How To Hire Women (in robotics or any deep tech field)

Throw out all the assumptions about why there's a lack of women in the STEM workforce and fix these four core problems.

I’ve spent decades doing what is effectively company and community management with a personal passion for improving the experience for women, balanced with meeting the needs of company or organization. In the process of managing a large soccer (football) league, science clubs and robotics competitions, I was able to conduct a lot of experiments into what works for diversity, and what doesn’t. As the founder and President of the Women in Robotics community, I’d like to share some tips to help companies in your quest to hire the best.

Unless you are Google, with unlimited perks, payroll and prestige, then you honestly DON’T attract everyone. And losing out on people because you aren’t intentional in your hiring practices is a losing strategy. Particularly for robotics companies with high capital requirements and small budgets/runways in competition with the tech giants for talent.

From Funnel To Pipeline

You might think that your job ad and hiring process is gender neutral and meritocratic. However years of data suggests that details make a difference and that recruitment is not a level playing field. With equal qualifications, women are still less likely to pass interviews, meet subtle cultural fit requirements, let alone apply in the first place.

For the first time in history, women are now earning more than 50% of all degrees in the USA. But the bad news for robotics is that disciplines like Comp Sci and Engineering are still male dominated, reducing the size of the available talent pool.

So, what does the gender ratio of resumes sent to your company look like?

If reflecting the real world pool of talent in STEM, then it should be approx 20% female, depending on the specific job. Does your initial applicant ratio match reality? Or are you already losing diversity? Many robotics companies tell me they have trouble right from the start, with very few female job applicants, so here’s a list of suggestions we share.

Checklist For Increasing Your Talent Pipeline:

Is your workplace female friendly? What is the current ratio of women? Do you have women on your interviewing committee? Can you demonstrate why your company has a good culture for women. Is every image on your product/website/team male?

Even if you can’t leverage your employee diversity, you can still be diversity friendly. Ensure your hiring team is on board with this. Have you all considered how frequently unconscious bias happens and simple checks to balance it? (See some of the resources listed below.)

Jessica Nordell wrote on Medium, “It’s why women are hired and promoted based on proof, while men are hired and promoted based on potential.”

Check your HR process. Is the ratio of women applying to equal to the ratio of women interviewing? Is the ratio of women interviewing equal to the ratio of women being employed? One classic problem is the inclusion of one woman in the final round of interviews, serving as a diversity box tick, rather than a viable candidate.

Check your tech interview style. Invite people to show their work without time limits or trick questions. If employees have access to tools at work, then they should have access to tools in technical interviews. A successful candidate in a hyper competitive interview process is rarely a successful team member.

Check your job language. It’s easy to default to unconsciously biased language ie. using adjectives like ‘killer’ ‘rockstar’ ‘aggressive’. Textio is a service that analyzes the text and gives you suggestions for success.

Invite women to apply. Women get more rejections than men in the application process, so make it clear that women aren’t wasting their time applying for your positions. You can explicitly invite applications from women and members of unrepresented groups.

Get word out to women. Ideally you do this through the advocacy of women already in your company. However, if you’re just starting out, then lean on women who know you well who are outside of your company ie. lecturers, board members and friends to advocate for you.

Build a pipeline. Have regular women’s events, advisor days, office hours, breakfasts or network events. Reach out to diversity groups, communities and job boards for women.

Publicize success. Success also speaks for itself. Some companies like Etsy, Facebook and Microsoft have significantly increased the number of women in their engineering teams, and those women are both living proof and outreach evangelists.

ProTip. Mine the biosciences and software. There’s a lot of talent in adjacent fields.

Resources:

Women in Robotics Community: https://womeninrobotics.org

Unconscious Bias: https://medium.com/@jessnordell/it-s-not-foot-in-mouth-disease-6fdc3e2b08bc#.8u44wfigb

Suggestions and Lists: http://www.hiremorewomenintech.com/

Language Feedback: https://textio.com/

Etsy Case Study: http://firstround.com/review/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year/

More Tips: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/05/how-to-hire-female-engineers/

Finally, Fixing The Pipeline Doesn’t Drain The Swamp

I’ve analyzed a lot of statistics on STEM employment and the attrition rate is still much higher for women and people from underrepresented groups than it is for white men. In general, women say that they have to work harder and better to get equal attention, that they are less likely to be promoted or receive pay increases, or to get to work on the challenging projects.

A survey by MetLife found that women in STEM were nearly twice as likely than women in other industries to say they are considering leaving the workforce right now, for reasons such as; seeing others getting promoted ahead of them; not being paid fairly; lack of purposeful and meaningful work; and a lack of diversity at their company.

New proprietary research by Gotara, a career advancement platform used by over 30,000 women in 176 countries, shows very similar reasons for why women leave STEM careers prematurely.

1. Feeling Undervalued

By a significant margin, the number one root cause identified was women feeling deeply undervalued in their STEM roles, either through overt slights or subtle patterns of disregard. Thirty-eight percent of analyzed career advice requests pointed to regularly being made to feel invisible, disrespected or not good enough by managers and colleagues despite proven capabilities and contributions.

2. Unsupportive Managers

Twenty-one percent of the analyzed requests described toxic manager behaviors like neglecting to provide constructive feedback, denying access to key meetings and decisions, failing to recommend for promotions despite strong performance, taking credit for work delivered by women on their teams, or even actively sabotaging women’s career progression.

3. Exclusionary Behaviors

The third top factor was contending with exclusionary behaviors rooted in traditionally male-dominated STEM environments and cultures. Nineteen percent of requests detailed ongoing struggles to have voices heard and valued in meetings, gain opportunities despite outsider status, and overcome consciously or unconsciously biased policies, processes and mindsets among those holding power.

4. Career Growth Opportunities Lacking

The surveyed women felt a pervasive sense that career growth opportunities were not equally available. While never given explicit reasons why, 16% of advice-seekers expressed dismay over repeatedly watching male peers secure promotions and plum assignments despite feeling equally or better qualified.

Taken together, these systemic barriers erode technical women’s passion, motivation and sense of belonging over time. Eventually, most conclude that fighting an uphill, often lonely battle for fairness and advancement simply isn’t worth the emotional toll. As a result, female talent walks out the door – not because priorities shifted due to motherhood or compensation was inadequate, but fundamentally because technical work environments made them feel marginalized, stalled out or forced out. via Serenity Gibbons on Forbes

Find out what your attrition data says about your company and why people leave. Fix things in your ‘pond’ before you fix your ‘pipeline’ or you’ll waste time and resources. PLUS every person who leaves your company is a negative reference point. Word can get around pretty fast.

Diversity Debt is Real

Your first hires tend to come from your friend and acquaintance network. This can easily snowball from a team of four male founders, to a team of ten or twelve men, then twenty. The addition of one woman makes a huge difference when there are only four men, but by the time there are twenty, then the addition of one woman makes very little difference in company culture. It’s not fun being that one woman either, and you are far more likely to get high churn.

This ‘only woman on the team’ unhappy syndrome can become a vicious cycle as you are negatively reinforcing the role of women as outliers in your company culture. Imagine the experience if you were the only man in a team of twelve women. Even with the best of management intentions, you are going to feel excluded from the company culture.

In an ideal world, there would be a 50/50 gender balance across every profession. In the current world, however, your company should have a minimum of 20/80 in technical roles. The greater your headcount, the harder it is to hire enough good women to discharge your diversity debt.

Above all, remember that women would like to see proof that you will value their contributions, provide them with challenges and promote them into positions of leadership. After all, why would you want to work somewhere that didn’t?