Tech Recruiting for Diversity

Growing a diverse workforce is part of our climate justice mission as we aspire to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. Our commitment is not justified by appeals to productivity benefits or better business metrics. Instead,

  1. We simply believe that a person’s social identities don’t limit their talents; and

  2. We strongly prefer working in diverse teams rather than teams lacking diversity;

The vision for recruiting is that Cadence OneFive will be an employer of choice for top talent underrepresented in engineering fields. We’ll know we’re succeeding when, for example, top underrepresented candidates would choose to work here rather than anywhere else.

Background

Our Metrics Today

We are already a diverse team across the company. We started the company with the intention of building habits that result in a diverse team, and we’ve built process aligned with best practices. A clear area for improvement in terms of outcome, however, is diversity in the engineering team, which is predominantly white and male.

  • More than half of our team, including both founders, belong to identities underrepresented in tech
  • Current team composition includes 8 cis women, 7 cis men, and 1 non-binary person (among 11 perm and 5 consultants)
  • Various racial and ethnic backgrounds including White/Caucasian, Asian/Asian American, African American/African/Black/Caribbean, Hispanic/Latinx, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
  • Four of our team members are immigrants to the US
  • Three of our team currently reside outside the US

Best Practices for Startups Building Diverse Teams

As we implement our diversity recruiting strategy, it’s valuable to consider what the broader tech industry recommends as best practices for seed-stage startups. We already do a lot.

  1. Start Early. Building diversity from the very beginning is crucial. It’s much easier to create a diverse team from the start than to try to diversify a homogeneous team later.

  2. Make Diversity a Core Value. Diversity should be a fundamental part of the company’s mission and values, not just an HR initiative.

  3. Create an Inclusive Culture. Building an inclusive culture where all employees feel valued and heard is crucial for attracting and retaining diverse talent.

  4. Be Transparent About Diversity Efforts. Open communication about diversity goals, successes, and challenges can build trust and accountability.

  5. Set Diversity Goals: Even at the seed stage, having specific, measurable diversity goals can help drive action and accountability.

  6. Encourage Open Dialogue. Creating spaces where team members feel comfortable openly discussing diversity in recruitment reinforces the commitment to diversity recruiting.

  7. Expand Networks. Startups should actively work to expand their networks beyond their immediate circles, which often lack diversity.

  8. Remove Bias. Strategies like blind resume reviews and structured interviews with predefined questions and evaluation criteria help reduce bias in the hiring process.

  9. Offer Flexible Work Arrangements. Flexible work options can help attract diverse candidates who may have different needs or constraints.

  10. Provide Growth Opportunities. Clear paths for growth and development are particularly important for retaining diverse talent in startups.

  11. Consider Alternative Talent Pools. Looking beyond traditional tech backgrounds can bring in diverse perspectives and skills.

  12. Regularly Evaluate and Adjust. Building a diverse team is an ongoing process that requires continuous evaluation and adjustment.

Wins Already on the Board

What we’ve built so far appeals (in theory) to candidates from all backgrounds:

  1. Climate Justice mission: Diversity is not an add-on.

  2. Minority and woman-led: The fact of a woman CEO and minority (Asian and Hispanic) founders is a readily accessible data point.

  3. Diverse company-wide team: Our current make-up signals that women and minorities are valued and successful here.

  4. Practices that signal respect. Respect for each person is not an add-on. And you can experience in how we work day-to-day that it’s not just empty talk

  • Transparent Compensation: Our open-book policy on finances, including compensation, promotes equity and trust, which is attractive to diverse candidates.

  • Community Communication Norms: Our emphasis on creating a safe space for authentic expression and valuing diverse perspectives aligns well with the goals of diversity recruiting.

  • Advice Process: Our collaborative decision-making process ensures that all voices are heard, creating an inclusive environment that values diverse perspectives.

  • Asynchronous-Friendly Practices: Our commitment to flexible work arrangements can attract a wider pool of diverse candidates who may have different needs or constraints.

  • Horizontal Performance Management: Our non-traditional approach empowers individuals to manage their own success, which can be particularly appealing to candidates from diverse backgrounds who may have felt constrained in traditional hierarchies.

Recruiting Strategy

We already engage in best-in-class recruiting processes and when we have enough inbound, our interview pools are balanced and the outcomes speak for themselves. While we must continue to invest in fair, bias-free and efficient processes as we grow, doing more now won’t move the needle because…

For technical hires, we have a pipeline problem. When we have open positions, we get few applicants who are of underrepresented demographics. We had only 3 female applicants for Head of Engineering, for example (and we interviewed all of them). We won’t give up and take this lying down. We will invest in incrementally improving our pipeline by focusing on proactive, targeted approaches.

Needless to say, everyone we hire, regardless of demographics, geography, or anything else, has to be a great fit for a fast-growing software startup.

  1. Empower Our Champions Lots of people believe in us. We’ll ask them to help amplify our message and reach.

  2. Expand Shallow-Relationship Networks Develop a systematic approach to grow our networks that tie us to potential candidates from underrepresented groups before we have open positions. This is fundamentally a people-to-people task. Read more here.

  3. Understand What Matters to Underrepresented Candidates Conduct actionable research improve how we connect to underrepresented talent.

  4. Go Where Top Underrepresented Talent Gathers Identify and actively participate in spaces where diverse tech talent congregates.

Metrics

As a startup, we’ll focus on directional improvements rather than quantitative goals. Note that even directional goals require benchmarking:

  1. Diversity of applicant pool: Aim for increasing percentage of applicants from underrepresented groups

  2. Diversity of interview pool: Aim for a high proportion of top talent who make it to interview stage

  3. Team composition: Strive for increasing diversity with each new hire