Candace Morgan

Pinterest’s first diversity director, on the tech industry’s struggle with the idea of itself as a meritocracy

which is often shorthand for “am I comfortable hanging out with you for hours all day,” Morgan said. It would be better for companies to articulate company values and look for candidates who embody them, she added.

Pinterest has set clear goals: to increase the female hiring rate to 30 percent for full-time engineers (up from the current 21 percent) and 8 percent for those who are black, Latino or from an other underrepresented group (up from 1 percent). For non-engineering roles, it aims to hire 12 percent from underrepresented groups, compared with 7 percent.

To get there, the company has struck a partnership with Paradigm, a consultancy firm that focuses on diversity, with the aim to bring more data and experimentation to the problem.

For example, one area Pinterest recently tackled is the employee job referral.

Typically, people recommend people like themselves. But the company tried a six-week experiment that involved prompting engineers to recommend potential hires who are women and from racial and ethnicity groups in short supply in tech.

The result: Pinterest saw a 24 percent increase in the percent of women referred and a 55-fold increase in the percentage of candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.

“People like to say that it’s all about the code, when we know that hiring decisions are not.”