Recruiting

aronow.io

Astronomer

Attentive

Aven

Benchling

Boulevard

Brightline

Brigit

Calm

Census

Clever

CloudTrucks

Coder is a remote infrastructure development platform that makes working with code easier than ever. Coder enables everyone from industry rookies to experts to develop code faster than ever before, using templatized starting points and ultra-secure workspaces.

Coder

Cohere

Cointracker

Color

Costanoa Ventures

Decimal

Deel is payroll for modern business. No matter where you're hiring, Deel helps customers run payroll, supporting 150+ countries with hundreds of worldwide experts. Deel helps their customers know that hiring, paying, and managing stayed compliant and easy in their all-in-one platform.

Deel

Deepnote

Deliveroo

Dune

Duolingo

EightSleep is more than a mattress company - it's a suite of products devoted to sleep fitness. Their goal is to make sure that your sleep is as high-performing as you are, helping you meet and exceed the bar for excellence in your waking life. Athletes and scientists alike love their range of highly customizable sleep tech because it helps them live healthier.

EightSleep

Figma

Format One

FullStory

Juni

Linear

Marqeta is a modern card issuing platform dedicated to empowering innovators to launch their products to the world. They have over a decade of experience as a trusted, high-tech solution for builders who need simple, scalable payment solutions.

Marqeta

Modern Treasury

Monte Carlo is a Series D data observability company helping its customers accelerate the adoption of data to eliminate downtime. 

Monte Carlo

Notion

Opendoor

Plato

PostHog

PostHog is an open source analytics platform. Their product is used by product, engineering, and marketing teams to understand user behavior, including product analytics, session recording, user paths, a/b testing, heatmaps, and more. The suite, founded through Y Combinator in 2020, has since been installed by over 10,000 companies.

Pragma Platform

Pulley

Ramp

Readme

Replit

Scratchpad

Sift

Snyk

Sourcegraph

Stytch

Talentful

Treasury Prime

VanMoof is a Dutch e-bike company creating stylish, feature-rich city bikes. They're the fastest growing bike company in the world, with an active community in over 50 cities worldwide.

VanMoof

Veev

Verkada

WeTransfer

Zippin

Abhik Pramanik

Culture

Kyra ran our first holiday book exchange, and it's been a hit with the team (to the point people mentioned it in our 1:1s). I added some photos from our recent meetups.


Ben added some improvements to our Slack guidelines. Sylvie added a way for us to learn more about each other in our weekly standup. We've been using both for over a month, and the team has been enjoying the changes!


How we use efficient and deliberate communication at Ashby to keep Slack notifications and meetings to a minimum, focus 36h out of a 40h week, and have fun along the way 😀.


How Thoughtful Communication Makes Us Unreasonably Productive

Engineering

Product

Halden Ingwersen

There was a time when Ted Kleber was making upwards of 75 cold calls every single day just to make a hire.  

“It was a lot of trial and error!” he told Ashby when we sat down with him. “You were given a job description and a hiring partner. And then you had to learn your own way through it.” He had to rely on his candidates themselves to learn what his own interview questions meant. “A lot of it was on the phone with candidates. I would ask them to explain to me what they did and, thankfully, I met a lot of people who were kind enough to take the time to talk to this junior recruiter to explain, _this is what I do and this is what you mean when you're asking these questions_.”  

As introductions to the world of recruiting go, it was a rough one. But it did inform Ted’s hiring philosophy. “You just have to not take it personally if you have a rough call or somebody decides not to take the job you're offering. Because it isn't personal. But that said, it pays dividends to be collaborative and to have a kind and honest approach.”  

These days, Ted isn’t making nearly so many cold calls. He’s the senior manager of recruiting operations over at [Nylas](https://www.nylas.com/), boasting a well-earned decade in the technical recruiting field working for companies like Uber and Twilio.  

“About two and a half years ago, I made the transition into recruiting operations,” Ted said. “And I've been doing that since. At Nylas, the role is kind of unique and it's taking shape even as I'm developing it.”  

## **What recruiting operations** **_is_**

If most recruiters wear a lot of different hats, Ted has a particularly impressive collection. “Part of it is ensuring that our systems are configured correctly and that we have the right tools and software and systems. Another part of it is data analytics and understanding what activities are going on and, and how we’re setting goals. Another piece of it is enablement and training materials, so some of that is building training for the business. That’s so they can feel comfortable with our recruiting process and internal enablement materials, so that the recruiters know how to use our different tools, where to go for resources, and how to interact with the business expectations. There's also an element of employer brand; I'm also helping with our presence on social media like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, AngelList, and contributing a little bit to like our website and making sure that our job posts are all branded correctly.”  

Though Ted is building out a team to help shoulder the work, he mentions that these duties came up organically. “I went in expecting one thing and I just found all these opportunities to expand and help out. That's one of the nice things about being part of a startup, you can really set whatever scope you want to.”  

> "As a recruiter, your focus is really on your client. And there's all this other stuff that needs to be thought of, set up, and built to support that function."

That’s an unsurprising function of the recruiting operations role. In a space so new, definition is a constantly evolving work in progress.  

“Recruiting is such an interesting division to be in in HR, and the recruiting operations function as a subset of that is an emerging space,” said Ted. “If you think about the traditional roles in recruiting, you have recruiters who need to focus on their clients and focus on making good hires for the business. But then there's all this other activity that has to go into recruiting. Think about it as a business within a business. You need to be a bit of a marketer, a bit of a lawyer, a bit of a sales person. On top of that you need to understand how to build a good experience for your candidates and for your hiring managers. As a recruiter, your focus is really on your client. And there's all this other stuff that needs to be thought of, set up, and built to support that function. Recruiting operations can be a bit of a catchall, but it's also an opportunity to fill in those gaps.”  

## **Startup recruiting isn’t made for robots**

After years recruiting for startups, Ted had noticed that many of them repeatedly miss the same marks when it comes to their talent acquisition. “There are some startups that do an incredible job at hiring,” he clarified. But of those that don’t, the mistakes are often the same: “Recognizing the value add that recruiting is.”  

He went on thoughtfully. “I've talked to some chief people officers that have said, _well, I just sort of view recruiting as an overhead_. _It's a function that consumes money from the business and I don't see the value in it._ But then there's other startups where hiring is _so_ critical! People call it the war for talent, and I don't know if I love that term. But the competition in recruiting to get the right people into the role is so key at the startup baseline. If they don't have the right people that has that cascading effect of not being able to ship products or hit revenue goals and eventually that doesn't look great to investors or the public.”  

It’s two very different approaches to hiring that impact everything else a startup is.  

“What really good startups do,” he said, “is recognize the value that recruiting brings as a function to grow the business. They also see a recruiter as being a strategic partner to hiring managers and helping them do organization planning. Everything from thinking about their job profiles and how to build a healthy team, to what the right balance of senior to junior folks on the team is.”  

It isn’t enough to hire often, Ted pointed out. It requires dedicated, full-time thought. “These good startups don't just stop at a job profile, they need an individual that's gonna contribute in a certain way. Recruiters can add a lot of value by taking that consultative approach and influencing that manager to think about the best long-term growth strategy for their team. That goes into headcount, planning, and conversations that they have with HR and finance to stick to that strategy.”  

>"What really good startups do is recognize the value that recruiting brings as a function to grow the business. They also see a recruiter as being a strategic partner to hiring managers and helping them do organization planning."

“I think the best startups view recruiting as more than just _I turn the crank, I point my recruiter coin-operated robot, and they get me the people_,” he went on. “They add so much more value than that. That's the difference between recruiting at a successful startup and recruiting at just a regular one.”  

Of course, it’s easier to speak of the recruiter who can keep up with that than it is to find them.  

## **The right skills for a unique job**

It’s a complex time for recruiting. COVID-19 continues to impact the world, companies are deciding between remote or in-person work, and news outlets struggle to name the ongoing wave of quitting and hiring and recruitment confusion. But Ted points out that we’re still in a candidate’s market.  

“Everything that you do,” Ted told us, “Either front of mind or back of mind, should be providing a good candidate experience. Every call you make, every email you send, every follow up that you need to do, all of that has a direct impact on your ability to attract top talent. It’s in the communication cadence, and the importance of making sure that you’re giving somebody the right kind of attention. Even though there's tons of opportunities out there, the job search can be a very personal and vulnerable thing.”  

Falling short on experience too often is damning to a small startup. “It can start to build a reputation. There's a ripple effect that accumulates out there in the market. It makes it a lot harder to attract talent if people are not saying great things about your company.”  

The best way to combat this, advises Ted, is to understand, “It's a numbers game. You need to know your clients and your managers, and the profile that you're looking for. You have to provide a solid experience for each candidate, regardless of whether or not they're moving all the way through the process. You never know who you might need to call again, and you never know what people might leave you on a public review site.”  

The other key for anyone making the jump into recruiting operations is prioritization, the harsher, the better. “As a recruiter and now as an operations manager, there are so many things that need to be done. Being pulled in so many directions at once can be really daunting. Sometimes it can be to the point where you're a bit paralyzed and you get nothing done because you have 16 things to do and you feel like you have no time to do them, or you can't do all of them well.”  

Ted fixes this by making firm calls and committing to them. “I borrow one of the values that I learned at Twilio: ruthlessly prioritize. Taking a step back from the waterfall of the things that you have to do and saying, _what can I fill my bucket with?_ I'll stick my bucket out and I'll catch the things that I know are going to have the most impact.”  

Even the best don't always make the right calls. “Sometimes you let the wrong things slide. Sometimes you execute on something that doesn't necessarily really have as big of impact as you expected. But if you start to think about your role in that sense and focus on the wildly important things, it will help you manage the rest.”  

## **The structure makes the success**

An excellent manager helps with all these skills, of course, and can be the bridge between a recruiting team wanting to do their best and startup leadership seeking to hire top talent.  

“For career growth and for opportunity, never underestimate the value of a good leader and a good mentor,” Ted told us. “Being able to recognize that quality as you're interviewing, and finding someone that you want to work with and you feel has your best interests going to go a lot further than just the name of the company you might join.”  

As for his own managers, Ted hesitated to limit the praise to a specific person. “I wouldn't point to any one single person and say this is the person that changed my career forever. I learned all sorts of different things from different people along the way. I learned a lot of discipline from some mentors in the agency. I learned a lot of general process knowledge from people in operations. Even my peers have been mentors in some respects. I really believe anyone you can learn from is a mentor, and I think you can have multiple mentors that serve multiple mentoring purposes. It all comes down to communication and being genuine and kind to your colleagues and offering what you can. Because you may view them as a mentor, but they also might view you as a mentor too.”  

With all the progress he’s made in his career, the kind and honest approach Ted learned doing hiring agency work has not changed. “I've met a lot of recruiters and tried different tactics in my day and I've often found that what people best respond to, both colleagues and candidates, is honesty and being genuine. As long as you're being upfront and genuinely yourself when you're talking to people and when you're collaborating or recruiting, it builds that foundation of trust. That's gonna' be important later on in the process.”

You can find Ted on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-kleber-47124143/).

We spoke to Nylas's Ted Kleber on getting into recruiting, and why a thoughtful approach helped him succeed.

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

**By Kenza Moller with The Swarm**


Hiring? Finding it more difficult than ever? You’re not alone.  
  
Even as the United States has opened back up, job openings have remained at a record high, with open roles in February outnumbering unemployed Americans by [a record 5 million](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/there-are-now-a-record-5-million-more-job-openings-than-unemployed-people-in-the-us.html). In 2021, the number of open tech jobs [nearly doubled](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/state-of-the-tech-hiring-market/) and the average tech listing attracted under [100 applicants](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/applicant-source-analysis/) for the first time since 2019.  
  
The hiring squeeze has incentivized more startups to expand their reliance on recruiters. Unfortunately, the talent gap has also struck the sourcing field, with the number of open recruiting jobs [outpacing the overall job market](https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/data-shows-soaring-demand-for-recruiters) and a quarter of recruiters reporting challenges in [filling sourcing roles](https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting/five-of-the-biggest-recruitment-challenges-concerning-hr-leaders/) on their own teams.  
  
For an early-stage business that isn’t yet dominating job boards, it might seem like hiring has never been more challenging. However, just because it’s becoming harder doesn’t mean recruiting has to be impossible. Here are five ways you can streamline recruiting, even as competition for recruiters grows fierce.  

## Lean into referrals

When it comes to recruiting more efficiently, it’s all about quality over quantity, which is exactly what an [employee referral program](https://community.theswarm.com/c/articles/how-to-build-an-employee-referral-program) (ERP) will do for you. Compared to applicants who apply on a company career site, referred applicants are [nine times more likely](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/source-of-hire-for-tech-jobs/) to be hired. They also save startups approximately $7,500 per hired referral.  
  
Referrals can be helpful, especially for early-stage startups, who have a harder time competing when it comes to employer brand recognition or salary. Connections can vouch for your company’s culture, opportunities, and mission, and they know ahead of time whether a referral would be a good fit.  
  
The key to running a successful referral program is to mine your contacts extensively, including employees, investors, advisors, and your personal network. Set up [a formalized employee referral program](https://community.theswarm.com/c/plan/creating-your-employee-referral-program) to reward employees for referrals and publicize that you’re looking.  
  
Don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues for introductions. A personal note to your advisors, investors, and personal connections can bring a ton of referrals your way, and job postings shared on one’s own LinkedIn or Twitter can garner interest from your networks.  

## Don’t overlook a career-changer

If you limit yourself to hiring a tech recruiter, you’re pretty much guaranteed competition. But if you’re willing to get creative, you may still have an excellent recruiter on your hands, even if they have a different background.  
  
Plenty of talented employees in other roles, from customer service to sales, may make great recruiters, especially if they’re already familiar with your industry. The overlap between tech recruiting and other fields has already been recognized by companies like [Recruit Rise](https://www.recruitrise.io/home), which help career switchers train for a role in tech recruiting in just nine weeks.  
  
Rather than compete for an experienced recruiter, consider someone with experience in your field and a desire to try out tech recruiting. If you hire for soft skills and cover their training for the hard skills, you might just end up with a talented recruiter who has deep experience in your field.  
  
Of course, this goes for other roles as well. If you can train and promote from within, you can save yourself the hassle of competing for external talent. [Promoted employees](https://www.umassglobal.edu/news-and-events/blog/promoting-from-within) not only save employers an average of 18% compared to external hires, but their performance reviews tend to be better for at least two years after promotion.  

## Outsource certain tasks — to technology

Whether you work with an in-house recruiter or you’re sourcing all applicants yourself, certain software tools can help you do more with less. Outsourcing certain tasks — from sourcing and screening to scheduling and follow-ups — can help you increase your bandwidth without having to hire on additional recruiters.  
  
Today, technology exists to streamline all stages of the recruiting and hiring process. A few areas you might consider include:  

-   Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) (like [Ashby](https://app.ashbyhq.com/product?partner=underdog#sourcing)) to help you source candidates, automate communication and high-volume interviews, and track your pipeline.
-   Leveraging platforms like [Knockri](https://www.knockri.com/), which use AI to remove systemic bias from the interviewing and hiring process.
-   Outsourcing technical interviews to companies like [Karat](https://karat.com/), where trained engineers can screen candidates for the specific technical skills you need.

## Embrace transparency

Hopefully, honesty and transparency are already part of your company M.O. — but if you want to beat the competition in the war for talent, you may want to take it a step further.  
  
Job seekers today, including recruiters, are increasingly looking for jobs that match their goals in terms of values, work/life balance, and pay. And when competition is fierce, any company that can share data around those pillars will stand out. (According to Indeed Canada, job postings that share salary data receive up to [90% more applicants](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/pay-transparency-job-postings-youth-1.6435727).)  
  
Transparency isn’t only helpful because it increases the number of candidates attracted to your role, either. It also helps disqualify those who aren’t a good fit for your company early on; that helps you save time and ensure that those you _do_ interview are actually well-aligned with your company.  
  
How can you be more transparent when recruiting?  

-   Include salary ranges for each position
-   Don’t just share that you have a “generous” vacation or healthcare policy — share the policies themselves
-   Don’t preach “work-life balance” if your teams frequently work late; be honest about the challenges and opportunities that come with certain roles or your company’s growth stage
-   Be open about where you are in your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, instead of simply saying that you’re committed to them

## Use storytelling to stand out from the crowd

As an early-stage business, it’s unlikely that prospective recruiters or employees will know your company name or your employer reputation before applying. Rather than considering this a challenge, use it as an opportunity: you get to share your story exactly as _you_ would like it shared.  
  
Leverage [the principles of storytelling](https://community.theswarm.com/c/closing-candidates/storytelling-in-recruiting) at all stages of outreach, interviewing, and hiring. Start by setting up a Careers page that clearly shares your mission, what it’s like to work for you, and the impact individual employees can have at work. Continue by sharing employee stories on LinkedIn and teaching employees (and leadership!) how to become thought leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn.  
  
Don’t forget to continue telling the story when you reach out to candidates and interview them. Focus on them as the main character: what mission are they helping to solve? How do they fit into the puzzle? Who are the other characters along for the ride with them? A compelling story can help you compete against those who may have an edge in available salary or brand awareness.  

## Work smarter, not harder

As an early-stage startup, the labor squeeze can seem overwhelming. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to streamline your recruiting efforts and stand out. And the best part is that all of these efforts pay dividends as you scale — so that even if hiring becomes effortless for your teams, these systems and practices continue to pay off.  
  
*This post was written by Kenza Moller in collaboration with [Ashby](https://app.ashbyhq.com/access) and [The Swarm](https://www.theswarm.com/). The Swarm makes it easy for companies to source referrals from their collective networks.*

Ashby has partnered with The Swarm to do a deep-dive on the current state of hiring recruiters, and how you can beat the competition and nab the recruiter you need.

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

Candidate experience is critical for recruiters, but how can you know that yours is truly top notch? Is it even possible to take the assumptions and guesswork out of candidate experience?  
  
The most effective way to know for sure is to get data from your candidates in the form of a survey. But, even then, not all surveys are created equal. Your survey needs to ask the right questions in the right way to truly get to the core of your candidate experience.  
  
We spoke to several professionals in the Talent and Recruiting Operations space to see how they approach surveys, and what you can do to replicate their success. This article will walk you through what to ask, how to ask it, and what you should keep in mind as your candidates fill it out.  

## Why candidate experience is key

First impressions have a huge impact on how humans think and feel about new people and groups. And, for a potential new employee, candidate experience is their first impression of your company. You could be the best place to work in the world, but if the process of applying for a job is horrible, you’ll still struggle to attract quality talent.  

> “A company can unknowingly go from an amazing experience to a miserable one without the insights that allow your team to catch things like the need for interviewer training refreshers.” - Destiny Lalane
  
In a 2021 CareerPlug survey, they found that [58% of respondents declined a job offer because of a poor candidate experience](https://www.careerplug.com/blog/candidate-experience-statistics/). That’s a staggering number, but if you’ve ever had a poor hiring experience, you’re probably not surprised. It can feel frustrating, disorienting, or demeaning to go through a hiring process where the hiring team feels checked out, distant, or dismissive.  
  
The problem is that no hiring team is acting that way on purpose. (After all, who would want to lose out on good candidates?) Most negative candidate experiences come from pure ignorance of how bad the process really is. That’s why no guide on how to improve your experience will help until you know what experience you’re already creating.  
  
Destiny Lalane, Talent at Ashby, weighed in here. “A company can unknowingly go from an amazing experience to a miserable one without the insights that allow your team to catch things like the need for interviewer training refreshers.” You can avoid that ignorance by thoughtfully scaling your recruiting team, training your recruiters, and, as we’ll discuss here, studying data from high-quality surveys.  
  
Now that you know how vital creating a good candidate experience survey is, let’s see how to do it.  

## Timing

When should you send your candidate experience survey? That depends on what you want.  
  
The “end point” of your funnel is going to look different for different applicants, depending on how far along they get. Destiny says to ask yourself, “What kind of information are you trying to collect? At what volume are you interviewing? This will help you decide.”

Jeremy Lyons, Talent Partner at SGNL.ai and former Manager of Recruiting Operations at Wish, told us that, "The further along an applicant gets in your process, the more likely they are to fill out your survey and provide high-quality answers."  
  
Make sure to note how far along a candidate was when they filled out the survey! That will help you to identify if your experience is great up to a point, or if you have an issue further along your pipeline.  
  
For rejected candidates, there is one more element to consider: don’t send your survey too soon. Candidates who were rejected may not be quite so glowing as candidates who were hired. And if you send a survey and a rejection in the same email, you’re not setting yourself (or them) up for fair and objective feedback. Send the rejection, then wait two or three days for any especially negative feelings to die down before requesting feedback. This will help ease negative bias in the survey, even if it might not eliminate it fully.  
  
Jeremy also pointed out that there’s more to timing than how long it’s been since you gave your applicant an answer. “Something that gets overlooked here is the time of day that you are sending your survey,” he told Ashby. “You want to send it between 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM. People are often distracted during that window and looking for something else to do. If that is the case, they'll blitz through a survey you send.”  

## Length

Once you’ve decided when to send your survey, you should consider the length. Brevity is your goal here; aim to get the best information in the shortest time possible.  
  
Lalane recommends no more than five or six questions. “You're asking for a favor, for feedback, which is very valuable,” she told us. “You want it to be as easy as possible to get the information you most care about.”  
  
That might mean you need to make a few trade offs. If you want a lot of detail, for instance, consider using long-form text boxes and asking open-ended questions, but just two or three total questions. On the other hand, you may be able to ask an extra question if all the questions are in a simple scale or multiple-choice style.  
  
Beware survey fatigue! Odds are good that a candidate is filling out multiple job applications and being asked to complete multiple candidate experience surveys. Make it easy for them to choose to complete yours.  

## Questions

We’ll begin with a few guidelines for the types of questions you might need under different circumstances. Nobody outside of your organization can tell you _exactly_ what questions to ask. Your company and interview process is unique, as is the information you want to learn with this survey, so your questions need to be custom-tailored to fit. That said, we’ve included a few examples for ways to get this information, along with the style of survey question it is.  

**Timelines of responses / Speed of responses-** Are your communications prompt? Did the process drag out too long?
- _1-10 Scale_ I didn’t have to wait long to hear back from my recruiter
- _Extended Response_ Did you feel that communication was prompt?

**Professional attitudes-** Was your team professional in all of their communications? Do your interviewers need more coaching on effective interviewing? Did your interviewers appear prepared? Did they give you time to complete your answers with minimal interruptions?
-  _1-10 Scale_ Everyone I spoke to was professional and polite.
-  _Multiple Choice_ How would you describe the team members who interviewed you? (Professional, Rude, Excited, Knowledgeable, Disengaged, Withdrawn)

**Sourcing-** Where did you get the bulk of your candidates? This is especially useful to see if word of mouth, paid marketing, or in-house referrals are making a big impact on your sourcing.
- _Multiple Choice_ Please select where you heard about this job (Indeed, LinkedIn, Google, Other)
- _Short Response_ Can you tell us where you first heard about this role?

**Quality of questions-** This is useful if you’re looking to make sure that you’re asking the right questions to identify good talent. It’s also useful if you want to make sure that candidates feel heard and understood.
- _1-10 Scale_ I found the interview questions challenging.
-  _True or False_ I felt that the interviewers got a good sense of my skills.

**Briefing-** Does your candidate feel that they knew what to expect throughout the process?
- _True or False_ I knew exactly what to expect from each stage.
- _1-10 Scale_ I wasn’t surprised by any part of the interviewing process.

**Open ended response space-** This is less a type of question than a type of answer. Consider leaving room at the end of your survey to ask candidates if they have anything else to say. They may show you problems you’d never have anticipated!
- If I could change one thing about this hiring process, it would be...
- Is there more our team should know?
- What do you wish we’d done differently?

  
If any of these types resonate with you, you may need them, but don’t limit yourself. You may not even know what your blind spots are until you get candidate feedback.  
  
Keep in mind as you customize and write your questions that they need to be as clear as possible so that the maximum number of applicants understand them. Clarity will also help you avoid asking leading questions that push respondents to a particular answer.  
  
If you were to include all of these questions it would far exceed the recommended length. What information is most important to you? How much of that can you fit into the suggested length?  

## Aggregation using net promoter score formula

In contrast to a linear 1-10 scale, you may find that an NPS is a better fit for some of your questions. An NPS or “Net Promoter Score” is a metric that turns 1-10 scale ratings into a percentile. While those taking your survey will still see a “1-10” option on their end, you’ll be able to aggregate and calculate their scores into a percent on the recruiting team’s end.

NPS calculation refers to people who answered your question with a nine or ten as “promoters” and those who rated a 6 or lower as “detractors.” Simply, you find the NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. (7 and 8 raters are called “passives” and don’t factor into the the final score.) The NPS score lets you know what percentage of those surveyed are truly delighted with your candidate experience - especially when you consider that the original concept came from the question, “How likely are you to recommend this to a friend?"

For instance, if you had 10 respondents, and 6 of them rated your candidate experience a 10, while 4 of them rated it a 1, your final NPS would be 20. (*60% promoters - 40% detractors = 20*)

NPS scores are extremely helpful when condensing many different survey responses into a single, digestible number, making it easier to quantify your overall candidate experience. And a digestible number makes it much easier to set realistic, actionable KPIs.

## The many facets of candidate experience

When we think of “candidate experience,” you’re liking to think of the specific interview process. But keep in mind that candidate experience begins with the job posting itself, and continues through every element of the hiring process.  

> "The further along an applicant gets in your process, the more likely they are to fill out your survey and provide high-quality answers." - Jeremy Lyons
  
Here are some areas you might consider incorporating into your survey, or even auditing to get a better sense of your overall experience:  

-   Language and accuracy of job listings
-   Emails
-   Glassdoor reviews
-   Website language (especially “about us” or “meet the team” pages)
-   Specific or niche industry review sites

  
As you craft your survey, don’t forget that first impressions and, by extension, your candidate experience, comes from more than just your interviews.  

## What else do you need to know?

As you form your questions and curate your survey length, there are a few other things to keep in mind.  
  
You’ll need to decide if you want your surveys to be identified or anonymous. Identified answers have the benefit of making it easy to track and follow up, but it may come at the cost of candidates not wanting to tell you their true thoughts (especially if they’d like to reapply later.) If they’re anonymous, candidates should be assured of this up front, and it may encourage them to be more candid and open.  
  
Regardless, allow applicants to skip any question they want. A required long-form answer may scare them off of being honest or may be too identifying for an anonymized survey. You want to encourage edge cases, like a candidate who accepts the job yet has strong feedback about the process.  
  
Decide which responses are helpful _after_ receiving them, not before. If you assume a swiftly denied candidate has nothing new to tell you, you rob yourself of the chance to learn something new. Give every candidate a chance to complete the survey.  
  
That said, be prepared to see some negativity from rejected applicants. It never feels good to receive bad feedback, but if you find similar sentiments across different applicants, you may find exactly what you need to change to make future reviews much better.  
  
This survey isn’t your only source of data about your candidate experience. Keep an eye on Glassdoor reviews, the language in candidate emails, and verbal feedback given to recruiters to see the whole picture.  
  
Finally, be sure you really put this data to work. “A lot of people have these set up,” says Lalane, “But they don’t have a clear process of sharing the responses within the department, with hiring partners, or implementing feedback where appropriate.” You’re doing hard work, so don’t waste it!  

## Start maximizing your success

Candidate experience can be complex, but measuring it doesn’t have to be. Ask questions thoughtfully and measure it with care, and the rest will fall into place.  
  
If you thought this article was helpful, [subscribe to our blog](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/#newsletter-form) for more.

To succeed in providing a high-quality candidate experience, you'll need to measure your process. Here's our complete guide on how to tackle your candidate experience surveys to get the results you need.

How To Effectively Design and Run Candidate Experience Surveys

“Candidate experience” is a pretty nebulous term. Firstly, it can mean a lot of different things to different people and, secondly, it's been used as marketing jargon for recruiting software in the last few years, making it even harder to to know what it really *means*.

To us at Ashby, candidate experience means that we want each candidate to feel as positive as possible about the time they spent interviewing with us. Ideally, they'll even feel inspired to recommend other candidates to interview with us, even if they didn't get the job!  

A great candidate experience will have a positive impact on your hiring process and your company brand. IBM conducted [a study with 7,000 candidates in 2021](https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/YMOARJJG) and found that:  

* A great candidate experience leads to **38% more accepted job offers**
* Candidates who had a good experience are **twice as likely to become a customer**
* Rejected candidates who had a great experience are **80% more likely to apply again**

We regularly hear very strong feedback on our interview process. We want to use this article to demystify “candidate experience” and share a few practical tips that will help you improve it, no matter the size of your team.  

![love for ashby in a candidate email](/images/ashby-love-email.png)

## 1. Be fast and responsive

If you only take away one lesson from this post, make it this one: speed matters in hiring. There are two main dimensions to this. The first is that a  quick response represents excellent service. If you’ve ever interacted with customer support, you’ve surely paid attention to how responsive they’ve been. You may have also noticed that responsiveness typically correlates very closely with the quality of service you receive.  

The second dimension of hiring speed is about candidate churn. In a competitive hiring market, hiring teams that move slowly will lose candidates that are mid-process with other companies.  

The rule of speed applies to every step of the funnel. You sent an outbound message and received a reply? Move to scheduling as soon as you can. You received a strong inbound application? Reply as quickly as possible.  

A responsive hiring process makes applicants feel more valued. An unresponsive one can even discourage the candidate's own engagement. You need to give responsiveness to get responsiveness.  

## 2. Communicate your process clearly at every step

Candidates want to know what to expect from your hiring process. A candidate left guessing might think that you're disorganized or uninterested, which leads them to proceed with other offers. Help them by making it clear what your interview and assessment process looks like from the start.  

At Ashby, we share an outline of the entire interview process with each candidate. This document highlights all the interview stages and who they can expect to meet at each one. We reinforce this by sending additional briefing details at every step of the process.  

As an early stage startup, you may occasionally make opportunistic hires and where you’re not as prepared as you’d like to be. That can be okay if you set the expectations with the candidate clearly. Let them know that the first one or two interviews will be more open-ended but that, afterwards, you’ll share a structured plan for the remainder of the loop with them.  

It takes a little bit of work to prepare the candidate-facing outline and email templates upfront, but it makes a *huge* difference for candidates. Providing clarity on the process also helps the candidate perform at their best, which means you’re going to get more clues if they’re a good fit from your interview.  

## 3. Let candidates know who they're meeting with and who their team might be

When you’re interviewing a candidate, they’re also interviewing you. They want to make sure your company is a good fit for them as much as you do, so find ways to help them out! The clearer a picture the candidate can get about what it would be like to work on your team, the more likely they are to move forward in the process.  

At Ashby, we tackle this in a few ways. Our [team page](https://www.ashbyhq.com/team) shows who new hires will be working with. It’s incredibly helpful to let candidates know who they’ll meet during each interview, and who might be on their team someday.  This eliminates surprises and allows the candidate to prepare better.  

We also share our content pieces (on [thoughtful communication](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/company/thoughtful-communication) and [time and productivity](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/company/time-and-productivity)) to highlight the more distinct aspects of our culture and give applicants a sense of how they’d be working if they were to join us.  

Together, these amount to a lot of high-quality information for a candidate, allowing them to prepare better for interviews and get a strong sense of our company culture. We’ve also noticed that having this content out there allows candidates to come to our interviews with much better questions about the team and work environment.  

## 4. Leverage your interviews as opportunities to sell

How you conduct your interviews themselves is, of course, a huge part of the candidate experience. This is your chance to interface with the candidate directly, and it gives them the best sense of what it’s like to actively work with you and your team.  

Challenging and relevant interviews are the best way to engage strong candidates. In the best cases you can highlight some real-world challenges your team is facing - this will give the candidate a sense of the type of problems they would get to work on. It’s also a great way to show, rather than tell, what your business’s main concerns and priorities are.  

You should ensure that all interviewers are well-equipped to speak about company culture and other common questions that candidates bring up. Have new interviewers shadow or take a small role in a series of interviews before leading them personally.  

Ideally, as you grow the company, you will introduce a more structured interviewer training program. This can help team members who are new to hiring, or hire infrequently, to feel confident and capable in the process. That confidence will be noticed by your candidates, who don’t want a nerve-wracking interview process thrown off by an interviewer asking confusing questions.  

## 5. Measure and iterate

The best way to ensure a strong candidate experience is to collect quantitative *and* qualitative data about your process from your candidates (ideally most of the ones you interviewed, whether or not you ended up hiring them.)  

You can create rubrics that align closely to the areas you care about most. We’ve kept our survey very short and focus mostly on expectation setting (ie “I was briefed well on what to expect during each interview.”) We want to keep the survey short enough that candidates won’t have to work hard to complete it.  

![ashby candidate experience rating](/images/ashby-ce-rating.png)

We’re always pleasantly surprised by how many candidates want to provide feedback on our process. It’s already provided some helpful insights to improve candidate experience even further. Treat every candidate as a chance to improve your candidate experience.  

## Make candidate experience your next big focus

All of this advice can be accomplished with the tools you are already using today. It’s all about making candidate experience a top priority, and giving each candidate the time, thought, and attention they deserve.  

If you want to learn more about how Ashby can help, feel free to [contact us](https://app.ashbyhq.com/startups/product), and [subscribe to our blog](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/engineering#newsletter-form) for more recruiting advice every other week.

Everyone wants to create an amazing candidate experience. But what does that really mean, and how can you maintain an excellent experience with an effective hiring process? We're diving into that question right now.

5 Simple Ways to Improve Candidate Experience and Close More Candidates

Stephanie Baysinger wants a seat at the table for recruiting ops. Because, according to the recruiting ops expert with 12 years of field experience, that’s where those in the role will truly shine.

“My strong opinion with recruiting operations,” she told Ashby when we sat down with her, “Is that it can’t be the catch-all for your team. You need to think of your recruiting operations team as a strong strategic partner. They’re key in helping you connect dots for your overall long-term vision of what you're trying to accomplish.”

Between knowing what the long-term goals of a company are and understanding the short-term moves needed to reach them, Stephanie explained, recruiting operations pros are most effective when business founders view them as a partner. Unfortunately, that’s not always what ends up happening.

“Part of my role is to make sure that what we build will scale along with us and not break in the next stage of business growth,” she told us. “It's this constant balancing act of trying to build things when the team needed them yesterday, and then feeling comfortable with knowing what you need to solve for right now to the next level.”

But it can be hard to stick to that high-level vision when there’s always more to be done. “Every day you log into your email and see everything from, *We need to redo our entire referral process to, Greenhouse has a bug today, can you fix it?* And everything in between!”

Though it’s seen an explosion in numbers in recent years, recruiting operations is still a growing field, and that leaves many teams confused with what, exactly, to do with someone in that position. The end result of this has been more tangential projects, side work, and putting out fires than Stephanie would prefer.

“One of the things I’m wishing I’d see is the role of recruiting ops as the central hub of information. It’s a great spot because we work alongside our recruiters, but then we're also partners with our HR team, and with finance. The number one skillset of a recruitment operations team is the ability to anticipate needs and anticipate how an action taken now might have a trickle effect later.”

## Becoming the expert

Stephanie’s advice doesn’t come from nowhere. She started in recruiting at a global consulting firm, doing high-volume, high-touch MBA recruitment to bring in new consultants.

But Stephanie says she was soon taking on more than just direct recruiting. “What I found myself doing was constantly looking for ways to improve our processes. That job taught me a lot about the importance of consistency, creating a global brand, and ensuring that any candidate that engaged with us left with both a global and local connection to the work. But what that also meant was that, as a global recruitment team, there were things that we wanted to standardize. To that end, I started stepping into an operations role to help all of our recruiters get the resources they needed so that we could create that global experience and brand in a consistent way.“

It sounds like a huge undertaking, especially outside of the confines of her actual job description, and it was. ”I was taking on a lot. I found that a lot of the problems we had stemmed from recruiter training. So I started a global recruitment training program for new hires in their first month. I would do monthly trainings to help all of our teams understand the operational rigor of the role. I could actually catch people in their first thirty days, and then follow up with them six months later and get all the best practices down at the beginning.“

Stephanie spent seven years doing this before moving on to HubSpot, where she formally pivoted into a more technical role. Though she entered HubSpot as a recruiter trainer, her role was situated within operations functions. This was perfect, because it let Stephanie build a score of programs to help train and enable HubSpot’s recruiters. She rose to a management level before making the move to Klaviyo, where she was the company’s first formal recruitment operations leader, building out her own team and her own systems.

In the course of her career, recruiting ops has gone from being a helpful add-on to a recruiting role to something that Stephanie herself is being recruited for. Most recently, Stephanie has found herself at Marqeta, where she’s the Director of Recruiting Operations. “What was exciting about this role,” she told us, “is that this was one of the first strategic leadership hires on the recruitment team, because we have a leader here who truly believes in the importance of enablement and operations.”

## The recruiting dominos

That upper-level buy-in and enthusiasm is key, Stephanie says, in part because it’s not the case everywhere. “I've seen some people describe recruiting ops as, *'we have our recruiters, and our sourcing team, and our coordinations team, and then everything else goes to recruiting ops.'* And that's a recipe for not having the clarity, power, and partnership of a recruiting operations function.” The role can be cloudy enough even without that attitude, Stephanie says.

On the other hand, a functional and thriving recruiting operations team is what unblocks so many of recruiting’s current problems.

“A true collaboration between so many different departments is this dance that needs to be flawlessly choreographed. You need to understand and be a really great partner to the ones determining our overall head count. But then that trickles down into so many other things. What are the strategic roles that I actually need? What budget might we have to hire new talent? What roles are we prioritizing and what's the strategy behind it? Then you start bringing in your HR business partners and your talent managers. And they're trying to help hiring managers understand how to build out an organizational structure. And then from there you're working with your systems team to make sure that there's data validity and that we're compliant. And then you have a recruitment team who gets to take those roles and actually hire incredible talent for them.”

It’s a dizzying list.

“And you can see, they all sequence,” Stephanie went on. “It's like dominos: you want them all to nicely collapse, but usually it's all trying to fall at the same time.”

Naturally, the biggest stress point is one of the earliest in that chain.

“I don't think I'm the only recruiting ops person who would wish there was a magic wand or a piece of technology that could help me manage my head count!” she said. So far, nothing has cracked that problem for her in specific, but that's just one more reason why a talented recruiting ops team is so valuable.

“Recruiting operations isn't a field that can just be put to the wayside. It's becoming a piece of a business operating plan that needs dedicated planning and rigorous rhythm, because that's how it functions best. What I've found has worked is being extremely transparent and learning from the previous quarter, as well as knowing that it's probably never going to be solved perfectly. It's just learning from the last time we did it and making the process incrementally better.”

## Making improvements

In a career so busy, in a role not everyone understands yet, with endless challenges to iterate upon, Stephanie hasn’t stopped going out of her way to keep making improvements.

“I surround myself with really smart people,” Stephanie says, starting out humbly. “I about think the things that I'm currently learning in my role about building a recruitment strategy, and I think that they've had to pivot and change so much in the last couple years. What I want us to do more of is really getting to know the candidates and their decision motivators and all the different reasons why someone might want to make a change in their career. Just truly building that relationship. As we think about the future of work, the strategy should be focused on where we find incredible talent. “

And where is that? Anywhere in the world, Stephanie tells us. “Now that box has been completely opened so that it's not limited by geography. And that creates an entirely new way of strategizing how you bring talent into your company! I've worked at places where we've thought about using a pod or a hub-and-spoke model. We would hire in different regions and people could work in a hybrid way, but there was always a home base or a place for someone to go. But what’s the motivator for the employees? What do they actually want?”

What an employee wants is changing, and rapidly, just like the workplace as a concept. “Part of the strategy is to think about not just what we need right now, but what we're going to need in the next couple years. What will be the economic needs of our company? What gaps are we hoping to fill, and how do we start hiring for those things now? And how are we up-skilling and giving our current employees the opportunity to gain those skills once they're already here? Part of the strategy now is hiring for the skills you might need in the future, as well as hiring for really incredible cultural additions to your company and providing them with those resources to grow and prosper in their roles.”

## The ever-changing tech systems
Recruiting ops might still be new, but Stephanie says this is the most exciting time to be here. “I'm really excited to dive more into a lot of recruitment and HR technology. I've seen that space just boom in the past decade. We started with a lot of homegrown tools, and then we found the limitations of the tools. And now, I probably get two or three emails a day from various vendors who do various things. This might become an entire strategic role on a recruiting ops team in the future, to be someone who can manage the tech and ensure that our systems are empowering our recruiters. I've just seen this space just skyrocket.”

So what’s Stephanie looking for when she’s picking out tech for her team? “UX and tools for our recruiters that are intuitive, that make their life easier. It used to be about, *can I measure how much time we saved?* There'd always be these ROI metrics of saved hours a week. But now the technology is more around the analytics and how the technology and the time saved can actually impact the bottom line of a company and interviewer investment.”

Stephanie even specifically mentioned some of her favorites. “Ashby has been a really strong recruiting tool. I'm being very serious! Having done a recruiting operations role, I'm finding I have no desire to reinvent the wheel anymore. When there's a tool or a piece of technology that you can plug in, that integrates really well with the other pieces like your ATS, and does some of the lift, that's the kind of thing I want. And then I get to focus more on data cleanliness and validation and not vanity metrics.”

Any tool that helps streamline Stephanie’s workflows is a good one in her book. “There's a lot that happens behind the scenes that keep the boat floating and keep us running in the right direction. And when we can automate those and find more ways to innovate, there's usually a really big conflict between time and capacity. And so I'm consistently trying to find ways to automate a lot of repeatable steps so that we can create more space for growth.”

## Moving forward

Though she’s still new to Marqeta, Stephanie is an expert in what she’s doing, and she’s got big plans. When we asked her what the first thing she’d do in a new role might be, she had an answer ready to go. “It's so cliche, but I would just go on like a true listening tour. When you're misaligned on the talent that you *think* your hiring manager wants, or you think the business wants, that's a lot of wasted time, which is wasted money, which is wasted resources and burned out employees.”

“I would make sure that I'm really truly understanding our value proposition that we want to give to future employees,” she went on. “And I want to learn about that from the executive level, diving into old board of directors decks. What's super important for us? What kind of people do we want to work with? What kind of culture are we trying to create at this company?”

The passion she's cultivated over her career is obvious, and it's a great model for anyone interested in being a standout recruiting ops professional - or hiring one. “I want to be so embedded as such a strong partner to all of the hiring managers and to the employees at the company. I just want to be so in sync with where the company's going, going to all the town halls and looking at our CEO's two, three, five, ten year goals. And am I aligning the recruitment strategy to that?”

She paused and smiled. “That would be probably the first thing that I'd do.”

You can find Stephanie on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniebaysinger/).

Stephanie Baysinger is a recruiting ops pro, with over a decade of recruiting experience. We spoke with her about how to help the recruiting operations team achieve the best results at any company. Here's what she had to say.

Marqeta’s Stephanie Baysinger on Letting Your Recruiting Ops Team Shine

If you’re reading this on a computer, thank [Alan Turing](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/obituaries/alan-turing-overlooked.html).  
  
  
Turing was a scientist in the first half of the 1900s, and in addition to being a key figure in helping to end WWII, his work led to the development of computer science and artificial intelligence as we know it today. Even if you’ve never heard of him, you’ve definitely used items in your everyday life that were created because of his ideas. If you _haven’t_ heard of him, it may be because much of his life’s work was classified after he was was convicted of the crime of indecency for being gay.  
  
  
When Ashby sat down with Arthur Woods, he proudly told us that his company, Mathison, was named for Turing.

“It was his middle name. And so that’s really the backstory of what the company is all about. I grew up in a rural town in Northern California,” he told Ashby. “I came out as gay halfway through college and joined the LGBTQ community. I really got into HR technology and entrepreneurship out of this interesting vantage point of feeling like I was breaking the rules in life in general, and wanting my career to reflect the same.”  
  
  
Mathison is a company that helps companies build their diversity, equity, and inclusion plans, track their success, and train and empower their teams to create the greatest impact. And Arthur’s passion for that mission comes through very clearly when he speaks about it.  
  
  
“As an entrepreneur, I found myself thinking about new, creative ways to solve problems and also to chart my own path. I became passionate about HR technology, in particular DEI. Realizing that we spend the majority of our waking lives at work, and work for so many people is not working! For so many people work isn’t a place where there's a sense of empowerment or belonging. And I was really inspired to dedicate my life to how we innovate to make work something that works for people.”  
  
  
Since launching Mathison three years ago, Arthur has watched DEI go from being considered an optional bonus to an essential category for more employers.  
  
  
“Yet the vast majority of companies are struggling to make progress,” Arthur said. “They’re driving blind right now: they don't know where their gaps are or what to do. There's this huge need to take action. We wanted to start Mathison to turn the lights on in the room and help organizations see where they need to focus their attention, and then give them the tools to take action.”  
  
  
In the course of that goal, Arthur literally wrote the book on diverse hiring. “[_Hiring for Diversity_](https://www.mathison.io/hiring-for-diversity-book) was a culmination of years of research, studying the hiring practices of hundreds of employers and uncovering their greatest gaps and their greatest needs. And what we found in our work was that employers, first of all, didn't really have a playbook or a roadmap for their DEI efforts. We had the opportunity to deliver that to them. After working with hundreds of employers we translated all of our insights into the book.”  

## **What research uncovered**

There’s material in the book for anyone who cares about DEI hiring, but Arthur had a target in mind when he wrote it. “The leader who is trying to go from this extraordinary intent to _impact_. And what we're doing with the book is giving folks case studies, resources, and direct things that they can do to put their DEI strategy into action. The whole notion is that we need everyone to be part of this solution. It's not enough for us to simply just put our DEI activity on the shoulders of HR alone. We actually need everyone to play an active role. And the whole book is about democratizing that responsibility.”  
  
  
To learn that, Arthur didn’t only focus on employers and leaders. He also connected with nonprofits, workforce development agencies, and finally, active job seekers themselves. “We did a study of hundreds of underrepresented job seekers to understand the barriers they’re facing and to ask them _what is it that we can do to ensure we're lifting the barriers for you_. _What are the challenges you are seeing as we walk into the hiring process? How can we make sure that everything that we do addresses those issues?_”  
  

> “It's much more realistic to tell our organization: we may be early on, we may not have all the answers, but let's do this together.”

  
In the course of research, Arthur had some incredible conversations and insights. And something that stood out to him was how narrowly many people tried to define “diversity.”  
  
  
“As employers, many people still have a very narrow definition of what diversity itself is. That largely limits our ability to be inclusive in our efforts, because it hinders our ability to actually support every community.” Arthur told us that they combat this by zooming out for a big-picture approach. “Our model is to embrace a much more holistic definition of diversity.”  
  
  
Arthur pointed out to us that a wall exists between those within a company focusing on diversity, and those applying to work there. And it isn’t always clear from the outside what those DEI efforts really look like. “Job seekers have little idea about an organization's commitment to diversity, their diversity goals, or the efforts that they have underway. Our ability is to tell that story externally and really give organizations the ability to communicate their commitment to diversity. They need to build transparency to stand out to that job seeker that doesn't truly know right now, how authentically committed the organization is.”  
  
  
Sometimes the biggest gaps in a DEI strategy are, oddly, the most glaring ones. “It seems like such an obvious thing, right?” Arthur said. “As an employer that actually is taking steps to be more or inclusive, how can we now help you tell that story authentically to job seekers? But most job seekers, the vast majority in fact, had very little idea about an organization's commitment to diversity or diversity efforts when they went to their career page or when they walked into the hiring process. So part of our vision is helping with that.”  

## **DEI and building in public**

Clarity and transparency is often the focus of Mathison’s work.  
  
  
“Organizations basically have the posture that they need to go do this work underground away from everyone and not really share their progress or results until the progress is noticeable,” said Arthur. “And what that does is limit awareness of the work to a select few in your organization. It hinders collective ownership and actually ends up making the work unsustainable. Limited people find themselves trying to drive this work forward and they can't make a ton of progress.”  
  
  
There’s another approach that works much better, says Arthur. “Instead, say: let's start by building collective transparency across our organization, around our DEI activities. Let's now empower every single person to play a role. Let's equip everyone with the resources to take action. And let's build a continuous conversation with our organization. So everyone feels like they're connected. And that's a very different posture than, _let's have one person go underground and figure this out and they'll report back once they make progress._”  
  

> “What a cool thing for your organization to say, _you're part of the journey with us_. We want you to be part of the solution, give us ideas, tell us what we're missing. You're equally part of driving this all forward.”

  
  
That desire to bury the work, to do it quietly, Arthur says, may come from a place of fear. “I think it's a fear of admitting to not being far enough along, or admitting to not being perfect. And honestly, that's just an area where we have to shift our mindset to thinking that every single step along the way is progress.” It isn't a bad thing to be working imperfectly. “No one has really figured this work out end to end. No one has the full playbook and no one has all of the answers, right? Our ability to make true progress, and our ability to bring everyone along, and be transparent, and be somewhat vulnerable is a whole different way that we can do this work.”  
  
  
Working this way moves the bar to an achievable height. “It's much more realistic to tell our organization: we may be early on, we may not have all the answers, but let's do this together,” Arthur advised. “That's a very different posture. And it's one that, by the way, I think is much more exciting for the team of people who come into an organization and care about DEI. What a cool thing for your organization to say, _you're part of the journey with us_. We want you to be part of the solution, give us ideas, tell us what we're missing. You're equally part of driving this all forward.”  

## **Building in DEI as a team mission**

If you’re starting a new business, prioritizing DEI from day one is key. “The very first thing that we recommend organizations do is to have a conversation with leadership. Ask: why does diversity matter to us? What does it uniquely mean for us, and what is going to be necessary for us to bring this plan to life? What role will we all play? What activities will we need to engage in?” Starting with leadership is especially important, Arthur says. “If leaders at the top can have that conversation, it articulates the vision, the pillars, and how they're going to measure success.”  
  
  
“In a lot of organizations,” he went on, “What happens is their leaders say they have a diversity challenge. So they go to the head of diversity or to their head of HR and they say, you need to go figure this out, solve this for us. And so there's a collective need at the top, but there isn't a collective responsibility. And it makes everything else much harder. The whole notion of this is that we must go beyond. Leadership is just where the conversation has to start.”  
  
  
The idea of collective ownership of DEI is so vital, Arthur says, that it’s how he closed his book. “The last chapter in our book was _How to Mobilize Your Entire Team in DEI_. And the reason that it was at the very end, was that it’s mostly foundational. We need everyone. And that's a philosophical shift for a lot of organizations to shift the responsibility from that head of DEI to the rest of the organization.”  
  
  
Arthur suggests that the leaders in these conversations find ways to become more comfortable with the concept of diversity as a collective project. “It's going to be out of the comfort zone for a lot of leaders that have been taught for years and years: _you need to have all the answers, you cannot admit to not knowing, and you need to lead from a position of strength_. It's actually a much greater position of strength these days to lead from a position of authenticity, to admit to not knowing and to be willing to listen.”  

## **Adapting to a shifting space**

Excitingly, much of DEI is moving in that direction. Arthur predicted greater transparency and accountability at all levels will soon become the norm in the diversity space. He also predicted that that idea of diversity as a monolith is finally cracking.  
  
  
“Diversity is very holistic,” he said. “There are many different dimensions we can see and not see. It's intersectional — the complexity of diversity exists in ways that we haven't acknowledged before. I think we're going to see a lot of communities that weren't typically on the radar previously, now in the forefront. And a great example of that is the neurodiverse community, which in the last year has become a much more prominent part of the conversation. A lot of folks have very proudly identified themselves in the community in ways that they never previously did. There are employee resource groups dedicated to the neurodiverse community. And I suspect we're going to see more and more communities emerge that others weren't quite aware of as the taxonomy of diversity continues to expand.”  
  
  
Unafraid of keeping up with these changes, Mathison is continuing to grow, and they’re looking forward to a big year ahead. “We're continuing to expand our technology, extend our team, extend what we're measuring, and really be a resource for growing organizations that want to meaningfully take action in this work.”  
  
  
We also asked Arthur what his own goals looked like. “For me personally, I consider myself a permanent student of the work. I don't really believe there are experts in the DEI, because the work is continuing to evolve every day. Instead, there are permanent students who subscribe to the work itself and continue to immerse themselves in it. That's the great thing about this work. There's always a new barrier to learn about. There's always a new viewpoint to understand. There's always a new community to better build awareness of. And we just have to continue to expand our horizons in the work if we want to continue to be equitable.”  
  

> “Diversity is very holistic. There are many different dimensions we can see and not see. It's intersectional — the complexity of diversity exists in ways that we haven't acknowledged before.”

  
One way Arthur is helping to do that is with [Mathison’s Equal Pay Summit on April 12th, 2022](https://www.mathison.io/equal-pay-summit).  
  
  
The summit, Arthur said, is all about, “Uncovering the latest trends in pay equity and pay transparency. There's been a lot of new legislation in states like Colorado and in cities like New York where we're seeing new requirements for pay transparency and job descriptions. As this is becoming a requirement, a lot of organizations are internally wondering, _what have we been doing for pay equity and transparency?_ Have we assessed how equitable our pay is, are we defining everything very intentionally for job seekers who might be severely underpaid in their previous jobs? And we might be perpetuating that pay equity gap when we give them an offer that matches what they're being paid today, right? So there's a huge systemic issue with pay inequity.”  
  
  
He described the depth of the problem. “If you think about the trickle down impact of when someone is inequitably paid, what it means in terms of the house they can buy, the school they can send their kids to, the lifestyle they have, and how they actually become future leaders and organizations, pay alone actually has an enormous impact. And so us being able to be part of this conversation with the community on the latest trends and pay equity, transparency, what they mean for leaders and organizations right now, and how we can take action. It's going to be a very cool conversation!”  
  
  
Attending (or watching a recording) is a great way to be a permanent student of the work yourself. As Arthur told us, “Our whole philosophy is that you should not have to wait in order to make meaningful progress. You should be able to have progress in action, at any part of the journey that you're on. I'm very excited about all the work ahead. It's only the beginning in so many ways.”  
  
You can learn more about Mathison at their [website](https://www.mathison.io/), or on Twitter, [@Mathisonio](https://twitter.com/Mathisonio).  
Connect with Arthur Woods on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurwoods/) or Twitter, [@ArthurWoods](https://twitter.com/ArthurWoods).

Arthur Woods is an HR expert who literally wrote the book on DEI. His business, Mathison, is all about helping companies address their diversity struggles. Ashby sat down with him to talk about his work, DEI, and what both founders and recruiters need to know.

Recruiting

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

How To Effectively Design and Run Candidate Experience Surveys

5 Simple Ways to Improve Candidate Experience and Close More Candidates

Marqeta’s Stephanie Baysinger on Letting Your Recruiting Ops Team Shine

Mathison’s Arthur Woods on the Right Way to Approach DEI

Product

Resources

Company

Developers

Recruiting

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

How To Effectively Design and Run Candidate Experience Surveys

5 Simple Ways to Improve Candidate Experience and Close More Candidates

Marqeta’s Stephanie Baysinger on Letting Your Recruiting Ops Team Shine

Mathison’s Arthur Woods on the Right Way to Approach DEI

Subscribe to Updates

Product

Resources

Company

Developers