Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
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
-
•
Nearly 60% of HubSpot's UX hires came from employee referrals, which reinforces sameness and reduces diversity.
-
•
Slowing down hiring speed allows for more thoughtful and inclusive candidate sourcing.
-
•
The leadership team used a technique called 'aided recall' to actively seek candidates from underrepresented groups.
-
•
Candidate experience mirrors customer experience; mixed signals and disjointed communication hurt confidence, disproportionately affecting women and people of color.
-
•
Women often only apply if they meet all job requirements, whereas men apply despite partial matches, reflecting a confidence gap.
-
•
HubSpot implemented interview prep guides and standardized interviewer notes to level the playing field for all candidates.
-
•
An associate practitioner rotational program was launched to hire and develop junior talent without prior deep experience.
-
•
Belonging is crucial: it’s more than diversity and inclusion—it impacts retention and individual performance.
-
•
Unseen diversity traits (neurodiversity, mental health, education) significantly affect employees’ sense of belonging.
-
•
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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Power is a weird word. It's hard to relate to, and we aren't usually put in that position in our work."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
"We wanted to create personality in interfaces without pretending they are human."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences
June 11, 2025
"AI changes everything in unstructured data analysis; before it was painful manual work, now it's automated theme detection and clustering."
Aleksandra Korczynska Caroline Jarrett Justyna ParmeeSurvey Tools
March 12, 2026
"Asking questions made our direct communication partners think I didn’t know what I was talking about; telling statements worked better."
Anat Fintzi Rachel MinnicksDelivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
June 9, 2022
"We often use radio buttons when check boxes or sliders would reveal the truth."
Peter MorvilleThe Architecture of Understanding
May 13, 2015
"We get these 75-page PRDs created by enthusiastic people, not PMs, and they’re unreadable. We call that fake holder input."
Paul FordNew work, new words: A glossary for AI
June 9, 2026
"This field is still really emergent and growing momentum nationally and internationally."
Ariel KennanTheme Two Intro
November 17, 2022
"Each hard control button in a car costs between 50 cents and 10 dollars, which adds up to millions in manufacturing costs."
James RamptonThe Basics of Automotive UX & Why Phones Are a Part of That Future
July 25, 2024
"Qualitative research is excellent for discovering needs but poor at quantifying their scale or priority."
Michaela MoraAdvanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions
March 11, 2022
