Download - DataEngConf SF16 - Beginning with Ourselves
Beginning with ourselves
Using data science to improve diversity at Airbnb
Elena Grewal / April 7, 2016 / @elenatej
I started at Airbnb ~4 years ago
● Ph.D. in Education
● Team grew from 5 to 68
● 2nd woman, only woman on leadership team
How we got there
● Team growth
● Interview process
● Why diversity
● Using data
○ Top of funnel changes
○ Conversion changes
● Scaling diversity data science
Interview process focused on practical data skills
‘Data challenges’ - Airbnb data + real question
Multi-stage
- Recruiter screen- Take home data challenge- Onsite challenge- 1:1s with hiring manager, business partner, CV
We felt good about the data challenges and process
● Popular Quora post
● Process starts being used by other companies (!)
Why act now
● Harder to hire women as ratio declines
● Women could feel excluded on team
● Homogeneity -> narrower range of ideas
Women in data dinners
Create community of senior women in field
Circulates to multiple companies (not just Airbnb)
● Create standard rubric● Binary scoring system● Removed names for a bit● Trained graders● Two graders for each test
to ensure consistency
Next steps
● Focus on multiple aspects of diversity
○ Apply similar process to thinking about racial diversity
○ Other dimensions as well
○ Continue to improve interview process for all - stay vigilant
● Continue to monitor team culture and belonging of current employees
● Help the rest of the company and scale the efforts
Scaling our effortsWhat about the rest of Airbnb?
● Full time data scientist + data engineer to work with our “People and culture team”
● AWS account held separate from main Airbnb data
● Built tool to request and collect diversity data from referrals and passively sourced candidates
● Dashboards with diversity data for every team