VANRATH: “ReachDeck is helping us to pioneer inclusive recruitment in Northern Ireland.”
VANRATH are committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all their candidates.
VANRATH is a leading recruitment agency in Northern Ireland. Established in 2000, they’ve placed over 15,000 candidates so far, supporting them through every step of the recruitment process. Today, VANRATH is the most reviewed and highest-rated agency in Northern Ireland. They have over 1000 Google reviews, and a client retention rate of 96%.
As VANRATH continues to build career success stories, they're doing so with a commitment to inclusive recruitment. This enables them to reach more diverse talent, so they can continue teaming their clients up with the best people.
Below, VANRATH shares how web accessibility software, ReachDeck, helps them to recruit in a way that’s accessible and inclusive to all people.
Outcomes
- ReachDeck is supporting VANRATH in their goal to be "at the forefront of accessibility in the recruitment sector."
- Its features have allows VANRATH to be "more inclusive of visitors with visual impairments, cognitive challenges, and limited English.”
Inclusive recruitment
VANRATH is committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all their candidates. That means, to recruit in a way that recognises, understands and values differences in every part of the process.
15% of people have a disability. 1 in 5 people are neurodivergent, meaning they have a neurodiversity such as Dyslexia, Autism or ADHD, for example. With inclusive recruitment, organisations can better attract neurodivergent and disabled talent. With a diverse workforce, they reap the benefits that come from diversity of thought and lived experience.
Speaking on VANRATH’s mission, Jordan Duffy, Senior Marketing Executive at VANRATH says;
“Building successful careers and supporting our clients with the best talent in the market is at the heart of everything we do. We are driven by a passion to help people build careers that meet their goals, and help businesses achieve success through great and strategic talent.”
Inclusive recruitment allows organisations to reach the best people for the roles they’re recruiting for. That’s because it enables all people to access the career opportunities available, regardless of disability or difference.
Jordan highlights;
“At VANRATH we want our recruitment process to be an inclusive one, at every stage. This begins with our website. Every website user has different capabilities, so we need to make sure that our content can be accessed, used and understood by everyone.”
Placing an emphasis on the benefits of inclusive recruitment, Jordan continues;
“We are seeing more and more clients hiring a diverse workforce. With that, we need to ensure that we are inclusive of all types of people with different capabilities. Not only will this help us to be a trailblazer in the recruitment industry, improving digital accessibility is also the right thing to do.”
As part of their commitment to inclusive recruitment, VANRATH decided to invest in web accessibility software, ReachDeck.
Jordan explains;
“We want to be at the forefront of accessibility in the recruitment sector, and help other organisations improve their offering too. As an industry it’s important. We need to improve accessibility so that all candidates can have equal access to employment opportunities. ReachDeck is helping us towards this goal.”
Having an accessible website is hugely important to us. We want our jobs, recruitment services, and content to be accessible to everyone. Our partnership with Texthelp has given us the tools to manage our site more effectively.
ReachDeck
ReachDeck is an all-in-one digital inclusion solution that helps organisations make online content accessible and usable for everyone.
It contains the ReachDeck:
- Auditor which scans websites for technical accessibility errors in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). WCAG set the international standard for web accessibility. It also identifies readability issues at scale. Readability is all about how easy or difficult it is to read something.
- Editor - an editing tool that supports teams to create content that’s easy for everyone to understand. As the user types, it highlights grammar, spelling and readability errors.
- Toolbar - an accessibility toolbar that offers assistive features to online users. It adds text-to-speech, reading and translation support. This allows web visitors to access online content in the way that suits them best.
Sharing the benefits of ReachDeck, Jordan says;
“The ReachDeck Auditor allows us to find and fix accessibility errors at scale. It also helps to make our website more compatible with search engines. That’s because there’s a considerable overlap between features that improve accessibility and SEO performance. It also helps us to make our website reader-friendly for all. The ReachDeck Auditor identifies readability issues, whilst the ReachDeck Editor guides us to improve content readability. It helps us to write content that’s free from long sentences, jargon, and is of a lower reading age.”
Jordan continues;
“By adding the ReachDeck Toolbar to our website, we are ensuring that our website is as easy to use as possible. It has allowed us to be more inclusive of visitors with visual impairments, cognitive challenges, and limited English.”
The ReachDeck Toolbar allows web visitors to customise their online experience. For example, with the Toolbar visitors can;
- Use Text-to-Speech to read on-screen text out loud;
- Translate words into multiple languages;
- Display the meaning of words through illustration;
- Convert online content into MP3 files for easy listening;
- Magnify text for reading out loud;
- Create a simplified view of a webpage to remove distracting content.
The ability to customise the Toolbar was a main selling point for the team at VANRATH. Jordan explains;
“To attract a wider talent pool to job applications was the main reason for looking for web accessibility software. But we also wanted to be able to allow candidates the chance to customise their online experience. We know everyone has their own unique capabilities so this was important to us. The ReachDeck Toolbar allows visitors to customise our content to suit their own specific needs. For example translating content into different languages, reading aloud, and styling assistance. This includes adjustments to colour, font type, and size – this was what really sold ReachDeck to our business. ”
We are simply delighted to be able to add ReachDeck’s accessibility toolkit to our website! We want our jobs, recruitment services, and content to be accessible to everyone and feel it is important to give people a customised experience to meet their individual capabilities. We hope this feature further demonstrates our commitment to pioneering inclusive recruitment in Northern Ireland.
3 benefits for inclusion
Today, recruiters are competing on a much bigger scale than ever before. With an increase in remote working, local talent is being recruited into global roles. Online recruitment channels are becoming increasingly important.
Looking to the future, Jordan reflects on the growing need for accessibility in recruitment;
“We know that there is an appetite for employers to make positive changes to the way they attract, recruit, develop, and retain employees. We would say to any organisation that truly values diversity and inclusion that they consider adding an accessibility toolkit to their website – it can really make a difference to the way you recruit and operate.”
Sharing 3 key benefits, Jordan highlights that with an accessible website organisations are able to;
- Draw from the widest pool of talent available. By opening up your recruitment process you’re inviting talent from all walks of life. Not just those that are able to ‘pass’ non-inclusive processes.
- Benefit from a neurodiverse workforce. Neurodivergent employees are often creative thinkers and strategic problem solvers. They bring a wealth of benefits to any organisation.
- Create equal opportunities that make everyone feel included. The employee journey starts at the recruitment stage. By recruiting inclusively you’re recognising and valuing diversity right from the start. That means, you’re creating a welcoming environment for all your employees, right from day 1.
For any organisation wanting to begin their journey with inclusive recruitment, Jordan says;
“Many companies may shy away from web accessibility and inclusion factors. They’re often perceived as being complex, expensive, or simply too difficult to work around. But that’s not true. Small changes can make a big impact, you just need to be willing to begin. Inclusive recruitment tools also offer support along the way.”
You can discover more from VANRATH about their journey with ReachDeck in this webinar - 3 Steps to Accessible & Inclusive Recruitment with VANRATH.
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