Six Ways for­­ Tech Startups to Recruit More Women

With the #MeToo movement in full swing and a record number of women elected in the U.S. midterms, 2018 was dubbed by some as “The Year of the Woman.” But pan back from the close-up, and the bigger picture is less rosy, particularly when it comes to diversity in the workforce.

Women are still underrepresented at every level in corporate America, and, most strikingly, over the last three years there has been virtually no improvement. In tech jobs, women hold just 11% of senior leadership positions. Despite the appointment of many women partners in venture in 2018, there has been barely any change in the proportion of dollars invested in teams with women founders since 2016. And in Europe, 93% of 2018 venture capital investments went to all-male founded teams.

This is confounding, since data also shows that diversity in teams results in greater success for companies across all-important metrics, including growth, financial performance and innovation. McKinsey’s 2018 report Delivery through Diversity describes how companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive team are 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability. And a recent Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with above-average diversity on their leadership teams report a greater payoff from innovation.

As a growing tech startup, here are some tangible steps you can take to create a more gender-balanced workplace.

1. Start diverse

Early team members are instrumental in defining your culture and values. Your team reflects what you stand for. If it’s underrepresented, that sends a signal to potential hires about what kind of people you are likely to accept. Including a woman in your initial small team is going to be much easier and more culture-defining than attempting to hire a woman onto a team of a dozen men.

2. Rethink job descriptions

Although job-post bias is well documented, masculine-oriented words and phrases remain pervasive, and at the same time, certain words and phrases in job descriptions can be shockingly exclusive.

A 2017 Textio analysis shows how the phrases used in a job description map directly to gender response. Companies of the likes of Amazon, Netflix, and Uber have used phrases such as “wickedly”, “maniacal”, “bull by the horns”, “whatever it takes”, and “all-star”, which tend to attract a higher proportion of applications from men, statistically. Others, like Slack, have been more thoughtful about their messaging, employing phrases such as “lasting friendships”, “meaningfully”, and “care deeply’, which have been shown to draw more female applicants.

To be more mindful of your hiring vocabulary, this LinkedIn blog is a great start.

Of course, hiring is about much more than the lexicon of your job postings. Studies have shown that women are unlikely to apply for a job unless they meet 100% of the described requirements. Men, on the other hand, will apply if they meet even just 60%. The take-away: avoid extensive “nice-to-have” criteria, and focus on the “must-haves.”

3. Recruit widely

Recruiters tend to fall back on the “no pipeline” excuse, when in reality, the pipeline is a direct result of their own imagination and resourcefulness. It’s up to you to attract a diverse applicant pool.

Data shows that if you have only one woman in a larger pool of finalists, her chances of getting hired are almost nil because she stands out so much. If there is not enough diversity in your pipeline, be creative and seek out other communities to find candidates.

4. Beware of AI

The proof is expanding that AI replicates human biases in hiring. Amazon recently axed recruiting software it had been developing since 2014 because it was proven to favor male applicants. AI software is only as good as the data it’s fed, so if a company like Amazon has traditionally hired more men, the software will have that inherent bias as a result of the historical data it was built on.

In this case, the algorithm favored words such as “executed” and “captured” when analyzing candidates, which automatically led to the viewing of a higher number of resumes from male candidates. AI technology is still far from fair, and should be used cautiously in recruiting.

5. Avoid the myth of meritocracy

Silicon Valley and the tech world place a high value on merit: the assumption is that the best candidates get hired, irrespective of gender, race and sexual orientation. The reality is different. Recruiters typically find merit in those with whom they are similar, be it based on pedigree, hobbies or shared connections.

Under the guise of merit, organizations become less thoughtful about their biases, and thus less likely to take mitigating steps. Narrowly defined, merit is too often a justification for the status quo. To progress, companies need to recognize this and adopt gender-aware proactive hiring approaches.

6. Standardize interviews and evaluations

This might be obvious, but it’s alarming how frequently interviews are unfairly unstructured. We have a belief that we hire based on our innate sense for talent. But when interviews are conducted in an informal manner, allowing us to prioritize our gut instinct, unconscious bias creeps in, disadvantaging diverse candidates.

Standardized interviews are simply better at predicting success on the job. It’s important to identify upfront what criteria you are looking for and evaluate each candidate against that criteria. Ask all candidates questions in the same order, with similar prompts and language.

While this might feel a bit awkward during an interview, it’s more likely to lead to diverse and successful hires.

Wonder what all of this looks like in practice? Fortunately, there are a few excellent examples of progressive companies already enacting some of these steps. Read how Atlassian boosted its female technical hires by 80%, how Slack got ahead of diversity and how others in the tech industry are working hard to attract more smart women.