Hiring
The Moment in Time
Before we ever redesigned our own hiring process, we spent more than 5 years getting an intimate insider’s view into the hiring processes of over 100 tech companies. Through our flagship program - The Fellows Program - we helped undergraduate Black and Latinx technologists secure internships within the tech industry.
Alongside working with students, we partnered with the companies that hired and managed them. We reviewed job descriptions and interview questions. We noticed terms like “bad culture fit” were the polite way companies said, "not like us." We spotted that hiring processes often prioritized evaluating performance under pressure over the assessment of real job skills. And we watched hiring managers expect responsiveness from Black and Latinx students balancing impossible life circumstances - and using that as a reason they weren’t qualified.
We knew that these hiring systems weren’t built with Fellows, or Black & Latinx people in general, in mind. But we learned that these systems don’t really work well for anyone. These partnerships taught us a lot about what we didn’t want in our own systems.
In 2020 after George Floyd was murdered and protests for Black lives reignited across the country, there was a reinvestment and commitment in racial equity. We answered the call from our funders, company partners, and community to double down on our work, so we expanded, tripling our headcount over the next two years.
As we quickly planned for growth, we dreamt about building something that could change what people of color experienced in a hiring process. Could we design something that respected candidates while balancing our organization’s urgent need for skilled, values aligned, thoughtful new team members?
What We Intended to Solve
Through the Fellows Program, we used the tech industry as our learning lab, but we knew that those lessons were extrapolatable to the experience of Black and Latinx people at large. We decided to expand the recommendations we made to external partners to our internal organization's processes and procedures. We considered:
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If the hiring experience is a candidate's first impression of us, what impression do we want to make?
How could we create a process that respected a candidate's time, energy, and lived reality?
What would an interview process look like if it evaluated skills related to the role rather than testing performance under pressure?
How could candidates meaningfully evaluate us, just as we evaluated them?
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How could we move beyond vague ideas of "culture fit" and assess the skills, competencies, and ways of working that actually mattered?
How could we build a hiring process that was clear, replicable, and sustainable for both hiring managers and the People team?
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How many new people could we realistically absorb and onboard well?
How could we evaluate not just whether someone could do the job, but whether they would thrive in our organizational context?
How could we design a hiring process that set new employees - and the teams welcoming them - up for long-term success?
What We Built
We approached hiring as a crucial and essential part of our organization, and alongside onboarding new employees, our 2022 top priorities. It was an all hands on deck effort, and because we knew having the right people in the organization was key to our next stage, we acted like it.
From the moment a role opened to the day someone accepted an offer, every step was intentionally designed to reflect our values while giving hiring managers a clear, repeatable process to follow.
Find our final hiring process with a sample timeline in the resources section.
Putting It Into Practice
The process itself mattered and made the process slow and intentional but the practices we wove throughout it is where you could really feel something different for both our candidates and our team.
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Before a job description was ever drafted, hiring managers completed an intake form defining the role's responsibilities, required experience, management style, and what success looked like. That clarity became the foundation for every step that followed - from interview questions to final hiring decisions.
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We shared:
salary expectations on the job description and confirmed them in our initial screening call
hiring timelines in the job description
interview questions before the interview
evaluation criteria in our job description and at each interview stage
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Past the initial screening, we paid candidates a preset rate based on our estimated time for prep and actual interview time.
We wanted interviews and demonstrations of work that highlighted their expertise and the job they’d be doing. We didn’t want to extract free labor from our candidates. We knew that looking for a job - oftentimes unemployed - was a hustle, and we wanted to demonstrate with cash that we valued each candidate’s experience and expertise.
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The hiring process was collaborative between the hiring team and the hiring manager. We kicked off the process and co-designed most elements together.
Candidates had diverse touch points with members of our team. If a candidate was going to manage someone, their future direct report was a part of the decision making team. If their role would impact the whole team or they would be a senior leader, they met the whole team through a company-wide Q&A. We didn't let the interview process leave people out of decisions that affected them.
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Before extending an offer, every finalist had a candid conversation with our CEO about the realities of the role, the organization's challenges, and what we saw as a potential growth path for them.
We endeavored to be as transparent as possible with candidates. We wanted candidates accepting offers with as much information as possible about where we were at as an organization and where they could be expected to be pushed and coached as a member of the team. The intent was to give candidates genuine agency to opt in to joining the organization with as much information as possible.
Candidates who didn’t move forward were offered the opportunity to receive feedback.
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Our interview process wasn't something we invented separately from everything else. It reflected our competency model.
We wanted to understand what someone could do, but also how they would do it, what kind of team member they would be, and if they would thrive within our culture. We didn’t approach hiring as a standalone process - we used the same tools the candidate would see throughout their employment: onboarding, performance conversations, and career growth.
What Time Taught Us
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We expected candidates to appreciate a more transparent, respectful hiring process. We didn't expect people who weren't hired to thank us, refer friends to future openings, or apply to other roles! Our first open role attracted about 15 inbound applicants. By the end of our hiring sprint, we were receiving about 60 - 80 inbound applications per role.
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Our hiring process became one of the best models for what we were trying to build and accomplish with our culture - it was intentional, transparent, and deeply human.
It also set an incredibly high bar for the rest of the organization. We love that and we were still rebuilding and growing faster than we could absorb. The rest of our organization was still catching up to the standards we set in hiring.
Hiring is often the first experience someone has with your culture. Make sure it reflects the organization they'll actually join - that gap can become a source of disappointment and distrust.
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We tripled our team in two years. Looking back, we simply asked our organization to absorb more change than it could. Hiring is absolutely about finding great people and it's about having the organization that can support them once they arrive.
Whenever possible, build hiring timelines around organizational readiness AND funding deadlines AND program impact goals - not just one.
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We believed in giving candidates an honest picture of the organization and what it would be like for them in the role and their growth trajectory. We wanted them to have the information they needed and the agency to make their decision, which we accomplished.
But we also used that level of transparency as permission to partially absolve ourselves from hiring decisions that might have been sticky. Yes, a candidate should have transparency and agency in their choice but it is - at the end of the day - the organization’s responsibility to make the decision and support them once they arrive.
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We spent a lot of time evaluating whether people could do the work and whether they aligned with our values. What we didn't evaluate as intentionally was if they would thrive in our organization’s operating conditions & expectations. We needed people who were down to also navigate ambiguity, build from scratch, and held high work standards without needing perfect conditions.
We underestimated how much someone’s preferred way of working shaped whether they would thrive (or even like!) our organization. The right candidate isn't just someone with the right skills - it's someone whose desired working environment matches your organization’s reality.
What We’d Tell You
Design your hiring process to mirror what it’s actually like to work with you. The way you hire people teaches them what it's like to work with your organization long before they receive an offer.
Respect candidates' time as much as you expect them to respect yours. Share timelines, interview questions, salary expectations, and pay people for meaningful demonstrations of work whenever you can.
Don't build hiring as a standalone process. Connect it to your job descriptions, competency model, onboarding, performance conversations, and compensation philosophy. The strongest People & Culture systems build on one another.
Hire at the pace your organization can actually support. A great hiring process can't compensate for managers without capacity, weak onboarding, or an organization growing faster than it can absorb.
Design your process around the employment relationship you want to have. If your organization believes in coaching, thoughtful feedback, and respectful offboarding, your hiring process should reflect those same values from the very beginning.
Be transparent - but don't confuse transparency with good judgment. Giving candidates honest information helps them make informed decisions. It doesn't replace your responsibility to make one yourself.
Remember that every hiring decision is also an organizational design and culture decision. You're not just filling a role. You're shaping how your organization works, collaborates, and grows for years to come.