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.
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
"Enterprise UX is really hard because, in addition to designing for products, we also design for our own change and the change our colleagues navigate."
Boon Yew ChewMaking Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
June 6, 2023
"Everyone seems to have a design system, but many don’t understand why they need one."
Dan DonaldDesign Systems as a Vehicle for Systemic Change
June 1, 2023
"Research ops should elevate beyond processes and support to become a strategic partner reflecting critically on our work."
Fatimah RichmondThe Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
March 25, 2024
"Playbacks are stakeholder-focused meetings that sell the work’s story and drive buy-in, different from critiques focused on craft."
Joseph MeersmanSweating the Pixel: Scaling Quality through Critique
June 10, 2021
"If you don’t get good guidance and feedback from your enterprise partner, you’re not going to do the best work possible."
Melinda BelcherBridging the Gap: Making the Most of the Differences Between Agency and Enterprise
January 8, 2024
"Theory at its most fundamental just means if something A happens, then something B will happen."
Uday Gajendar Adam RichardsonFrom AI to Zeitgeist: Theory as the design antidote to AI hype
March 27, 2025
"Rather than handing off work, our designers and developers work side by side through sketching, testing, and iteration."
Laura Smith Tom GaylerEmbedding Service Design and Agile Practice within UK Planning Teams to Create Services that Last
December 3, 2024
"If you’re sitting there thinking I need to build out this project and nobody else is saying the same thing, it means you have to do it, period."
Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica HarlleeWhat's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
February 22, 2024
"Turn capping helps reset the model to prevent drift but introduces new problems around memory."
Katie JohnsonDisrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
June 4, 2024
