Building a Diverse Hiring Pipeline with Ragini Holloway & Gabe Westmaas #51

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

This ELC Hiring Summit special feature covers building a diverse hiring pipeline! You’ll hear how to approach DE&I holistically & what success looks like beyond the metrics. Plus how to balance headcount demand with DE&I goals, hold execs/managers accountable & ideas for effective DEI programs & partnerships with Ragini Holloway (SVP People @ Affirm) and Gabe Westmaas (VPE @ Checkr).

RAGINI HOLLOWAY, SVP PEOPLE @ AFFIRM

Ragini is currently Senior Vice President of People at Affirm and is an advisor for PeopleTech Partners and tech startups, including Shift.org and Pinkaloo Technologies.

Ragini helps high-growth startups scale recruitment and People processes, often from scratch. She took Credit Karma from 40 to just over 500, and has similar ambitious hiring goals now, already taking Affirm from 100 to nearly 1,000.

Ragini advocates for collaborative hiring practices and facilitates organic and authentic work cultures where people come together and discover common goals. Ragini is heavily focused in building diverse teams and designing employee engagement programs that drive ongoing workplace satisfaction and high retention rates.

GABE WESTMAAS, VPE @ CHECKR

Gabe is VP of Engineering at Checkr, building a fairer future through a better understanding of the past. The team is bringing automation, consistency, and fairness to the manual processes behind background checks. Gabe has led several teams through high growth periods, most recently at Airbnb, and prior to that in the crowdfunding space at Tilt, and the Cloud Servers team at Rackspace.

SHOWNOTES

• How to think about diversity, equity & inclusion holistically (1:37)
• Why authenticity matters & how it impacts your hiring process and funnel (4:48)
• Balancing headcount demands & hiring diverse teams (8:53)
• How to hold executives & hiring managers accountable for DEI goals (14:53)
• What a successful DE&I program looks like (beyond the metrics) (20:12)
• Aligning hiring managers & hiring processes with DE&I goals (22:57)
• Effective programs & partnerships to create hiring opportunities for URGs (25:51)
  

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