Behind the product: How a diversity of experience created Greenhouse Inclusion

8 mins, 14 secs read time

Sonder:n. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, and worries—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

We believe a culture of belonging sets the foundation for people from diverse backgrounds to be their most authentic selves and do their best work. It’s why our solutions are designed to address unconscious bias throughout every stage of the hiring process. And with research showingbias and a lack of diversity is detrimental to businesses, companies everywhere are beginning to strengthen DE&I at every level.

在招聘的每个阶段拥抱DE＆I

Our technology enables companies to operationalize多样性，公平与包容（DE＆I）招聘实践in their organizations, created in partnership with Paradigm. As the industry’s first holistic tech solution that meaningfully incorporates DE&I into our product, we help companies scale these practices throughout every stage of their hiring process.

Below, we showcase the individuals who helped bring our very first DE&I products to market in 2018. Learn more about their stories and motivation for enacting positive change on behalf of the companies we serve.

Cultivating awareness

亚历克斯·鲍威尔（Alex Powell）是Greenhouse产品管理总监，紧密地塑造了包容性产品并推动188bet安卓APP其目的。对于亚历克斯来说，该解决方案不仅仅是应对业务挑战的一种方式。

“As someone who often has to be explicit about their identity, I’m often in a situation where I am unintentionally通过，“亚历克斯说。“因此，我一直处于经常被掩盖的现代偏见的情况。”

As we become more aware of unconscious bias that may be present, Alex said, we can become better at overcoming them. "It's important for me to correct microaggressions or moments of bias when I see them happening. Having the tools to enable this process is key for companies looking to build diverse, equitable and inclusive teams."

188bet安卓APP温室是第一个提出整体技术解决方案来解决招聘偏见的人。de＆i仍然是我们产品产品未来的重中之重。
Alex Powell, Director of Product Management at Greenhouse

Using more inclusive language

Alexa Lytle, a former User Experience Researcher at Greenhouse, also played an important role in developing our DE&I product offering. Alexa was tasked with figuring out whether the feature set resonated from a values perspective and validate the ways in which it would be an integral part of our customers' DE&I initiatives.

Alexa作为助教的学术经验使人们对维护包容和公平的做法充满热情，尤其是在工作场所。“我是一名学生，后来又是由北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的Sherryl Kleinman教授领导的大学社会学课程的助教。班级让我对我们社会中的外在和内在化性别歧视的方式睁开了眼睛。” Alexa说。

“真的坚持我的主题之一是women’s inequality in the workplace. The same qualities that women had historically been knocked down for, men had been praised for."

When I learned my Greenhouse team would be infusing DE&I throughout our product that would reinforce fair judgement of qualities for all people, regardless of their identity, I was elated.
Alexa Lytle, former User Experience Researcher at Greenhouse

Alexa also learned how exclusionary and harmful our daily language can be. "For example, I now use 'y’all' instead of 'you guys' to address a group of people," said Alexa. "It’s more inclusive and it doesn’t reinforce a society in which males are the more ubiquitous gender – a little change that I think can collectively have a big impact. I decided that using inclusive terms in our workplace and getting others to do the same would be part of my legacy at Greenhouse.”

Recognizing lived experiences

188bet安卓APP温室总裁兼联合创始人乔恩·斯特罗斯（Jon Stross）一直优先考虑看到他人的观点并认识到每个人的生活经历的重要性。

“For me, the origin of our DE&I product offerings goes back to when I met my wife," said Jon. "I was continually surprised by how she, a woman of color, perceived the same situations so wildly differently than I did." If Jon described a work situation, for example, his wife's conclusions of who the stars were and who was struggling were sometimes different from his own perception.

"She might tactfully point out an employee who didn’t self-promote was actually a superstar who I wasn’t noticing or advocating for enough. It’s been quite humbling to continuously realize that my biases are far more profound than I recognized – and I realized how the right technology could help individuals support a more inclusive perspective."

Among the many elements of our offering at Greenhouse that strengthens DE&I, Jon pointed out that requiring notes on scorecard ratings (given to candidates after each interview), is a good example of how the interviewer can better recognize the lived experiences of the people they're interviewing while reducing bias.

Jon realized that he had previously been making an overall judgement about a candidate and then backing into the rating. "When I was forced to articulate the evidence I collected per attribute, I realized I couldn’t. This led me to start interviewing more thoroughly to truly gather evidence about each of the attributes I was responsible for."

Making a person aware of their bias enables them to embrace a more inclusive mindset and ultimately strengthens DE&I across the entire hiring process.
Jon Stross, President and Co-founder of Greenhouse

Adding objectivity

Former Greenhouse Senior Product Designer Caroline Cheung believes that the best ideas come from collaborating with a diverse team. Caroline finds purpose in creating a space where everyone shares the same knowledge of the problem, feels comfortable sharing their ideas and voting on the best ones while avoiding groupthink.

The DE&I product offering from Greenhouse helps create an equal playing field for candidates of all backgrounds by prompting recruiters be more transparent and objective in their assessment.
Caroline Cheung, former Senior Product Designer at Greenhouse

Many businesses are starting to realize that “culture fit” as standard interview criteria introduces a great deal of “similar to me” bias – and arechanging their approach to culture interviewsto determine how an individual’s experience, traits and unique personality canaddto an existing company culture. Greenhouse has gone a step further by making "culture add" interviews an intrinsic part of our structured hiring process.

“The first time I conducted a culture add interview at Greenhouse, I was paired with a male-identifying colleague from another department," said Caroline. They were in the same room and followed the same set of questions before individually submitted our scorecards after the interview.

"I felt confident giving a "strong yes," thinking my colleague must have given a positive rating as well. It turned out he gave a “thumbs down” in his scorecard which made for an interesting discussion between us – I saw a lot of positive qualities in the candidate, while my colleague saw the exact opposite." The important part of this process is that both team members had the autonomy to submit their answers separately, enabling them to embrace different opinions without influencing each other.

"This experience made me realize how two people can perceive the same experience so differently due to our own biases," said Caroline, "and perhaps my assessment was reflective of how much of myself I saw in the candidate which doesn’t always translate to how qualified they are for the role. This helps everyone remain objective."

Enhancing representation

Nitya Bhaskar,前产品营销经理at Greenhouse, also helped bring the original DE&I product offering to market. With a background in tech, Nitya has witnessed the industry grapple with the question of how to meaningfully impact change when it comes to DE&I.

Nitya说：“公司可能选择将多样性作为优先事项，从建立更强大的业务到'正确的事'到避免负PR反弹的优先事项有很多原因。这些举措是代表。”

"In my experience as an Indian American, it can be difficult to navigate the cloudy realm in which your status as a minority is subtly enforced in different ways," said Nitya. She explained that even companies with the best intentions can stumble when it comes to creating an inclusive environment – and that rapidly becomes apparent when organizations let imbalance in this area spiral into larger problems within a company. "I'm passionate about diversity and inclusion and in particular – and the ability to have an ongoing dialogue to broaden my perspective."

I value company leaders who genuinely care about DE&I and who continuously work towards building a culture in which every person can thrive.
Nitya Bhaskar, former Product Marketing Manager at Greenhouse

Nitya解释说，在工作环境中，促进代表性直接影响她的职业生涯。Nitya说：“代表性使基本关系和指导的成长能够从指导者分享与我的经验的观点。”“我发现，增加的表示可以创造一个良性周期，从而使来自代表性不足的背景的人们可以访问他们可以依靠并学习的榜样。”

188bet安卓APP温室is committed to strengthening DE&I

确保我们的客户在整个招聘过程中拥有支持DE＆I的工具只会继续占据我们作为人才领域的技术公司的兴趣和热情。

了解温室如何帮助您的188bet安卓APP公司建立多样化，包容和公平的团队。