How do you ensure diversity and inclusion in your hiring process?

Situation: At a fintech company, our engineering team was 85% male and our pipeline reflected that—we were sourcing from the same channels and referrals tended to be homogeneous. We were also seeing inconsistent interview feedback; "culture fit" was used in ways that felt subjective. I wanted to broaden our pipeline and reduce bias in evaluation.

Task: I needed to implement concrete practices to improve diversity in hiring and make our process more equitable—without lowering the bar.

Action: I partnered with recruiting to expand sourcing: we added job boards focused on underrepresented groups, built relationships with coding bootcamps and organizations like Code2040, and ran a referral bonus that explicitly encouraged diverse referrals. I implemented structured interviews: we used the same questions for all candidates and rubric-based scoring. I removed "culture fit" as a standalone dimension and replaced it with "values alignment" with defined behaviors. I ensured diverse interview panels—at least one woman or underrepresented minority on each loop. I also ran calibration sessions so we aligned on what "strong" looked like before we started. I tracked pipeline diversity and shared it with leadership.

Result: Over 18 months, our pipeline diversity improved—we went from 12% to 28% underrepresented candidates in final rounds. We hired 4 engineers from non-traditional backgrounds who became top performers. I learned that diversity requires intentionality in both sourcing and evaluation—and that structured processes reduce bias more effectively than good intentions alone.