A diverse team brings diverse perspectives, and diverse perspectives help us build better products and more fully deliver on our mission.
Since are focused on building diabetes software, hiring people with a personal connection to diabetes might be a big win. But people without diabetes also have great perspectives on building great software, great processes, and 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
There are a number of channels we use to reach candidates: they each have pros and cons, so we aim to have a healthy balance of them to ensure we attract great and diverse candidates and doing so in a cost-conscious manner. Here are some of the channels we have used:
Referrals: we promote our job openings internally and encourage Tidepoolers to share our job openings with their networks. We offer no referral fees. We also realize that our networks tend to “look like us”, which might lead to less diversity.
Social Media: we promote our job openings on our social media channels.
Conferences: events where our team members speak or participate provide opportunities to source talent that is aligned with Tidepool’s mission.
Nonprofits partners: we have worked with groups such as YearUp, which focuses on training young minority adults to help launch their careers.
Job Boards: through SmartRecruiters (our Applicant Tracking System), our job openings get publicized in job aggregators such as LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc.
Recruiters: on rare occasions we work with recruiters to help us expand our candidate base for mission critical job openings.
Sourcing for a job opening is an ongoing process that only stops once an offer has been accepted by a candidate.
Screening Candidates
Once we have received applications from candidates, we screen them. We want to make sure that we don’t waste anyone’s time (candidate or interviewers) if the candidate is not a good fit for the role and/or clearly doesn’t exhibit the right attributes to succeed at Tidepool.
The following attributes (also known as core competencies) are related to our core values. Evidence of these is explored as part of the screening stage, and constitutes the foundation for interview questions:
Maker Mindset: what Tidepool is doing is bold and disruptive. So, it’s no coincidence we have Tidepoolers who love creating all sorts of things and think outside of the box to come up with new ways of overcoming challenges. Examples of people that exhibit this mindset include: nonprofit leaders, community organizers, activists, entrepreneurs, open source advocates, podcasters, and broadly speaking, makers of anything.
Radically Candid: we value people who are not afraid to speak their mind, but always do so in a constructive and collaborative way. Being Radically Candid means you challenge people directly but in doing so, you care personally.
Transparent and Honest: we don't keep secrets internally. We openly share with the team details about our financials, deal status and more. We also want people to be transparent in admitting mistakes, and share what they learned, so others can learn and improve. Externally, we share our source code, regulatory quality system documents, processes, project planning, and more. We keep very few secrets, typically only if it is required by an agreement with a partner, or as we are protecting user data.
Embrace Remote Working: this is less of an attribute, but more of a requirement. Since Tidepool is a completely remote organization (regardless of pandemics), we want to grow our team with others that either love working remotely, or are open to learning and capable of thriving in a remote environment.
We do not move past this stage until we have screened diverse candidates. This is a criteria we have to ensure we keep diversity at the forefront of our recruiting approach.
In parallel with our recruiting efforts for more seasoned jobs, we are very proud of our Internship Program and our Apprenticeship Program, both of which have been a source of extraordinary talent to feed into the Tidepool ranks over the years.