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Webinar tip · 22 October 2026

Ask for behaviours, not traits, in job adverts

Women are less likely to apply when requirements are written as traits ('a natural leader') rather than behaviours ('good leadership skills').

Dr Janine VictorThomas International

Small changes in wording change who applies. Dr Janine Victor of Thomas International gave one you can make in your next advert.

Traits versus behaviours

Research shows women are less likely to apply for a job when requirements are written as traits rather than behaviours. 'You are a natural leader' is a trait. 'You have good leadership skills' is a behaviour, and attracts more women.

Victor also pointed to free online tools that check job adverts for gendered language.

What to do this week

  • Rewrite every 'you are' requirement in your live adverts as 'you have' or 'you can'.
  • Run your top three adverts through a gendered-language checker.
  • Cut requirements to the essentials: long lists of musts put people off.
Read the clip transcript

Something interesting is that research has shown that women are actually less likely to apply for a job if requirements are expressed as traits rather than behaviours. So the traits might be, you are a natural leader. So that might be the requirement. Versus the behaviour, you have good leadership skills. So if you're going to write, you have good leadership skills, it's, you know, it will attract women as opposed to you are a natural leader. And something that could be quite helpful is that there's various gendered language bias tools online that you could, you could, you know, go and have a look at.

From the webinar · Jun 2022

Tackling Unconscious Bias in Recruitment

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