What Pride Month Reminds Us About Inclusive Hiring and the Systems We're Building to Do Better

At Recruitment Smart, we don’t see Pride Month as a campaign window. We see it as a checkpoint.

Because when you build technology that influences who gets hired, you also carry responsibility for who gets excluded, intentionally or not.

It’s easy to celebrate diversity with language. It’s harder to embed it into logic. Into workflows. Into product design decisions that quietly shape outcomes.

Pride Month reminds us to ask the questions we should already be asking year-round: Are we helping organisations hire fairly? Are we building systems that allow people to show up fully? Are we doing enough to make bias visible and correctable?

The Reality: Inclusion Isn’t a Given. It Has to Be Designed.

Hiring systems aren’t neutral by default. If they’re not built with inclusion in mind, they tend to replicate the past. And that’s exactly the problem we’re solving for.

Here’s what the data tells us:

• 3 in 5 LGBTQ+ candidates say they’ve experienced discrimination during hiring
• 75% of CVs are rejected before a human even sees them
• Neurodiverse candidates face up to 30% higher rejection rates in early rounds
• Only 38% of companies have a documented DEI hiring strategy
• Unstructured interviews are 2x more likely to lead to biased decisions
• 26% of job descriptions use inclusive language by default
• Transgender job seekers frequently encounter barriers in application processes that are not inclusive, leading many to avoid applying for certain roles.
• Minority candidates are more likely to be judged on “fit” instead of skill
• 57% of employers say their interviewers aren’t trained in inclusive evaluation
• Companies with diverse leadership are 27% more likely to financially outperform their peers

These are not edge cases. This is the hiring landscape most candidates move through. And it’s why we build our products the way we do.

Built for Better: Where Our Products Stand on DEI

We don’t believe in diversity features. We believe in inclusive infrastructure. That means every platform we build at Recruitment Smart is designed to see more, hear more, and miss less.

SniperAI – Fairness Starts with the First Match

SniperAI is our intelligent CV matcher but it’s not just about relevance. It’s about reach.

It’s designed to:

• Surface transferable skills, not just identical resumes
• Flag exclusionary language before it reaches a job board
• Prioritise overlooked potential, not just perfect matches
• Avoid pattern-matching that reinforces sameness

Bias doesn’t always happen in the interview. Often, it happens before a person’s even considered. SniperAI helps change that.

JeevesAI – Inclusive Conversations, On Autopilot

JeevesAI helps candidates feel seen, not sorted. It runs smart pre-screening conversations that:

• Respect pronouns and identity preferences
• Adjust tone and pace for different communication styles
• Maintain equal clarity and guidance across all candidates

That’s how we reduce the early-stage friction that causes 40% of candidates to drop off unnecessarily.

VScreen – Interviews with Structure, Not Subjectivity

VScreen supports live and async interviews with fairness built in. It:

• Applies consistent scoring rubrics across candidates
• Offers anonymised review options to reduce visual bias
• Includes accessibility features like captions and flexible formats
• Creates a digital trail for transparent evaluations

If your interview process changes based on who’s in the room, that’s not flexibility—it’s risk. VScreen helps fix that.

Pride Isn’t a Campaign. It’s a Calibration Point.

Pride Month isn’t just about flag colors or filtered logos. It’s a moment to ask: What does it mean to be valid in a hiring process? To show up without being coded or corrected?

For us, that answer comes down to this: We build hiring systems that don’t assume the default is the best fit. Because hiring should reflect possibility, not just precedent.

What We Commit to Every Day

We’re not here to posture. We’re here to build responsibly. That means:

• Designing screening tools that correct for historic bias
• Creating flows where identity is acknowledged, not erased
• Supporting candidates with different access needs
• Making interview outcomes traceable and defensible
• Helping clients align tech with values, not just speed

We don’t believe DEI lives in one module or dashboard. It lives in the logic of how decisions get made.

Final Word: Inclusion Is a Product Standard, Not a Statement

We stand with the LGBTQ+ community this Pride Month—but more importantly, we stand for building systems that don’t require people to translate themselves to be considered.

Hiring is about connection. Equity. Respect. If your tech can’t deliver that, it’s not solving the right problem.

If you’re looking to build a hiring process that sees more of the right people, then book a discovery call. Let’s make fairness your first feature, not your fallback.