Finding diverse candidates starts with expanding where you look and rethinking how you present opportunities. Most hiring pipelines draw from the same narrow channels, which naturally produces a narrow pool. Broadening your sourcing, rewriting your job posts, and restructuring your evaluation process can dramatically change who applies and who advances.
Post on Specialized Job Boards
General-purpose job boards reach a broad audience, but specialized platforms connect you directly with candidates from underrepresented communities. Several well-established options exist:
- Diversity.com has operated since 2000 and lists opportunities across the United States, with free resume posting for job seekers.
- Diversity Job Board serves people of color, women, and people with disabilities, letting candidates search by location, industry, and experience level.
- Professional Diversity Network hosts culturally distinct boards like Asian Career Network and iHispano, along with local, national, and virtual networking events.
- People of Color in Tech focuses specifically on technology roles, including a dedicated remote-jobs board and a weekly industry newsletter.
- HBCU Connect is a networking platform for students and alumni of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, featuring career fairs and employer rankings.
Posting on these platforms is not a one-time fix. Build ongoing relationships by sponsoring events, attending virtual career fairs, and keeping your listings current. Candidates notice when an employer shows up consistently rather than just during a hiring crunch.
Rewrite Your Job Descriptions
The language in a job posting shapes who feels welcome to apply. Research on gender-coded language shows that words like “ambitious,” “competitive,” and “superior” skew male-coded, while “agreeable,” “collaborative,” and “empathetic” skew female-coded. Loading a posting with words from either group can discourage qualified people from the other side of the spectrum. Aim for neutral, concrete language that describes what the person will actually do.
A few specific swaps make a real difference. Replace “he or she” with “you” or “they.” Use “workforce” instead of “manpower,” “chairperson” instead of “chairman,” and “spokesperson” instead of “spokesman.” These are small changes, but they signal that your workplace thinks beyond a default template.
Jargon matters too. “Rockstar” and “ninja” sound playful, but they tell the candidate nothing useful and can feel exclusionary. Instead, describe the actual qualities you need. Replace “self-starter” with “dependable” or “motivated.” Replace “multitasking” with “organized” or “detail-oriented.” And watch for phrases that inadvertently screen out candidates for non-job-related reasons. Requiring a “native English speaker” when you really need fluency in English eliminates qualified bilingual candidates. Requiring a “clean-shaven” appearance can turn away candidates whose faith involves maintaining facial hair. Say “professional attire and appearance required” instead.
One more high-impact change: trim your requirements list. Studies consistently show that women and other underrepresented groups are less likely to apply unless they meet nearly every listed qualification, while others will apply meeting just a fraction. If a requirement is actually a preference, label it that way or remove it.
Build Relationships with HBCUs and HSIs
Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions are rich pipelines for early-career talent, but effective partnerships go beyond showing up at a single career fair. Companies like IBM and NBCUniversal have invested in sustained relationships with schools like Morgan State University, combining recruitment with mentorship, curriculum input, and internship programs.
You do not need to be a Fortune 500 company to do this. Start by sponsoring a capstone project, offering paid internships, or hosting an information session with a department that aligns with your open roles. The key is consistency. Schools and students respond to employers who demonstrate a long-term commitment, not those who appear once and vanish. If you hire interns from these programs, create pathways for them to convert to full-time roles, and make sure their experience is genuinely developmental rather than just administrative.
Tap Into Professional Associations
Nearly every industry has professional organizations that serve specific communities. The National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Association of Latino Professionals for America, the National Association of Black Accountants, and similar groups maintain job boards, host conferences, and run mentorship programs. Joining as a corporate sponsor or attending their events puts you in front of candidates who are already engaged in their professional development.
Employee resource groups inside your own company can also point you toward relevant organizations and conferences. Your current employees are often the best bridge to communities you haven’t yet reached.
Remove Bias from Your Screening Process
A diverse applicant pool only matters if your screening process gives everyone a fair shot. Blind recruiting, where identifying information is stripped from resumes before review, is one of the most direct ways to reduce unconscious bias. Remove names, graduation years, school names, and addresses so reviewers evaluate only skills and experience. Several applicant tracking systems can automate this for you.
Structured interviews are equally important. Instead of free-flowing conversations where rapport and “culture fit” can dominate, create a standard set of questions tied to the specific skills and competencies the role requires. Score every candidate on the same rubric. This doesn’t make interviews robotic. It makes them fairer. Interviewers can still build rapport, but the hiring decision rests on consistent, comparable data rather than gut feeling.
Diverse interview panels also help. When candidates see people who look like them on the other side of the table, it signals belonging. And diverse panelists are more likely to catch biased reasoning in post-interview discussions.
Understand the Legal Boundaries
Broadening your pipeline is legal and encouraged. Making hiring decisions based on a candidate’s race, sex, or other protected characteristic is not. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment actions motivated, in whole or in part, by a protected characteristic. That prohibition covers hiring, firing, promotions, compensation, internships, interview selection, training access, and even placement on a candidate slate.
The distinction is straightforward: you can cast a wider net to attract candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, but you cannot give preference to a candidate because of their demographic identity. Quotas are illegal. Selecting someone for an interview slot or a “diverse candidate slate” based on race or sex, rather than qualifications, crosses the line. Business necessity is not a defense against intentional discrimination, and neither is client or customer preference.
The practical takeaway is that your diversity efforts should focus on the top of the funnel, expanding where you source, how you write postings, and who sees your openings. Once candidates enter the evaluation process, every person should be assessed on the same criteria regardless of background.
Track Your Pipeline Data
You cannot improve what you do not measure. Track where your applicants come from, what percentage advance to each stage, and where dropoff happens. If a specialized job board sends you strong applicants but none make it past the phone screen, the problem is likely in your screening criteria, not your sourcing. If your final-round candidates are diverse but your hires are not, look at your interview process and who is making the final call.
Review this data quarterly. Share it with hiring managers so they see the patterns, not just individual decisions. Over time, pipeline data reveals which sourcing channels, posting strategies, and evaluation methods actually produce results, letting you invest more in what works and fix what does not.