Quartz increases staff diversity due to remote work

Financial news site Quartz increased its staff diversity by offering workers the chance to work remotely, reports Sara Guaglione of Digiday.

Guaglione reports, “Quartz opened up hiring to ‘all applicants everywhere’ last summer, as part of the hiring policy changes implemented to improve its process as well as diversify the applicant pool and subsequently staff. ‘Nothing compared to how fast and strong an impact opening up our applicant pool to remote applicants had,’ said Quartz CEO Zach Seward.

“‘The quality and diversity of applicant pools [for] most positions increased dramatically,’ Seward said. People of color now make up 42% of Quartz employees overall, up from 31% last year, and 50% of its editorial employees. This improvement happened ‘faster than I expected,’ he added.

“Brian O’Keefe, deputy editor at Fortune, said hiring people in different locations ‘allows us to hopefully have a larger pool of candidates and find great candidates for all the hiring we are doing.’ Since the beginning of the year, Fortune has hired 22 full-time employees across the company. Almost half of those new hires are people of color, and half are outside of New York, according to Mike Kiley, Fortune’s svp of HR & talent. The company recently hired people living in Arkansas, Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina.”

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