Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
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Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
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Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#2At my current job, we used to advertise that we wanted someone with deep knowledge of Python, who had written their own Python metaclasses. How many of you know off the top of your head exactly what a metaclass is and why you would want to write one? While we did have one hand-rolled metaclass in our own codebase, it was just there, written long ago, worked fine, and didn't need any modification. None of us actually working at the job have to think about metaclasses on our day-to-day tasks.
By putting that very specific bit of Python arcana in our job ad, we were just scaring away lots of potential candidates who could have done the job just fine. They stopped mentioning metaclasses in the ad and we've gotten some really good new hires since who are very competent, and best of all, are very nice people.
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#3many of the job listing phrases suggested by this post make the company seem more inviting, open, comfortable in general.
i don't see these phrasings as tied strongly to inclusion of specific underrepresented gender, sexual preference, racial or ethnic groups. many white males who dislike brogrammer culture will find these phrases more appealing too.
also, these phrases actually advertise for a different type of job in a different type of company, a company that isn't looking for a ninja/messiah to save its ass and make all the critical decisions singlehandedly, a company with a management team that isn't a gang of lazy, entitled, technical illiterates who are ignorant about how to organize and run a software dev operation.
in other words, this company is not just looking for a bro (sucker) to dump all the shit on (exploit). this company knows what it's doing.
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#4At my current job, we used to advertise that we wanted someone with deep knowledge of Python, who had written their own Python metaclasses. How many of you know off the top of your head exactly what a metaclass is and why you would want to write one? While we did have one hand-rolled metaclass in our own codebase, it was just there, written long ago, worked fine, and didn't need any modification. None of us actually…
Yep, agreed! Thanks for sharing that, nice point. Most of the work we do as developers isn't the sort of John Carmack's Magic Numbers sort of wizardry, so looking for more of the same sort of dev skill can be counterproductive as you've found.
Nice people are where it's at. After all, we've gotta work together, and someone will always be able to learn the tech...
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#5I guess I could be classified under "POC," even though I'm half white. I was fully expecting this to be full of overly sensitive trite, but now I wish everyone writing job ads reads this first!
The other issue is HR usually does the postings, where they just get handed some skills and they make up random numbers and go from there. But seriously, you don't need a Java guru that has achieved nirvana with the JVM to write CRUD apps, so why not just advertise what you're actually looking for?
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#6I honestly don't understand what any of this has to do with inclusion. Maybe the aim is to de-emphasize competitiveness, directness, and individual responsibility, which is fine if that's the kind of employees you want to hire. But is there strong scientific evidence that women lack these qualities compared to men? What if you'd like to hire people with the qualities of, say, the Williams sisters of tennis fame?
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#7I honestly don't understand what any of this has to do with inclusion. Maybe the aim is to de-emphasize competitiveness, directness, and individual responsibility, which is fine if that's the kind of employees you want to hire. But is there strong scientific evidence that women lack these qualities compared to men? What if you'd like to hire people with the qualities of, say, the Williams sisters of tennis fame?
There is evidence that women are penalized for showing these traits. The same behavior is seen as direct and competitive in men and as bossy and stuck-up in women. Which is also why negotiating while perceived as female can be a very different experience. Generalizing, of course.
It's interesting to read the experiences of trans people who have truly seen both sides.
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#8I would replace " No ninjas, rockstars or brogrammers, please; just nice, caring humans." with "Just nice, caring humans". "no..." sentences sound defensive to me.
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#9> No ninjas, rockstars or brogrammers, please; just nice, caring humans.
I like how in a post about inclusive job ads, they still wanted to show off that they Exclude The Right People.
Their cultural based discrimination is obviously correct and should be applied universally; previous cultural based discrimination is a crime we should all strive to avoid!
I actually enjoyed the post (and agree with most of the points about writing job postings) and don't mean to be overly critical, I just think it's an interesting chance to reflect on how easily these habits come to us as people. (And so some of the language above is dramatic for effect.)
Re: Practical tips for writing inclusive job ads (2016)
#10I would replace " No ninjas, rockstars or brogrammers, please; just nice, caring humans." with "Just nice, caring humans". "no..." sentences sound defensive to me.
That is the one "no..." sentence that I'd leave there. It serves to distinguish them from the a particular culture.
That message is lost when you just say "nice, caring humans".