A diverse team brings diverse perspectives, and diverse perspectives help us build better products and more fully deliver on our mission.

We are focused on building diabetes software, so certainly hiring people with a personal connection to diabetes is a big win. But people not living with diabetes also have great perspectives on building great software, building great processes and being a great company. Diversity also includes gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political views and much more. By having a broad variety of perspectives we can build better software and a better company that meets the needs of the diverse population we serve.

Sourcing Candidates

Building a great team starts with attracting great candidates, and there are three channels we can use to attract candidates: referrals, outbound recruiting, and inbound interest. We keep all three channels open, but we are thoughtful about the biases that result from each channel so that we can make them work for our team-building goals and values.

Open positions are posted at tidepool.org/jobs. We’ll talk about open positions at our All Hands meetings.

Referrals

Referrals from people who already work at Tidepool are one of the best signals we can get about whether or not a candidate will be successful at Tidepool. Tidepool employees understand Tidepool’s needs and what it’s like to work at Tidepool, and their relationship with the candidate means they know a lot more than we can learn during a typical interview process.

In order to get good referrals, everyone needs to know which positions are open, know how to start the recruiting process, have time to search their network, and feel aligned with the company's mission and priorities. We expect everyone to go through their networks looking for and thinking about candidates. Employees will do initial outreach to interesting connection, which will give us a good space to talk about how we start the recruiting process.

We do not offer referral bonuses. We feel that participating in the recruiting process is a part of everyone's job and should not need additional incentives.

The danger with referrals is that we are most likely to refer candidates who are like us, which can result in a homogenous team instead of the diverse one we want to create. We should emphasize diversity as a priority in our referral lunches and also search the local networks we are involved in. We should also continue to look for other ways to offset this bias on an organizational level.

If you want to refer someone for a job opening at Tidepool, please follow the instructions on this FAQ.

Outbound Recruiting

For every position open at Tidepool, there should be a single person who is in charge of the recruiting efforts for that position. While we are small, this will likely be the CEO. This starts with writing the job description and publishing it on tidepool.org/jobs, but also means proactively searching for people who might be a good fit, looking for pools of candidates that we can recruit from, and asking friends for introductions to promising candidates.

It is critical that we find talent pools of diverse candidates to pull from, and that our outbound recruiting intentionally target underrepresented groups. If we are recruiting from universities, we need to be careful about which schools we draw from. If we are pulling people from other companies, it’s important that we are thoughtful about the location and industry biases of those companies.

Inbound Applications

All of our job openings and descriptions will be posted on tidepool.org/jobs, and some will be posted on other sites where we can advertise our open positions. Careful thought should be given to where we post job openings, as traditional boards have homogeneous audiences. We will also have people reading about Tidepool through our blog and social media, developers working with our tools and participating in our community, and a broad audience hearing about Tidepool through news or using the product.

Inbound applications give us the highest number of candidates that are outside of our personal networks, but also have the lowest initial filter because no one at Tidepool is making any judgment about the candidate before they enter our pipeline. Because of the light filter, it can be tempting to dismiss these candidates, but an inbound application is a strong signal that the candidates believe in what we’re doing at Tidepool. This means that a smaller percentage of candidates from a broader pool will progress through our interview funnel. Regardless, we still need to treat inbound applications with respect.

Every inbound application should receive a response from the Tidepool team within 3 days so that they feel heard and like they were able to reach us personally.

More Hiring Information

More information about our hiring processes can be found here in Confluence / Employee Resources / Hiring.

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