Building an Accessible (and Delightful) Hiring Process
“Can a hiring process delight people?”
This was the question we set out to answer when we started hiring people at Access to Success. We read a lot, brainstormed a lot, and iterated a lot. Our goal was to create a process that would not just delight candidates, but also set an inclusive and welcoming stage for those who apply, those we interview, and those we hire. Above all, we wanted the entire process to be accessible for everyone.
Here’s what we learned and implemented.
1. Include an audio-described job description
Think back to when you were looking for jobs. How carefully did you read the usual 1000-word job descriptions? After the first few postings, they all kind of blend together, don’t they? For a lot of people, both neurodivergent and neurotypical, reading and evaluating dozens of these lengthy walls of texts can get incredibly draining.
So, we provide an alternative way to “read” our job postings — in the form of a video presentation on YouTube narrated by a member of our team. It’s a lot easier to consume and even makes staid old job descriptions look nice.
2. What’s “relevant experience”?
We love people who become experts in things out of sheer passion, not simply because they have to do it as part of their job. So, we define the tasks the role will include (recently adding the estimated proportion of each task), and let the candidate decide if they can do the tasks.
Every job we post has the statement:
“Formal experience in a work-like setting is not a requirement, we only ask that you demonstrate your ability to do the tasks required for this role. Whether you gained your relevant skills through a professional job, startup, side project, student club or even a serious hobby, it is all “relevant experience” for us.”
3. “Fit” goes both ways
We’re a very small organization, so we want to make sure candidates can get a sense of what working with us is like. After all, we want the candidates also to feel we are a good fit for them.
So, we include our own “references” from past team members and links to posts about our work culture. The number of interviewees who brought up those articles was a pleasant surprise, underscoring that personal perspectives about a work culture do matter.
It’s also necessary to go beyond the usual inclusivity statements. Our job description always includes:
“People with disabilities are encouraged to apply! As a not-for-profit working for disability inclusion, lived experience with disabilities is a tangible skillset that will add to our mission.”
Clear and enthusiastic communication matters.
4. Full-time or part-time?
In another article, I wrote that side hustles are welcome at Access to Success. Whenever we expand our team, we think long and hard about whether we really need someone to work full-time, or do we just need someone great who can do the job in half the hours if they wanted to. Most of the time, we find it’s the latter.
So, we give candidates the option to choose. Our priority is to find the best candidate and work with their needs, and this approach usually leads us to some absolutely incredible candidates. The kind who make me feel lucky they’d consider working with us.
5. Set the stage early for accommodation requests
Interviews often become very rigid and inflexibly formal. In the post-COVID world when everyone is wearing sweatpants under their desk, why bother with the pretense?
So, we make the interview invitation email casual, friendly and encouraging. We specifically tell candidates that the dress code is casual, and most importantly, encourage them to let us know if we can make the process more accessible for them. Our Calendly link to book an interview also asks if we can make the interview more accessible.
Lastly, right at the beginning of the interview, we ask if there’s anything we can do to make the conversation more accessible. This is the moment people bring up little things like, “My internet is a little glitchy today” or “My live captioning app has been acting wonky”. This is the opportunity to make sure candidates are comfortable before diving into the conversation.
6. Help candidates put their best foot forward
None of our roles require people to have all the answers on the spot. We usually discuss the problem, go back and do some research, and then discuss solutions. It’s not hard to imagine this is the case with the vast majority of jobs out there.
Our interviews largely mimic this process. We give our candidates roughly half of the interview questions with the invitation email itself, particularly those which are intended to test the depth of their knowledge in the subject matter.
7. Standardize the interview questions for each role
Standardizing interview questions is a fairly well-known recommendation. It allows for a clear comparison between candidates and limits extraneous biases.
Our interviews are 25% getting to know the person informally and 75% asking them a set of questions we decide in advance. The pre-set questions are a mix of three things — questions in “tell us about a time” format, questions that test how candidates think about solving problems they will face in the role, and questions to evaluate them on fit.
8. Score candidates on pre-set questions and note the scoring rationale
Having standardized the questions, each interviewer scores the candidates on each question and notes their rationale. This allows us as interviewers to discuss our opinions more objectively.
An unexpected benefit was that the scores and rationale also serve as an extremely helpful reference point when we need to hire new candidates for the same or similar roles.
9. “What can we do to make this the best job ever for you?”
This is the last question we always ask every interviewee (and one of the questions we share in advance). It allows us to understand what’s important to the candidate, what they hope to get out of the role, and/or their ideal working environment.
Interestingly, one common point that a lot of candidates brought up last year is their wish for clear communication. Not pay or perks, but just clear communication.
10. Communicate early and often — with all candidates
One more time, think back to when you were applying for jobs. How many times did you send an application into the void of an online portal, only to receive a generic confirmation and not a peep ever again? Or when you’d receive an automated rejection email 3 months after you applied? I don’t know about you, but I hated that experience.
So, we do rolling interviews which allow us to get back to candidates with an interview invitation or a decline within 1–2 weeks. For those we interview, if the scores are clearly below par, we send a decline within a week.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Naturally, we find a few candidates we really like early on in the process, but the interview process needs to go on with others. If we still haven’t sent a decision to those candidates in 2 weeks time, at that point we send them an email. We tell them we haven’t forgotten about them, and that we need another week or two to get back with a decision. The subject line of this email is literally “We haven’t forgotten about you”.
You may notice I skipped some table-stakes like making sure the job postings are accessible and actually providing accommodations. If you don’t know what that means, you have a fair amount of work to do before you can get to the delighting part.
As for us, we most certainly have not “figured out” inclusive hiring. But I’d like to believe we’ve made some interesting strides. There’s still a long way to go and I hope we keep learning, iterating and improving. In the meantime, hopefully you (if you’re still reading) can get some ideas out of the things we try.
Alright, your turn. What uncommon strategies do you use to make your hiring process inclusive, accessible and delightful?
