Diversity and recruiting developers

At Texas Linux Fest 2013 in Austin, Rikki Endsley from the USENIX Association spoke about a familiar topic—diversity in technology companies and software projects—but from a different angle. Specifically, she looked at how companies recruit new team members, and the sorts of details than can unintentionally keep applicants away. Similarly, there are practices that companies can engage in to help them retain more of their new hires, particularly those that come from a different background than their co-workers.

A lot of what Endsley said was couched in terms of "hiring," but she said that it applies to recruiting volunteers to open source projects as well. As most people are aware, demographic diversity in technical fields is lower than in the population at large, she said, and it is particularly low in free software projects. Of course, these days paid employees do a large share of the work on free software projects; for companies that manage or produce open source code, the diversity problem is indeed one of finding, hiring, and retaining people.

Everyone understands the value of hiring a diverse team, Endsley said, but a fairly common refrain in technology circles is "we don't have any women on our team because none applied." Obviously there are women out there, she noted, the challenge is just to make sure that they know about one's company and its job opportunities. This can be a problem in any scientific and engineering field, she said, but it is particularly troublesome in open source, where the demand for developers already exceeds the supply. In a job-seeker's market, companies need to "sell" their company to the employee, not vice-versa, so if your company is not getting the applicants it would like to see, you ought to look closely at how you sell yourself, and be adaptable.

Endsley said that she did not have all of the answers to how to recruit more diverse applicants, but she did at least have a number of things that a concerned company could try. Most of her observations dealt directly with recruiting women, but she said that the advice applied in general to other demographics as well. She offered examples that addressed other diversity angles, including ethnicity and age.

The hunt

Recruiting really begins with identifying what a company needs, she said. It is tempting to come up with a terse notion of what the new recruit will do (e.g., "a Python programmer"), but it is better to consider other facets of the job: representing the company at events, helping to manage teams and projects, etc. The best plan, though, is to come up with not one, but three or four "talent profiles," then go out and change recruiting practices to find the people that fit.

Where one looks for new talent is important. Not everyone who meets the talent profile is reading job board sites like Monster.com. Companies can find larger and more diverse pools of potential talent at events like trade shows and through meetups or personal networking groups. In short, "think about where people engage" and go there. After all, not everyone that you might want to hire is out actively looking for a job. It can also help to reach out on social networks (where, Endsley noted, it is the "word of mouth" by other people spreading news that your company is hiring that offers the real value) and to create internship programs.

Apart from broadening the scope of the search, Endsley said that a company's branding can greatly influence who responds to job ads. Many startups, she said, put a lot of emphasis on the corporate culture—particularly being the "hip" place to work and having games and a keg in the break room. But that image only appeals to a narrow slice of potential recruits. What comes across as hip today is only likely to appeal to Millennials, not to those in Generation X or earlier. In contrast, she showed Google's recruiting slogan, "Do cool things that matter." It is simple and, she said, "who doesn't want to do cool things that matter?"

Companies should also reconsider the criteria that they post for their open positions, she said. She surveyed a number of contacts in the technology sector and asked them what words they found to be a turn-off in job ads. On the list of negatives were "rock star," "ninja," "expert," and "top-notch performer." The slang terms again appeal only to a narrow age range, while the survey respondents said all of them suggest an atmosphere where "all my colleagues will be arrogant jerks." Similarly, the buzzwords "fast-paced and dynamic" were often interpreted to mean "total lack of work/life balance and thoughtless changes in direction." The term "passionate" suggested coworkers likely to lack professionalism and argue loudly, while the phrase "high achievers reap great rewards" suggested back-stabbing coworkers ready to throw you under the bus to get ahead.

Endsley showed a number of real-world job ads (with the names of the companies removed, of course) to punctuate these points. There were many that used the term "guys" generically or "guys and gals", which she said would not turn off all female applicants, but would reasonably turn off quite a few. There were plenty of laughably bad examples, including one ad that devoted an entire paragraph to advertising the company's existing diversity—but did so by highlighting various employees' interests in fishing, motorcycle-racing, and competitive beard-growing. Another extolled the excitement of long work days "in a data center with a rowdy bunch of guys." Honestly, Endsley observed, "that's really not even going to appeal to many other guys."

Onboarding and retention

After successfully recruiting an employee, she said, there is still "onboarding" work required to get the new hire adjusted to the company, engaged in the job, and excited about the work. Too often, day one involves handing the new hire an assignment and walking away. That is detrimental because research shows that most new hires decide within a matter of months whether or not they want to stay with a company long term (although Endsley commented that in the past she has decided within a few hours that a new company was not for her).

She offered several strategies to get new hires acclimated and connected early. One is to rotate the new employee through the whole company a few days or weeks at a time before settling into a permanent team. This is particularly helpful for a new hire who is in the minority at the office; for instance, the sole female engineer on a team would get to meet other women in other teams that she otherwise might not get to know at all. Building those connections makes the new hire more likely to stay engaged. It is also helpful to get the new hire connected to external networks, such as going to conferences or engaging in meetups.

Retaining employees is always an area of concern, and Endsley shared several strategies for making sure recent hires are happy—because once an at-risk employee is upset, the chances are much higher that the company has already lost the retention battle. One idea is to conduct periodic motivation checks; for example, in the past USENIX has asked her what it would take for her to leave for another job. Checks like these need to be done more than once, she noted, since the factors that determine whether an employee stays or leaves change naturally over time. Companies can also do things to highlight the diversity of their existing employees, she said; Google is again a good example of doing this kind of thing right, holding on-campus activities and events to celebrate different employees' backgrounds, and cultivating meetup and interest groups.

Another important strategy is to have a clear and fair reward system in place. No one likes finding out that a coworker makes more money for doing the same work solely because they negotiated differently during the interview. And it is important that there be clear ways to advance in the company. If developers cannot advance without shifting into management, they may not want to stay. Again, most of these points are valuable for all employees, but their impact can be greater on an employee who is in the minority—factors like "impostor syndrome" (that is, the feeling that everyone else in the group is more qualified and will judge you negatively) can be a bigger issue for an employee who is already the only female member of the work group.

The audience asked quite a few questions at the end of the session. One was from a man who had concerns that hiring for diversity can come across as hiring a token member of some demographic group. Endsley agreed that it can certainly be interpreted that way—if done wrong. But her point was not to give advice to someone who would think "I need two more women on my team," but to someone who is interested in hiring from a diverse pool of applicants. That is, someone who says "I have no women on my team, and none are applying; what am I doing wrong?" Most people these days seem to agree on the benefits of having a diverse team, but most people still have plenty of blind spots that can be improved upon. But with demand for developers working on open source code exceeding supply, successfully reaching the widest range of possible contributors is a wise move anyway.