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Equality Statement
Disparities in financial inclusion impact a person’s ability to accumulate wealth, and we at Kard recognize there are many communities historically underserved by and underrepresented in financial services and industries. In our own efforts to make the fintech community more inclusive and representative, we have joined the Fintech Equality Coalition in tackling these important issues and are highlighting our call to action plans below.
Our Call To Action
As career recruiting focuses heavily on a candidate’s previous work experiences, many members of underprivileged backgrounds are unable to take on valuable work experience due to personal or financial barriers. At Kard, we hope to address this pipeline problem by:
Providing internships for a variety of roles throughout the year. We believe that gaining work experience should be possible beyond just the summer, and that by opening our company to interns year-round, we can employ a greater variety of students.
Paying our interns for their work. Doing so not only reduces financial barriers that someone might have in pursuing an opportunity, but it also represents the value that an intern brings to the team. Work, regardless of what title, takes time and is beneficial to the company and so should be rewarded as such.
To work towards making the fintech space more diverse and inclusive, we are also improving our hiring process to be more holistic and considerate of the disparities and underrepresentation that already exist in the industry.
At Kard, we are embracing a broader definition of diversity to incorporate all sectors of identity, including but not limited to gender, race, experience, socioeconomic status, belief, and more. We recognize that grading candidates on a “culture fit” is a biased metric representative of our own views, especially when the representation of cultures is already lacking in fintech. As such, Kard reviews applicants based on a set personality criteria to reduce personal bias we might hold about who “fits” with us. When thinking about how jobs are advertised and who has the most access to these listings, it is important to consider how candidate pools can sometimes be self-selecting where the issue doesn’t lie solely with the selection process, but also with the distribution channels of the application.
To address this, we are now posting our applications on job listing sites targeted for specific underrepresented groups. In doing this, we are proactively drawing on a wider range of diverse candidates rather than choosing from a pre-selected pool.
Conclusion
As a company that works directly with challenger banks that are fueled by missions to make financial services more accessible, Kard is also actively looking internally to reshape and refocus our hiring process. By doing so, we hope to help close the inequality gaps suffered by many underrepresented groups at the hands of the fintech and financial industries. We encourage feedback and are grateful for your support as we work towards our goals.
Our Call To Action
As career recruiting focuses heavily on a candidate’s previous work experiences, many members of underprivileged backgrounds are unable to take on valuable work experience due to personal or financial barriers. At Kard, we hope to address this pipeline problem by:
Providing internships for a variety of roles throughout the year. We believe that gaining work experience should be possible beyond just the summer, and that by opening our company to interns year-round, we can employ a greater variety of students.
Paying our interns for their work. Doing so not only reduces financial barriers that someone might have in pursuing an opportunity, but it also represents the value that an intern brings to the team. Work, regardless of what title, takes time and is beneficial to the company and so should be rewarded as such.
To work towards making the fintech space more diverse and inclusive, we are also improving our hiring process to be more holistic and considerate of the disparities and underrepresentation that already exist in the industry.
At Kard, we are embracing a broader definition of diversity to incorporate all sectors of identity, including but not limited to gender, race, experience, socioeconomic status, belief, and more. We recognize that grading candidates on a “culture fit” is a biased metric representative of our own views, especially when the representation of cultures is already lacking in fintech. As such, Kard reviews applicants based on a set personality criteria to reduce personal bias we might hold about who “fits” with us. When thinking about how jobs are advertised and who has the most access to these listings, it is important to consider how candidate pools can sometimes be self-selecting where the issue doesn’t lie solely with the selection process, but also with the distribution channels of the application.
To address this, we are now posting our applications on job listing sites targeted for specific underrepresented groups. In doing this, we are proactively drawing on a wider range of diverse candidates rather than choosing from a pre-selected pool.
Conclusion
As a company that works directly with challenger banks that are fueled by missions to make financial services more accessible, Kard is also actively looking internally to reshape and refocus our hiring process. By doing so, we hope to help close the inequality gaps suffered by many underrepresented groups at the hands of the fintech and financial industries. We encourage feedback and are grateful for your support as we work towards our goals.