Openreach | Firm hopes to attract more female candidates with 'language review'

Telecommunications company Openreach is set to shine a light on bias language used in job adverts, after the firm discovered that gender biased language discourages as many as one in two female candidates from applying.

In a release published by the company, Openreach shared that it hopes its new linguistic approach will help it meet a commitment to recruit a minimum of 20% female candidates into new positions in 2021.

Openreach’s study found that women are 50% less likely to consider roles that have a coded gender bias. However, when presented with a gender-inclusive advert, female applicants’ interest in the position spiked by more than 200%, with 60% sharing that this was due to the manner in which it was written.

To tackle this, the firm launched a new consciously unbiased job description for its entry-level engineering role, with the language carefully selected in order to appeal to a female audience.