Dive Brief:

• The vast majority of senior HR leaders surveyed by video interview firm HireVue (86%) said that diversity and inclusion is a priority in their post-pandemic hiring processes, and the addition of remote work may help to enable pursuit of D&I goals.
• Remote work allows employers to recruit a "wider and more diverse" talent pool, HireVue said. The firm pointed to its finding that 92% of hiring managers surveyed no longer considered location to be a recruitment barrier, and 45% of respondents said they would expand their recruitment efforts to include candidates from "non-traditional places." About one-third of respondents said they would examine job-listings and rewrite them to include inclusive language.
• Simultaneously, 32% of respondents reported dealing with "significant" budget cuts, and 28% said they dealt with barriers including increased workloads, depleted resources and a long list of administrative tasks. HireVue polled 1,142 senior HR professionals based in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Dive Insight:

Since the beginning of the year, U.S. employers have recruited from a significantly larger pool of applicants than in the early part of 2020. The situation has been described by some hiring managers as "overwhelming," according to a report published in February by recruiting platform iCIMS.

In seeking to meet D&I hiring goals, employers might want to consider the diversity of hiring panels and succession planning, as well as candidates, according to a 2020 Diversity Best Practices report. The organization, which scored an index of organizations on their use of diversity, equity and inclusion best practices to create more inclusive workplaces. For instance, it found that 85% of those companies that scored in the top 10% of organizations incorporated diversity into succession-planning processes.

In a February HR Dive report, sources said hiring D&I initiatives will need the support of leadership in order to succeed, while recruiters may also need to reexamine professional networks to determine why organizations draw the candidate slates that they do. 

Organizations like Generation USA, an arm of independent nonprofit Generation, have sought an "impact hiring" model that specifically seeks to match opportunities with workers who are overlooked by traditional talent pipelines due to historical barriers.

Employers in a recent ManpowerGroup survey said they anticipated hiring could return to "pre-pandemic" levels by the end of 2021, with second-quarter hiring projections being particularly strong in industries such as leisure and hospitality. But talent managers may also face attrition by the pandemic's end, due to employees who have prolonged searching for new opportunities in large part because of the pandemic.