Soumya Chittigala

Over 47% of millennials want to work at diverse companies but a lack of workforce diversity and unconscious bias are fast becoming a systemic problem in tech. Companies worldwide are looking to tackle the issue of diversity hiring in tech but very few have actually made strides in the right direction.

A diverse workforce can give you a competitive advantage and has also impacted productivity and profits in the past. This guide can help you run a more diverse and inclusive hiring process in tech which could reap huge benefits for your organization in the long run.

Why does diversity in tech still matter in 2020?

How to limit bias in your tech hiring process?

7 ways to increase diversity in tech

How to get started: D&I tech hiring examples

Why does diversity hiring in tech still matter?

Diversity has always been a top priority for recruitment and talent acquisition. In fact, it’s been doing the rounds for quite some time but very few organizations have actually built a diversity hiring process that eliminates bias – both conscious and unconscious. Though companies have hiring initiatives and focus on diversity and inclusion within their teams, very few have a formal D&I program.

There could be 2 reasons for this –

• Diversity fatigue – Diversity can be complex and it requires consistent effort by organizations and when this process gets slow or non-existent, fatigue starts to set in. This could lead to paralysis and inaction.
• Bias – Bias seems to be more prevalent in tech roles and the talent gap doesn’t help the cause either. With increasing pressure on closing open tech positions, recruiters can get sucked into the vacuum of forming (biased) opinions about a candidate and using that as a means for making decisions, rather than objectively analyzing a candidate’s ability to code.

Finding ways to fix these issues can help you run a better and more diverse hiring process.

How to limit bias in your tech hiring process?

While eliminating bias altogether from the tech recruiting process could be a long shot, there are a few things we can do to ensure we reduce it. Here are a few ideas that can help:

(Be) Objective – Collaborative – Decisive

• Be objective in your tech hiring process: Objectively measuring a candidate’s ability to code can help you overcome bias. A tech assessment platform should be able to mask details like name, orientation, gender, race, pedigree, etc. where bias is most likely to creep in. Evaluating candidates this way ensures that they make they cut based on their skills alone and nothing else.
• Allow collaboration via inclusive panels: Biases mostly arise at an individual level. Replacing one on one discussions with an inclusive panel makes sure that it’s no longer an individual opinion that stands out, but a collective one. Collaborative interviews leave little room for bias and are the logical step to follow after an anonymous skill-based assessment
• Take decisive actions: Despite taking all the necessary precautions to prevent bias, recruiters can sometimes be left with the decision to make the last choice and times like these call for decisive actions. Since, so far, we’ve tried to make the process as bias-free as possible, the final decision should be based on the candidate’s skills and nothing else. This way you limit bias while not limiting talent in your hiring process.

7 ways to increase diversity in tech

1) Say “No” to racial stereotyping, legacy politics and pedigree

Many colleges in the US admit “legacies”, or students with a family connection to the university, at dramatically higher rates than other applicants. It could be a no-brainer to reach out to candidates from the top 10 schools but put that on hold. Why? – Because these schools are not very accessible to low-income students.

In order to be impartial in this process, keep your mind open to hiring diverse candidates both from ivy leagues as well as coding boot camps or state schools. While shortlisting candidates, focus on their work history and background and test their skills using a bias-free assessment platform

2) Aim for an inclusive digital transformation

Digital transformation is great for your organization but is it hurting your diversity hiring goals? Digital disruption is impacting the technology sector the most and organizations are struggling to keep up with the digital gender divide.

With no proper mentorship and upskilling opportunities available (especially for women), this gap is getting difficult to bridge. Instead, aim for an inclusive digital transformation by creating a community of female role models in tech and stimulate learning through mentorship and hands-on tech training workshops.

Would you like to get updates once a month on our latest articles? We won’t spam, we promise. Subscribe now to The HackerEarth Blog!

3) Do away with resumes

A resume at best tells you what someone has done in the past and not what they’re capable of doing in the future. If the candidate is fortunate, his or her resume is first read by a human being rather than an automated Applicant Tracking System(ATS). Also, a resume almost always includes details like gender and educational background which could create an unconscious bias among employers.

Also, resumes can never tell you if the candidate codes well or not which is another reason why you should probably do away with them. Rather, there are other ways that you can use to shortlist potential talent. Administering a personality test and testing their job competency using a skill-based developer assessment can be good alternatives.

4) Combat ageism in tech

Tech’s youth-driven culture and workforce could make some developers and engineers feel obsolete. The best way for developers to combat ageism is to never stop learning and when you’re hiring senior engineers, it’s always good to consider the whole story.

One way of doing this is to examine what the developer has done in the past two years that is tangible to a prospective employer rather than looking at their 20 plus years of experience. Also, evaluate them on values rather than on a culture-fit.

5) Hire for value fit instead of a culture fit

An assessment of culture fit should focus on how well the person’s values align with the organization’s, rather than how well their personal characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation, align with the current workforce. Recruiters who interview based only on culture could form biased opinions and pick candidates who think or act like them. Instead, hire for values candidates who share the company’s vision and goal.

6) Make your job descriptions gender-fluid

Being mindful of the vocabulary in your job description can make a big difference in tech. Avoiding gender-coded words like “rockstar” and “ninja” can help weed out an unconscious bias against women developers. Also, emphasizing your company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in your job description can help create a more inclusive workforce.

7) Look beyond diversity

Diversity is just the first step. Recruiters should foster a sense of belonging among employees by bringing differences together through inclusion. Allowing for freedom of expression, celebrating differences and understanding that diversity hiring is not just merely hiring women developers helps create a truly inclusive workplace for all. Here is a guide on driving inclusive hiring in tech.

How to get started: D&I tech hiring examples

Here are some initiatives by companies we absolutely admire for being flag bearers of diversity hiring in tech:

Slack : Since 2015, the company has proactively sought out candidates from outside traditional developer pipelines such as Stanford and MIT. It has also focused on recruiting tech talent from all women’s coding camps such as Hackbright and programs that focus on training black and Latino programmers such as Code2040.

Intel: Intel has made the largest-ever commitment to invest in technology companies led by women, underrepresented minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans), startups led by entrepreneurs with disabilities, US-based entrepreneurs from the LGBTQ community, and US military veterans. Through September 2019, the Intel Capital Diversity Initiative has invested $381 million in companies led by diverse teams.

Buffer: Buffer uses its blog as a medium to explore issues in tech which affect underrepresented groups. The company also regularly modifies its job descriptions to include language and images that support inclusive hiring. They also sponsor awesome initiatives such as POCIT‘s Beer and Boardgames event and #wocintech‘s awesome photos

Welcome to the second episode of #NetflixandHire where we learn some great ways on how you can get your recruiting metrics right!

For this, we’ve chosen a TV show we LOVE and we can all learn from—The Crown.

Why? Because Queen Elizabeth sums it right—“In an increasingly complex world, we all need certainty.”

P.S. If you haven’t already gone through our previous episode, here you go! – Episode 1: How to drive inclusive hiring in tech ft. Orange Is the New Black

Source: Pop Culture Times

The show delivers an important message on how, as a leader, you are responsible not only for the well-being of yourself but everyone else around you, and that it never hurts to be informed. Through the seasons, you realize that as a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth, though not having any political power, is always in a position to advise the Government. You can also see how she strives to be informed—by hiring a private tutor and staying on top of official documents—just so she can keep things in check.

Now, being a tech recruiter is no less than being a monarch. You’re tasked with connecting with the right developers, bringing in the right talent, and making sure your kingdom, (ahem) organization, flourishes. But can you be so sure of doing these things without the right metrics? We think not! In fact, the Recruitment Operations benchmark report by Yello vouches for the same.

The key takeaway—Recruitment operations is all about streamlining hiring processes, cutting costs, and driving greater efficiency.

Source: Yello

Now, let’s look at how you can measure and tackle each of the above metrics, ‘The Crown’ style:

1) Reducing your time-to-hire

“There is one thing I’ve learned in 52 years of public service is that there is no problem so complex, nor crisis so grave that it cannot be satisfactorily resolved within 20 minutes.” —Winston Churchill

Source: Pinterest

Did you know that 52% of the recruiters take more than 3 hours to actually make a hire! Hence time-to-hire is the first recruiting metric that we will cover.

Honestly, if Churchill could solve political emergencies in a matter of minutes, we could surely solve the time-to-hire problem with a little help.

The 2 biggest pitfalls that recruiters face when it comes to closing positions are:

• Screening candidates
• Scheduling interviews

How can you screen developers and schedule interviews better?

Use personality tests

From Minna’s 16 developer profiles to Hackernoon’s 9, developers exhibit a myriad of profiles. Different projects need different behaviors and value profiles apart from skills. Hence, it’s important to get to know prospective employees and their work ethic to understand if they would be the right fit for your organization.Here are some questions from Alistair Doulin’s programmer personality test that you could use.

Use skill-based assessments

Using skill-based assessments to test technical competencies is a great way of making sure that you only have the right candidates in the interview stage. It gives both recruiters and hiring managers enough bandwidth to concentrate better on testing candidates in the later stages of the interview. It is no wonder that skill-assessments can bring down your time-to-hire by 50%.

Create a take-home coding test for free

Use live video interviews

An easy and time-tested method for scheduling interviews better is to use a live video interview tool. Some cool benefits of using such a tool:

• Scheduling interviews gets a lot simpler when assessing remote developers.
• You can watch candidates as they code and evaluate them for job readiness.
• With access to interview history, you always have data on hand to make the right hiring decision.

Did you know that by adding a live video interview tool in your hiring process, you can bring down your average time to hire to 10 days!

2) Decreasing your cost-per-hire

Season 3 sees Prince Charles’s investiture as the Prince of Wales and the demands of the royal family for the deployment of 15,000 troops, 21 gun salutes, and a battery of Royal Field Artillery among other things. However, the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, understands that a penny saved is a penny earned and he advises Charles to “Go and study there and address the country in Native Welsh” to make a more meaningful impact on the people of Wales.

Source: The Digital Weekly

It’s time we took a leaf out of Wilson’s book and saved some money by cutting down unnecessary hiring costs.

How can you reduce your hiring cost?

Did you know that recruiters spend 35% of their annual recruiting budget on external agencies to hire 10 technologists! No wonder this recruiting metric is really important to recruiters. Here are some ways on how you can reduce your hiring costs by minimizing your dependency on external agencies:

Leverage social media to build a developer brand

Prospective employees would like to know all the cool things that your company has been up to and see the kind of work culture in store for them. Setting up live Q&A sessions, building a talent pipeline using your company’s Linkedin profile and attracting Gen Z developers through Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest could be some ways in which you can gauge their interest.

Attend local meetups

Look for local developer meetups and conferences. You can find a lot of free events in your locality on Meetup. Shortlist for events that align with your recruiting goals. You could make some connections a couple of days before the event so you know whom to spend time with on the day of the event.

Make your tech team your brand advocate

Your tech team is first-hand proof of what you stand for as a developer brand. Hence, it is very important that your developers are your strongest advocates. Try incorporating a referral program and encourage developers to share their experiences working with you to ensure a greater recall.

3) Boosting your retention rate

“Keep one eye on the future. The distant future” – King George VI

The series portrays King George VI as the monarch who rose to the occasion at the expense of his physical and mental health. You can clearly see his preparedness when he urges Churchill to let Elizabeth undertake the commonwealth tour to ease her into her future role as Queen in order to keep the monarchy standing in the case of his demise.

Source: Business Insider

It’s time we channeled our inner King George and thought about the future of our workforce. Is all that sweat and blood that went into recruiting your dream tech team going to waste? This brings us to our 3rd recruiting metric: retention. Taking some steps to retain your tech team for the long run is the only way forward.

How to increase retention in your tech team?

We had recently written this detailed article on how to ensure your tech talent pool is poaching proof. Here’s the gist:

1. Provide autonomy and purpose to your developers
2. Develop a community internally
3. Provide perks and privileges your developers can’t say no to
4. Have an open discussion with your employees in the incentive process
5. Provide creative freedom and growth opportunities

There you have it—our royal advice on how to get your tech recruiting metrics right this year. Let us know if any of these have solutions have helped better your hiring process in the comments below. See you soon in the next episode! Until then, #NetflixandHire 😎