The hiring process is not just about who we hire but about how. Our hiring process is one of the most important ways we define who we are, both out into the world and inwardly to ourselves.
A future Ride Report employee's first encounter with our company and our practices is through the hiring process. Every step of the way – from how we source to how we interview – we are setting the expectations for the person being hired. The hiring process can both implicitly or explicitly communicate what we value, how we communicate, how we make decisions, etc.
Our hiring process is always a way in which we reinforce our values for the people doing the hiring. For example, when we ask team members to spend time sourcing candidates with diverse backgrounds, we're communicating that valuing diversity requires activism and that the company values and prioritizes this work. As another example, when we follow a hiring process that evaluates all candidates on a clear set of measurable criteria, we are showing that we value objective decision making using explicitly stated goals.
We use Lever (internal link) as our central tool for sourcing, tracking, and evaluating candidates.
The hiring manager is the project lead for a hiring project. The hiring manager's goals are to ensure that a well-defined process is followed, and that candidates receive fair treatment and regular communication. The hiring manager will vary from role-to-role.
First, the Hiring Manager creates a "Hire" Project via our Project Process. The "Hire" project template contains a checklist and hiring plan template to prepare for all new hires.
The hiring manager is the project lead for all new hires, responsible for scheduling and running checkpoints for the hiring team to discuss current outreach and sourcing efforts, discuss the status of individual candidates, and, when necessary, clarify or refine the process. These checkpoints should be run like any other project checkpoint—anything that will be discussed at the meeting should be outlined in an agenda beforehand per our meeting guidelines. If no agenda is prepared, the meeting should be quick—just to review any outstanding candidates.
The hiring team consists of the project stakeholders for a hiring project. Responsibilities include preparing the hiring plan, applicant screening, interviewing, and evaluating candidates.
Working with the hiring team, the first step is for the hiring manager to create a hiring plan that details the qualifications, experience and traits of the role needed. These criteria are made as explicit as possible, with guidelines about how we will measure each criteria for the hiring team to follow.
Based on this plan, the hiring manager will then create a job description. We strive to make the requirements for the role as clear as possible, and make the language welcoming and appealing to a diverse set of candidates. The job description will be reviewed and approved by the Hiring Team before being posted. The hiring manager will use tools (like textio.com) and other resources to help identify biased or repelling language in the description.
The job description will provide information to candidates as well to understand whether or not the role is a good match for them. The Open Source Employee Guide will always be linked in the job description, as well as any additional specific information about the team the role is on.
Oftentimes, candidates will need additional information about the role or Ride Report in general to know whether or not the job is right for them. If candidates need to have additional conversations throughout the process to get a better understanding of the company or the role, the hiring manager will facilitate resources to candidates to make sure they have the information they need. The hiring manager will make clear that any additional conversations are not evaluative, and whenever possible will make arrangements to pair the candidate with someone who is not involved in the decision making process.