Learnings from 'Designing efficient, equitable hiring processes'

When it comes to hiring, it can be easy for an engineering leader to think that ‘the sooner we find a candidate, the better’.

There is a role that needs to be filled, and a complex interview process can simply burden an already mountainous to-do list. But there are countless issues with this attitude. 

In Designing efficient, equitable hiring processes, the importance of structure and investment of time is repeatedly mentioned. This series highlights the truths and failures of unstructured recruitment processes, and the negative impact they can have on remote hiring and underrepresented groups in tech. The content gives advice on how to implement practices that fix these failures and lead your organization to better hiring that benefits everyone.

Episode 1: Fast-paced hiring: how to scale a team efficiently and without exhaustion

Emmanuelle Franquelin knows exactly what the hypergrowth of a team looks like. Faced with the task of doubling her team in one year across two different countries, Emmanuelle quickly realized that she’d have to dedicate more time to hiring processes than she initially thought, and that there was power in treating hiring like any other software project. 

In this article, Emmanuelle shares her learnings from this challenging period, taking a deep dive into the significance of setting clear objectives, how to find and remove bottlenecks within your hiring process, and how to gain buy-in for investment in the way your company hires. 

Episode 2: How to structure developer hiring to combat systemic DEI failures

Shannon Hogue-Brown is the Head of Solutions Engineering at Karat, and has several years of experience working closely with engineering teams to improve their hiring practices. In this article, Shannon focuses on structured hiring processes, and the impact they can have on closing the systemic gaps that currently exist within the tech sector. 

Shannon looks in-depth at her five key practices for structured hiring and highlights how their implementation can lead to inclusive hiring that not only builds a diverse team, but also raises the bar for hiring in your org and moves you closer to achieving targets. These five practices are: 

• Assessing competencies;
• Avoiding ambiguity;
• Using a structured scoring rubric;
• Training and reviewing your interviewers;
• Looking out for pedigree bias.

Episode 3: Hiring the right engineer: remote interviewing that works

Engineering leaders today are no stranger to the challenges of managing distributed teams,  and when it comes to the challenge of remote hiring, this can be even more daunting. Allison McMillan, Director of Engineering at GitHub, has faced this head-on; resulting in a framework that she believes gives the ‘hiring manager a sense of the individual, but also allows the candidates to shine in a variety of ways.’ Ultimately, she has set out to create a remote hiring process that is enjoyable and gains the right information from a candidate at any experience level.

Alison takes the reader through her framework and illustrates how to cultivate each step of the process. When it comes to remote hiring, a well-thought-out plan is a manager’s best friend. The key is to ask yourself the right questions before you ask anything to the candidate.

Episode 4: Efficient and equitable hiring at a global scale

This article is a writeup of a roundtable discussion hosted by LeadDev; focusing on the prioritization of building inclusive teams for engineering organizations across the world.

The event brought together a group of senior engineering leaders from large enterprise companies in Europe and the United States to discuss how their organizations can commit to implementing inclusive hiring practices on a global scale. They reflected on their personal experiences of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and shared the practices that their organizations were driving.

Attendees heard Shannon Hogue-Brown’s five key practices for a structured hiring process, and from this followed a conversation between our engineering leaders on tokenism in hiring and their efforts toward investing in the pipeline.

Our roundtable discussion ended with attendees being encouraged to share what they wanted to learn more about, or what they could offer to others. Attendees left inspired to continue the conversation surrounding the implementation of, and dedication to, equitable hiring processes and the significance they have in our organizations. 

Episode 5: Crafting hiring processes that reduce bias and create consistency

Nobody builds a hiring process with intentional bias, but sometimes practices that are commonplace in the tech industry can unintentionally create unequal starting grounds for candidates. Building diverse teams begins with recruitment, so what can engineering leaders do in their organizations to ensure that inclusivity is being interwoven from the starting point?

Our panelists – Tramale Turner (Engineering Manager at Stripe), Laurie Barth (Staff Software Engineer at Gatsby), Jared Jordan (Leader of Growth APAC Engineering at Netflix) and Shannon Hogue-Brown (Head of Solutions Engineering) – and moderator –  Jason Wong (Founder of JWong Works) led the conversation in a space where they were comfortable with being uncomfortable. The discussion explored in-depth the systemic issues of failures in DEI regarding hiring in the tech industry, and what can be done to fix them. 

The conversation included the following topics:

• Candidate pools: what they should look like and how to successfully diversify them;
• Writing inclusive job descriptions;
• Identity awareness vs. identity blindness;
• Building DEI fluency into the hiring process;
• Having conversations about the system. 

A final takeaway

Shannon Hogue-Brown poignantly asks in her article, ‘Why does [the tech industry’s] appetite for change and disruption stop at hiring?’

The belief that ‘hiring is a chore’ has become the ultimate blocker for DEI efforts and efficient recruitment in the tech industry. The lack of time and thought being dedicated to hiring processes is harming the progress of systemic change that the industry is crying out for. The content in this series guides the reader to switch their attitude towards hiring and leads them to understand the need for structured and equitable processes. The takeaways outlined in these pieces of content enable engineering leaders globally to make the changes toward more efficient and equitable hiring that benefits everyone in their organization.