At Searchlight, we believe building a diverse team and inclusive culture is win-win for candidates and organizations. The studies back this up — diverse teams financially outperform their peers by 36 percent (McKinsey reports on inclusion and diversity) and inclusive teams outperform their peers by 80 percent (Deloitte). But diversity isn’t a box to check, it’s a commitment to thinking about talent and non-traditional candidates in a new way. So, how do we do it? We tie diversity initiatives to business outcomes at every part of the hiring process.
At Searchlight, we evaluate candidates based on their soft skills rather than credentials — their working styles, strengths, and abilities — as measured by the people who know their work best. In doing so, we’re breaking the cycle of unconscious bias by actually measuring Quality of Hire and identifying proven signals for success.This is how we operate as a team, and it’s also core to how we’ve built our product from the ground up.
"We use Searchlight to convince hiring managers to not just hire one archetype of person. Searchlight's ability to highlight a candidate's behaviors is an effective way to reduce bias for risk-averse hiring managers. Instead of us spending personal capital to convince them to hire a diverse candidate, we use Searchlight to prove that the candidate is exactly the same from a behavior standpoint. They’re just not the same from a resume and past experience perspective."
Ann Watson
SVP People & Culture
"I'm proud that we've built a more equitable and inclusive hiring experience using Searchlight. Searchlight has transformed the way we evaluate candidates and measure post-hire outcomes. By introducing behavioral data to our hiring processes, we can measure and improve on quality of hire, a metric critical to our retention strategy."
Wade Foster
CEO & Founder
Searchlight’s system for mitigating bias helps teams hire with conviction across every role at your company, while bringing transparency and data to the process.
The way we collect data is vetted end-to-end for inclusivity and objectivity, whether that’s about word choice, the way a question is asked, or a nuance in our user experience. Each touchpoint goes through a thorough examination by talent and DEI experts so our data is as objective as possible.
The true test of Quality of Hire comes when we measure our understanding of a candidate against outcomes data. Searchlight builds success profiles from pre-hire to promotion because true, unbiased artificial intelligence relies on outcomes data.
Did the candidate we hire become a high performer? Did they stay and grow their career with our organization? Why or why not? Did we measure the right competencies for their role? What do we look for next time?
Searchlight finds themes and patterns in the behavioral data so that we can proactively surface the right signals to look for in the interview process and cut through the noise created by traditional crutches like education and prior employers that bias our decision-making.
We assess ourselves regularly through internal data reporting and external audits from organizational psychology experts in pursuit of reducing adverse impacts of bias at every hiring touchpoint. We cut our behavioral data in multiple ways, along factors such as demographics, job families, and location. If we detect the potential for bias in our heuristics, we scale certain features like “reference relevance” until our distribution is comparable across subgroups. Above all, we value AI that is transparent and people-first and avoid black-box algorithms.
"I am so so grateful to have been introduced to Searchlight as a candidate. In the past, I’ve been blocked from jobs based on incorrect assumptions about my background. Going forward, I will come to every opportunity armed with the references that can best speak to who I am and how I work."
"I’ve done 12 final round interviews. Every time, I’ve made it to the end only to lose out to someone the hiring manager knew or a referred candidate. If I had Searchlight earlier, I think it would have increased their trust in me and led them to a different decision."
"Every time I’ve gotten a job, it’s been from a referral. Searchlight harnesses the power of my references to help me break into new industries outside of my network."
"As someone who’s made a career transition, Searchlight helped me make the best case that I have what it takes to succeed in this new role. Thanks Searchlight!"
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