When Rachel Kraska first joined ShopRunner as the Sr. Manager of Talent Acquisition, she was tasked with recruiting for a hyper-growth startup. As she rolled up her sleeves and dug in to the challenge, she soon realized there was more than just hiring that needed to be addressed, the company was almost entirely made up of white males. This “unbalanced homogeneous culture”, as Rachel referred to it, would require incremental changes in the hiring process if it were to ever thrive. These are the incremental steps Rachel developed to change ShopRunner from a homogeneous workplace into “Best Places to Work” award recipient.

1. Education - Rachel hosted seminars for hiring managers and staff to educate them on how diversity, inclusion and bias looked and sounded.

2. Interview Training - Rachel developed a training curriculum on what not to say in an interview.

3. Hosting Events - Rachel hosted meetups at the office for Women in Tech, Queer Tech Club, PyLadies and hired out of those events

4. Broadened Sourcing Channels - Rachel sourced slack, meetup and multiple other tech blogs for diverse groups.

The hard work paid off and while it was not a rapid turnaround, ShopRunner soon developed a balanced corporate culture.

Stacey Broadwell Interviews Rachel Kraska and asks why she prefers the word “Balance” over “Diversity”.