Prestige alone is no longer enough to attract talent. Candidates now choose employers based on people culture more than any other factor. If you want more top talent to apply and complete your hiring journey, then you need to show a commitment to inclusion and diversity.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is making headlines right now across the world. While it’s making some business leaders cautious, many UK employers are doubling down on their commitment to inclusivity, rather than walking away from it. Candidates have also not been swayed. They still look for simple proof that they will belong and be treated fairly. In practice, that means real people, clear steps and a process that respects them from start to finish. And for those more cautious business leaders, the proof is out there – research from Great Place to Work* shows that diverse and inclusive workplaces benefit from:
- Higher revenue growth
- Greater readiness to innovate
- 5.4 times higher employee retention
This “dos and don’ts” guide offers 6 simple, practical steps firms can take to turn quiet interest into confident applications. It helps employers provide a more inclusive candidate experience. Each step signals to candidates that they will feel a sense of belonging and thrive working for your organisation, while also reducing drop offs and streamlining manual admin for busy teams.
In this article, we’ll be looking at:
- Six topics with Do/Don’t guidance you can roll out this month
What to keep in mind right now (who decides vs who applies)
To create lasting change, you need to start by looking at possible obstacles to success:
Executive decision makers might want to prioritise brand control, client promises, compliance and cost over inclusive hiring. Visible DEI signals might seem too “politically charged” right now. And smaller projects, such as Employee Resource Group (ERG) activity, responding to online reviews or simple culture videos might be viewed as “nice to haves” that add work without adding impact.
Candidates have a different agenda of course. What attracts them to particular firms goes way beyond remuneration packages. We spend a lot of our time at work. Every single candidate, wherever they are in their career, wants to feel supported and a sense of belonging. Diversity candidates might also be looking for a visible route for adjustments, real people they might work with, or for signs the firm listens and is responsive. When the signals for any of this feel vague or dated, strong candidates tend to drift to employers who explain themselves better rather than investigating further.
Bridging the gap between these two stakeholder groups is done by framing inclusion as operational clarity:
- A careers page that explains the hiring journey reduces inbox noise.
- Simple adjustment routes lower complaint rates and improve overall hiring performance.
- Short, dated updates and calm review replies build brand reputation and trust, without plundering budgets.
If you’re looking to make your talent attraction more inclusive, then internal communication and collaboration is crucial. Expect questions from your brand, legal and IT teams, and meet them armed with specifics: copy that can be easily kept current, wording cleared once and reused, webpages that are optimised for mobile, and updates that can be scheduled.
Start where risk is low and impact high – implement one or two items from the list below and demonstrate better application completion rates, or fewer queries, and you can start to broaden your scope from there.
Dos and Don’ts for Talent Acquisition
1. DEI page with social proof
Do. Treat your DEI page as a live window into your business. The aim is simple: after a one-minute skim, a candidate should be able to picture themselves in your organisation and trust that the support is real.
Explain in a few lines how inclusion shows up in the day to day running of your business, then prove it. Share recent employee-led activities, add information on your community work, and do it with warmth. Candidates need to see the real people behind the corporate façade.
Add short testimonials with names, roles and how long each person has been with your organisation. This allows future candidates to see who is thriving. If you partner with charities, training providers or use software than enhances inclusion, such as inclusive language checkers on your applicant tracking software (ATS), or screen reader friendly design, then name them.
Also, don’t forget to include any culture or inclusion awards you hold. Be sure to add dates and a sentence or two on why they matter to the company. Outline the benefits that support everyone at your firm – from mentoring, learning and development to wellbeing support.
Finally, add a clear link to how adjustments work for all candidates during the hiring journey. Candidate experience is key – so demonstrate how you weave adjustments into the application process, not as anomalies or obstacles, just as part of your day-to-day hiring process.
Don’t. Avoid using stock imagery, or generic content about “valuing diversity”. Don’t leave your DEI page sitting untouched for a year, keep it up to date. It’s also worth ensuring your ERG activity isn’t hidden away on internal communication channels. When applicants cannot find proof, they can assume inclusion is a slide deck, not a practice, and move on.
2. Careers pages that explain the journey and feel human
Do. Use your careers page to answer the questions candidates actually ask. Set out the hiring steps and typical timelines in plain English, so people know what happens next. Make sure you are demonstrating what good looks like at each stage, so expectations are shared and understood.
Give a simple outline of career paths. This allows applicants to see how growth works in your organisation from entry to leadership. Make the page even more informative by including employee stories in both text and video format; focus on short, honest pieces – they’ll build much more trust than a glossy, polished montage.
Use real photos of named employees and consider adding a short sentence from them on what surprised them about their candidate experience. Above all, make sure you are linking this page from every job advert, so no one misses it.
When done well, careers pages let people build a mental image of the role, the work involved and the team. All of this raises application rates and reduces drop off.
Don’t. Do not send people into a maze of PDFs to find basic information or rely on one polished film that never changes. Sparse or dated pages signal indifference and pushes candidates towards more proactive employers.
3. Using company reviews as a marketing channel
Do: Always assume that your candidates will have checked company reviews. Be transparent and link to your Glassdoor and Google profiles from your careers page. Ensure you respond calmly to all reviews, thank people for positive reviews and acknowledge the negatives too. Share what has changed, even if the fix was small. Consider building a light rhythm into the year by inviting interns, returners and leavers to add feedback, then publish a short “what we changed” note twice annually. If common themes pop up, be sure to feed them into talent attraction team meetings, onboarding workflows, manager training and your “day-one” kit. This demonstrates you don’t just listen; you also act. Not only does this build trust, but it also reduces time spent by your team dealing with the same questions cropping up through side channels.
Don’t: Don’t ignore reviews, or common patterns. Don’t bury or hide links and hope people won’t look, because they will. If candidates only find unaddressed complaints, they will assume you do not care, or cannot change things, and they will move on.
4. Rewards and recognition, beyond pay
Do. Show that effort is recognised and rewarded. Use a section of your careers page to point to how you celebrate wins both big and small. Demonstrate that recognition is an everyday occurrence, whether in the form of peer shout outs and project credits or larger company-wide awards events.
Shine a light on internal mobility, whether that’s secondments, cross-team projects, or short exchanges with other offices. Be clear about learning and development opportunities, from study time to mentoring, and make it clear how employees can put themselves forward.
Clarity around rewards and recognition help candidates see that your firm will provide opportunities, not just payslips. The signal you are sending is simple: people grow here, and we make space for it.
Don’t. Avoid long perks lists with no context. Hidden rules and uneven practice (for example, flexibility and learning and development opportunities that differ by department or manager) are of no use and are a quick way to lose top talent.
5. External accountability – handling reviews, news and scrutiny
Do. Expect that external events, whether a negative news story, a viral social media post, or a critical industry conversation, will influence candidate attraction. Maintain a simple, dated public statement in clear sight on your website, or add a “what we learned” blog which addresses significant events clearly and calmly.
If your firm is mentioned in a diversity/ESG report or survey, link to it and highlight the key takeaway – even if it shows areas for improvement. This shows accountability and that your firm is prepared to listen and to make changes.
Don’t. Go silent when a challenging situation arises, especially one related to inclusion, ethics or fairness. Candidates interpret silence as guilt or indifference. Avoid defensive, overly corporate or legalistic language – stick to plain English at all times. Explain succinctly what you learned and what specific actions you took as a result. Transparency is crucial.
6. Adjustments and Accessibility – clear routes and honest support
Do. Provide simple, visible and confidential routes for candidate to request adjustments at any stage of the application process. Use a clearly labelled link for this on all job adverts, application forms and careers pages. Be explicit about who sees any adjustment request, usually only HR or your talent acquisition team, and how quickly you will respond. Ensure you reply within the given timeframe. Make sure you frame any adjustment requests as a standard part of the hiring process rather than an irregularity.
Don’t. Hide the adjustment process or make it overly bureaucratic. Never put pressure on candidates to say why they require an adjustment and don’t let adjustment requests lapse. It’s essential you ensure candidates don’t have to re-explain their needs to every new person they meet in the process, the candidate experience should feel effortless for every applicant. Internal communication on this point is key; wherever possible add notes to the candidate card in your ATS, to make the hiring team aware of any adjustments they need to know about and use rule-based workflows in your ATS to adapt the process for them.
Feature Spotlight – how Reach ATS supports inclusive recruitment
- Anonymous review and fair screening: Reach ATS facilitates blind screening by anonymising any or all identifying candidate information. Directly supporting inclusion by mitigating unconscious bias.
- Flexible workflows: Our fully configurable ATS allows teams to add in dedicated support channels and workflows for candidates with adjustment requests. Rules-based access means that requests go straight to the correct, confidential point of contact, with all contact logged for a full audit trail.
- Accessible design and content: Reach ATS creates fully accessible careers pages and campaign microsites. Our AI tools allow you to check ads and job descriptions for inclusive language and ensure all content uses legible fonts, clean code for screen readers and captioning options for embedded videos.
- Standardised and timely communication: Our smart ATS lets you schedule clear, consistent, personalised email updates as part of your hiring workflows, reducing manual administration. Our AI tools help hiring teams check all correspondence from job ads to emails for inclusive language and follow your corporate rules on tone of voice too. Ensuring every candidate is treated with care and respect.