You may think that a strange question to ask, after all a website is but an inanimate object. New research suggests however that the perceived diversity of your website has a big impact on the diversity of the candidates you attract for new job vacancies.

Let me explain. A paper, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, has recently revealed that recruitment websites that present cues of racial diversity encourage candidates of all races to browse for longer.

The research team had initially expected that cues of racial diversity such as images and testimonials would encourage ethnic minority applicants by suggesting that the organisation supports employees from all walks of life.

They tested this hypothesis by monitoring what candidates did as they browsed recruitment websites, and then what each candidate remembered about the sites they’d just browsed.

The study asked candidates to browse several websites, some fictional, some real.  There were a mixture of diversity cues present on each site, ranging from strong diversity cues to none at all.

When tested two weeks after the browsing, black candidates found they could recall more information about the sites with strong diversity cues, whilst also spending more time browsing those sites.

Interestingly however, the same was also true of white candidates. It wasn’t such as strong as for black candidates but it was visible nonetheless.

Of course the cues have to be sincere, but if your organisation is genuinely diverse then showing that via your recruitment pages can have a big impact on the range of talented individuals you can attract. So if you’re a culturally diverse organisation, it seems clear you should be shouting it from the rooftops, or at least from your website.

Adi Gaskell is Head of Online at the Process Excellence Network