Becoming part of the team

Our hiring process attracts a diverse pool of talented applicants

The Hearken team has developed a transparent, collaborative, and well-defined system for hiring. Our method ensures that, in a pool of candidates who applies for a specific job, most applicants have the experience we are asking for, and the demographic makeup of candidates reflects our outreach efforts.

Diversifying the candidate pool

An example of a recent hiring process highlights the diversity of the pool of candidates: Out of 116 applicants, two-thirds of our applicants were women, one-third of our applicants were people of color, and nearly one-fifth of our applicants were LGBTQIA. (To be clear, these categories are overlapping, since these are three different attributes of a single person — gender, race, sexual orientation).

Of the 10 finalists we interviewed: Five were women of color, four were white women, one was a man of color. We hadn’t looked at their responses to the optional demographics questions when we scored their applications and resumes, so this majority-POC, majority-women pool of top applicants came from them being excellently qualified and writing a strong application, and from the success of our outreach strategy.

Pieces of good advice for your application

If you’re interested in working with us, and maybe already have begun writing your application, here are a few pieces of advice that might come in handy throughout your application process:

  1. Answer the application questions. An unreasonable number of applicants write responses on the application that doesn’t actually answer the question we ask. It doesn’t matter if what you write is interesting. If it doesn’t answer the question, your score will be affected negatively.
  2. Follow directions. If the instructions say to email a specific address, using a specific subject line, with your resume attached, do that. Don’t use a different subject line, or send it to a different email, and expect us to go looking for it.
  3. Prepare for interviews. Usually everyone we interview has done their homework. Sometimes a lot of homework! But this isn’t always the case, so worth noting here again. Learn about the company, and have questions prepared to ask the interviewers.
  4. Answer questions in interviews, too. Make sure you’re actually answering the question. If that means asking for clarification or pausing to gather your thoughts before you start, that’s okay. We pay close attention to the way the interviewee communicates: whether they understand our questions, clarify when confused, and are able to provide us with the relevant answer.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you! And, in the meantime, you’re more than welcome to take a deep dive into the specific steps of our general hiring process.