The funny thing about diversity in tech is that it’s not hard to find—as long as you’re looking for it.
I’ve written before about the way folks explain why they can’t find diverse candidates in tech, and here I wanted to offer some tips that you could literally do TOMORROW to immediately make your workplace a better place for those “non-traditional” tech candidates you’re looking for.
1.) Make sure you’re offering LGBTQ & woman-friendly healthcare.
Shoot off an email to HR or ask in a meeting — Do we offer LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare? How generous is our maternity policy?
This is an action that will literally take you less than a minute, and can transform your company into a place that doesn’t just say things about caring about diversity, but institutionalizes them. (Note: you want to make sure that, after you ask the question, you work to make sure that you do offer LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare and offer generous maternity leave).
2.) Anywhere you have “entry level” or “BS Computer Science” written add “or bootcamp grad”.
Doing this will also take you, literally, a few minutes to accomplish and will open up an entire world of diverse candidates. Why? Because by asking for only Computer Science majors you are limiting yourself to a mostly white, mostly male set of choices. Whereas 16% of undergraduate Computer Science majors are women, this number is 36% to 43% for graduates from coding bootcamps.
These bootcamps are also much more racially diverse than CS programs.
So it’s pretty simple: if you want more candidates who aren’t white men, open your job posts up to bootcamp grads. Besides, they don’t teach the latest and hottest frameworks in most universities, but they almost always do at bootcamps.
3.) Go to recruit at universities that you haven’t before, such as Huston-Tillotson (HCBU) or St. Edward’s or Texas State (Hispanic Serving Institutions) — don’t just go to the big universities like UT Austin.
I’ll use Austin as an example because I’m most familiar with that area. Tech folks recruit at UT, but not necessarily at HT or St. Ed’s or Texas State. Is it because it’s easy, or because there’s an assumption that there’s “the best” and “the rest”? I don’t really know the reasons, but I do know that if you try something different you will probably see different results.
4.) Do one thing different every week you are looking for candidates: tweet at diversity groups in the area where you’re recruiting, send messages to Meetups, search events to see if there are any diversity panels or lectures going on and roll up to talk to people.
In other words, try.
Folks reach out to Women Who Code Austin all the time with no particular agenda, “Hi we wanted to see if we could support you,” “Hello do you need sponsors?”, “We have an event and we’d like to invite you,” etc. Usually what happens is that some of our members attend, and sometimes they end up working at these places — or at least interviewing there.
It won’t hurt to try, it will hurt not to, though.
There you go, I fixed it for you, some low-hanging diversity in tech fruit for you. If you have any questions or comments feel free to ping me on Twitter @sarachicad.
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