After a proclaimed that the next hire at her all-female company would be a person of color, fellow panelist Monique Lovato was quick to interject some caution.
“Be careful about making that next person a token and making them representative of everyone else that is not like your current team,” said Lovato, CEO and executive director at , an organization supporting Latino families and entrepreneurs. Instead, she suggested, first have a conversation with your board and staff to see what diversity exists and if possible, hire in cohorts.
In this touchy world of workforce diversity — and whether technology companies overlook qualified workers who aren’t white men — even the well intentioned are still figuring things out. That’s evident in a , which surveyed 680 founders and executives of companies started within the past seven years.
Approximately 72 percent said that building diversity “is extremely important or very important.” But, in reality, 56 percent had fewer than five diverse tech employees, while 32 percent had none. (Fifty-two percent of the companies had fewer than five employees.)
The point of the survey, said director Julie Penner, was not to remind tech companies of the lack of diversity, but to think of diversity as what’s next.
“I have this conversation a lot,” Penner said. “People with three-, four- and five-person companies. They’re all guys. I say you don’t have to hire a woman. That’s not my ask. My ask is that you not make a hire until you look at two incredibly qualified women in your candidate pool. That’s a difference for me. … It’s adding diverse people to the top of the funnel so you’re looking at a candidate pool that is diverse and then make the best decision for the company.”
Technology companies have had a time with . A few of the larger ones shared how diverse they were in 2014. They weren’t. Apple’s male in 2014. At , male workers made up . Facebook had , while Twitter’s Գ.
In two years, diversity at these companies improved a few percentage points. But it has also elevated the discussion as companies of all sizes grapple with reaching out to a more diverse job pool — if only to find more workers to fill tech jobs. Supporters point to other benefits: diverse opinions, increased problem solving and improved financial performance.
“I think women do more with less,” said Allyson Downey, . “We get less capital and we’re still building businesses regardless. The are more financially successful. I think it’s because we have to be really scrappy. We have to turn over all the stones looking for opportunities. I built my business with $800,000 compared to what I see other founders do with $8 million. And we’re cash-flow positive and have been for almost two years now. I think it does force you to be smarter with resources.”
Reports such as , found that diversity can have a better rate of return for companies. McKinsey’s report of 366 public companies found that for every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity in senior leadership at U.S. companies, earnings before interest and taxes rose 0.8 percent. FirstRound’s over the past decade found that those with a female founder performed 63 percent better than investments with all-male founding teams. Another organization, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, collects research and does its own on topics such as at .
Another point that the panelists made was that it’s not just about data, but also common sense. If you hire people just like yourself, perspectives tend to be the same.
“It makes intuitive sense,” Penner said. “If you have all the voices sound like your own, you’re leaving opportunity on the table. Entrepreneurs are looking for the biggest, untapped opportunity. I see it all the time. Entrepreneurs are approaching a problem that a 22-year-old white guy is not interested in. It just hasn’t been tapped.”
The Chase/Techstars report also advises startups to recruit in nontraditional venues, provide mentoring, offer parental leave or leaves of absence, and audit jobs for pay equity. Such perks can attract the nontraditional tech worker.
On the hiring front, weeSpring uses tools such as or sites such as to help find job candidates beyond looking at resumes.
“ܲwhen we’re looking at resume piles, we’re looking for people who remind us of ourselves,” Downey said. “We’re looking for colleges we recognize. We’re looking for companies we’ve heard of and respect. By cutting out that first screen, you wind up with a much more diverse pool.”
Penner suggested standardizing the hiring questions because bias may creep in “if you change the questions and don’t give the candidates the same opportunity to answer them,” she said. “That doesn’t cost a startup any thing.”
