Diversity Hiring

Pay Equity Improves Your Company’s Performance

This company implemented a pay equity policy to address discrepancies in salary setting due to unconscious bias. After a year of implementation, all engineers and managers at the same level were paid identically. The policy was well-received internally and externally, and helped to attract more people to the company due to its commitment to equity and inclusion.

Building a Diverse, but Cohesive Team

This article discusses the challenges of building a diverse mobile engineering team and the actions taken to overcome them. Intentional sourcing, in-house programs, and expectations setting were used to ensure diversity of all sorts. Lessons learned include that people add more than they fit, diversity brings unique perspectives, culture building takes time, and non-traditional backgrounds add value and creativity.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.

Diverse Teams Have Greater Customer Empathy

This article outlines the steps taken to build a better mass-market product for an audience of older users. These steps included using personas, advocating for inclusive design principles, and implementing diverse friendly hiring practices. Ultimately, these changes resulted in a more accessible product and helped attract great talent to the team. The article emphasizes the importance of diverse teams in empathizing with diverse audiences and building better products.

How to Close the Confidence Gap

This article discusses the confidence gap between women and men, which starts in childhood and is reinforced through academic and professional years. It provides actions to address the confidence gap, such as understanding the problem, educating others, creating a forum for people to share, being conscious while recruiting, coaching perfectionism, creating a safe environment to take risks, and encouraging a collaborative workplace. It also emphasizes that the confidence gap affects not only women, but also other cultures, and that addressing it can lead to more innovation, risk-taking, and less burnout and attrition.

Making Recruiting Everyone’s Job

In order to quickly build a team of 20 engineers in a year, Lever established a Toronto office from scratch and taught everyone how to source and promote the company. Sourcing training was introduced to the organization, and sourcing parties were held to bring in new people. As a result, six senior engineers were hired in three months, and the team of 16 engineers was built in less than nine months. Lessons learned included getting people to think beyond referrals, having people think about DE&I, understanding that experienced people don't apply, and collaborating with recruiters.