring pipeline.

Gem offers top-of-funnel metrics to help you understand the pipeline your team is building. Sourcers, recruiters, and talent leaders can report on the gender or race/ethnicity breakdowns of their pipelines to discover how their efforts are impacting diversity. We also offer custom fields for tracking other segments of candidates that talent teams can tailor more specifically to their diversity initiatives. Gender and race/ethnicity stats are only shown in aggregate for directional guidance to illustrate whether efforts are paying off on the whole, and to limit unconscious bias against individuals.

Gem’s gender and race/ethnicity analytics help teams track diversity from the very top of the funnel. The data is less prone to individual biases and risk than visual identification, and provides a more complete viewpoint than EEOC/self-reported data alone, which is only captured later in the funnel and can be skewed due to inconsistent participation.

This data can not only shed light on whether teams are reaching out to a diverse talent pool, but also:

• reveal where systemic biases might show up—by role, recruiter, or hiring manager—as some candidate segments get stuck at certain stages of the funnel. Are certain groups disproportionately dropping out of the funnel at specific points in the process?

• detect whether email outreach is inadvertently alienating underrepresented groups, so sourcers can rework their messaging to be more inclusive

• inform hiring managers about diversity breakdowns in historical data

• show via top-of-funnel metrics why the team did or did not hit its diversity hiring goals in a given quarter or year

• view the difference in pipeline between focused efforts on diversity vs sourcing through unfocused methods

“Clients want to know that a diverse set of candidates is being reached out to and passing through the pipeline. It’s phenomenal to have that built into a sourcing platform.”

Erica Waichman

Recruiting Manager

Gem’s analytics allow recruiters to see their entire pipelines at a glance, from reachout to offer-out. Get immediate visibility into passthrough rates at every stage of the funnel and identify where different segments of candidates are dropping out, so you can optimize and ensure fairness in each step of your hiring process.

The ability to test varying outreach messages also allows teams to try out new DEI content and discover what prospective candidates most want to hear about. We’ve also integrated with several candidate databases that feature a wealth of diverse candidates such as SeekOut; and our Splash integration allows teams to track prospects who register for or attend diversity recruiting events, making it seamless to follow-up with them in automated yet personalized reachouts afterwards. Gem’s search module helps resurface diversity candidates for nurture campaigns—inviting female software engineers to your upcoming Women in Tech event, for example. We know how crucial cultivating relationships and building trust is if you want your diversity initiatives to succeed.

To learn more about how Gem can help your team, contact us here.