Charlene Delapena talks being intentional about diversity and changing the recruitment strategy at Coinbase
Charlene (Char) Delapena is the Head of Strategy at Jumpstart, the world’s smartest recruiting platform allowing university level engineering talent to connect directly with top companies. She brings over 6 years of in-house university recruiting experience having managed programs at Dolby Laboratories and Coinbase. Char is also the chair of this year’s annual URx Conference which has been a great platform for early career recruiting & development professionals to engage in thought-provoking sessions during the 2-day conference. Char is passionate about connecting early career individuals with opportunities that will help kick-off amazing careers.
How did you get into the blockchain space? What first piqued your interest?
Before Coinbase I was at Dolby Laboratories for about six and a half years, and over five years was spent managing the University Recruiting program. During the 5th year of the Summer Internship Program, Coinbase reached out to me about an opportunity to build out their UR program. I will be fully transparent and say that when Coinbase initially reached out I had no idea who they were, but the great thing was that they provided me with a number of different reading materials to get to know the crypto and blockchain space a little bit better. And through that, coupled with the interviewers that I met with, I grew really interested in the space. I felt that I was ready to take a risk on a new industry, one still in the nascent stages, but one that had a ton of potential.
What got you interested in working at Coinbase? What path did you follow to become a University Recruiter?
My path is a bit of an anomaly in that my undergrad was in telecommunications, but I found early on that I wasn’t going to be a network engineer or a programmer, so I leveraged my minor in management. My first role at Dolby was as an executive assistant, but soon after, I started working closely with the head of talent at Dolby who wanted to onboard entry level talent. I quickly discovered that every aspect of University Recruiting is one that I’m really passionate about, from full-cycle recruiting to the summer program to on-campus recruiting. Creating opportunities for students is something that I’m just really excited about.
What kinds of diversity initiatives does Coinbase support? How do these create an inclusive company culture?
When I started at Coinbase, we had identified that an emphasis on bringing in a more diverse pipeline was crucial to the organization. The crypto industry is even less diverse than the audio engineering space, so it was definitely more of a challenge for me. Rather than attending career fairs at our target school list, I focused on connecting with many of the diverse student groups on-campus. I worked with the Society of Women Engineers, Women in CS, National Society of Black Engineers, and Society of Hispanics and Professional Engineers to not only set up discussions on-campus, but to intentionally build a relationship with these groups. Our strategy proved successful as our 2018 internship program was 58% diverse– which meant that 58% of our class was either female or was an underrepresented minority. This was a huge increase from the previous year’s program, which stood at 17% diverse.
What have you noticed while recruiting that prevents women from entering the blockchain space?
What’s been evident through our on-campus recruiting efforts is that there are women who don’t quite understand that there are opportunities for them at Coinbase. Many of them assume that if they are not crypto or blockchain specialists, there won’t be a place for them in the industry.
How did you address this question?
We were there to assure our female attendees that at Coinbase, we are made up of people across the range with regards to knowledge around crypto and blockchain. Our focus is to find people who are passionate about our mission to create an open financial system for the world and who embody our core values. For engineering, we look for individuals who not only embody our values but also possess great programming skills.
Did this focus on bringing women into the recruitment pipeline and addressing their questions change Coinbase’s recruitment numbers this season?
Oh my gosh, yes. I haven’t run the metrics, but the increased number of women candidates we were seeing post-Grace Hopper and on-campus recruiting were overwhelmingly positive.
To reiterate, we were very intentional about our strategy. It’s one thing to say we want more women at our company, but if you’re not intentional about your initiatives, it’s not going to move the needle.
How has your experience recruiting at Coinbase (a blockchain company) different from recruiting at any other tech company?
Very very different. Recruiting at Dolby was slightly easier as everyone was already familiar with the industry whereas at Coinbase, we had to invest the time to educate people on the crypto and blockchain space before telling them about our company and our opportunities.
What is the biggest tip you would share with any woman hoping to work at Coinbase or enter the blockchain space?
I would recommend reaching out to somebody who works at Coinbase to understand what the culture is like. Our Women’s Employee Resource Group is more than happy to chat with anybody who’s considering Coinbase as an employer.
What changes have you noticed in recruiting at Coinbase over the past two years?
I started at an interesting time. I came onboard in September of 2017 only a few months before crypto hit its peak in December. With the boom of Bitcoin in December, there was a ton of people who were racing to learn more. For somebody like me who was in the University Recruiting space, I was bombarded by students who had done an extensive amount of research and were really passionate about the blockchain space which was exciting.
However, there remains a much larger group of students who are unsure about what the crypto and blockchain space is and how Coinbase plays into that. One of the things we did during our spring on-campus recruiting tour to address this was to pivot from hosting general info sessions about Coinbase to presenting intros to crypto and blockchain. Rather than telling students about Coinbase, we were able to provide education back, which resulted in students becoming organically interested in our opportunities. We travelled to 22 different universities this fall, and were thrilled to host an intro to crypto and blockchain and each one of them.
Connect with Charlene on her LinkedIn.
Write to Roshni Rawal at roshnirawal@berkeley.edu.The she256: Fireside Chats are sponsored by Upscribe.
