Women in Voice JOBS! It’s Official
Dear Women in Voice Community,
As Women in Voice (WiV) grows and develops internationally and locally, we are formally rolling out Women in Voice Jobs. We’ve been considering launching a jobs board for years now. Especially with the pandemic, women have been hit harder, especially those with caretaking responsibilities. Here are articles that have documented some of the jobs and income toll due to the pandemic:
In 1 year, women globally lost $800 billion in income due to Covid-19, new report finds
Why Millions Of Women Who Lost Jobs In The Pandemic Have Yet To Return
Moms Cut Work Hours Four Times More Than Dads During Pandemic
Pandemic job losses compound pay inequity. Women working full time in the U.S. are paid 82% of what men earn, which also drops to 63% for Black women and 55% for Hispanic women (AAUW, 2020).
Mission: The Women in Voice Mission is all about connection, building community, and providing professional development opportunities. Recently, we announced our Career Accelerator to support women and gender minorities in their career next steps. We see supporting employers and job seekers finding each other as an extension of our Mission. Additionally, we see opportunities down the line to do research on salaries, number of jobs in the sector, and other data-driven research to inform our work.
Voice and Conversational AI Jobs: Many jobs boards we have seen focus exclusively on voice user interface (VUI) and design roles, voice actor roles, or bots, not all of these but one category. One of our strengths at Women in Voice has always been the diverse perspectives and richness of the multiplicity of skill sets our community brings to the table. Our Jobs Board hosts jobs across the voice and conversational AI field today and as they evolve. Voice jobs are proliferating and we see teams hiring with a head count of 10–15. We’re excited to support them creating diverse teams from Day 1.
International by Design: From Day 1, we have been an international community. Jobs on this Jobs Board will be from all around the world. Especially during lockdowns, location matters less and less for teams hiring. Features in the Jobs Board allow for employers, hiring managers, and recruiters to find talent wherever they are.
Women in Tech, What’s the Difference?: We deeply respect our colleagues in this space, Women Who Code, Girls Who Code, Tech Ladies, Women in AI. However, when we did a competitive analysis or typed “voice” and “conversation” into their jobs boards, we rarely found anything that related to jobs in voice that would be relevant to our Members. We see a gap in the market for international, voice and conversational AI, and women and gender minority focused jobs boards.
Serving our Community: From the research we conducted at WiV in 2020 of almost 100 women, (Voice Career Development & Salary Survey Results from Women in Voice Global)
62% of respondents thought that receiving job-related information from WiV was “very important” to them, and 30.6% thought it was “somewhat important”. More crucially, over 62% of our respondents were active in the job market. Supporting our community directly with career and jobs related material appears directly relevant to their lives.
We plan to be the #1 place where you can find women in voice to hire.
Future Directions: We are an ambitious team and see the potential for other programming such as Online Courses, certificates, negotiation seminars, wealth management support, and other career opportunities moving forward. This Jobs Board is one facet of what Women in Voice Jobs programming may become.
Just for Women? Nope, for everyone! Yes, any gender. We know people coming across our community identify across the gender spectrum. We’ll have a place for people to opt-in to sharing their pronouns and our community events are heavily dominated by people who use the pronouns “she/her” 86% at the WiV Inaugural Summit. Our Jobs Board will be open to all genders, but designed and promoted to especially women and gender minority folks.
Check out the Beta: www.womeninvoicejobs.org
Discounts! There are discounts today and we’ll keep them rolling out in tandem with Membership, Sponsorships, Events, as well as our other programming. Watch for Membership launching later in September 2021!
Thank you to all those involved in WiV Jobs. We especially want to thank:
Maddy Apple, Jennie Stenhouse, Cathy Pearl, Romina Pankoke, Raven Jiang, the WiV Board of Directors and Advisors, and the entire Women in Voice Community
Sincerely,
Joan Palmiter Bajorek
