5 Tips to Diversify your Engineering Team
Building a diverse and inclusive team takes more than just good intentions and commitment; it takes real strategy and action. Over the past year, we’ve been energized to see that more employers have committed to making their engineering organizations more diverse and understand the importance of building a diverse candidate pipeline, but found that they are still struggling to make this a reality.
Regardless of company size, industry, or mission, here are 5 tips for building a more diverse engineering team:
Begin by making your candidate pool as diverse as possible.
The best way to hire diverse engineering talent is by diversifying your top of funnel. A quick generic search for full stack engineers on LinkedIn will yield you tons of qualified developers that are very likely from historically overrepresented groups in tech. If you just filled your pipeline with these search results, you’d end up with a homogenous candidate pool from which to recruit and hire. Luckily, there are many strategies that other technical recruiters and I use to build out a diverse top of funnel. Invite applicants from diverse backgrounds by posting jobs in specific job boards and Slack groups. Creating search strings tailored to organizations for Black and LatinX tech talent like Code2040 and National Society of Black Engineers, women groups like Women Who Code, LGBTQ groups like oSTEM, and veteran groups like Vets Who Code will help you narrow your search on specifically underrepresented groups. Utilizing non-traditional websites for your searches can help, too! Anytime there is an engineering hashtag trending on Twitter or Instagram (like the #whatanengineerlookslike tag from a few years ago), it can be a great source of candidates.
2. Adjust your job descriptions.
Additionally, you can improve your job descriptions to help attract a wider range of people. Research shows that job descriptions that are more strongly feminine-coded won’t deter men from applying but will encourage women to apply. Running your job descriptions through a gender bias tool will reveal unintentionally biased words that you can replace with more inclusive language. Gender decoder is free to use and will let you know if your JD is more feminine or masuculine in language. Textio is a [paid] tool that includes educating the user on how the language is biased and suggestions on how to change it. For a list of commonly used masculine-coded and feminine-coded words in job descriptions, check this out.
Example of a job description run through Textio to uncover biased language.
3. Your interview process must prioritize inclusion.
The hiring process allows candidates an intimate sneak peek into the company they might later join. As such, you want candidates to feel welcomed and you want to be sure that your process is one that allows them to properly showcase their skills. I recommend being proactive in your communication about offering accommodations to candidates; you can offer them any accommodations that you already provide (i.e. providing captioning for candidates who are hard of hearing) and ask them if they will need any additional accommodation. Give candidates options for their interviews: some candidates might want to do white boarding during the coding interview, while others may prefer to work on a computer.
We see some companies ask candidates esoteric questions or algorithms which are essentially used as *secret handshakes* to determine if they majored in computer science or mathematics. If you want to open your pipeline to candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, we suggest ditching the interview questions centered around engineering theory, unless it’s essential to that specific role. Instead, create engineering interviews that mimic the problems that the candidate will be tackling if they end up joining your company; this will allow you to determine whether or not candidates are qualified to do the job even if they come from non-traditional educational backgrounds.
Lastly, some candidates may feel more comfortable in an interview if they are given the chance to interview with a diverse group of people. If your interview panel is looking fairly homogenous, try to expand your pool of interviewers. If your engineering team is homogenous, add some cross-functional interviews from additional teams. Adding in a lunch or a coffee break so that the candidate can sync with other people across the company can help as well.
4. Adjust your process as you get feedback.
As the recruiter or hiring manager, it is important to do pulse checks during the candidate’s process (so that you can make sure things are going well in real time), but it’s also important to check in with a candidate at the end of their interview process (regardless of the outcome of their interview). You may learn that candidates need a more thorough demo of the product, or that you should add an extra 15 minutes onto a technical screen so that engineering candidates can have time to ask questions of their own. Having a wider range of candidates to give you more diverse feedback can help you see blind spots in an interview process that may have previously been overlooked.
5. Commit to goals and measure progress rigorously.
You and your team will want to commit to tangible goals and measure your progress toward them. Tracking pipeline demographics will make it easier for you to monitor your progress and to be aware of any steps in the interview that might be eliminating some candidates unnecessarily. Data-driven recruiting teams can use this data to be more targeted and smarter about their sourcing and employer brand strategies.
But don’t stop there. As developers progress through your interview process, use a tool like Gem to manage your pipeline demographic data. If, for example, you see that there is a particular step in the interview process where female engineers are regularly dropping out, your hiring team can work to identify the problem and build a strategy to address it. Tracking your engineering candidate demographics as they move through the process will allow you to see quantifiable evidence of any part of your process that may be broken.
There are countless actions you can take to build a more diverse engineering team. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or don’t know where to start, remember that building a diverse pipeline is the first step. Utilizing candidate data will allow you to continue to adjust your process as your company evolves and hit your hiring goals. Being intentional at the top of the funnel can help you focus your efforts in growing a truly diverse team.
Diversifying your engineering team takes sustained strategy and effort but is worth the work!
We specialize in building diverse pipelines for all types of roles. Contact us to see how we can help you act on your intention to build a diverse team!
