Designing an Inclusive, Compassionate Hiring Process

By Kerry Cahoon , Director at Impactual LLC

We have received a lot of incredibly kind feedback from applicants about our hiring process; in fact, we’ve even had candidates we didn’t hire refer business to us! We love the relationships we build through our hiring processes and thought we’d share some of the best practices we’ve honed over the years. The most important thing for us is to ground every aspect of our process in the understanding that candidates put a lot of time, effort, and heart into their applications and interviews. We prioritize giving that same amount of care back by communicating early and often with our applicants. 

Here are a few of the things we do to make our process inclusive and compassionate. 

1. Clear and consistent communication. Applicants receive messages from us to confirm receipt of their application and let them know where they stand in our hiring process. Even if we are delaying the process or not moving forward with someone, we let them know in a timely manner. 
2. Limit communications to the formal hiring process. We love proactive candidates who find ways to reach out to our team members to flag their applications for our openings. But we also understand that not everyone has the “in” to connect with us in this way. We let every applicant who reaches out know that we are thrilled they are interested in working with us, but will only be in touch through the formal process.
3. Share expectations for what the hiring process entails up front. We detail our process and timeline in the job posting. And then, as we move through the hiring process with our applicants, we communicate the timeline and next steps repeatedly. We understand the time commitment we require, so we tell our candidates in writing and in interviews exactly what they can expect from us.
4. Reach out to applicants across different sectors. For Impactual, a talented applicant pool means finding candidates with different (or atypical) backgrounds. We’re always looking for people who have experience in varying sectors and industries, who come from all different parts of the country, and most importantly - bring new and varying perspectives to our team. 
5. List titles and salary levels. We strongly believe candidates should not be left to guess at how much they may be paid for a position (we never promote jobs that don’t have salary ranges in them). To find the best match for our firm’s needs, we provided flexibility in experience levels while also maintaining a high standard for applicants we consider.
6. Don’t get hung up on HR style language. If you’ve got a wildly qualified pool, tell people. If you’re genuinely impressed by someone in the process, but can’t hire them and hate it -  tell them! Ask them for permission to reach back out or if you can give their info to someone in your network. 
7. Give candidates a chance to flex their relevant skills. We do this by requiring a short written simulation that gives candidates a sample of the work they’ll be doing.
8. Reduce bias in the process. Conducting phone interviews for the first round and blinding the simulations for review in the last round allows us to focus on the quality and content of the candidates’ answers and work product. We are also intentional about not having education requirements which levels the playing field.
9. Stay open to feedback and address it quickly.  Although we have recruited multiple candidates to join our team, and received positive feedback from both new team members and those we did not hire, we are always looking to improve. We stay open to feedback and adapt our process quickly if someone raises a flaw in it that we need to address! For example, it was only after a few candidates shared that they didn’t know we would have a simulation exercise as part of the process that we added that to our job descriptions.  

We’d love to hear what you think about how we do this and what else we can do to create an inclusive and compassionate environment as we run future hiring processes.