They are also doing the latter with the scorecard thing, but I guess at least it’s better to be explicit than to just do it anyway in a less controlled manner.
Different perspective in the room where the decision is made really does impact how good the team, its decisions, and its work are. I can link a bunch of studies if you like - the business case for having a diverse team has been made a bunch of times over the last decades.
It’s a factor we consider but it’s not the sole decision point. Skills, knowledge, empathy, curiosity, etc are all important.
Gender and ethnic background aren’t the only factors in whether you bring a different perspective, either. If all your team are oxbridge educated white men who worked in consulting, an oxbridge educated white woman who worked in consulting isn’t really a very different perspective.
Ultimately we’re building a bank for our users, if we all think the same way we’ll massively narrow the number of people who find what we’re building useful.
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Maybe this is me being overly simplistic but if you don’t set a benchmark, based on the distribution of sex, race, orientation, age etc. in society, then you can’t make sure that your approach to hiring is successfully fostering diversity & inclusion. Isn’t that the purpose of the scorecard?
Just because you set a benchmark, that doesn’t mean you have a quota. It’s only a quota if you’re proactively seeking certain candidates, whereas a benchmark can simply be used for retrospective analysis.
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It does mean that an applicant who is slightly less capable for the position can and will be chosen for the job if they bring more diversity to the team. I think we can agree that is factual.
Whether that is right or wrong is the debate.
For me, it feels a little too far - but I can also definitely see why it would be beneficial and can see why a person would see it as the right choice.
I applied for a Data & Analytics position about a year ago but never received a response.
Good to see the process has improved since then.
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Only if it’s a quota. I’ve checked the blog & community and Monzo have never said that they have one.
And as Maria’s just said, the primary end goal is to have different perspectives, diversity is just a factor that feeds into that.
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If you are scoring and you have two candidates:
Candidate 1
- technical score: 5
- diversity score: 2
Candidate 2
- technical score: 3
- diversity score: 5
Then, as-per Monzo’s stated process, candidate 2 will be hired over candidate 1.
Obviously this is a gross oversimplification, but it does show the point clearly. Monzo are not at the stage where they would just hire both at this point.
Could you please point me to the explanation of their process that you’re referring to here?
Where they explained that their scorecard includes scoring on widening perspectives - as per Jonas’ presentation at the event, and as confirmed by Maria above.
I’m not trying to be difficult here, but this is factually true.
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God I hope that never happens.
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That assumes that all factors are equally weighted, which might not be the case. But, more fundamentally, you seem to be implying that ‘diversity’ is a less important factor than ‘technical’ when considering the likely performance of the candidate. I think the point @mcampbell was making, is that isn’t necessarily the case, and there is a body of evidence showing this. Obviously there is a certain minimum level of technical competence required, but beyond that, other factors (including empathy, etc) might be more important on long-term performance as part of a team.
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Yes absolutely, hence mentioning it was a gross oversimplification. Clearly all factors are not equal, but it does not change the fact that lower scoring in non-diversity areas can be made up - to some degree - by higher diversity scoring.
It definitely could be argued that the non-diversity areas are less important, but I’m not sure I’d agree.
The part that I’m struggling with is the fact that you’re trying to assign a single candidate a diversity score at all. Unless I’m missing something, you can’t quantify someone’s diversity if you’re talking about race, gender etc. What matters here is how their background has shaped their perspective.
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How someone’s background shaped perspective and their empathy etc won’t even be judged if any CV received does not progress to a phone call or interview. What criteria do they use to screen CVs particularly as past job summary is only a snapshot of work undertaken and soft skills and transferable skillset are not going to come out for more mature candidates unless there is an interview process or a CV is half a dozen pages long. Cramming decades of work experience on to 2 pages does prevent a candidate going into the detail needed to show the transferable skills that could benefit Monzo
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This doesn’t explain the criteria that they use to assess CVs but I think it helps explain how they address your concern.
Standardised application review: To squash unconscious bias in our candidate assessments, we’ve stopped using CVs as the main basis of application review. Instead we ask a set of questions on the application form, so that the reviewer’s initial assessment is based on easily compared answers. The CV is a secondary source of information, meaning the hiring manager’s first impression is made before they see the candidate’s name, or where they went to school.
Quote from this blog -
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I’ve applied to an overnight support position and unfortunately got rejected for not having sufficient experience in this field, despite having experience as a sales assistant at a phone company and recently as a software engineer (I still love software but the Monzo package was nice and I would’ve loved to join the company and move up the chain later on).
If we omit the disappointing result the application process was nice and easy so at least there’s that 
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[quote=“billinghamj, post:45, topic:9008”]
It does mean that an applicant who is slightly less capable for the position can and will be chosen for the job if they bring more diversity to the team. I think we can agree that is factual.[/quote]
I’m going to disagree here - being “capable” for a position is really quite nuanced, and so is “diversity”. People are complex, and so are jobs.
Quick comment on the scorecards thing:
- there are usually 5-6 ‘technical’ or job-specific criteria
- these are basically the ‘you should apply if’ part on the job ad
- there are also about 12 criteria covering other things
They aren’t numerical (because people are bad at numerical scoring - is 5/10 average or is 7/10 average?). They are things we evaluate but they aren’t all equivalent - some are dealbreakers, some are nice-to-haves, some are considered in the context of the team that already exists and what is most important to give balance and variety within that team.
I guess I’m going to write a blog post about ‘culture fit’ pretty soon…
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Hi @mcampbell,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to questions posted here in this forum. A quick one from me - are follow up emails (a week after applying) welcome or seen as an annoyance? Always difficult to know where to stand…
Many thanks,
Audrey
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Ideally you’d never need to send one as we’d be totally on top of everything 
If you don’t hear back from us in the timeframe you’d expect to, a follow-up or chaser is helpful - occasionally (rarely) emails triggered from our hiring software don’t arrive, in which case a follow-up from you is the only way we can know this and make sure that you actually hear back from us.
We track where candidates are in the process and how long they’ve been in that stage for, and are working to make the whole process quicker, but it’s helpful to get human signal when things aren’t working as expected - we love feedback.
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Great, thank you so much! Very helpful
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