Part 2: Building a Diverse Team
Reducing bias during the recruiting process
Last post we talked about how the GSB Impact Fund ‘hires’ a team of 65+ members and thinks of DEI metrics. Now, we’ll talk about reducing bias.
We all have unconscious biases. Think about how you might smile more when you hear someone is from the same hometown or region as you. Or, how you may look at a resume twice, since the applicant has the same first name as your best friend. We were highly cognizant that the 13 leadership team members, who are the ‘hiring managers,’ have unconscious biases that inherently favor some applicants.
Reducing bias
Over the course of 5 leadership team meetings, we implemented ways to expose or limit our bias in service of increasing diverse perspectives within the fund. We share these tactics below, corresponding with the order of the process.
Method 1: Application questions
- Including an open ended question saying “Our intention is to have the GSB Impact Fund’s membership represent a diversity of experiences and perspectives. What unique perspective will you bring to the Fund?” This allows applicants to share how their unique background may bring a new perspective onto a team, without the application reader being biased to favor certain types of diversity.
- Eliminating questions asking if applicants went to office hours or lunch and learn. Some students may not have learned the importance of American-style ‘informal networking’ through attending office hours.
“International students don’t attend office hours as often as students from the US, because it’s a different concept. In the application, we decided to not ask about attendance at office hours because of this unfair advantage.”
-Louise Hannecart, MBA ’23, Urban Development Deal Team Lead
Method 2: Reading applications for interview selection
- Using application numbers, instead of candidate names, when reading applications and only sharing names once interview invites are ready to go out. This limits unconscious favoritism a leadership member may have for a familiar name.
- Creating standardized criteria with sample grading to score applications. This reduces subjective scoring.
- Having at least 2 leadership members independently read and score each application. This reduces bias a leadership member may have to over-index on certain information.
“We were very clear and aligned on the benefits of eliminating names in application review, but I was surprised by some challenges. It was harder to remember details of each applicant, without names, so the screening process took longer. And, in interviews, we had to start over a bit since we couldn’t anchor application info to a specific name.”
-Sarah Freeman, MBA ’23, Justice Deal Team Lead
Method 3: Interviews
- Carrying over the standardized criteria from application review to continue to reduce subjectivity in scoring.
- Requiring interviewers to proactively create and ask standardized behavioral and case questions across all candidates. This reduces asymmetric information across candidates.
- Encouraging interviews to be all in person or all on Zoom for an interviewer. This reduces the influence of the environment on the outcome.
- Asking another leadership team member to lead an interview, if the original interviewer has any relationship with the candidate. This prevents partiality due to preexisting ties.
- Requesting detailed notes from each interview and recording interviews, to avoid misremembering information from a conversation.
“Monique and I (Co-CIOs of the fund) offered to interview in cases where a team lead had a prior relationship with a candidate (e.g. worked closely on a class project; led another club together; were friends). That way, we could decrease unconscious partiality. After taking notes and scoring candidates on interview criteria, we shared our insights with the team lead to incorporate into their overall decision-making.
-Anisha Mudaliar, MBA ’23, Co-Chief Investment Officer
Method 4: Final team selection
- Reminding leadership members of the standardized criteria and asking them to refer directly to the application and notes, instead of memory, when making selections.
- Adding a meeting to strategize about how to handle personal challenges or any other concerns around bias.
- Reviewing final team selections with another leadership team member and discussing if the team feels skewed in any direction.
“Two people of the same race, gender, and prior firm can have vastly different perspectives and values — it’s easy to over-index on a few DEI metrics and lose sight of the nuanced reality. Getting a second pair of eyes to pressure test my thinking was critical in building a balanced team in a fair way.”
-Keunyoung Ma, MBA ’23, Food & Agriculture Deal Team Lead
If we could do it again, we would:
- Introduce criteria transparency — Share competencies and criteria we are using with applicants, so they understand what we look for. This levels the playing field for applicants who have less context and pre-existing relationships with fund members.
- Align on criteria — Host a kick-off call to align interviewers on screening criteria and provide examples of illustrative situations. We did this asynchronously, but it would have been beneficial to have a group discussion on follow-up questions.
How does this apply beyond the GSB Impact Fund?
What we practiced, related to DEI and reducing bias this recruiting season, will hold up in future leadership roles we enter after the GSB. Something I’ll take into my future job is…
“Thinking critically about how I craft interview questions and whether they reduce bias in the hiring process or unintentionally introduce it.”
-Isabel Hebert, MBA ’23, Portfolio Operations Lead
“On the Portfolio Operations team, we had 2 leadership members in each interview — one led the interview questions and one took notes. It was hugely helpful to capture accurate details and later use those notes to reflect and decide on team members, instead of grasping at memories / examples from conversations.”
-Keya Patel, MBA ’23, Co-Chief Operating Officer
“Scoring the anonymized written application according to pre-established criteria and standardizing the interview process with consistent questions and an open mind to different approaches, were two key actions that helped remove bias from the process.”
-Diego Ramírez Aguilar, MBA ’23, Energy & Environment Team Lead
“Conducting blind reviews of applications upfront was tremendously helpful, and I’d argue, impactful for driving towards a more diverse and equitable funnel of investors. As someone who plans to work in VC full time, I will definitely take this learning with me.”
-Shaneez Mohinani, MBA ’23, Fintech Deal Team Lead
Revisit Part 1 of this 2 part blog piece for a peek inside how the GSB Impact Fund ‘hires’ a team of 65+ members and thinks of DEI metrics.
