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Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

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Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#31

Post by columbo »

Wanting to increase diversity is a good thing, so kudos for that. However you should -never- -ever- -ever- indicate a preference towards a race, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation. Did I say ever? Ever. Ever. Ever. It's discriminatory, it's demeaning and it's illegal.

If you want to increase diversity then, well, don't just say 'I need women!', rather go to where the diversity is.

There are a ton of groups, meetups, community boards that would love to know you are 'hiring' not that you are 'hiring '. For example: http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-SF/

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#32

Post by Kluny »

Anechoic wrote: post #13

The original process the OP describes is exactly what many affirmative action opponents think AA does, that is only consider one demographic and ignore all the others. If you want to open opportunities for women, you post the job notice in places where women will see it. That will get you qualified candidates, and if you find a women who is the best person for the job, you hire her. edit: spelling

Like where? Ladies' Craigslist?

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#34

Post by btilly »

Um, your wife and co-worker are right. This is not how to hire women.

Also I find it interesting that you were considering a woman for job as a UI designer. Why not another engineer?

Here is a potentially better way to do it. Is your female co-worker comfortable presenting in public? If so, have her give a technical talk with cool demos and say you're hiring. That's not a bad way to find potential employees. And if there are women available, seeing a female face of the company will make them more interested.

But if she comes back with a smart guy, hire him. Because you're looking for a good employee first, and not a woman first.

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#35

Post by jerrya »

Build a work environment friendly to men and women.

Advertise your position for a designer.

Make sure that the ad is seen in plenty of places where women designers may look. Do as much outreach to women as you want to. Speak to women tech meetups. Pass your job position along to professors likely to know qualified students and let them know the position is open to everyone, but you'd like to hire more women in general and are having problems reaching out to women. Use facebook, linked in, pinterest, to reach out to women developers.

Ask your #1 employee if she is interested in speaking to schools, meetups, conferences. Sponsor her speaking.

Interview qualified candidates.

Then hire a qualified candidate apt to do well at your position.

Also, let it be known you are always interested in good candidates, regardless of their specific expertise. Then when you find good candidates, make a position for them. This works well with your outreach and internship program.

(Other activities: sponsor outreach to high school girls, sponsor women in tech conferences, sponsor outreach to all high school students, create internships (and advertise those internships all across campus))

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#36

Post by apawloski »

mooism2 wrote: post #9
jasonlotito wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the article says. The problem is they want a diverse workforce. So the question becomes how do they hire for that?

That's not what the article title says.

It's difficult to make a meaningful contribution here if you only read title of the article we're talking about.

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#37

Post by fein »

Peroni wrote: post #12
jasonlotito wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the article says. The problem is they want a diverse workforce. So the question becomes how do they hire for that?

The problem is they want a diverse workforce. I'm sure the vast majority of companies want the exact same thing but there comes a point where you simply have to accept that we work in a significantly male dominated industry and to get to a point where more than 20% of your staff are female means you have to compromise somewhere in order to achieve that balance. Unfortunately that compromise isn't always going to be a…

Yes they want a diverse workforce, but I think the issue is more that they need a diverse workforce. We should probably examine the need part first. In most cases its a PR/ government requirement issue, which means that maybe this wouldn't be a goal if the PR and regulatory pressure didn't exist.

I don't know of a right way to get more women into the IT space, but the diversity requirements imposed on businesses don't seem to have the effect that seems to have been intended.

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#38

Post by moron4hire »

Back when I was dating, I had a really hard time meeting "qualified candidates" (i.e. interesting people not enamored with the TV show "The Jersey Shore"), say nothing about ones who were single and interested in dating me. I signed up on a bunch of dating websites, I filled out all of the profiles with minute detail (thinking it proved I wasn't some shallow person interested in a quick hookup), paid very close attention to the content of the profiles I read, and had a process for interviewing people all designed to show I was truly interested in them, and to whittle down to the perfect candidate.

After reading your article, I realized it is exactly the same way we try to hire people. We go out on job websites, fill out the job profiles, crawl through resumes and try to interview the perfect candidate. Dice.com, Monster.com, LinkedIn.com, they're the same exact thing as Match.com, eHarmony.com, and OkCupid.com.

And shock and horror, it doesn't fucking work in either case. I've had the same exact experience in hiring.

There were three things I learned through this process, in both spheres: 1) One got just as good of results from random selection as from HR-based, profile-based, direct-effort candidate searches. Actually, the random selection was better because it didn't take anywhere near as much effort. 2) Boiling people down into numbers and rankings and trying to figure out which one was "better" than the others made me physically ill. 3) The only way to find "the one" was to know them already. I quit trying, I expanded my circle of friends, I completely and successfully changed from an introvert to an extrovert, and eventually the stars aligned.

Now, that sounds like a system you can't count on, "stars aligning". But really, I think it is a system you can count on more often than anything else. For one thing, you know the "stars" will eventually "align". "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" -- Seneca. Opportunities are presented to you on a daily basis, you just aren't prepared for it.

I bet, with near certainty, you've met an amazing female designer/engineer already. You have probably met several. And you have probably met several that are interested in working for a company like yours. You just didn't know it, because you weren't engaging people in conversations AS people. You were trying to hire them.

You were trying to turn them into Human Resources.

Re: Turns out Hiring a Woman is Discriminatory

#40

Post by tptacek »

You can't create a gender-specific role in your company and then hire for it.

What you can do is gender-specific lead generation. Create a role that's not gender specific, then market the role (news flash: tech hiring is marketing) using women as a target market.

This process doesn't guarantee you women for your roles. At your scale (and ours) there's nothing you can do about this. You're going to have more men than women. When you hit the scale of, apparently, Etsy, you can start to see demographic shifts in your company that correspond to how you market your openings.

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