How to help non-binary job seekers feel included, not ‘othered’

Plenty of job applicants have had this experience: They fill out a job application, and at the end they’re asked to enter their demographic information. They select their race, disability status and veteran status. When they go to put in their gender, however, the drop-down offers just two options: male or female. For people who don’t identify as strictly male or female – an umbrella gender category called non-binary – choosing between two genders that don’t quite fit can be a particularly isolating experience. 

In 2020, Private Lives 3, Australia’s largest national survey of the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQ people to date, conducted by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University showed 13.6% of participants describe themselves as non-binary.

Yet many companies still fail to adequately recognise non-binary people as part of their hiring processes. Such omissions carry the risk of alienating a key group of workers, who might interpret a non-inclusive hiring form as a sign that a workplace won’t be a supportive environment for them. 

“It’s a lot about the signals that you send holistically throughout the recruitment process,” says Katina Sawyer, an associate professor of management at the University of Arizona who has studied transgender inclusion in the workplace. 

Below are some best practices to follow in order to be more inclusive of non-binary job seekers as they move through the application process.

Build an inclusive job application 

In order to show non-binary applicants that your company is a safe space, hiring managers should be sure to use inclusive language in job applications. The application, after all, is a potential employee’s first touchpoint with your company, and for LGBTQ+ job seekers, it can serve as an important signal of your workplace values. 

“I think people under-emphasise the importance of the job ad or description and the language that’s being used,” says Jessica Hardeman, global director of employee lifecycle at Indeed. “There are easy things you can do that will attract more candidates.”

Some companies have simply chosen to add an ‘other’ option to the gender section of their applications, an approach most experts recommend avoiding. “That word is actually not helpful, not supportive,” says Janine Yancey, founder and CEO of the inclusion-oriented employee training company Emtrain. Even if the idea of ‘other’ is to include many different genders at once, “just as easily, somebody could read ‘other’ as, ‘Oh, great, I’m being othered.’”

Instead, offer male, female and non-binary as gender options. Yancey suggests offering a fill-in-the-blank option too.

Companies can also add a space for applicants to list their pronouns. If someone’s candidacy moves to the interview stage, knowing their pronouns might help avoid a situation where a recruiter or hiring manager accidentally misgenders them. That said, pronoun questions should always be optional. Some non-binary applicants might be nervous about sharing their identity early in the application process, for fear of bias.  

Report non-binary employees correctly on government forms

Since 2013, there has been a concerted effort by the Australian government to implement the Australian Guidelines on the Recognition of Sex and Gender and include options on forms and official documents beyond the have been to the binary gender options: male or female.

Over the last decade, official recognition of non-binary identity has become more common at the government level. The Australian government issues passports with an ‘X’ marker for non-binary people. Unfortunately for HR managers, though, some Australian government departments are still catching up on the recommended Guidelines for non-binary people to identify themselves. This was especially evident in the 2021 Australian Census, and its failure to capture meaningful data on the non-binary population.

Regardless of the Australian government’s efforts, many employers have been slow to add a non-binary gender option to forms like applications and employee records. 

Focus on other aspects of inclusion

While using inclusive language in job applications and employee records is a critical first step, a truly gender-inclusive hiring process takes into account the multifaceted ways in which trans identity might show up in the hiring process. 

Recruiters and hiring managers should remain cognisant of names, for instance. Many trans and non-binary people use a name other than the one they were assigned at birth, and employers should be careful to use each candidate’s preferred name.

Likewise, when verifying an applicant’s background, keep in mind that their professional references or former bosses might know them by a different name. If a hiring manager does encounter a discrepancy between names, they should not assume the worst. “I’ve heard some horror stories about people being kind of thrown off in the process and then confronting candidates as though they were lying about their identity,” Sawyer says. 

Rather than confronting the applicant on a discrepancy in names, hiring managers should be open to the fact that the information they encountered on, say, an old college transcript is likely to include a name assigned at birth that the applicant no longer recognises (known as a deadname). 

Training hiring managers and recruiters on the nuances of non-binary and trans identity is one way to ensure a more inclusive workplace – and so is holding accountable anyone at your company who might disrespect non-binary applicants. 

If a recruiter is not sensitive to a person’s preferred pronouns, or uses a deadname even after being corrected, they risk alienating both qualified candidates and current employees. Thoughtful inclusion is critical for not only a company’s brand but for the humans who work there. And an inclusive mindset at a company inevitably trickles down to the hiring process. 

Job applicants “look at your company pages, they look at the people that work at the company already, because they’re really thinking, can I see myself there?” says Kathryn Koo, a senior diversity, inclusion and belonging business partner at Indeed. “All of these things kind of come into play when they’re deciding to click submit – or not.”