As a hiring manager at Manifold, I want to make sure my job listings are as inclusive as possible, so we can find the best people who will be successful here and add to our culture.
And as a product manager with open positions and access to user testing tools, I naturally began testing. We want to test features and ideas as soon as possibleâââso why donât we do this with something as important as who we hire, and how our companies present themselves to the world?
Striving for diversity in hiring is important because itâs the right thing, and itâs critical to our long-term success: we know the better we do at it, the smarter weâll get, from the top down to individual teams seeing new opportunities and spotting more potential hazards as they work.
Iâm lucky enough to have the autonomy to run with things like this and our tool allowed demographic splits, so I ran a series of groups:
- wide open
- identified as women
- identified as women and had children
I did this because:
- Iâm a white cis het man without kids, and I want to discover when Iâm writing with blinders, or making assumptions, and I know that someone who is interviewing may not feel like theyâre in a position of power to ask for things or point out problematic language, so I want to try and actively discover issues and address concerns up front.
- in tech, especially in startups, we skew young and childless, and if youâre looking for âculture fitâ youâre only going to hire people like you
(I did not look at non-binary gender because our user testing service forces testers into a binary gender choice. I have given them pointed feedback on this and would love to hear about more inclusive alternatives.)
I started small: I asked participants to read through a two versions of a problematic time zone bullet point and a benefits listing, answering questions (âwhatâs your opinion of xâŠâ) after each. The first was very close to what weâd used in the past, and the second a new draft intended to be more expansive and inclusive.
I knew it wasnât the most rigorous test, that there are many other intersections that need exploring, and that my variant text would need honing. But we build, we measure, we learn, right? So whatâd we learn?
Time zones are the worst
Manifold is headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and about half the company is there. The rest is remote. With the vast majority of the company on the Atlantic and Eastern time zones, itâs very difficult to be far off that.
Weâve expressed that as:
We believe in having people work from where they are most productive. If you want to join us in our cozy office in Halifax, welcome! Weâd love to have you. If you are remote, you are also welcome! Ideally, you live within 4 hours of the Eastern time zone.
That confused a surprising number of people. Some testers on the West Coast did not realize weâd hire them. A Jamaican tester who understood everything else was entirely baffled.
A cynical view might be âgreat, if they donât understand relative time zones, you know theyâre not worth hiringâ and I would say âseriously? Have you ever worked with time zones? I want to hire people who donât have a bunch of dendrites knotted up remembering that stuff.â
The variant tested was:
As a remote-centric company, youâre free to work anywhere as long as youâre online and available for our core hours of 12â4 Eastern, or 9â1 Pacific.
This eliminated entirely the question of where people lived. Everyone got it immediately!
It introduced a new problem, though: some testers then thought the job was only four hours a day. Two swooned at the thought. âThis sounds like a dream jobâ one said. It is, but itâs not a half-time dream job.
Iâm still working on wording. Time zones are the worst.
To the bennies
Hereâs our first version:
We offer:
- health, vision, and dental insurance for you and your family
- 15 days paid vacation days to start
- competitive compensation
- equity opportunities
- available 401(k)
And the re-written one:
We offer:
- flexible working hours
- excellent health, vision, and dental insurance for you and your family that starts on your first day
- vacation youâll be encouraged to use, plus an all-company end-of-year week off
- competitive salary
- equity opportunities
- 401(k) with no match (weâre brand new)
- yearly professional development allowance of $2,000 for conferences, training, or anything thatâll help
- health and wellness allowance
- home office allowance for remote workers
- weâll issue you a sweet laptop, big monitor, and all that good stuff
All of that is true, by the way, and since I did these tests Manifoldâs added 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for anyone who becomes a parent (regardless of gender or if itâs by adoption or childbirth).
Things you think you know are likely right
The vacation youâre encouraged to use was lauded. Testers with kids noticed and appreciated the health care for them and their family that started immediately. Both of those were frequently cited in summary comments as indications that weâre a good place to work and care about our employees.
Yay!
âCompetitive salaryâ is standard text that got a consistent âwhatever, everyone says thatâ reaction. I know! I know. If you canât offer meaningful ranges, what can you say here that is meaningful? âWe conduct regular salary surveys to ensure our pay is in the top x%?â What if youâre a startup and you pay well enough, but much of the compensation is in startup equity and not cash?
Youâll discover hidden assumptionsâââthe 401(k) problem
I tried two explanations of our 401k plan (for Americans), which does not have a company match. This is not unusual at your tiny new startups. I wanted to be very clear that there was not a match, though, and tried to slip in a why.
The original had â401(k)â as a bullet point. The variant said â401(k) no match (weâre new)â
This did not go well.
If you just say you have a 401k, thereâs an assumption you have a match. This was called out explicitly in commentary (and I cringed every time) but really called out when we said we didnât have itâââit generated a very negative reaction: âWhy no match?â
That set up another unexpected reactionâââfurther on in second version, I listed out all of our fringe benefits. Wellness benefit to go towards gym membership! Professional development.
It ends up being a good chunk of bullets. What I didnât expect was for people who had a negative reaction to the no match in the 401k, many felt even more negative about the additional benefits.
âWhy are you offering all these other benefits but no 401k match?â one woman asked in the middle of the list, returning to it in later summary answers.
I had hoped there would be enough there to start off-setting the match. Who doesnât think âAllowance towards home office? I can buy a V60 and make my own artisanal coffee?â
Everyone. If anything, reminding people we cared about the little things made not having a match more prominent.
Youâll introduce new problems that illuminate old issues
You probably already flagged one of the bullet points. We used to say
Whether youâre at Manifold HQ or remote, weâll buy you your laptop, your choice of flavor, along with a monitor and the accessories you need to work and potentially travel well.
I thought that was too boring and formal, and also, it was the last bullet point and I was tired. I just waved my hand at it, and said:
Weâll supply you with a laptop, monitor, and all that cool stuff.
This⊠if youâre at a standing desk, please hold onto a solid surfaceâââwent over even worse than the 401(k) text. No one liked it. Zero comments that âthis hip person gets that itâs table stakes.â Almost everyone in an all-woman test group reading the line out loud delivered the second half with at best resignation. 100% of women with kids did. Some eyerolled so hard I could hear it. âI know what the writer was saying, butâŠâ on woman said, trailing off.
Okay, so itâs lazy text. How big of a deal could it be?
Huge. It nearly set fire to the whole test. For many of the people who reacted, it destroyed the credibility of the entire company benefits description.
âUnprofessionalâ was a running theme. People who liked the benefits and seemed positive about us as a whole shifted into a âI donât knowâŠâ tone for a bit, and then returned to mention it in summary comments. The more generous assumed weâd just screwed up writing that line.
I knew that line wasnât great, but seeing how strongly people reacted and what it did to their overall impression reinforced the importance of consistent voice and paying attention that friendly didnât wander into glib and unprofessional.
Moreover, it was a huge âyour privilege is showingâ moment. The original text I waved away did a good job of assuring people that theyâd be supported even if they didnât already have, or couldnât afford to buy, a nice home computer setup so they could work remotely. This is huge for people who might be coming out of a career change, or otherwise donât have cash in reserve for an expense like this.
Aaaaaand I just hand-waved the old, perfectly good text away without considering why it might be important because I thought it was boring.
Derek. Come on, man.
I know we all want to test incomplete things. And often, we need to remind ourselves itâs often okay to release something youâre a little embarrassed about, as long as customers can get value, because they canât judge it against your Dreamstate v.3 release. But this was a welcome reminder that if Iâm looking at something people will see, and my own reaction is âthatâs just not good workâ itâs worth holding. Iâd have gotten way better results if Iâd asked for help, or just slept on it.
Whatâs next
I loved doing this, and I recommend we all look for opportunities to use testing to learn where we have blindspots and expose hidden issues, so we can improve and iterate.
Manifold has a number of great positions open, particularly in development and marketing: check them out! And Iâll continue to test as I have the opportunity. I welcome feedback, thoughts, ideas, and particularly, anything in how in the world you express the time zone thing.
Iâm at derek@manifold.co or @milhous on Twitter