What Is Impact Hiring?
Impact hiring is a hiring method that focuses on recruiting, supporting, and retaining entry-level talent, especially from groups facing systemic barriers, to create business advantage and social value. When you implement this method into your hiring process, you can maximize your chance of hiring and retaining qualified candidates.
Going beyond just filling open positions
Impact hiring looks beyond traditional hiring criteria like education and skills when assessing a candidate. Instead, it focuses on aligning the candidate’s values, aspirations, and potential contributions with the company’s mission and social impact goals.
This approach integrates recruitment, assessment, and ongoing support to ensure these employees succeed and grow within the organization, turning entry-level talent into a competitive advantage. In short, it takes a qualified candidate and transforms them into an even more qualified one, teaching new skills and providing continuous professional development, making the ultimate investment in talent.
Do degree? No problem. Impact hiring helps break down barriers such as the college degree requirement, fostering diversity, improving company culture, enhancing employee retention, and driving better overall work performance.
Organizations adopting impact hiring often embed it into their broader talent strategy, using data and metrics to refine and scale their efforts, ultimately benefiting both the business and the communities they serve.
7 Ways to Implement Impact Hiring
1. Define Your Purpose and Values
Start by clearly articulating your company’s mission, core values, and social or environmental issues that align with your business goals. This clarity sets the foundation for attracting candidates who share your impact vision. Did you know that having a positive employee brand is a strong attractor to qualified candidates, especially those in Gen Z? Being the company that employees want to join and grow in is key to attracting and retaining great employees.
2. Develop Clear Job Descriptions
Create job posts that specify the role’s purpose, the impact expected, and the essential skills and qualifications. Emphasize how the role contributes to your company’s social responsibility and values. Being too vague or too picky can have negative effects on the potential candidate. For more tips on making effective job descriptions, check out our blog about it.
3. Optimize Recruitment and Sourcing
With the rise of high-volume “bot” applications, AI, and fake candidates, sourcing candidates who are real, qualified, and a good fit for your organization is tougher than ever. This is why proactively sourcing candidates with a recruiting research firm like Corporate Navigators can be a game changer in your hiring timeline. If you have a dedicated HR and recruitment team, you can also task them with proactively engaging candidates to reach diverse talent pools.
4. Implement Skills-Based Assessment
While there is nothing wrong with traditional resumes as they provide a decent first glance at a candidate’s background, skills-based hiring is a growing hiring trend, and for good reason. If you shift your focus from traditional credentials to skills and potential, you can unlock a whole new talent pool. Use objective skills assessments to evaluate candidates’ abilities and fit for the role, enabling you to tap into a broader and more diverse array of candidates.
5. Reform The Verbiage in Your Interviewing Processes
In everything you say or do regarding candidates, have your values be reflected in it. Making small adjustments like updating screening and interview questions will make it easier to assess candidates’ alignment with your company values and their potential for social impact. This will also ensure fairness and reduce unconscious bias throughout the process.
6. Support Employee Success and Growth after Hiring
Impact hiring doesn’t just end when the candidate onboards. Give them opportunities to grow after they are hired and you will invest in maximum employee retention potential. By providing empathetic onboarding, training, mentorship, and career development opportunities. Support systems help retain talent and foster long-term growth within the company.
7. Use Data to Drive Continuous Improvement
To ensure that your impact hiring process is effective, it’s important to continually self-reflect. To achieve this, collect and analyze data on hiring outcomes, candidate demographics, and employee performance. Use these insights to refine your impact hiring strategy and scale successful practices across the organization.
Impact Hiring Tips: Recruit for Success
By following these steps, you can transform your hiring process to get maximum return on investment. Whether you need entry-level employees or to recruit executives, making an ongoing positive impact on your team will make the best environment for high engagement and retention. Use these tips to unlock untapped potential and drive meaningful impact in growing your team!
