Re:Ask HN: How does your company approach hiring diversity?
by matt_the_bass on Saturday February 15, 2020 @11:13AM
(#22336060)
I agree with hiring based on skills not non-capability metrics. I also believe that a diverse team is valuable (and interesting to me).
However one topic that isn’t discussed much in the comments is how one advertises the position. It’s easy to end up advertising (subconsciously) in a way that attracts more of the current majority rather than a diverse applicant pool. For example, most of the team are “bros” and the job description caters to “bros”, then guess who’s more likely to apply for the job? In many cases you’ll miss the best merit based candidate because they are not a “bro” and don’t want to work there.
So I do feel it’s important to make job offerings as inclusive as possible. And that sometimes requires non trivial effort.
However one topic that isn’t discussed much in the comments is how one advertises the position. It’s easy to end up advertising (subconsciously) in a way that attracts more of the current majority rather than a diverse applicant pool. For example, most of the team are “bros” and the job description caters to “bros”, then guess who’s more likely to apply for the job? In many cases you’ll miss the best merit based candidate because they are not a “bro” and don’t want to work there.
So I do feel it’s important to make job offerings as inclusive as possible. And that sometimes requires non trivial effort.
(Replace “bro” with any group of your choice.)