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Before 2003, in the entire history of the NFL there had only been seven minority coaches. That year, the league passed the Rooney Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/

Before 2003, in the entire history of the NFL there had only been seven minority coaches. That year, the league passed the Rooney Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule), which required that teams interview at least one minority candidate for coaching positions. Note that it didn't require that teams hire minority candidates — just that they consider them. Today, about a quarter of current coaches are non-white. The Rooney Rule took the league from seven — total, all time — to 25% — right now — in a decade. In my mind, the Rooney Rule is a good policy to model after. Strict affirmative action is complicated, controversial, and... yeah, I'd feel "weird" just like you implementing hiring quotas. But an interviewing quota (or just a rough goal) seems perfectly legit. The key is to focus on interviewing more women, not hiring more women. Do your best to get more women into the top of your hiring funnel, and you'll likely see more women come out the bottom. And you'll have a wider pool (because this'll force you to interview more candidates, total), which you'll have a better chance that whoever you hire — man or woman — will be awesome.

icelancer 14y ago
Trust me, we interview everyone who passes a phone screen and has a promising resume. It's just that so, so few of them are actually women. I actively pursued an acquaintance of mine to try and get her to work for us, as she was just graduating from a top engineering undergraduate school and was an actuary. Sadly, she took a position in NYC (understandable). We're very strict on hiring, so we do interview many candidates for each position that opens up (we have plenty of open positions now that we can't seem to fill). If we set an interviewing quota, it could literally take us years to hire someone for a mid-level developer position simply because we would get no applicants or no referrals from recruiters that were women. It's just how it is. Very sad.
- jacobian 14y ago
  Well, part of that I'd just file under "hiring is hard" (right now, at least). I do think you need to start further up in your hiring funnel than the phone screen: were I in your shoes, I'd be trying to get more minorities to submit resumes in the first place. One of the problems identified by those studying diversity in tech is a self-selection bias: minorities, and women especially, seem to send out fewer resumes and less ambitious about the positions they apply to. Perhaps consider reaching out to groups like RailsBridge, Python Boston, PyLadies, Ladies Learning Code, etc., and letting them know you're hiring and want to talk to candidates from their communities? Drop me an email (and let me know where you're located) if you'd like me to try to help make you some connections. Re-reading the above, I'm hoping it doesn't come across as critical; it's clear you're taking this very seriously, and that's awesome. Just hoping I can help more!
  - icelancer 14y ago
    Hmm, the idea of reaching out to women-oriented groups sounds promising. Our Chief Architect has made it very clear he wants to interview (and hopefully hire) more women. As for minorities, we probably need more white people, if anything! (Not uncommon in software development / data science, I'd guess - I'm a minority.) There's a local hackerspace that has women groups, I think. I'll start there. Thanks for the advice!

icelancer 14y ago

Trust me, we interview everyone who passes a phone screen and has a promising resume. It's just that so, so few of them are actually women. I actively pursued an acquaintance of mine to try and get her to work for us, as she was just graduating from a top engineering undergraduate school and was an actuary. Sadly, she took a position in NYC (understandable). We're very strict on hiring, so we do interview many candidates for each position that opens up (we have plenty of open positions now that we can't seem to fill). If we set an interviewing quota, it could literally take us years to hire someone for a mid-level developer position simply because we would get no applicants or no referrals from recruiters that were women. It's just how it is. Very sad.

jacobian 14y ago
Well, part of that I'd just file under "hiring is hard" (right now, at least). I do think you need to start further up in your hiring funnel than the phone screen: were I in your shoes, I'd be trying to get more minorities to submit resumes in the first place. One of the problems identified by those studying diversity in tech is a self-selection bias: minorities, and women especially, seem to send out fewer resumes and less ambitious about the positions they apply to. Perhaps consider reaching out to groups like RailsBridge, Python Boston, PyLadies, Ladies Learning Code, etc., and letting them know you're hiring and want to talk to candidates from their communities? Drop me an email (and let me know where you're located) if you'd like me to try to help make you some connections. Re-reading the above, I'm hoping it doesn't come across as critical; it's clear you're taking this very seriously, and that's awesome. Just hoping I can help more!
- icelancer 14y ago
  Hmm, the idea of reaching out to women-oriented groups sounds promising. Our Chief Architect has made it very clear he wants to interview (and hopefully hire) more women. As for minorities, we probably need more white people, if anything! (Not uncommon in software development / data science, I'd guess - I'm a minority.) There's a local hackerspace that has women groups, I think. I'll start there. Thanks for the advice!