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BLNA RTC Hires

With RTC, we’ve been able to find creative ways to interact and actually build meaningful and trusting relationships with students.

Brittany Mitlo, Director of University Recruiting, Duolingo

Duolingo’s language learning app is the world’s most popular way to learn languages, with over 40 languages offered to 60 million users.


Challenges

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Increasing candidate diversity in their recruiting pipeline
  • Reaching students at multiple schools year-round with a small recruiting team
  • Building a scalable recruiting and DEI strategy

Diversifying their early-career recruiting pipeline

When Director of University Recruiting Brittany Mitlo first began working at Duolingo over six years ago, the company was much smaller, and she was a recruiting team of one. 

Like many companies, Duolingo used school-specific, in-person recruiting to find and hire early-career talent. 

That approach quickly became limiting—Brittany couldn’t be in multiple places at once. 

“I was visiting a handful of schools one at a time and doing some limited outreach through different online portals,” Brittany remembers. “There was no way to scale that approach without a much bigger team.” 

DEI has always been a priority for Duolingo, and a big part of their school strategy involved visiting student-run clubs that specifically focused on affinity groups like women, Black, and Latinx students interested in tech. 

But that still wasn’t enough. 

“You’re still limited, because you’re only going to certain schools,” Brittany says. “You’re only seeing one way of thinking.”

We needed to reach underrepresented talent in a way that was scalable.

Brittany Mitlo

Duolingo needed to find a more effective way to reach underrepresented talent at multiple schools throughout the year.

“We were trying to figure out how to broaden our horizons and do it in a way that was scalable. We knew we were going to hire more recruiters, but on top of that, we needed to reach underrepresented talent,” Brittany says.


Solution

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Partnership with RTC, a nonprofit that shares their vision for diversity in tech
  • Virtual Career Summit and other RTC events to connect with candidates
  • Building long-term relationships with students

A partner who shares their vision for diversity in tech

When the Duolingo team first heard about Rewriting the Code (RTC), a non-profit created to support college and early career women in tech, they knew they had found a partner whose vision aligned with their own. 

“At the time, we were still a startup, and RTC was just a few years old,” Brittany remembers. “After seeing their partnerships with reputable companies and hearing how well thought-out their vision was, we knew we wanted to work with them.”

Today, Duolingo is a large enterprise with over 700 employees. But at the time nearly four years ago, they were a much smaller company, with limited resources. RTC’s tiered engagement options made it possible for Duolingo to become a partner and begin interacting with the community. 

“With some partnerships, it feels like you need to have these full teams of 20 or even 40 people focused on university recruiting. RTC’s tiered options provided opportunities for smaller companies and underdogs like us to participate,” Brittany says. “That was a deciding factor for us when we were first considering the partnership.”

Building relationships with candidates

Most of Duolingo’s internships and early-career software engineering positions are located at their headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA, well outside of traditional tech hubs. That made RTC’s virtual events especially valuable for Duolingo, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Duolingo built a virtual-first strategy to interact with students no matter where they were located, without having to travel. 

“With RTC, we’ve been able to find creative ways to interact and actually build meaningful and trusting relationships with students,” Brittany says. 

A key pillar for those relationships is RTC’s annual Virtual Career Summit, which takes place every August and kicks off the university recruiting season. 

“Being able to speak with women while they are wrapping up internships or research projects, before they’re back in school, is valuable,” Brittany says. “We can tailor our space for them and show off what makes our company unique.” 

Those relationships with students continue after the Career Summit is over—Duolingo can capture student information to  share internship opportunities based on their interests and invite them to in-house recruiting events. 

“We’re constantly in touch with them,” Brittany says. “One key part of our strategy this year was contacting students that we had previously interacted with early to let them know our application was going to go live soon. We wanted to give them an extra sneak peek and offer them something unique, because we’ve already built these relationships.” 

In some cases, Duolingo has spent years building relationships with these students through RTC, from Freshman year all the way to post-graduate opportunities.  

“The data shows that the earlier you engage with students in their college career, especially if it’s a meaningful initiative, the more likely students are to walk away feeling a strong emotional connection to the company and apply to jobs in the future,” Brittany says. 

A proactive, communicative, flexible partner

Throughout their nearly four years working with RTC, Duolingo has remained impressed with the non-profit’s team members, initiatives, and dedication to its mission.

Each individual that I’ve worked with at RTC is not just passionate about what they’re doing, but they’re also experts at what they do. They’re very on top of their game.

Brittany Mitlo

Duolingo makes a point of taking advantage of every opportunity available to them in their partnership. 

“With RTC, we’re constantly making sure we’re in front of students,” Brittany says. “As a team, we challenge ourselves to be innovative. We know people are often coming back to us. They want to see something a bit different than previous years.”


Results

HIGHLIGHTS

  • 2x increase in RTC offer accepts YoY
  • 15+ RTC candidates hired for internships or job offers in 2024
  • 45% of RTC accepts from Black and Latina women
  • Increased Duolingo brand appreciation:
    • Most visited virtual booth at the RTC Career Summit
    • Top 2% of sought-after companies in the RTC community

2x increase in RTC accepts YoY

Each year since Duolingo began working with RTC, Brittany has set escalating, ambitious DEI hiring goals and has managed to meet or exceed them each time. 

Duolingo more than doubled the number of RTC candidates who have accepted internships or full-time jobs (from 7 to 15) this year. Since the hiring season isn’t over, that number will likely rise even higher. 

“It is really validating to see our efforts paying off, and to see the line graph go up each year,” Brittany says. 

Building Duolingo’s brand with RTC

Nowadays, Duolingo is in the top 2% of companies sought after by members of the RTC community. RTC women enthusiastically engage with Duolingo through events and job applications. 

Duolingo’s virtual booth is consistently among the highest attended at RTC’s Career Summit.

Intersectional recruiting

With RTC, Duolingo has increased the number of early-career women in its recruiting pipeline. But it’s also increased the overall diversity of its hires: 45% of Duolingo’s 2024 RTC recruits are Black or Latina, from RTC’s Black Wings and Latinas de RTC communities.

“RTC has improved our representation of not just women, but specifically Black and Latinx women,” Brittany says. “Hiring from underrepresented populations, especially in tech, is a big focus for us at Duolingo. RTC helps us meet those goals.”

Hiring from underrepresented populations, especially in tech, is a big focus for us at Duolingo. RTC helps us meet those goals.

Brittany Mitlo

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Partner Case Study

After our first year of partnership, we had a significant increase in the diversity of our early talent pipeline and a YOY increase in hires from underrepresented groups.

Amy Jordan, Recruiting Programs Manager, Palantir
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