Leadership wants a more diverse engineering team, but says the bar must not drop. How would you approach this?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Diagnose the funnel by stage with data
- Widen sourcing to new channels and communities
- Fix job ads and remove non-essential requirements
- Use structured interviews and diverse panels
- Hire on merit with the same bar; track results
Model answer
I would first look at the funnel data to see where the gap starts: are few women or under-represented candidates applying, or are they dropping at a certain round? If the top of the funnel is the problem, I would widen sourcing through women-in-tech groups, returnship programmes, tier 2 and 3 city colleges and community events. I would rewrite job ads to remove non-essential requirements and biased language, and show flexibility benefits. If the drop is in interviews, I would introduce structured interviews, scorecards and diverse panels, and train interviewers on bias. The hiring bar stays the same for everyone; we only remove things that never predicted performance. I would track representation and pass rates at each stage every month and report progress honestly to leadership.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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