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Even well into the 21st century, women continue to face unique challenges in the workplace. Long-standing issues like the wage gap, the glass ceiling, and hostile work environments persist and new challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately affected women. 

As we conclude Women’s History Month, let’s talk about five ways the pandemic has impacted women in the workplace, along with actionable things your organization can do to improve gender equity. 

1. The pandemic severely impacted women’s well-being and career prospects

Only 22% of women believe their employers enabled them to set clear boundaries between work and personal hours during the pandemic while 77% say their workload increased during that time. And that’s on top of the childcare and household responsibilities that disproportionately fell on women during this time.

The endless responsibilities at work and home have negatively impacted women’s mental health and career prospects. 47% of women who changed working hours during the pandemic felt it hurt their relationship with their employer. And more than half of women feel less optimistic about their career prospects today than they did pre-pandemic, with 29% of those women citing poor mental health as one of the main reasons.

Sources: Deloitte “Women @ Work” report and Gallup “The Pandemic Hit Women Hard; Here’s What Leaders Must Do Next”

How to support the women in your workplace:

Check in on the women in your workplace so those experiencing burnout don’t suffer in silence. Managers should conduct regular check-ins with employees to discuss workload, how they’re feeling, and how they’re progressing toward career goals. Even more, ask women how they are doing outside of work. Normalize sharing challenges, particularly related to childcare and life at home.

Real change needs to happen at the organizational level. Hold leaders accountable for creating initiatives and policies that support working mothers like flexible schedules, on-site childcare or stipends, extended maternity leave, mental health days, and wellness allowances. 

2. Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions—especially women of color

Since 2016, women have made small gains at each rung of the corporate ladder, including a 5% increase in representation in the C-suite and a 3% increase in representation in senior VP-level roles. Still, progress toward gender balance at leadership levels is lagging—as only 86 women are promoted to management positions for every 100 men. 

Unfortunately, women of color continue to be the most underrepresented group in the upper levels of organizations. They hold only 4% of C-suite positions and 5% of senior VP-level roles. For comparison, white men account for 62% of C-suite roles and 61% of senior VP-level roles.

Sources: McKinsey “Women in the Workplace 2021” report and IBM “Women, leadership, and miss opportunities” report

How to support the women in your workplace:

Many companies have made commitments to improve diversity but lack the data and technology needed to create and accomplish an actionable strategy. Truly improving representation requires first understanding the current diversity of the teams and levels in your organization, then benchmarking that data against the external talent pools you hire from. Using SeekOut, your recruiting team can identify realistic opportunities to improve diversity and surface qualified women of color for senior-level roles. 

3. Of the few companies that make gender diversity a priority, less than half are making any real progress

Only 1-in-4 companies make the advancement and inclusion of women in the workplace a top ten priority. And of those well-intentioned companies, about half are struggling to make progress, according to their employees. 

A survey of representatives from 429 organizations with strategic DEI initiatives found that:

• Only 45% of companies have job succession plans that include women candidates.
• Only 48% of companies ensure high-performing women receive promotions.
• Only 49% of senior executives openly challenge gender-biased behaviors and language.

Source: IBM “Women, leadership, and miss opportunities” report

How to support the women in your workplace:

Ask your leaders to create a company policy that a certain percentage of candidates for every role must be women and create a goal to increase female representation in manager and leadership roles. 

Hiring and promotions are only part of the solution. Foster a “see something, say something” culture where everyone is encouraged and expected to speak up when they encounter gender-biased behavior and language. That culture should be championed and vocalized by leadership so it permeates throughout the company. 

4. Compensation is important but not everything for female job seekers

Gallup surveyed more than 13,000 people about what they want in their next job. Unsurprisingly, increased income and improved benefits were a top priority for both women and men. But after that, women and men had starkly different values in their jobs. 

66% of women said work-life balance and well-being are very important (10% higher than men), 62% said being allowed to do what they do best is very important (9% higher than men), and 52% said diversity and inclusion are very important (23% higher than the men). 

Source: Gallup “Recruiting Women Takes More Than Just Competitive Pay”

How to support the women in your workplace:

The reality is women care about these things because they have to. First and foremost, offer equitable compensation—then provide the secondary factors women value in their jobs. 

As you make your company and workplace more inclusive for women, make sure that progress is reflected in your employee value proposition so you attract female candidates. Highlight how your company makes work-life balance, DEI, and work autonomy a priority on your careers website and candidate outreach messages. And when you connect with great female candidates, ask them what they’re looking for in their next opportunity and work with the hiring manager to deliver it. 

5. Companies with more women in leadership positions have better business results and happier employees

Harvard Business Review analyzed more than 150 companies and discovered that when women join leadership teams, their companies become more profitable, more socially responsible, and provide better customer experiences.

Additionally, female leaders are more likely to champion employee-friendly policies and DEI initiatives, as well as mentor and sponsor young women and women of color. Even more, a survey of employees with both male and female managers found that female managers are more likely to support their direct reports in the following ways:

• Check-in on overall well-being (7% higher than male managers)
• Make sure their workload is manageable (6% higher than male managers)
• Help navigate work-life challenges (5% higher than male managers)
• Take action to prevent/manage burnout (5% higher than male managers)

Sources: Harvard Business Review “Research: Adding Women to the C-Suite Changes How Companies Think,” McKinsey “Diversity wins: How inclusion matters” report, and McKinsey “Women in the Workplace 2021” 

How to support the women in your workplace:

Leaders must provide women with opportunities for career growth and professional development so they move into high-level roles where they can make an impact. Provide each employee with personalized career paths that help them find trainings, colleague connections, and jobs within your organization that lead to career advancement. 

But just as important, ensure all your female employees’ voices are heard. Women bring value to organizations in various ways so always be listening and learning from the perspective they offer. 

Summary: Break down the barriers women face at work

Building a more inclusive workplace isn’t just the right thing to do. Winning companies know that gender equality is essential to their success. Here’s a quick recap of everything your organization can do to support women:

• Check in with women about the challenges they’re facing in and outside the workplace.
• Implement initiatives and policies that support working mothers.
• Analyze the diversity of your workforce and create a realistic plan to hire more women of color, notably in senior-level roles.
• Create a policy that a certain percentage of candidates for open roles must be women and provide career pathways for the women you hire.
• Set an expectation that every employee speaks up when they encounter gender-biased behavior and language.
• Provide equitable compensation first, then offer the secondary factors women value in a job.
• Create an employee value proposition that reflects how your organization supports women so you attract female candidates.
• Get women in management and leadership positions and listen to their ideas and perspectives.
• Provide women with career pathways and professional development opportunities that help them advance in your organization. 

It’s time to finally create an inclusive and supportive workplace for women. First, understand the challenges they face, then take action to solve them. 

Check out our Diversity Recruiting eBook and learn 12 tips to level up your diversity hiring efforts. 

Leading diversity strategist Torin Ellis recently joined us for an episode of the SeekOut Spotlight Series. During his powerful presentation, Torin provided an actionable piece of advice every company can use to elevate its diversity efforts: Ask every employee during their performance evaluation what they did to contribute to DEI&B. 

DEI&B isn’t a responsibility that falls solely on HR and the recruiting team. Everyone in the company must be held accountable for creating a workplace where all employees are treated fairly and feel welcomed and respected. After all, the “inclusion” and “belonging” elements of DEI&B are driven by the everyday relationships and interactions employees have with each other.  

As we conclude Black History Month, let’s discuss how every employee—regardless of their background, role, and level within the organization—can make the company a supportive place to work for their Black colleagues every day of the year.  

Provide emotional support to your Black colleagues  

The 2022 Black History Month theme centered on the importance of Black health and wellness. It’s a timely theme given that the past couple of years have been especially mentally and emotionally taxing for the Black community.  

From being disproportionally impacted by COVID-19 to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others, Black/African Americans as a whole have experienced significant trauma. As Asha Tarry wrote on HR Executive, “Historically, Black people shoulder the pain and anguish of not only themselves as individuals, but also that of the collective group of Black people everywhere.” 

Being emotionally supportive to your Black colleagues starts with listening and learning about their experiences—provided they’re willing to share with you how they feel. If a Black colleague wants to talk to you about societal issues or their experience in the workplace, here are some ways you can best lend an ear: 

• Listen empathically – There is a lot you don’t know and can never fully understand. With that in mind, simply listen with the intention of learning and being a better ally going forward.  
• Avoid offering advice or feedback – Even if well-intentioned, offering advice or your own perspective can come across as dismissive. Listen and be supportive but avoid chiming in with your thoughts.  
• Get comfortable being uncomfortable – Learning about the experiences of your Black colleagues is never going to be an easy conversation. Always remember that no matter how uncomfortable you feel, it pales in comparison to what they experience every day.  

Listen closely to the Black people you work with and take what they say to heart so you can learn what it takes to be a supportive colleague.

Educate yourself 

You shouldn’t only rely on the Black people you know to educate you about the Black experience and Black history. Some may be willing to help you learn but others may find it too exhausting to continually have those conversations.  

Take it upon yourself to learn on your own. Read books and articles, watch documentaries, and listen to podcasts—and more importantly—share that content with your wider company. Consider starting a Slack channel where resources can be shared or hosting “Lunch and Learns” on topics you feel your entire company can benefit from learning about.  

By proactively educating yourself and sharing what you learn with all your colleagues, you’re ensuring this important conversation extends beyond Black History Month, throughout the entire year.  

Wondering where to start? Here are a few resources that were shared on SeekOut’s Slack during this year’s Black History Month: 

• The Biography of Sojourner Truth — National Women’s History Museum 
• Mind, Body, Spirit: 10 Self-Help Books by Black Authors to Help Align Your Life — Book Riot 
• Celebrating Black Deaf History Month With DEAFinitely Dope — Airbnb 
• The Guide to Becoming a Black Community Ally — Southern Utah University 
• True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality — Kunhardt Film Foundation 

Check out these resources and search for other ones that will help you learn more about the Black experience.

Be conscious of what you say and how you act 

We all know that the way we conduct ourselves in and outside the workplace is of the utmost importance. However, Black people often experience microaggressions from non-Black colleagues who lack the awareness to know that what they’re saying or doing is harmful. 

Listening to your Black colleagues and educating yourself is the best way to learn how you can avoid unknowingly making a misstep. There has never been more dialogue about inclusion than there is today and it’s important to actively listen and participate in those conversations so you can learn how to do better.  

Here are resources shared on SeekOut’s Slack that can help you educate yourself and your colleagues on common microaggressions Black people deal with at work: 

• Avoiding Digital Blackface, and Other Actions for Allies — Better Allies 
• Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think — NPR  
• Why Black hair is a workplace issue — Digitally Cognizant 
• Why getting a name right matters — BBC 
• Name Pronunciation Tool — #MyNameIs 

Explore these resources and consider sharing them with your wider company so everyone learns how to be inclusive to their Black colleagues.

Speak up when you see inequity  

Calling out harmful behavior in the workplace can be uncomfortable. But remember, being an ally means “getting comfortable being uncomfortable.” Lead by example and speak up whenever and wherever you see racism, discrimination, or any form of inequity.  

Inequity in the workplace 

It’s easy to ignore harmful words or actions in the workplace when they don’t impact you. However, your company will never truly be inclusive until every employee is willing to call out inequity.  

Ask your company leadership to implement an internal ticketing system employees can use to anonymously submit concerns to HR (tip: check out SpeakUp). HR can then follow up with the person affected, find out more about the situation, and determine how to best proceed.  

Having an anonymous ticketing system in place helps employees report harmful behavior without fear of backlash. It also demonstrates your company cares about inclusion and wants to make it easy for all employees to voice concerns.  

Inequity in hiring 

Whenever you’re involved in hiring, ask the recruiting team and hiring manager upfront about their diversity hiring strategy. Is there a requirement that a certain percentage of the slate be underrepresented candidates? How do they intend to source diverse candidates? 

However, sourcing underrepresented candidates is only a small part of the larger challenge when it comes to diversity hiring. It’s important to ensure every candidate who interviews is fairly evaluated and comes away with the impression that your company is an inclusive place to work. Here are a few tips for creating an equitable interview process: 

• Include a person on the hiring team whose sole responsibility is to be on the lookout for unconscious bias. 
• Ask every candidate the same interview questions and use a consistent rubric to evaluate each candidate post-interview. 
• Have candidates meet with a peer who can share insight into their experience in the workplace.  

Encourage your recruiting team to follow these tips for every role so diversity is always top-of-mind when hiring.

Inequity in society 

Encourage your company’s leadership to take a public stance on social justice issues. When issues arise, request they issue a public statement, publish a blog post, and make a social post showing support for the victims and/or groups impacted. 

But more importantly, your company should back up its words with actions. Statements should include commitments to support community organizations that make a difference or to improve representation within the company. Hold your company to those commitments and request leadership provide periodic updates internally to employees and externally to the public. 

Support the Black community outside the workplace 

Your support for the Black community should extend outside your workplace to the community you live in. Donate to or volunteer with the organizations you asked your company to support or find other ones whose mission resonates with you. Check out the list of Black-led NPOs on Every.org and research local organizations that could benefit from your support. 

Additionally, make it a priority to financially support Black-owned businesses. A lot of people do so during Black History Month, but these small businesses need your support throughout the year. Explore your community and share your experiences and recommendations with your colleagues, just like you did with the learning resources you discovered. 

Here are a few resources for finding Black-owned businesses: 

• 198 Black-Owned Businesses to Support — The Strategist’s list of Black-owned businesses, many of which you can order from online. 
• Support Black Owned — Search for specific Black-owned businesses by zip code. 
• EatOkra — Download the app and find Black-owned restaurants in your area. 

These are only a few of the many resources that can help you find Black-led organizations and businesses so take it upon yourself to explore what your community has to offer.

Don’t let the momentum wane 

As we conclude another Black History Month, it’s important to carry on the actions and dialogue that were the focus of the past 28 days.  

Make it a priority to continuously listen, learn, act, speak up, and offer support throughout the year so you contribute to your company’s effort to make the workplace inclusive for your Black colleagues.  

We’re excited to share all the new developments in the SeekOut platform that have gone live since our last update in October. Our product team has rolled out new features that help you rediscover past candidates in your ATS and save hours reviewing resumes. They’ve also made improvements to SeekOut’s existing functionality and released new features focused on better collaboration, efficiency, and candidate data. 

Let’s dive into everything that’s new in SeekOut. 

Rediscover candidates in your ATS 

Many companies have an ATS full of warm candidates who have already expressed interest in joining their team. However, the ATS has historically not been a viable candidate source for new roles because:  

• A candidate’s information is never updated in the ATS after they apply, so you don’t have insight into their recent work history or any new skills they’ve acquired
• Most ATSs have poor search functionality, making it difficult to find qualified candidates

Talent Rediscovery solves both these challenges by: 

• Matching every candidate in your ATS with their up-to-date profile in SeekOut 
• Enabling you to surface candidates in your ATS using SeekOut’s advanced search capabilities

With Talent Rediscovery, you’ll find new search fields in SeekOut based on ATS data, such as the hiring process stage candidates advanced to and candidates who finished as your second choice when they initially applied.  

When you run a keyword search, SeekOut not only searches against the candidate’s public profile but also the attachments they included when they applied, like their resume and cover letter.  

Talent Rediscovery is an additional capability. Contact your CSM or account manager to learn more.  

Save hours screening candidates 

Our new Inbound Talent solution helps recruiters efficiently find the most qualified applicants. Simply add the specific skills and years of experience required for a role and let SeekOut do the candidate screening.  

You can also add preferred qualifications and SeekOut will rank candidates by how qualified they are. When you view a candidate’s profile, you’ll see a “match score” section that summarizes why they are a fit for the role.   

Inbound Talent also gives you the ability to analyze aggregate data about candidates, so you can understand how accurate your job description is based on who is applying.  

Inbound Talent not only saves countless hours for recruiters. It also improves the experience for all your candidates, since you can be quicker to notify unqualified talent that you’re proceeding with other candidates.  

Inbound Talent is an additional capability. Contact your CSM or account manager to learn more. 

Even more candidate data  

We’re always striving to provide fresh and accurate candidate data across different roles and industries. Over the past 12 months, we’ve increased our candidate index from 530 million to 707 million profiles. That means there are now 31% more candidates available to source, so you can make great hires and fill your roles faster.  

Along with fresh candidate data, we’ve also improved our inference capabilities, which results in more candidates for specific searches. For example, the number of Black/African American candidates in North America has increased by 114% in the past 12 months because we’ve grown our candidate index and improved how we do inference for that diversity tag. 

Organization-wide project sharing  

We’re introducing new features aimed at improving collaboration among teams, starting with organization-wide project sharing.

In addition to personal, shared, and archived projects, you now get insight into the SeekOut projects used by all the hiring teams in your organization.  

Sourcing visibility across the enterprise 

It’s frustrating to source a candidate, add them to your ATS, and then learn that someone from your team has already been working with them. We’ve solved this problem with another new collaboration-focused feature—Enterprise Visibility.  

You can now see if anyone in your organization has added a candidate to a SeekOut project or messaging campaign. The candidate’s profile will display the date they were added and who on your team is working with them.  

Enterprise Visibility is only available for Enterprise accounts

Efficiently source across different continents  

Global Efficiency streamlines the workflow of teams that recruit for similar roles around the world. 

SeekOut divides candidate pools by continent to make it easier to search for candidates in certain locations. With Global Efficiency, you can map long Boolean strings over to a new search for a different continent with a single click.  

Export candidate profiles as a PDF 

SeekOut now gives you the ability to export a candidate’s profile as a PDF.  

The exported PDF includes all the candidate’s basic information, as well as the deep candidate data you’re accustomed to in SeekOut. It will include details like the programming languages a developer knows and published papers and patents from an expert candidate.  

New integrations  

We’ve added even more ATS and CRM integrations over the past few months. New integrations include: 

• Ashby 
• Recruiterflow 
• Jobvite 
• IQRecruit 
• GR8 People 
• Smashfly 

Check out all of SeekOut’s Technology Partners and reach out to your CSM or account manager to request other integrations you would like us to add.  

See what’s next for SeekOut 

Watch the recording of our “What’s New in SeekOut” webinar to learn more about all these new features and improvements and find out what we have planned next.  

The SeekOut Spotlight Series features conversations with thought leaders in talent acquisition, DEI, and remote work. In episode three, SeekOut CEO Anoop Gupta spoke with Torin Ellis, a leading diversity strategist, professional speaker, and author.  

Torin leads a progressive consultancy that has a laser-like focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) strategy and risk mitigation. He embraces a collaborative approach built on transparency, actionable strategy, and rigorous performance monitoring. Torin is the former executive producer and host of “Career Mix”—a weekly show on SiriusXM. His voice has become requested and trusted by some of the biggest conference organizers in the U.S. and abroad and he authored his first book Rip The Resume in 2016.  

Torin and Anoop had a powerful conversation on a wide range of DEI&B topics. Here are a few of the highlights from their discussion.  

The problem with how organizations think about unconscious bias 

Torin: I think far too many organizations have used the moniker of unconscious bias as a curtain of complacency. As a curtain of mediocrity. People have pinned the moniker of unconscious bias on training or actions because they are coddling individuals’ desire to intentionally, or unintentionally, not consider diverse and underrepresented audiences.  

If I’m discounting a person because of their name, zip code, socioeconomic status, academic institution, or for some other nefarious reason, that’s not unconscious—it’s conscious. What people have done is put all those excuses under unconscious bias to allow them to continually permeate their unintentional effort toward DEI&B, which is why we have not made the progress we’ve been yearning for over the last 25 to 30 years. We cannot continue to coddle these excuses. We need to hold people accountable.  

How TA professionals can lead DEI&B efforts in their organization 

Torin: Number one, you have to be empowered. You have to feel empowered to speak up when a hiring manager is discounting all the underrepresented talent and not giving you valid reasons. You have to feel empowered to speak up if someone is not responding in a timely manner and you’re losing incredible individuals. If you don’t feel empowered to speak up about the reality of your organization, then you’re going to continue to be an impediment to how we achieve DEI&B.  

Number two, you have to understand strategic exploration. You have to know what business unit, department, or team you’re supporting. Every requisition is not the same. One may be going to a team that is in a continuous improvement phase. One may be going to a team that is in a high-growth, high-velocity phase. Another may be going to a mature team. That requisition might read the same but the people you need are different.  

Number three is tactical execution. You have to ask yourself, honestly, “What is it that I don’t know?” When I go on Twitter or LinkedIn, I’m trying to connect with people who I don’t know—who can deposit information, resources, thoughts, and different angles into my work. It’s what I don’t know that is going to help me connect with Indigenous or First Nations populations. It’s what I don’t know that is going to help me hear incredible stories from those who are experiencing ageism in the workplace. It’s what I don’t know that is going to allow me to talk to Hajibi women and allow us to bring them into our workplace.  

It’s what we don’t know that is missing in our tactical execution. We need to ask questions and one of the ways we ask better questions is by having different voices contribute, which is the power of inclusion.  

Using data to ask the right questions around DEI&B 

Torin: Data is extremely important; I absolutely believe in it. But it’s what we’re looking for that matters? How are we collecting the data? What resources are we pulling it from?   

There is no secret sauce for data collection. It’s what works or has not worked in your organization and using the data in a way that changes the outcome. I’m not saying that we need to throw everything out. But let’s look at the sources of all the candidates. Where are they dropping out in the interview process? What’s the battery of questions that we are using to evaluate them? Are we using the same questions at every stage of the interview process? Who handles onboarding? How are we making sure that our process is speedy, efficient, and duplicatable? That’s how we use data. 

A lot of people are accustomed to certain data points. They’re accustomed to certain resources. They’re accustomed to relying on certain voices. One of the questions that I always ask all of my hiring managers is “What’s the one thing you need in a new hire that’s not in the job description?” And I use their response to synthesize exactly what we should be looking for and to get rid of all the stuff we don’t necessarily need.   

Watch the on-demand recording of the full conversation between Torin and Anoop to learn how organizations can fundamentally change how they think about and approach DEI&B.  

By SeekOut CEO and Co-Founder Anoop Gupta

Today is a special day for me, both for the news I get to share, and for what it means for our customers and community. I’m pleased to announce SeekOut raised $115 million in Series C funding, which brings our valuation to $1.2 billion in four years. Tiger Global Management led this round, along with additional participation from Founders Circle Capital, Madrona Venture Group, and Mayfield.  

Since we raised our Series B nine months ago, SeekOut has increased ARR by more than 3x and doubled our customer base to more than 1,000, including 6 of the 10 most valuable U.S. companies. G2 has recognized the company as the number one Talent Intelligence Software and as the leader for Enterprise Diversity Recruiting software. In 2021, SeekOut was awarded GeekWire Startup of the year and ranked number two in the B2B category of The Information’s 50 Startups to Watch list. We are truly humbled and grateful to you, our customers and partners, for your confidence and support and guidance for the future. 

With this funding, we’ll continue to invest deeply in our market-leading talent acquisition platform. And, working closely with customers, we will accelerate delivering our vision for Enterprise Talent Optimization^SM, with new solutions in employee retention, internal mobility, and career development.  

This is an exciting – and critical – time to be innovating in the people technology space 

No one involved in the running or building of a company needs me to tell them what a watershed time we’re in. Whether we call it the ‘great resignation’ or ‘great reshuffle,’ we’ve seen a seismic shift in how employees and companies engage with each other over the last two years.  

With so much at stake, only the companies with a focused, strategic approach to hiring, retaining, and growing their talent will survive and thrive. Given the rapid shifts in technology and landscape, companies can go from being leaders to laggards quickly, which is reflected in the urgency I see from the board room to the C-suite to find the right solutions to these challenges.  

Here are some key shifts we are observing in the new world of work:  

• Balance of power shifting to employees: Employees want purpose, flexibility, and the ability to grow within your company. Companies need solutions built for their people, not HR, or employees will be voting with their feet and becoming part of this great reshuffle. The great resignation is a huge challenge, but it also represents a huge opportunity for companies to get ahead by leveraging people-first systems. 
• Accelerating digital transformation changes the competition for key talent. The modern talent pool must go beyond LinkedIn and the usual job sites. Search more widely, dig deeper, and look at internal talent too. Think about skills adjacencies and development to retain the best. 
• Remote and hybrid work will be the norm. We see more and more evidence of work trending in this direction, and you can prepare your systems and teams to excel in the new environment. Optimization solutions can help build the muscle to recruit, retain, and motivate distributed teams.  
• Diversity remains critical to hiring, retention, and building companies people want to work for. People care about working at a company that’s reflective of the world. Building diversity into all elements of your talent strategy should be a sustainable, long-term solution for recruitment and retention.  

To thrive, companies must leave no stone unturned to recruit and retain talent. We believe the great reshuffle can also be opportunity for every enterprise. The largest talent pool in our time is now in free agency.  

Going from “flying blind” to getting ahead with Enterprise Talent Optimization 

Today, many enterprises are flying blind when it comes to building and maintaining their workforces. Enterprises aren’t evolving quickly enough or haven’t had the tools and resources to keep up with jobseekers and employees. The data is locked up in silos of HRIS, ATS, LMS, and other systems within the enterprise. Many important sources of data, where employees do day-to-day work, are not even considered.  

Further, no company is an island. Without the context provided by external data – external available talent, size of talent pools, diversity, open jobs, available skills and skills adjacencies, salary, competition – even good knowledge of internal employees is not sufficient to recruit and retain talent. And data itself is not sufficient, you need talent intelligence and predictive insights, you need recommendations for actions to persevere and prevail. 

Great companies know you don’t make decisions looking in the rear-view mirror. It’s interesting that data is everywhere in the enterprise except where you need it most: informing the decisions about the people you need and the people you have. 

We believe by maximizing the potential of people – both in the pipeline and already in the organization – enterprises will have the talent to realize unprecedented innovation and growth. 

• With this financing round, we’ll be investing deeply in innovation to extend our leadership position in talent acquisition and power new solutions for internal mobility, employee retention, career pathing, and learning and development.  
• We call this new solution, Talent360 Platform for Enterprise Talent Optimization. It’s a system that HR teams have been sorely lacking: a data-rich and data-informed way for HR and business leaders to have a comprehensive 360-degree view of internal employees and external talent, with analytics, predictive insights, and actionable recommendations. Leveraging this platform provides a competitive advantage in recruiting, retaining, and developing their talent base. 
• We believe our strengths in talent acquisition naturally extend to Enterprise Talent Optimization. We have the right expertise on our team, a powerful data platform to integrate with and make sense of numerous data sources, and the most in-depth data allowing for smarter insights and impactful, dynamic actions. Most importantly, companies will drive results for their greatest asset: their people. 
• With SeekOut, companies can glimpse their employees’ future success and the possibilities for all their people. 

We’re so fortunate in our community, customers, and team, and delighted for the opportunity to continue growing SeekOut. We believe strongly that companies who amplify their people will deliver outsized results—as well as building a world where we’re all happier and more engaged at work.  

People are at the core of our journey too, and we welcome anyone interested in the future of people technology into this critical conversation. Whether you’d like to see more of what we do, learn how our customers are diversifying and empowering talent, or you’re curious about joining us, please take a look or reach out.  

“It’s an exciting time to be in the people technology space as there’s a clear shift in the way companies are thinking about hiring and retaining talent. SeekOut is at the forefront of this change, delivering a best-in-class solution for talent optimization that enables businesses to hire, grow and retain their workforce like never before. We are excited to partner with them as they continue to reshape the industry and provide companies with data, insights, and actions that drive results.” — John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global Management  

Our SeekOut product team has been hard at work to help you power faster, more complex searches and deliver even more candidate results. Our October 2021 release delivers enhanced power filters, improved Software Developer Insights, time zone distance on candidate profiles, and 20 million new candidate profiles with fresh information.

Let’s dig into the updates and what you can expect.  

Enhanced Power Filters 

Power filters allow you to run complex, targeted searches with a single click. They’re one of our most popular features and we’ve made them even more powerful with this update to increase efficiency, insights, and explain-ability: 

• Faster, more complex searches – You can now combine up to five power filters in a single search and we’ve shortened the time it takes to return search results. 
• Power filter values in People Insights – SeekOut now includes a numerical value in People Insights showing how many candidates match a particular power filter, so users have more insightful talent pool data for the searches they run. 

Introducing Power Filter Badges 

SeekOut now displays badges on profiles for candidates who match specific power filters—even before a search is run.  

Displaying these badges on the top of profiles makes it faster and easier for talent acquisition professionals to quickly see the most relevant candidate characteristics without having to scan the whole profile during their search. 

If you want to see why a candidate matches a particular power filter, click “More” on their badge. It will expand and show the terms on their profile that make them a match.  

Improved Software Developer Insights 

We improved Software Developer Insights to surface data, making it faster and easier to understand. Results will now display: 

• A word cloud of the most common skills and power filter matches present in the talent pool. 
• A chart of the most common programming languages known by candidates in the talent pool. 

The Skills Insights chart has been updated to give a quick visual overview of the talent pool. 

Introducing Time Zone Distance 

With remote and hybrid work being the new normal, Time Zone Distance shows talent acquisition professionals the time difference between them and the candidate.

More Profiles and Fresher Candidate Information 

Public profiles have expanded from 622 million to 642 million candidate profiles, all with fresher and more accurate information. This update includes 5% more Expert Profiles with improved diversity classification and location mapping in the Expert database. 

Discover Your Next Great Team Member with SeekOut 

The entire team at SeekOut is always striving to help our customers discover and connect with great candidates—with a focus on diversity and technical expertise. We hope these changes make your sourcing and recruiting easier and more enjoyable. As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can continue to improve SeekOut to make you more successful. 

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are top priorities for nearly every company. According to Deloitte’s 2020 CEO Survey, 96% of CEOs agree DEI is a strategic goal. To meet that goal, 90% of those CEOs are prioritizing and investing in talent recruitment, development, advancement, and retention and 72% are prioritizing and investing in DEI data and transparency.

Despite these positive intentions, many organizations are struggling to increase the diversity of their workforce. GEM’s 2020 Recruiting Trends Report revealed that 49% of talent acquisition professionals say, “finding more diverse candidates to interview” is their biggest barrier to improving diversity.

SeekOut’s AI-powered Talent 360 platform gives talent acquisition professionals the tools and data to create an actionable diversity hiring strategy that helps their company achieve its DEI goals. In this article, you’ll learn concrete steps for using SeekOut to build a pipeline of highly qualified, diverse candidates.

Set Realistic Diversity Hiring Goals

Data is your ally when it comes to diversity hiring—and that includes using data to set realistic diversity targets. Start by gaining insight into what diversity currently looks like in your organization, then benchmark that data against the talent pools you hire from.

Perhaps, you already know Black/African Americans employees are underrepresented in your company. It’s great you’re aware of that but you can use data to identify the best opportunities to improve Black/African American representation in your workforce. Use SeekOut to explore the makeup of specific teams, roles, and levels in your organization and compare that data against your peers and the geographies your employees are located in.

If SeekOut shows that similar companies and your regional talent pools have a higher percentage of Black/African American data scientists than your company employs, that’s a realistic opportunity to improve diversity in your company. You can then set targets to hire more Black/African American data scientists and create a recruiting strategy for meeting that goal.

Analyze Your Talent Pools and Create Inclusive Job Descriptions

Every talent acquisition professional has experienced a hiring manager providing excessive role requirements they want included in the job description. Excessive requirements not only limit the number of candidates you can consider—they also discourage diverse candidates from applying. A Hewlett Packard internal report found that men will apply for a job when they meet 60% of the role requirements, but women tend to apply only if they’re 100% qualified for the job.

Using SeekOut Talent Analytics, you can have data-driven conversations with hiring managers about whether their role requirements will result in a viable candidate pipeline. You can view aggregate data on your talent pool’s job titles, skills, employment history, educational background, diversity, and more. You can then use these insights to collaborate with hiring managers on inclusive job descriptions that appeal to qualified, diverse talent—ensuring no viable candidate is left behind.

As Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, once said, “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Data is objective and prevents opinions from influencing conversations about role requirements. Take advantage of SeekOut’s Talent Analytics and become a trusted talent advisor to hiring managers, helping them see the best path toward discovering their next great team member.

Create an Effective Sourcing Strategy

Using the inclusive job description you crafted with the hiring manager, create a profile of your ideal candidate and strategy for building a diverse hiring pipeline.

Explore Talent Analytics in SeekOut to find where qualified candidates are located and what it will take to make a successful hire. For example, you may need to consider a relocation budget for an ideal candidate or make remote work an option for the role. Think outside the box and determine how you can put your organization in the best position to attract diverse talent.

You can then use keywords, Boolean strings, filters, and AI matching in SeekOut to search for candidates who fit your profile and build a pipeline of qualified, diverse candidates to consider.

Mitigate Unconscious Bias in Candidate Assessments 

Unfortunately, even the most accepting people have biases they’re not aware of. These unconscious biases cause recruiters and hiring managers to make unfair assumptions about candidates during the sourcing stage—stifling diversity hiring efforts before they even begin.

For example, people often speculate about a candidate’s intelligence based on the college they attended. Even worse, a qualified candidate with an uncommon name can be passed over, only because the recruiter doesn’t want to go through the awkward experience of figuring out how to pronounce it.

With blind hiring mode in SeekOut, candidates’ names, photos, education, and other identifiable details are removed from their profiles. Recruiters and hiring managers are only able to consider skills and experience, preventing unconscious bias from influencing candidate assessments.

Connect with Diverse Talent

You’ve successfully discovered a variety of diverse candidates who are qualified for your open role. Now, you need to get their attention and pitch the opportunity to them.

So far, you’ve taken a strategic and data-driven approach to diversity hiring. However, candidate outreach requires a human touch. Instead of sending the same generic cold email to every candidate you’ve sourced, personalize the message to get their attention. Include what you saw on their profile that impressed you, whether that be a specific skill, a project they’ve contributed to, or a company they’ve worked for.

Lou Adler calls this outreach approach “hiring for success.” Personalizing outreach messages for each candidate is proven to increase response rates, making for a healthy hiring funnel.

Diversity Hiring is Only Part of the DEI Equation

A data-driven diversity hiring strategy brings people from different backgrounds into your company. However, there is more to being an organization that truly values DEI. After all, if two diverse employees are leaving your company for every one you bring in, your hiring efforts are ultimately meaningless.

Diversity cannot work without inclusion and diversity and inclusion cannot be sustained without belonging. The LinkedIn 2018 Global Recruiting Trends Report sums up this concept nicely: “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like no one is watching.”

DEI is nuanced and multi-faceted. It starts with hiring people from different backgrounds but comes to life when you build a culture and workplace where people feel like they belong.

Request a SeekOut demo today and learn why our AI-powered talent search engine is rated the #1 diversity recruiting tool by G2.

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