One of the guiding principles of Holler's position on Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is: “We believe our workplace needs to be diverse in its makeup. So, we ensure our recruiting and sourcing efforts are diverse and inclusive.”
This is incredibly important especially as we scale our organization and begin to hire more and more. Read on for five actions that we've recently implemented here at Holler to make certain diversity, inclusion, and belonging are top of mind when it comes to our hiring strategy.
Driving a Consistent Hiring Process
When we think about recruiting diverse candidates for Holler, we aim to keep inherent unconscious biases in mind. One of the best ways to mitigate unconscious bias is to ensure consistency throughout the hiring process. We're committed to establishing clear hiring criteria from the get go (to eliminate the attitude of I'll know it when I see it), prepping all candidates with the same amount of information, and adhering to identical interview steps for each candidate.
Admittedly, this can be challenging in a startup environment where our hiring needs are constantly evolving, but striving to keep the interview process as consistent as possible across the board is a good place to start when looking at hiring from a lens of inclusivity.
Taking a Closer Look at Our Job Requirements
Upon opening a new position, we take a pause and examine what a given candidate needs to be successful in the role and make sure we're being as inclusive as possible as we define job requirements.
We’re asking ourselves: What are the competencies this person actually NEEDS to be successful here at Holler in this role? A common example is requiring a Bachelor’s Degree- we often see this listed in corporate job descriptions, but is it actually necessary?
The hope is that this line of thinking will push us to recognize that oftentimes there are a variety of backgrounds and experiences that can make someone successful in a given role.
Proactively Searching for Diverse Talent
We're committing to going out and proactively looking for diverse talent, regardless of how many exceptional applicants we receive for a given position. Right now, this means maintaining a dedicated block of time each week for our recruiting team to focus solely on researching and identifying diverse talent sources.
We have a running list of job boards, professional organizations/networking groups, and keywords that are meant to help us seek out particularly diverse pockets of talent that we may otherwise miss.
Ensuring Diverse Interview Panels
In partnership with hiring managers, we're striving to make sure that our interview panels are as diverse as possible in order to reflect the various backgrounds and viewpoints we have at Holler. We want to show candidates what our position is on diversity, inclusion, and belonging by allowing them to meet several employees from different backgrounds and with diverse experiences.
Interviewing for Key Behavior Alignment
Our Key Behaviors at Holler are the behaviors we ask our team to keep in mind every day to deliver our Purpose, Spirit, and Beliefs. They are the core tenants of what we stand for here. With this in mind, we've recently rolled out a 30 minute interview step that will focus entirely on evaluating how a candidate relates to and identifies with our key behaviors.
The interviewer will have access to a question bank with a list of behavioral and situation-based questions. The goal is to gauge how a candidate's values align with ours at Holler. This will also allow us to avoid the unclear feedback that's associated with someone being or not being a “culture fit,” which is oftentimes vague and obscure.
As we integrate these actions into our recruiting strategy, we plan to solicit feedback both internally and externally. We're looking forward to seeing how these play out and building upon these actions moving into 2021. More to come!
