Recruitment hints and tips
Making adjustments at every stage of the process
McKinsey & Company identified the four main obstacles which stop significant numbers of disabled people applying for jobs online.
Here are some suggestions to bear in mind when you are putting together an action plan to remove the barriers in your e-recruitment system:
- Provide senior managers and key players with the business case for action
- Identify which particular features your e-recruitment site includes or will include, for example:
- Information and background on your organisation
- Search facility for specific vacancies
- Entry to a graduate recruitment programme or other mass recruitment programmes such as for call-centre positions
- Online application form (either electronic or to be printed off)
- Speculative application form and job alerts
Note: The features your site includes will affect the range and number of barriers your e-recruitment website and e-processes may put in the way of disabled applicants
- Analyse your e-recruitment process and compare it to the e-recruitment process identified by McKinsey & Company to help you identify barriers facing disabled applicants. Please select this link for a diagram of the e-recruitment process
- Ask disabled people to give you feedback on their experience of each step of the process from an applicants perspective
- Design an action plan, taking into account those barriers which are most significant and those which will be easiest to remove.
- Include short term measures to help disabled applicants while you remove the barriers in the system. (e.g. Make your home page accessible first and include information on where those disabled applicants who cannot yet access the rest of the site, should apply.)
- Identify who needs to be involved in overcoming the barriers, including suppliers and partners. (See Who needs to know what? boxes and the section on minimising the risk of outsourcing.)
- Share ideas with other companies and learn from disabled people to avoid reinventing wheels! Involve disabled people at each stage, particularly when testing whether the changes youve made are successful
- Set a deadline for having your entire process barrier-free and tell everyone when you have achieved it
- Stay vigilant Ensure your website and processes remain accessible as they are updated over time.
Business benefits
Better customer service Employers who understand the needs and expectations of people with disabilities provide better service to disabled customers. In the UK alone, disabled people have a combined spending power of circa 50 billion.
Benefits to e-commerce Knowledge acquired during the implementation of barrier-free e-recruitment can be applied throughout the organisation (e.g. development of e-commerce sites and intranets).
Benefits to retention Employers who are good at recruiting people with disabilities are better equipped to meet the needs of employees who become disabled during their careers (Less than 17% of disabled people are born with a disability).
"It is our mandate to ensure we capture talent from the broadest possible pool of people. Ascertaining how we can be more inclusive and sensitive to capturing talent from the disabled community is a priority for us. From a barrier-free e-recruitment perspective we have focused on the recruitment process and our website."
"We took advice from our disabled summer interns in 2003 to institute two measures with regard to the recruitment process. Firstly, we wanted to ensure each applicant was aware of our diversity focus at the point of application. Our apply on-line home page now references our business principle No 7 For us to be successful our men and women must reflect the diversity of the communities and culture in which we operate. That means we must attract, retain and motivate people from many different backgrounds and perspectives. Being diverse is not optional, it is what we must be."
"Secondly, when applicants are invited to interview they receive a detailed email about the interview process and how to prepare for it. We have introduced the following sentence in this email. "If you need us to make any adjustments for interview or have any concerns about the interview process, please bring this to our attention when you call." We launched disability awareness training for our recruiting community so they are able to deal efficiently with resulting enquiries. A number of enquiries were received from disabled applicants and we were able to proactively make appropriate adjustments for them in the interview process."
"In terms of our recruiting website and associated information web pages, we have undergone an independent review by Clarifeye (a consultancy run by disabled people specialising in web accessibility). Their report is currently being reviewed and we expect to make further changes to our website based upon their input."
"The EFD, and organisations such as AbilityNet and Clarifeye, provide the firm with sources of high quality information and experience which enable us to develop our working practices in line with the corporate focus on disability. As best practice information becomes more widely available we are able to use this within our internal technology teams to raise awareness of the ways in which existing barriers for people with disabilities can be reduced or removed."
Trevor Smith, Managing Director, Co-head of Technology & Disability Champion, Goldman Sachs
"The BBC has been using e-recruitment since 1995 and we work hard to ensure that disabled people are able to apply to us online. We test the accessibility of all our sites and use a filter programme called Betsie, to provide an alternative text version of our website. We also provide all information, including our application form, in alternative formats."
"We have put together a number of focus groups to look at advertising and recruitment policies for specific groups such as journalists working in the west country and programme-makers based in London. These groups test ideas around how we recruit online as well as using other recruitment methods. There is a disabled person on each focus group to help us ensure that our policies work for everyone."
"We know that confidentiality throughout the recruitment process is essential. Information given by applicants regarding their disability does not form part of selection and is separated from the application prior to short-listing."
BBC
