5 ms·

Why some job adverts put women off applying

20 points by blowski 8y ago

1ba9115454 8y ago
She says Textio taught her company to avoid terms such as "coding ninja" - a common phrase in Silicon Valley job ads. This would also put me off applying for the role. It makes the company sound immature and anyone who calls themselves a coding ninja may not have great self assesment skills.
- gaius 8y ago
  Indeed. I haven’t actually seen very many ninja or rockstar type titles in the last few years so hopefully that particular fad has died off already. And I don’t know anyone, male or female, who doesn’t cringe at those kinds of titles either. Then again I am not in the webdev/fullstack market so maybe it does still happen.
- paidleaf 8y ago
  Saying it was "common" is simply a lie. I would love to see her stats because I've been working in tech for a while now and I've never seen the term "coding ninja" in a job ad. I've seen ludicrous demands like more experience in a tech than the tech has been out. Like "must haves : " - 5 years experience in visual studio 2017 and sql server 2017. Non negotiable.
  - Latty 8y ago
    I don't think it's a lie, I think it's just an old example. Just as the media loves using "epic fail" in a "How do you do, fellow kids?" kind of way, it's easy to assume something is still happening because it was big the last time you checked.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
As a UK license payer and general supporter of the BBC, these thinly-veiled advertising pieces (in this case for "Textio") always leave a bad taste in my mouth. Latching on to a worthy cause like feminism just makes it worse.
dfdffsdfff 8y ago
"ads with lengthy bullet points detailing the role's responsibilities will face a drop-off in women applying for the job" Maybe women just don't like too much responsibility or hard work? Maybe for that matter, no one does? Have they even checked what effect their proposed changes have on male applicants? For example "coding ninja" would surely also be off putting to many men.
- doubletgl 8y ago
  Wasn't there a study concluding that women tend to under-estimate their skills and men the opposite? If we assume that to be true, a long list of responsibilities is more likely to put off women because they don't think they can cover everything (or enough of it).
  - dfdffsdfff 8y ago
    There are all sorts of feminist studies. I bet most of them will be found to be flawed and unsubstantiated - like many of sociology studies have been found in recent times. In any case, I don't think there is a law of nature or a biological force that makes women underestimate their skills. Plenty of women don't underestimate their skills.
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      Nobody suggested there’s a force of nature or biology behind women underestimating their skills, only you - have you considered that many women may be socialised to do so? It’s not like the job application/interview/etc dance is perfectly neutral towards every characteristic and background a person might have all the time as it is - words used, interview styles, and so on and so forth are never neutral.
      - dfdffsdfff 8y ago
        "Being socialized" would be a force of nature. Anyway, they are not - who would do that, and why? The mostly female teachers? And somehow girls would still do better than boys in school, despite constantly being told they are bad? Actually the opposite is the case - studies have shown that boys tend to get worse grades than girls for the same level of performance. So wouldn't that be socialization of underestimating their skills for boys? (Of course those studies might also be flawed, like the feminist ones).
unwind 8y ago
It's somehow funny to me that they refer to Textio's CEO as "Mr Snyder", when she at least according to the company's Team page[1] seems to self-identify as female. Amazing what a one-letter typo can do. [1]: https://textio.com/team/ https://textio.com/team/
dbuder 8y ago
When the job ads make a big deal about diversity, especially when I know they have a male dominated workforce, I know they are going to do anything to hire a woman and I don't bother applying.
fimdomeio 8y ago
Replacing uncounscious bias, with conscious bias based on words that take into account both the employer and the canditate prejudices towards some words is a crazy tricky line of thought. To me it seems there's a problem, let's add an aditional layer of complexity to make it more intentional and less visible. The end result is that adverts get even more filled with prejudice.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Yeah, that's what always makes me uncomfortable about diversity efforts. Diversity? Sure, that sounds good. How you propose to get there? Ummm... not so sure about that. If you go back to the origin of the term "white privilege" as coined by Peggy McIntosh (in 1989, mind you, not 1972), you'll find that she defends to concept with such dubious claims as "being able to find music that represents your group" is a concrete example of "white privilege". Almost all of her examples are essentially unverifiable - yet, the solution (to white or male privilege) is always to replace intangible, nebulous advantages with very specific, concrete disadvantages.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    You start working at diversity by recruiting from places like historically black colleges for minorities and women only colleges for women(?).
r-a-w 8y ago
I would like to see the scientific evidence of this unconscious bias they are referring to. Im also skeptical of the claims that gender diversity alone will boost revenue 41%. That is a extremely bold claim.
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  That particular sentence in the article sounds very odd, as it suggests the baseline was a set of single-sex workplaces. I'm not sure where they found those. Perhaps the Catholic church?
  - theandrewbailey 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure that the Catholic church employs many fathers and sisters.
    - rahimnathwani 8y ago
      I'm no expert on the Catholic Church, but what I've seen on TV (e.g. Father Ted) suggests that men work from certain locations, and women work from others. So each of the workplaces is single-sex, even if the overall organisation is not.
      - qbaqbaqba 8y ago
        > Father Ted Also, priests tend to have pet bricks and drink motor oil.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I keep reading that tech is not very female-inclusive, and I keep wondering where these people are looking. Maybe San Francisco is different than any of the places I've worked in the past 25 years? I've been all over: deep south, midwest, north texas - I don't know if the gender ratio was 50/50 since I never did a headcount, but I sure remember an awful lot of women in technical roles everywhere I've ever worked. Maybe they're not counting Indian women?
paulus_magnus2 8y ago
actually if they look closely enough they'll find out companies really want to hire clever workaholics who have modest salary requirements, never ask for raise or promotion and are easily taken advantage of. That's the perfect employee. The only way around this is to create more demand for labour. Make employers compete more, break down monopolies, remove protections, moats, tax entrenched rent seeking.
vixen99 8y ago
Ofcom (i.e., UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom) mandates that for the BBC: 50% of leadership roles to be held by women by 2020. http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-ground-rules-bbc-50-leadership-roles-be-held-women-2020 http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-ground... With an infinite supply of talent and availability this will work. But the world isn't quite like that. Lots of women don't aspire to work 80 hours a week at full capacity over and above other life choices. Moreover, will gender trump merit on occasion? Who can doubt it?
- gumby 8y ago
  your implicit assumption is that many men do "aspire to work 80 hours a week at full capacity over and above other life choices". I think that's a big assumption.
insertnickname 8y ago
A job description that uses the phrase "We're looking for someone to manage a team" may seem innocuous enough. But research has shown that the word "manage" encourages more men than women to apply for the role. Changing the word to "develop" would make it more female-friendly, says Kieran Snyder So all you have to do to attract more women to a job is to lie about what the job entails? Maybe jobs for managers put off women because they don't want to be managers.

20 points by blowski 8y ago

She says Textio taught her company to avoid terms such as "coding ninja" - a common phrase in Silicon Valley job ads. This would also put me off applying for the role. It makes the company sound immature and anyone who calls themselves a coding ninja may not have great self assesment skills.

gaius 8y ago
Indeed. I haven’t actually seen very many ninja or rockstar type titles in the last few years so hopefully that particular fad has died off already. And I don’t know anyone, male or female, who doesn’t cringe at those kinds of titles either. Then again I am not in the webdev/fullstack market so maybe it does still happen.
paidleaf 8y ago
Saying it was "common" is simply a lie. I would love to see her stats because I've been working in tech for a while now and I've never seen the term "coding ninja" in a job ad. I've seen ludicrous demands like more experience in a tech than the tech has been out. Like "must haves : " - 5 years experience in visual studio 2017 and sql server 2017. Non negotiable.
- Latty 8y ago
  I don't think it's a lie, I think it's just an old example. Just as the media loves using "epic fail" in a "How do you do, fellow kids?" kind of way, it's easy to assume something is still happening because it was big the last time you checked.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

As a UK license payer and general supporter of the BBC, these thinly-veiled advertising pieces (in this case for "Textio") always leave a bad taste in my mouth. Latching on to a worthy cause like feminism just makes it worse.

dfdffsdfff 8y ago

"ads with lengthy bullet points detailing the role's responsibilities will face a drop-off in women applying for the job" Maybe women just don't like too much responsibility or hard work? Maybe for that matter, no one does? Have they even checked what effect their proposed changes have on male applicants? For example "coding ninja" would surely also be off putting to many men.

doubletgl 8y ago
Wasn't there a study concluding that women tend to under-estimate their skills and men the opposite? If we assume that to be true, a long list of responsibilities is more likely to put off women because they don't think they can cover everything (or enough of it).
- dfdffsdfff 8y ago
  There are all sorts of feminist studies. I bet most of them will be found to be flawed and unsubstantiated - like many of sociology studies have been found in recent times. In any case, I don't think there is a law of nature or a biological force that makes women underestimate their skills. Plenty of women don't underestimate their skills.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    Nobody suggested there’s a force of nature or biology behind women underestimating their skills, only you - have you considered that many women may be socialised to do so? It’s not like the job application/interview/etc dance is perfectly neutral towards every characteristic and background a person might have all the time as it is - words used, interview styles, and so on and so forth are never neutral.
    - dfdffsdfff 8y ago
      "Being socialized" would be a force of nature. Anyway, they are not - who would do that, and why? The mostly female teachers? And somehow girls would still do better than boys in school, despite constantly being told they are bad? Actually the opposite is the case - studies have shown that boys tend to get worse grades than girls for the same level of performance. So wouldn't that be socialization of underestimating their skills for boys? (Of course those studies might also be flawed, like the feminist ones).

unwind 8y ago

It's somehow funny to me that they refer to Textio's CEO as "Mr Snyder", when she at least according to the company's Team page[1] seems to self-identify as female. Amazing what a one-letter typo can do. [1]: https://textio.com/team/ https://textio.com/team/

dbuder 8y ago

When the job ads make a big deal about diversity, especially when I know they have a male dominated workforce, I know they are going to do anything to hire a woman and I don't bother applying.

fimdomeio 8y ago

Replacing uncounscious bias, with conscious bias based on words that take into account both the employer and the canditate prejudices towards some words is a crazy tricky line of thought. To me it seems there's a problem, let's add an aditional layer of complexity to make it more intentional and less visible. The end result is that adverts get even more filled with prejudice.

commandlinefan 8y ago
Yeah, that's what always makes me uncomfortable about diversity efforts. Diversity? Sure, that sounds good. How you propose to get there? Ummm... not so sure about that. If you go back to the origin of the term "white privilege" as coined by Peggy McIntosh (in 1989, mind you, not 1972), you'll find that she defends to concept with such dubious claims as "being able to find music that represents your group" is a concrete example of "white privilege". Almost all of her examples are essentially unverifiable - yet, the solution (to white or male privilege) is always to replace intangible, nebulous advantages with very specific, concrete disadvantages.
- scarface74 8y ago
  You start working at diversity by recruiting from places like historically black colleges for minorities and women only colleges for women(?).

r-a-w 8y ago

I would like to see the scientific evidence of this unconscious bias they are referring to. Im also skeptical of the claims that gender diversity alone will boost revenue 41%. That is a extremely bold claim.

rahimnathwani 8y ago
That particular sentence in the article sounds very odd, as it suggests the baseline was a set of single-sex workplaces. I'm not sure where they found those. Perhaps the Catholic church?
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that the Catholic church employs many fathers and sisters.
  - rahimnathwani 8y ago
    I'm no expert on the Catholic Church, but what I've seen on TV (e.g. Father Ted) suggests that men work from certain locations, and women work from others. So each of the workplaces is single-sex, even if the overall organisation is not.
    - qbaqbaqba 8y ago
      > Father Ted Also, priests tend to have pet bricks and drink motor oil.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I keep reading that tech is not very female-inclusive, and I keep wondering where these people are looking. Maybe San Francisco is different than any of the places I've worked in the past 25 years? I've been all over: deep south, midwest, north texas - I don't know if the gender ratio was 50/50 since I never did a headcount, but I sure remember an awful lot of women in technical roles everywhere I've ever worked. Maybe they're not counting Indian women?

paulus_magnus2 8y ago

actually if they look closely enough they'll find out companies really want to hire clever workaholics who have modest salary requirements, never ask for raise or promotion and are easily taken advantage of. That's the perfect employee. The only way around this is to create more demand for labour. Make employers compete more, break down monopolies, remove protections, moats, tax entrenched rent seeking.

vixen99 8y ago

Ofcom (i.e., UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom) mandates that for the BBC: 50% of leadership roles to be held by women by 2020. http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-ground-rules-bbc-50-leadership-roles-be-held-women-2020 http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-ground... With an infinite supply of talent and availability this will work. But the world isn't quite like that. Lots of women don't aspire to work 80 hours a week at full capacity over and above other life choices. Moreover, will gender trump merit on occasion? Who can doubt it?

gumby 8y ago
your implicit assumption is that many men do "aspire to work 80 hours a week at full capacity over and above other life choices". I think that's a big assumption.

insertnickname 8y ago

A job description that uses the phrase "We're looking for someone to manage a team" may seem innocuous enough. But research has shown that the word "manage" encourages more men than women to apply for the role. Changing the word to "develop" would make it more female-friendly, says Kieran Snyder So all you have to do to attract more women to a job is to lie about what the job entails? Maybe jobs for managers put off women because they don't want to be managers.