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Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem
Summary
There's no silver bullet to building a diverse and inclusive organization at scale. So how do you know what things to try, and what's working and what isn't? Our UX team used our user research chops to look at this problem in a user-centered way. In this session, we'll share how we married data and qualitative research to identify and fix holes in our recruiting, hiring, and retention practices.
Key Insights
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Nearly 60% of HubSpot's UX hires came from employee referrals, which reinforces sameness and reduces diversity.
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Slowing down hiring speed allows for more thoughtful and inclusive candidate sourcing.
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The leadership team used a technique called 'aided recall' to actively seek candidates from underrepresented groups.
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Candidate experience mirrors customer experience; mixed signals and disjointed communication hurt confidence, disproportionately affecting women and people of color.
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Women often only apply if they meet all job requirements, whereas men apply despite partial matches, reflecting a confidence gap.
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HubSpot implemented interview prep guides and standardized interviewer notes to level the playing field for all candidates.
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An associate practitioner rotational program was launched to hire and develop junior talent without prior deep experience.
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Belonging is crucial: it’s more than diversity and inclusion—it impacts retention and individual performance.
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Unseen diversity traits (neurodiversity, mental health, education) significantly affect employees’ sense of belonging.
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Including representatives from employee resource groups on interview panels helps candidates feel welcome and opens conversations about diversity.
Notable Quotes
"Maybe I too had joined another tech company that really wasn’t walking the walk when it came to diversity."
"Referrals encourage sameness because we tend to refer people who look and think like us."
"We treated diversity and inclusion like a sprint instead of the marathon that it truly is."
"For women, they often won’t apply unless they meet all the bullet points in a job description."
"This candidate experience was terrible for everybody but especially disadvantaging folks who started with lower confidence."
"If diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is actually dancing with everyone else."
"We have to slow down hiring to be more thoughtful and deliberate about who we bring on the team."
"We turned design thinking on ourselves to tackle our own hiring challenges—applying tools meant for customers to our own processes."
"Having an employee resource group member on interview panels creates a safe space for candidates to disclose more about themselves."
"Performance reviews at HubSpot are ongoing conversations, not one big yearly event."
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