Recruiting Changes that Increase Representation
It’s now common knowledge that more diverse workforces make for a more innovative and successful organization. At Petal, we’re proud of the work we’ve done in Recruiting to move the needle in the right direction, and you can check out our results here. While there is still room for improvement toward our goal of being truly representative of the U.S. workforce, we continue to iterate our current processes to make them even fairer and more equitable.
Our job doesn’t just start and end with the Petal team. We aspire to help other companies achieve some of the same success we’ve had in creating a more diverse workforce. Here are the four highest-impact changes we’ve made to our Recruiting processes in the past few years.
- Rigorously apply ‘Structured Interviewing’
You’ve probably heard this before, but that’s because it’s absolutely true: Structured Interviewing is key to creating an unbiased recruiting process. By assessing candidates against the same questions and using the same evaluation framework for each interview, we’re able to get a more holistic view of each candidate and their potential contributions to the company. And we believe this leads to more equitable decisions. Here are some of the highest-impact steps of our Structured Interviewing process:
2. Require diverse interview panels
We have publicly committed to hiring more women in technical roles and more Black and LatinX employees across all functions, and to do that, we require that our interview panels include at least two people from underrepresented minority groups. This allows us to gain a diversity of perspectives from our interviews.
One example where we’ve seen this change make a huge difference is with our Engineering team. Women candidates have said over and over again that they feel represented and more comfortable interviewing with us. Just the other day I received the following note from a woman engineering candidate: “Thank you for setting up my technical call with {}. I had a lovely experience yesterday with her. This was actually the first time going through a technical interview with a woman and it was everything I hoped for.” It really does make a difference!
The results of our efforts speak for themselves: we are currently at 29% women on the Engineering team, a significant increase from just 19% this time last year.
3. Proactively invite people who will thrive in your culture, not just those with the hard skills
“At Petal, we’re looking for people with kindness, positivity, and integrity.” This short blurb proactively tells potential candidates about our low-ego, inclusive culture. We’ve added it to all of our job descriptions since October 2019, and it’s been instrumental to increasing inbound applications. I’ve heard repeatedly from candidates that this description really resonates with them and is what compelled them to apply. It’s incredible what one line in a job description can do!
Now, not every company can claim to have the same culture as Petal, so this recommendation may not be fully transferable. However, if your organization is one that looks beyond the resume to the totality of a candidate’s experience, say so! At Petal, we communicate to potential candidates that their experiences don’t need to precisely match the job description; they are encouraged to apply anyway. While there are certain hard and soft skills that are non-negotiable for each role, we also value people who are eager to learn quickly, have an intrinsic drive to succeed, and are passionate about Petal’s mission to “make life easier with credit that’s honest, simple, and accessible”. These are all things that won’t necessarily be on a one-page resume or achieved through a more “traditional” career path.
4. Instill equity into our sourcing and selection process
It is known that women and those of Black and LatinX descent have not historically been well-represented in the finance and technology industries. Relying solely on inbound applicants would yield an employee population that is predominantly White or Asian and men. And while we embrace our team members who fit those profiles, we realize that there is a ton of untapped talent beyond these groups.
Therefore, we don’t rely solely on our inbound application channel for underrepresented leads; sourcing is an effective way to get people from diverse backgrounds into our pipeline. We’re committed to kicking off most new searches with a dedicated period of actively and deliberately reaching out to people from underrepresented populations. This includes connecting with alumni from HBCU (historically black colleges or universities) and focusing on engineering bootcamps known for fostering diverse student bodies.
In addition to applying our Recruiting team’s efforts to sourcing diverse candidate pools, we mobilize the entire team of Petalians to help us out. We offer a bonus for referring underrepresented friends/contacts/former colleagues to our open roles, with different amounts based on seniority.
Our belief is that we are leveling the playing field by inviting those who might not otherwise know about Petal, or know about fintech, or have friends who refer them to roles via traditional recruiting channels. And although we do not make hiring decisions based on race or gender, we try our best to ensure that at least 1 or 2 of the finalists for every role come from an underrepresented community as a result of implementing the aforementioned sourcing and interviewing methodologies. This keeps us accountable to our commitment to instill equity into our hiring process.
Keeping our process equitable also comes into play at the end of the selection process, when Hiring Managers submit their proposal to the Hiring Committee. This Committee reviews profiles of every candidate who gets hired and gives the final stamp of approval. Given their role, they are able to hold an objective standard for hiring, and command a holistic view on the diversity of our incoming team members.
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These are just a few of the changes we’ve made at Petal to increase representation. And we are still learning as we are going, with a lot more to do.
That being said, I challenge organizations to start with the small changes. Even if your team is super lean and you don’t have a ton of bandwidth, or — on the flipside — if you work at a larger company where it may be more difficult to make any large modifications, you’d be surprised by how small changes can lead to big impact. If we at Petal can do it with our limited resources, you can, too!
