Talent Makers

Expert Insights: Katie Burke

HubSpot is a leader in being transparent and active with its DE&I initiatives. We spoke with Katie Burke, Chief People Officer at HubSpot, which has more than 3,000 employees.

HubSpot's journey toward becoming a more diverse company is well-known. What are some of the things you did to accelerate diversity in sourcing?

I don't think people talk enough about the fact that really some of the most important work you can do in building more diverse teams is to focus on the skills and attributes you really need for a role versus relying upon, for example, degrees, years of experience, how well someone knows something, or how flashy someone is. We try to train interviewers to seek out and assess those skills in objective ways.

At HubSpot, we do our best wherever possible to eliminate credentials or time limits that don't actually matter, like “Five years of experience. Bachelor's degree or equivalent required.” I will admit that I was someone who grew up saying: “Years of experience is a good proxy. We want someone who's done this work before.” A good recruiter pushed me to think when they said, “The five years of experience is really just a proxy for this skill that you need.”

If you are a proficient project manager, it actually shouldn't matter to me whether you have five years of experience or 50 years of experience. The excellence of project management is really the skill I'm looking for. If you hire a lot of people, it's in your best interest to ...