Design an Inclusive Engineering Hiring Plan for a Boston SaaS Scale-Up
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Audit a B2B SaaS hiring funnel for bias and design an inclusive recruitment plan to earn your verifiable certificate.
The scenario
DataFlow is a venture-backed business-to-business software-as-a-service scale-up of about 200 employees in Boston, Massachusetts, growing quickly after a recent funding round. Headcount has roughly doubled in eighteen months, but the engineering organization remains about 85% male and 70% White or Caucasian, and the CEO now sees that homogeneity as both a hiring-quality risk and a reputational one as the firm courts enterprise customers.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
How can DataFlow redesign its engineering recruitment process to attract and fairly select a more diverse workforce without sacrificing hiring quality, speed, or legal compliance?
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Diagnose stage-by-stage bias in a recruitment funnel using applicant demographic and outcome data
- Design evidence-based interventions that reduce bias while preserving hiring standards
- Define measurable fairness and quality metrics that withstand leadership and legal scrutiny
- Align a DEI recruitment plan with US EEOC selection-procedure guidance
- Communicate a defensible strategy persuasively to a skeptical executive audience
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Diversity And Inclusion Strategy
Apply diversity and inclusion strategy to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Recruitment Audit
Apply recruitment audit to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Bias Mitigation
Apply bias mitigation to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Data Analysis
Analyze real datasets, build models, and communicate findings that drive decisions.
- Stakeholder Presentation
Apply stakeholder presentation to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
DEI Consultant
This challenge mirrors a real DEI engagement end to end: auditing a biased pipeline, designing legally compliant interventions, and selling the plan to executives. You practice turning demographic data into a defensible, budgeted strategy a paying client would act on.
This challenge sharpens
- diversity-and-inclusion-strategy
- recruitment-audit
- bias-mitigation
Talent Acquisition Manager
Redesigning sourcing, interviewing, and selection while protecting speed and quality is the core of modern talent acquisition leadership. You build fluency in funnel metrics and structured hiring that hiring teams own day to day.
This challenge sharpens
- recruitment-audit
- bias-mitigation
- data-analysis
People Analytics Analyst
Converting an applicant funnel dataset into fairness metrics and adverse-impact signals is exactly what people analytics teams do. You practice defining metrics that are both statistically sound and persuasive to non-technical leaders.
This challenge sharpens
- data-analysis
- recruitment-audit
- stakeholder-presentation