Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit (i) Recruiting. The goal of Facebook’s recruiting policies and programs are to recruit and hire candidates from diverse backgrounds — understanding that Facebook cannot build a diverse culture without diverse representation. Facebook has instituted a number of programs and commitments designed to increase diversity in hiring. For example, Facebook introduced the “Diverse Slate Approach” as a pilot in 2015, which sets the “expectation that candidates from under-represented backgrounds be considered when interviewing for an open position.” Akin to the “Rooney Rule” in the National Football League, the idea is to promote diverse hiring by ensuring that a more diverse set of candidates are given careful consideration. As applied to Facebook, the company states that for every competitive hire (e.g., not for an internal lateral transfer to an open position), hiring managers are expected to interview qualified candidates from groups currently underrepresented in the position. The purpose of the strategy is to focus recruiters’ attention on diversifying the candidate pool and push hiring managers to ensure they have truly considered a range of qualified talent before making a hiring decision. Facebook asserts that it has seen increases in diversity with the application of the strategy (without causing significant hiring delays). Facebook has now adopted the Diverse Slate Approach globally and also applied it to open positions on its Board of Directors in 2018. Facebook does not, however, tie executive pay to achieving diversity metrics and that is something it may want to consider to accelerate its ability to meet targets. In addition, as discussed above, Facebook has also set aggressive hiring goals of 50% representation in five years, prioritizing hiring at the leadership levels and in technical functions. (Although it remains to be seen whether Facebook will meet those goals.) Part of diversifying hiring has also included efforts to look outside of Silicon Valley for qualified candidates. Facebook states that it is recruiting talent from more than 300 schools across the United States for entry level jobs (including from HSIs and HBCUs) and from thousands of companies globally across multiple industries for experienced hires. In addition to hiring, Facebook has adopted a host of programs and initiatives designed to build out the pipeline of underrepresented minorities into tech jobs. The target audiences for these programs range from post-graduate level students to college students, high school students, and even elementary-school age children and their families or caregivers. These programs include, for example: • Engineer in Residence: Facebook engineers are embedded on university campuses at institutions with high minority enrollment (including HBCUs and HSIs) to design and teach undergraduate computer science courses and extracurricular programs to provide underrepresented groups with access to innovative computer science curricula and programming. • Facebook University: an 8-week summer training program where college freshmen intern at Facebook across roles in engineering, analytics, product design, operations, and sales and advertising, with the goal of building connections between students from underrepresented communities and Facebook. 65