Part 1: Building a Diverse Team

Peek inside how the GSB Impact Fund ‘hires’ a team of 65+ members and thinks of DEI metrics

At the GSB Impact Fund, we have 5 weeks to recruit 65 people — yes, 5 weeks, 65 people.

At first, this responsibility felt daunting. Most of our classmates have only hired a few people at a time or inherited teams through organizational changes. The Fund’s rapid and large-scale ‘hiring’ cycle was definitely a unique learning experience. We realized our learnings would be relevant not just to other student organizations, but to any organization rapidly scaling or transforming. In this 2 part piece, we share our most meaningful insights, particularly around the importance of hiring a diverse team.

How does recruiting work?

Each fall, the GSB Impact Fund runs a large-scale recruiting process. Our goal is to have a full fund with 7 deal teams and 1 portfolio operations team by the end of November. Each team has 8 to 15 students — investors and portfolio operations managers — who will experience the ins-and-outs of impact investing over the course of the academic year. As hiring managers, student leaders of the Fund have many core responsibilities during this 5 week recruiting sprint:

• Sharing the org’s mission and goals with students
• Publicizing at fairs and panels
• Holding office hours
• Creating the application process
• Reviewing hundreds of applications
• Interviewing a shortlist of candidates
• Extending final offers to join a team
• Offering resources to those not selected

Photo from our Lunch and Learn in October, with 200+ students interested in learning about the GSB Impact Fund and application cycle

Where does DEI come in?

DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) is a foundational value of the GSB Impact Fund. When we diligence companies, we seek out indications that they value DEI in their leadership team and across the organization. It is important to us that we reflect these values in our own organization, as we believe a more diverse fund leads to better outcomes and better learning for our members.

This year, our student leadership team thought about DEI in 2 ways:

1. Understanding the DEI metrics that matter to us and how to track them (in this blog piece, part 1)
2. Reducing bias in the hiring process (in part 2)

DEI metrics

What is our goal, as a fund, when it comes to recruiting and DEI?

This question was our North Star. It forced us to be concrete and determine the data we wanted to collect. After some discussion, we honed in on a goal of reflecting the diversity and richness of backgrounds and experiences within our MBA/MSx class, in regards to the final composition of the Fund’s investors and portfolio operations managers.

To attempt measuring this, we noticed the GSB’s existing data was limited to gender, ethnicity, and citizenship. We therefore focused on top of funnel recruitment to expand the pool of applications across these 3 dimensions. For example, we posted an extra reminder of the application due date to identity and cultural groups (like Women in Management, Black Business Student Association, and more) and asked applicants to voluntarily share their information across these categories.

Once we identified our goal, our leadership team met with Simone Hill Okafor to understand how to implement them throughout the hiring process. Simone is the founder and CEO of Melanted Futures, former GSB Impact Fund Investment Committee member, and a member of the GSB class of 2014.

Top four learnings from our discussion with Simone:

1. No quotas — Stay away from having a specific number in mind for demographics (that’s considered a quota and can even defeat the purpose of equity and inclusion).
2. Representation — Our “client base” is the class, meaning the starting point for representation for the Fund is our MBA / MSx class. We should then consider missing backgrounds or perspectives that would be valuable to the teams.
3. Provide context — Asking for demographic information can be intrusive, so provide context on why it’s being asked of candidates. Also allow candidates to opt out.
4. Review applications independently — Do not read applications with demographic data visible and prioritize data security seriously. Only bring in aggregate data (never identify demographic information of individuals to hiring managers) after decisions are made about who progresses to the next round. At that point, hiring managers can revisit the remaining applications to critically evaluate if bias influenced the decision.

If we could do it again, we would:

• Start the conversations sooner — In recruiting presentations and on our website, we should explicitly state why DEI matters to the fund. This would help applicants understand that DEI is embedded into our educational experience and not a checkbox item.
• Explain data usage — Share how we use demographic data. In the application we said demographic data could ‘help with program design decisions.’ We can go further to share how (1) student leaders of the Fund never see individual demographic data and (2) our goal is to reflect the class profile.
• Invest in more top of funnel outreach — Sponsor a panel or smaller group discussions about impact investing from diverse perspectives. Publicize this to GSB identity and cultural groups (Black Business Student Association, Latin American Student Association, Women in Management, First Generation Low Income, etc) to informally get the word out about the Fund to a variety of audiences, before applications open.
• Use researched DEI categories — Review current practices for collecting gender, race, ethnicity, and citizenship questions. For example, consider MENA (Middle Eastern or North African) distinct from the category of White, or include Transgender within the gender identification question.

Next up is Part 2: Reducing bias during the recruiting process

Written by Soa Andrian, Claire Chen, Keya Patel (Recruiting Leads, 2022–2023 GSB Impact Fund)