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The small change that made a big difference to getting more diverse job candidates

Making sure you have a pipeline of diverse candidates is essential to truly making your organisation reflect the consumers you serve.

A benchmark McKinsey report also showed that companies in the top quartile for ethnic or cultural diversity in their executive teams are 36% more likely to experience above-average profitability.

But there are many pieces of the puzzle to consider, and sometimes when it comes to talent acquisition, the focus has been on job adverts and not necessarily where those ads are placed.

That is what Catherine Lynch, former chief people officer (CPO) at Virgin Media, pointed out on a panel discussion with three other CPOs.

“At Virgin [Media], we changed the place we put the roles [ads] in the mainstream, that’s where disabled applicants got lost,” she said. “We still put the ads out in the other same places but by putting the ads on the Scope website, for example, it helped bring in a lot more candidates.”

READ MORE: The blueprint on how to make leaders accountable for real change

Studies have shown that disabled people have to apply for 60% more jobs than non-disabled people.

UK government data shows that 7.7 million people of working age (16-64) reported that they were disabled in April-June 2020, which is 19% of the working age population.

The data showed that only 53.6% of disabled people were in employment. The unemployment rate for disabled people was 6.5% in April-June 2020. This compared with an unemployment rate of 3.5% for people who are not disabled.

The DIAL Global Virtual Summit is support by Yahoo Finance’s parent company Verizon Media. The virtual conference, entitled ‘A Call to Action & Moving the DIAL for Meaningful and Sustainable Change through Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging’ speaks to senior directors and C-suite executives at the largest organisations in the world to discuss how companies can foster a truly diverse and inclusive workplace.

Vicky Edwards, chief people officer (CPO) Alfa, Zareena Brown, CPO Britvic, Suzie Welch, CPO Odeon Group were on a panel entitled ‘Broadening the Diversity Agenda to more than Gender/Race,’ chaired by Catherine Lynch, former CPO at Virgin Media.