Recruitment
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      1. TTC Open Playbook Homepage
      2. Recruitment

      Working with third party recruitment suppliers

      Set D&I expectations for third party recruitment suppliers and measure their progress.

      Employer recommendations

      ➖ When adding to your third party recruitment preferred supplier list (PSL), make one of the criteria, the company's D&I commitment and performance on D&I.  According to Capita, 'a contract for the delivery of diverse recruitment outcomes with commercial implications if these are not achieved is a powerful lever in ensuring your diverse recruitment needs are met in a competitive marketplace', Diversity and Inclusion Best Practice in Recruitment.

      ➖Require that third party recruitment suppliers are signed up to a code of professional practice which supports diversity such as REC’s code of professional practice.
      ➖Ask the supplier to demonstrate the tangible actions they’ve delivered and what D&I targets they are working towards. This will provide a clear picture of their commitment to delivering on any D&I promises.
      ➖ Put performance metrics in place that include D&I metrics and regularly review these.
      ➖Tech Talent Charter (TTC) Signatory organisations can highlight to your third party recruitment suppliers your organisation's commitment to the Charter, encouraging they also make the same data driven commitment to D&I in tech.

      ➖Support third party recruiters to sell your organisation to prospective candidates by ensuring suppliers understand the organisation's commitment to D&I and key D&I focus areas, targets, strategies and activities.

      ➖ Request third party recruiters advertise roles on a range of sites, and track which candidates came from where to ensure that job boards are helping - not hindering - efforts to diversify. 

      ➖ Ask third party recruiters to use inclusive language in job advertisements, remove ‘years of experience’ and eliminate jargon to ensure advertisements can be understood by a wide audience, including candidates from outside the industry.

      ➖Ask third party recruiters to advertise roles as open to flexible working arrangements and highlight inclusive policies such as parental, carer, or religious leave.

      ➖Organisations including Sky have introduced 50/50 candidate shortlists for all senior positions to level the playing field and work with recruiters to meet this goal.

      ➖Train and equip internal talent acquisition recruiters to challenge third party suppliers.

      ➖Request diverse shortlists. Ask recruiters to actively seek diverse candidates and require recruiters to provide diverse shortlists.

      'It is important to ensure that the pool of candidates is varied and diverse from the start: indeed, if there is only one unrepresented candidate in your candidate pool, there is statistically no chance they will be hired. The odds of hiring an underrepresented candidate are 79.14x greater if there are at least two unrepresented candidates in the shortlisted pool of candidates' Inclusion In Tech from Atomico and Diversity VC.

      💡HS2’s suppliers must submit a detailed plan on how they approach diversity. “By building this explicitly into our procurement and contract management approach, we are providing the platform for organisations to broaden the talent we are bringing into the sector,” says Mark Lomas, former Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at HS2.

      Further information