New LinkedIn updates put a focus on DEI efforts

Making sure your recruiting process is diverse, equitable and inclusive (DEI) for everyone is a longstanding issue for hiring managers.

Although great strides are being made toward gender equity, women’s representation across the board is still low, especially when moving up the corporate ladder, according to the latest Women in the Workplace study from McKinsey. LinkedIn data shows that women only hold a quarter of C-suite positions. 

Even when HR uses AI technology to help strengthen their recruiting efforts, biases can still sneak in and make the hiring process unbalanced. 

Now, LinkedIn is rolling out new tools for LinkedIn Recruiter and LinkedIn Learning to help recruiters diversify the talent pool. They’ll make sure the talent search has balanced gender representation and improved education on DEI efforts. 

Diversity nudges

LinkedIn Recruiter is rolling out a new tool called “Diversity Nudges” to help ensure that there is gender diversity in the talent pool.

Diversity Nudges – as the name suggests – will give you a nudge when your talent search has unbalanced gender representation by showing you the male-to-female ratio, as well as recommendations of filters – such as Locations, Skills and Companies – to help make your talent pool more balanced. 

If you’re looking for an electrical engineer candidate and your talent pool is unbalanced, Diversity Nudges will suggest adding skills like data analysis and analytic skills to help find more female candidates.

Featured commitments

In addition to Diversity Nudges, LinkedIn is adding a dedicated spot for companies to highlight their top commitments. The change comes as more employees look for a company culture that aligns with their values. 

Now, companies will be able to add a dedicated section to their organization’s page that highlights the causes they care about. Some options that you can put on your company page are:

• DEI
• environmental sustainability
• social impact, and 
• work-life balance. 

Learning paths

LinkedIn Learning is also rolling out new learning paths to help increase diversity, equity and inclusion. Free learning paths will “support Learning & Development (L&D) teams’ efforts to deepen their entire company’s understanding of DEI and reach their DEI objectives,” according to LinkedIn’s announcement. 

These new learning paths also include a path for creating more equitable and inclusive hiring practices.