by Claudia Colvin, Talent & People at Happy Scribe
I’ve been working in small startups for the past 5 years and have been intensively researching and learning how to hire and retain top performing teams with DEI at the core of the approach. In this process, I’ve noticed a problem with the advice on the topic.
DEI advice. There’s a lot of advice on how to do DEI but not all of it is applicable to early stage startups, or smaller startups of under 100 or 200 people. Practitioners tend to be working in much bigger companies. Budgets for DEI start appearing in bigger companies. As a field, most of the people giving advice haven’t actually worked in small startups and don’t understand the specific problems that need to be solved in early stage startups in order for DEI to work.
Early stage startup advice. On the other hand, there’s a lot of advice on how to do hiring for early stage start up. It’s great advice and very customised for this type of company, but most of it doesn’t even at nod DEI or mention it, let alone explain how to actually think about it strategically and tactically when you’re hiring. And there is a diversity problem with the people giving advice themselves: most of them are white men from medium to high income backgrounds (for example Sam Altman, Alex MacCaw, Greg Brockman, Brian Chesky). I’ve read their hiring advice, and there are aspects of it that are actually a problem for DEI, for example over-relying on personal network hiring. We do a lot of personal network hiring at Happy Scribe as well, but we balance it with an intense focus on diversity in our outbound outreach.
So you need to choose between DEI advice that isn’t very tailored to your situation, or hiring advice that’s very tailored to startups like yours, but doesn’t centre DEI and risks actually harming your DEI efforts.
This notion page is an attempt to bridge the gap. To give DEI advice that is practical and relevant to early stage startups, so they can be equipped to hire a diverse team and help it create a company where everyone can thrive.
Expand the sections that are most relevant to you. If you only have time for one section, expand the “fixing the problem at the core” toggle. It’s the most important one.