The 3 biggest language missed opportunities
Nevertheless, inclusive writing still regularly goes wrong. And that often happens unconsciously. When writing vacancy texts, you run the risk of only addressing a small group of potential candidates. This makes the chance of finding the perfect, diverse, candidate even smaller.
What goes wrong then if we want to write inclusively?
1. The language level: make it easy and pleasant to read for a large group
The goal of inclusive writing is that everyone can find and understand your vacancy. Various studies by Textmetrics within 300 Dutch companies have shown that many vacancy texts are written too difficult. Of course, highly educated people can understand more complex texts. But that doesn't mean they want to read it. If you pay attention to writing in understandable language, it will take the reader less time and energy to read the text. In doing so, they are more likely to become enthusiastic and motivated by a text that is not too complex.
What makes a text easy and pleasant to read? For that keep the following points in mind:
- Do not use difficult/specialist words, but choose words that everyone knows.
- Write concise, lively sentences that are easy to read.
Do not forget to give the vacancy text a clear title and subheadings. - Use bullet points and keep your paragraphs short.
- Choose a legible font and enough white spaces.
2. Bias: don't discriminate (unknowingly) on age and gender
Inclusive writing is done to address different types of people. You should not make any distinction based on age or gender. Unfortunately, this still happens (consciously and unconsciously) in many vacancy texts. For example, it may state that organizations are looking for students. Or that they are looking for candidates with a maximum of 8 years of work experience. By avoiding these kinds of sentences you can prevent age discrimination. A more sophisticated form of ageism in job openings can for example be describing the team as young and energetic.
There is something else going on when it comes to gender bias. Unconsciously, many texts have a more masculine tone of voice, which makes women feel less addressed when they read these texts. In many vacancies we also see words that refer to characteristics that are known as 'masculine'. See below some examples of masculine and feminine words.
Male | Female |
Autonomously | Involved |
Analytical | Communicative |
Decisive | Customer-friendly |
Result-oriented | Honest |
Driven | Sensitive |
Firmly | Committed |
Below you will find an example of a male-formulated job requirement
You are result oriented
Do you want to make this sentence feminine or gender neutral? Then choose the focus on behaviour:
You are able to achieve results
Check your vacancy texts for the amount of male (or female) characteristics you name in the profile and strive for a good mix of both.
3. The accessibility
You publish most vacancies online. No less than 25% of all internet users have a functional limitation. Then you have to think of people who are, for example, hard of hearing, blind or color blind. So you have to take digital accessibility into account. You don't just want to appeal to more people, but above all you don't want to exclude anyone.
It revolves around 4 principles. Include these in the texts you write for online use. The text must:
- Be observable: people should be able to experience and use the website with the senses they have. Think of text alternatives for non-text content such as a video or image.
- Be operable: people should be able to find and use the content on the website. For example, a page with content must also only be navigable with a keyboard and without a mouse.
- Be understandable: people and software must be able to understand the content. Think of making the content readable and clear and of the language level.
- Be robust: this is a bit technical, but the point is that the content must be reliable to interpret.
The above principles seem obvious, but various analyzes by Textmetrics show the opposite. The aforementioned study among 300 Dutch companies also looked at digital accessibility. The vast majority of companies have multiple accessibility issues.