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Ask HN: Success stories sourcing experienced female engineers?

7 points by wilbo ↗ HN
Has anyone had any success stories or tips for effectively sourcing experienced female engineers / web developers?

Context: I'm hiring for my startup and think it's important to have a diverse and inclusive culture from the beginning. It makes business sense [1], and makes recruiting in the future easier. I've posted a job [2] and 100% of my applicants have been male. I've tried my best to follow best practices [3],[4] (I know I could have done better, instead of focusing on neutral weigh more heavily towards female-friendly), but still had a 100% male applicant pool.

I'm going to post a job to WomenWhoCode specifically to try to increase the diversity of my candidate pool, however, it costs $100 to post and I've had a great pipeline of highly qualified, motivated, and interested candidates from free job boards (Indeed, AngelList, HN's Who's Hiring). I'm really looking for other methods to quickly get in front of more candidates. I'm going to be networking face to face at local Meetup groups, but the next events aren't for several weeks--I will be well into my interviewing process by then.

[1] http://search.proquest.com/openview/12fb82be078069ee2e8ca6147a8d1ce4/1 (many other research papers exist, this is just one) [2] https://angel.co/latchel/jobs/198374-2nd-software-engineer-senior [3] https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwittips_writingbetterjobads_03172015update.pdf [4] https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwitchecklist_reducingunconsciousbiasjobdescriptions.pdf

8 comments

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helen842000
Have you tried reaching out to any individuals where you have seen their projects, code or work online and been impressed by them? Aim to find the right person for the job, go in search of the skills you want for your startup. It doesn't have to be through a traditional job posting.
wilbo
I have. cold emailing, voice mails, and texts (not all at once) haven't been very effective. It's lead to one in-person conversation so far.

I'm also working through my network for direct introductions (those work well). Those efforts just aren't scaling well and I need to get this role filled quickly.

fossil401
(Female developer checking in. FWIW, I didn't find any of your language questionable and the focus on self-criticism was actually refreshing.

Sometimes reasons for not applying may be more prosaic. (In my case, for example, though I recently started looking for work, I am not in a position to relocate outside the Northeast).

Best of luck with your candidate sourcing!)

wilbo
Thanks!

I just posted to Women Who Code's job board. The listing will only allow you to put your company name, the title, technologies, 141 characters of job description, and yes/no on lots of different benefits. I'm hoping that will yield some more female candidates (although I'm a bit concerned that the only benefit I could list right now is paid vacation--equity and relocation weren't even options to select, but I do offer those!).

Good luck with your job search!

[deleted]
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romanhn
You and every other recruiter are looking for experienced female engineers. There are no magical shortcuts here, very few companies have figured out how to do so consistently. It's extra hard if you have no women onboard already.

Here are some things you can try:

1. Don't focus on experienced candidates. Really. Your pool will increase a LOT when you start looking at new grads as well as bootcamp grads (see HackBright). Consider interns as well - it's a legitimate way to impress and retain young talent. Experience is nice, but if you can figure out how to grow your engineers, the sky's the limit.

2. I'm hardly an expert here, but neither the job posting nor the leadership principles strike me as particularly women-friendly. The former seems pretty neutral (and rather dry), the latter has language like "disagree and commit" and "vocally self critical" that may project a culture of conflict. Conflict is not bad, mind you (some conflict, anyways) and I know you're coming from the right place, but that's the kind of language you might want to think about. I haven't used it, but https://textio.com/ might be something to consider. Compare to this job posting: https://www.etsy.com/careers/job/d6f56ba8-f2f5-45fd-b7ae-949... (Etsy is one of the few companies that have figured this out, BTW, IMO).

3. Explain concretely what the opportunities for growth and learning are.

4. Volunteer as a mentor at HackBright Academy (or something similar, since you're not SF-based).

5. Speaking of Etsy, read this: http://firstround.com/review/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-F...

Honestly, #1 will give you the best results. But as far as I can tell this is still a very early hire, so might be hard for you to make that decision. Do your best and set yourself up for future success, even if your next hire is not a woman. These things take time. Gender is also not the only way to increase diversity ;)

wilbo
I completely agree it's extra hard if you have no women onboard already--that's why I'm trying to source female engineers now, while the team has only one full-time engineer. The Etsy example of turning around a non-diverse culture is great, but waiting that long will cost 10x as much. Unfortunately, it seems that how it needs to be done, since sourcing at such an early stage is so difficult.

re: 1 -- I agree. I've found I won't have trouble sourcing entry level. The code schools and bootcamps seem to be making a lot of progress on gender diversity. I think in the long run when my company can afford to focus more on growth and leadership development I will pursue this route. Right now, however, I have a very solid pipeline of diverse and experienced engineers willing to join the team--just no experienced women.

wilbo
In case anybody has stumbled on this short thread while experiencing similar issues: I've had pretty good success with LinkedIn connection requests. I think it helps that I'm crafting the invite to be personal and that I'm a founder and not a recruiter.

The biggest struggle was finding the candidates in the first place. LinkedIn limited the number of search results you can get for free and "premium" subscriptions didn't seem worthwhile.

Instead, I used Google-fu "site:linkedin.com/in" and some boolean search around the technology I was looking for and my location. The key that got female candidates was including "Grace Hopper" or "Anita Borg". Nearly 100% of the search results were experienced women.