“We want to make sure that we get the right fit.”
“We can’t let the quality of the team/work/customer relationships suffer.”
“We’re looking for specific skills and experience.”
“We’ve tried to hire more diversely, but can’t find good candidates. It’s a pipeline problem.”
“We’re too small a team right now to be able to dedicate the resources to train someone inexperienced.”
Sentiments like these are pretty common when companies are hiring. Especially small companies. And they do result in hiring consistency. Unfortunately, the most consistent factor ends up being the enduring and overwhelming whiteness of the team.
People embodying these sentiments want the strongest and most “gelled” team. There’s nothing wrong with that. But. These ideas are packed to bursting with baggage and bias that disproportionately affect people of colour and others who are in (m)any ways “different.”
Now, there are many people and resources out there who can provide much greater wisdom, experience and concrete paths to action than I can. I recommend a vigorous googling and some critical analysis. It goes without saying that I’m largely addressing other white people here.
I have worked in, been aware of, and uncomfortable about all-white workspaces, of which there have been more than one in my career. I have pushed for changes to how we hire and have both abjectly failed and managed modest change.
So, here are some ideas from my current level of thought and experience on how we can understand what’s wrong with how we hire and what we can do to start addressing it. This is Part 1.
Especially in small companies, everyone’s wearing several hats, no one has enough bandwidth for everything that needs to get done, and they don’t hire until it’s painfully overdue.
This means that the time and effort needed to complete the hiring and training process is extra stressful, since it takes resources away from the already-stretched business. Everyone wants it to be as fast and efficient as possible.
It’s natural to lean toward job candidates with substantial recognizable education, skills and experience. That profile is similar to ours and our colleagues,’ so we know it works. We know that should shorten the amount and intensity of the training needed. Wins all around.
Especially for people with tech backgrounds, though, it’s most often white people with just that right education, skills and experience. Degrees from the right schools, the desired career paths, the cool company names on the resumes.
When we see resumes that deviate from those patterns, we peg those candidates as less than ideal, rather than as interesting humans with unique and valuable knowledge, skills and different ways of seeing everything from the customer base to the product roadmap.
On my team, we found that actually discussing our usual candidate wish list was a helpful first step. Previously there was just kind of a general consensus. But talking about it helped us understand that those criteria weren’t as beneficial as we thought, and how they limited our hiring potential.
The discussions helped break us out of our past patterns and analyze candidates in better ways. We started to “see” those whose experience was usefully different, whose skills were gained in unexpected ways, or whose resumes were intriguing for various reasons.
It has definitely led to more diverse candidates, more interesting interviews and broader perspectives among the team after hiring. We also should have had similar discussions regarding interviewing before we started doing it, but that didn’t occur to us until we were well into the process.
We fell back on the “we’re too small” excuse for far too long, for various reasons, but ultimately because the powers that be didn’t see an issue.
It wasn’t until I and a colleague became the most senior that it stopped being a request and became our new mandate. It wasn’t really risky for us, but the reality is that some workplaces just don’t care or will remain actively hostile to these changes.
In tech, the concept of “fit” is usually an incredibly strong driver when teams and culture are being built, and yet I can guarantee it’s almost never actually codified. At the end of the day, what it usually ends up meaning is “people who are like me.”
That could mean anything from physical appearance to coding philosophies. We are just usually more comfortable more quickly with people whose shared traits make them seem familiar and understandable.
But if we haven’t made much effort in our lives to be around and engaged with those who are different from us, what feels like “fit” just means homogeneity.
However, cookie-cutter teams don’t have the broadest experience or most varied ideas, and they don’t notice gaps in user experience. The results can range from mildly growth-limiting to massive public catastrophes. Mono-anything, be it agriculture or tech startups, results in weakness and greater risk over the long term.
Not feeling totally comfortable initially with a diverse set of candidates isn’t their fault. But we will go to horrendous lengths to not feel uncomfortable – to others’ detriment.
People of colour, as one example, are forced to spend an exhausting amount of time and energy making white people feel comfortable. Just because it’s not written into contracts doesn’t mean it’s not a candidate (and later job) requirement.
This kind of discomfort or lack of “connection” is on me, though. And you. Is the type and degree of perceived “fit” actually even relevant to the role or company culture? Reliance on it is an indication that we are not, in fact, focused on hiring the best candidate for the company.
The idea that changing how we hire could make the company or work quality suffer is just straight-up insulting. It assumes that anyone who’s not like us couldn’t possibly be as good. Of course, if you combine that notion with a resume that doesn’t have the expected education or experience, it’s easy to reinforce this discrimination.
Even if a new hire would happen to need more training in certain areas, it doesn’t mean they’re an inferior candidate. Everyone has stronger and weaker areas of expertise. Also, just because someone doesn’t have certain experience yet doesn’t mean they haven’t been trying to get it.
When we attempt to improve diversity, we often determine that there aren’t any good candidates. Really? The pipeline problem is oft cited. Is it really that more diverse candidates don’t exist because they opted out of the right education and career paths? Or are we just not seeing them because of the above-listed ingrained patterns?
Or, perhaps this talent specifically is not applying to your company. “They don’t look like me” goes both ways. What are our companies’ reputations in the world?
If you were a Black woman, would you feel 100-per-cent comfortable and confident going to work for a company that was founded and staffed entirely by white men? How should a female-identifying engineer react to a company where women only occupy “pink collar” roles?
If there actually is a pipeline problem, how do we repair it? It will remain an excuse in perpetuity unless we step up – where and when we are invited to get involved.
Just because a company has decided to get on the diversity train doesn’t mean we are anyone’s saviour. If we’re embarking on these initiatives only with the goal of getting access to a more diverse pool of workers, then let’s not fool ourselves that the motivation is anything but self-serving.
Providing money, services, etc. without listening to the people already involved, without valuing and centring their experience and expertise, just means forcing our status quo onto people who don’t even work for our companies.
We can give money that doesn’t require public stroking of the corporate ego. We don’t need to run anything, unless we’re explicitly asked to contribute connections or expertise. We can provide peripheral assistance to enable people to take advantage of existing programs, like scholarships or subsidized child care.
And before trying to hire the resulting bright, shiny, diverse candidates, make sure we’ve built (or re-built) companies where they’d actually want to work.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached on Twitter at @melle or by email at me@melle.ca.
