What is it?
Diverse.fyi is a directory of communities for supporting, sourcing, and hiring diverse technical talent. It’s a free resource that hiring managers and recruiters can use to discover these organizations as they look to build diverse teams.
So far, I’ve added 23 organizations to diverse.fyi and I’m adding more every day!
It was inspired by progression.fyi, a website that aggregates career ladders from tech companies that have made theirs public.
If you know of communities that you don’t see on the list, please click the “Add a community” button and let me know!
How it came to be
On the last episode of this newsletter, I shared that it was time to pivot Rubric. More than interviewing, companies shared that their primary challenge right now was sourcing mid and senior-level engineers.
So, I brainstormed ways to help address that problem directly. In addition to learning more about existing tools like LinkedIn Recruiter and Hired, I attended a panel on LeadDev about hiring and retaining underrepresented engineers where hiring managers shared how they diversified their pipeline by partnering with communities. One engineering manager asked:
It would be amazing to hear if anyone else has suggestions for good organizations that can help teams to find diverse candidates
In response, a couple of managers each shared their lists and each list was different.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen an exchange like this. When aiming to build diverse teams, partnering with diverse communities that broaden one’s network is one of the most common pieces of advice, e.g.
So, I began to explore how I might help hiring teams diversify their pipelines by making it easier to partner with these communities.
A hypothesis quickly invalidated
One hypothesis was that hiring teams would find it valuable to have a tool that helps them manage the distribution of jobs to job boards hosted by these communities, à la ZipRecruiter. I reached out to recruiters and hiring managers to understand:
Do they post to various job boards? Yes, but typically only 2 or 3.
How effective have they been? Anecdotally, they’re effective in getting applications but candidates skew towards the junior end.
How do they manage (updating/paying) the process? Manually. Once a month.
After more than a handful of conversations, I had collected enough data to determine that job distribution was a task but not a painful one right now 🚩 — a red flag. The other red flag, as we learned from Rubric, was the lack of existing alternatives in the market 🚩.
There may not be a business there, but I did see an opportunity to deliver value. In my research, I had found several amazing communities creating safe spaces for underrepresented folks and connecting them with workplaces striving for inclusion. I’m excited about the work that these community leaders are doing and I would love for more companies to discover these communities through diverse.fyi.
Every time a hiring manager or recruiter asks where they can go to source diverse talent, I want to (and I want others to) be able to point to diverse.fyi.
But what about a business?
For the next week or so, I’ll continue to add value to this free resource. I believe there is also opportunity in helping these community leaders succeed, but I need to speak with more of them to understand their needs and goals. In addition to a long-standing resource, I’m hoping diverse.fyi can be a great way to connect with more employers and community leaders about their challenges.
As always, more to come and thanks for reading.
If you do check out diverse.fyi, I would love to hear what else you would like to see on the site!