Hiring for diversity? Then you’re on the right track. McKinsey’s Diversity Wins report found that diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their less diverse competitors financially. However, finding mid-level experienced Microsoft Cloud talent is harder than it’s ever been—let alone talent from diverse backgrounds. So, let us help you take the headache out of hiring with this inclusive recruitment guide.
Can investing in diversity hiring help you solve your Microsoft Cloud skills gaps?
Cloud tech talent is notoriously difficult (and often expensive) to find. Bidding wars on talent and poaching have become increasingly the norm in recent years, especially in sought-after cloud technologies like Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Business Applications. Just last year, 56% of organizations experienced a delay on their scheduled Microsoft Dynamics go-live date, reporting staff shortage as one of the top five reasons for this.
However, accessing untapped talent pools can actually help you close Microsoft Cloud skills gaps within your organization more rapidly. By widening the net and looking in new places for cloud talent, you can greatly increase your chances of finding and retaining the people you need to conduct business-critical tasks and get your digital transformation projects off the ground.
With that in mind, here are 5 practical tips for hiring a diverse and inclusive Microsoft Cloud workforce.
5 tips for hiring a diverse and inclusive Microsoft Cloud workforce
1. Consider if a university degree is really necessary for the role
If you’re hiring a doctor, then you need someone with a medical degree. But if you’re hiring a developer to work on a technology that Microsoft has deliberately made “easy to learn, by anyone”, do they really need a university degree?
It might be on your wish list, but you’re potentially cutting out a lot of applicants with varied backgrounds and experiences by including a university degree as part of the requirements for the role.
For instance, research by Warwick University found that ‘a substantial number’ of disabled students choose not to continue their education or attend university, even though their achievement is on par with their non-disabled counterparts.
Often, not having a university degree is more dependent on mitigating factors. So, instead of making a university degree a must-have, consider what specific skills you’re expecting from someone with a degree, and list these in your job description instead. Lots of potential candidates may have gained these skills through other routes, such as work experience or training.
2. Offer flexible working
Although the debate still rages on over staff productivity levels at home versus the office, flexible and hybrid working are now firmly part of the corporate landscape.
In other words, a better work/life balance has become a non-negotiable for many skilled cloud professionals, and people are unlikely to tolerate working for an employer who doesn’t allow them a degree of flexibility. In fact, more than one-third of Microsoft Cloud professionals surveyed by Nigel Frank, state the opportunity of remote working as one of their top 10 reasons when looking for a new role.
What’s more, tech still has a long way to go in achieving true gender parity. Take the UK, for example. Considering that half of the country’s workforce are women, only 26% of women work in tech roles.
There’s a huge opportunity to engage more women to work in tech, thus widening the talent pool. And since women often take on the majority of caring responsibilities, without flexible working, they might shift to a job below their skill set that allows this, or leave the job market altogether
For more research on what workplace benefits women value most, check out this article.
3. Make your content more accessible (especially for job applications)
It’s only through diverse teams that creativity can truly be unlocked within your organization. And to be able to recruit a diverse workforce, you need to be able to reach the broadest audience possible. One step towards this goal is making some simple changes to your web and social content, as well as the job application itself, to make it more accessible for people with disabilities and candidates whose first language isn’t English.
Here are just some suggestions:
- Provide captions for any multimedia elements you use on your website (including images, graphics, and videos)—for a comprehensive set of accessibility guidelines for the web, see the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
- Use title case when you add hashtags to your social posts to make it more accessible (i.e. #DiversityHiring #HiringNow #TechRoles)
- Make sure you use short and clear sentences, free of complex jargon, when writing your job ads—the Hemingway Editor is a great tool for this
4. Reduce biases
The fact is, we all have unconscious biases. And that’s ok, as long as we acknowledge these and make sure that they don’t influence our hiring decisions.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) recruitment screening tools can help to reduce the risk of human biases. That can include cutting out biased language or communicating more objectively with candidates. AI can also be used to target diverse candidates more proactively.
Biased language may seem like a small issue, but it can make a big difference. For example, research by Reporter Cara Curtis found that certain words like ‘ambitious’ and ‘boastful’ are perceived as masculine.
Essentially, words such as these appearing on the job ad can put women off from applying, as evidenced by the augmented writing platform Textio. It analyzed more than 78,000 vacancies and found that the way a vacancy is worded can impact the ratio of male and female applicants.
Whether with the help of AI or taking extra care to consider your own biases, reviewing your job descriptions to make sure language is appropriate and non-gendered can help broaden your pool of applicants.
In fact, why not bring your colleagues into the conversation, to help you iron out any biases that you may not be aware of?
5. Use talent creation programs
If any of the above feels daunting, or you don’t currently have the right resources to review or change your existing hiring processes, then cloud talent creation programs can be a great way to bridge the gap.
These programs are a cost-efficient way to access diverse talent, without the heavy lifting from your own HR department. What’s more, talent creation programs can help to avoid expensive bidding wars or poaching in an ecosystem where talent is tough to find. Furthermore, cloud talent experts with a focus on diversity can cast a wider recruitment net than your average organization because that’s their area of expertise.
Take Revolent, for example. With diversity being the driving force behind everything we do, 53% of our own Revols (the cloud talent we create) are from an Arab, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, or Mixed Ethnicity background. What’s more, 37% of our Senior Leadership Team are women, exceding the tech industry average.
