The Hiring Process
Finding and hiring great people are the first essential step to building a diverse team and an equitable and inclusive company culture. Unfortunately, without a system to guide hiring managers through the process, they will too often hire people just like themselves. The result is a homogenous, less effective team and workforce, and one that is overwhelmingly white and male.
Receiving feedback from DEI Committee members and the company, we broke down and evaluated each step of our hiring process—from finding great talent, through interviewing, case studies, and all the way through the offer.
Receiving feedback from DEI Committee members and the company, we broke down and evaluated each step of our hiring process—from finding great talent, through interviewing, case studies, and all the way through the offer.
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Our first step was to look at where we sourced talent from. We partnered with organizations like local Chicago city colleges, the NAACP, and groups of professionals from underrepresented backgrounds to make sure our job postings reached channels where candidates were more likely to find the job and apply. We rebuilt how we posted our positions—inviting candidates to apply even if they did not meet 100% of the criteria. We set internal guidelines to make sure the group of candidates we invited to interview was diverse not only of race or gender but of experience and background.
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We recognized first impressions are biased, so we implemented a hiring matrix system shown to help interviewers recognize patterns in their evaluation and when their evaluations are outside of the norm. We developed standardized interview questions and case studies to objectively value candidates.
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