38 percent of tech job interviews offered exclusively to men: report Employers seeking tech talent are still more likely to interview men for their open roles, according to tech and sales recruiting firm Hired's analysis of how its customers use its platform. Hired, whose gimmick is that companies effectively apply to interview jobseekers – reversing the usual paradigm – rather than the other …
Women are also often overlooked on Hired - the the recruitment biz said 38 percent of positions advertised in 2022 only generated interview requests for men.
The report says the same, but no breakdown of those who applied for the jobs by gender and qualifications to be selected for interview.
The quote sounds like a major portion of industry is simply ignoring women but from experience in teaching engineering and occasionally dealing with job interviews we found very few women applied for the jobs, and given that last time I taught electronics (a bit over 10 years ago) I was seeing only 3-4 out of around 20 students were women it need not be a bias against women, just the reality of who is qualified and actually applied for that job locally.
It's an issue which will take years to balance the representation. Industry is mostly male, so women don't even start it and the few who do are often driven out for various reasons. Net result? Probably 90%+ of candidates for IT/tech jobs are men. If you take random samples out of those interview candidates, you'll have a lot of men-only interview sets. I'm not convinced it's entirely an employee screening issue.
There's a lot of work trying to get women involved in STEM work which will hopefully start addressing the imbalance in gender representation.
I've interviewed a few people over the years, for technical roles within my team. For the last couple of years, we have had a lot of women apply, but generally it's about 90% men. I try and employ a good balance, and feel it makes good business sense. My team is user facing, and women users seem much more comfortable approaching the women of the team. I base this on the fact that calls from women go up if we have more women on staff, and fewer calls if we have fewer women.
Sadly, it's generally very difficult to get a reasonable amount of women though.
@Stuart Castle: “I base this on the fact that calls from women go up if we have more women on staff, and fewer calls if we have fewer women.”
Sounds like these people need refuge in a mental health facility and not employed in a high tech industry. When I worled on a telephone help desk I got some womens tech problem solved. She said thank you very much. I said no problem, they hire people who like doing this. Then she went and complained about me.
I would be interested to know what the statistics are for HR departments. In the companies which I have worked for, HR has always been 90-100% women. (Engineering on the other hand, has much better diversity... About 70-90% men)
Is it possible that, taking only biological factors and not social factors, men and women tend to like different things?
Yes of course some people will be outliers, and everyone supports and encourages that. But it may be counter-productive or even impossible to push the statistics to completely homogenise men and women, because those statistics might just be driven by biology, and not "cognitive bias" in hiring, etc.
That said, it's always great to have women on any engineering team, and probably the best engineer I know is a woman - but she quit engineering because she is "bored of it", and because it stresses her out (she has ADHD). So nobody here is saying that women aren't good at engineering - but it seems they don't always enjoy it as much as men do. So why force the issue? I'd go insane if you forced me to work in HR
The industry is not shutting out or obstructing women.
Us techies are not cool and there are other careers with people and activities that are more appealing to females.
I know we would like more women in our teams, it would make for a better work environment. They generally just don’t want us. Starts in school with the geek nerd stereotype.
The cultures that have strong representation of women in STEM are the most repressive towards women and conversely those societies that support women to perform any role they choose have stereotypical gender divides. A Norwegian documentary from NRK 'Brainwash: The Gender Equality Paradox' (youtube) gives a very good analysis.
> Is it possible that, taking only biological factors and not social factors, men and women tend to like different things?
It's not just possible, it is absolutely the case, yet inevitably ignored in every single report/article of this type. Specifically, men are more likely to be interested in things, and women more likely to be interested in people.
Even without studies supporting it, this is just self-evident stuff for anyone talking to a bunch of men and women about their interests over the course of their life.
A relatively recent study on this issue - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261438 - found that not only do these differences exist, but that in countries with higher levels of female empowerment, the ratios in career choice are in fact *bigger*. It's a total repudation of the idea that if careers aren't 50/50, there's some bias or other negative effect at play.
My children (both girls) have been put off IT for life by the frankly quite boring computing lessons they had prior to choosing their GSCEs. I'm actually amazed any kids wanted to carry on, so there's part of the problem right there. The thing is, that it's not just that you need a good science/maths/technology teacher, you also need interesting problem solving work on the curriculum, because that's fundamental to science, technology and engineering careers.
My IT lessons were equally boring. In ~2000, they were mostly about How to use Microsoft Office.
The daft thing was, we still had some Acorn computers left, but doing any kind of "programming" on those things was banned, and anything of the sort on the new Windows XP PCs was more or less impossible.
Nevertheless I developed my own interests in IT and computing, which stemmed mostly from the joy of teaching oneself how to break the rules. (which again is a trait more commonly observed in boys than in girls..)
Schools and colleges need to teach IT not how to use microsoft packages and SQL databases. There's more to IT than that but that is sadly what the UK curriculum for IT is now. My daughters are the same. luckily neither has gone into IT, One into Law, and 2 into nursing. all are bright and computer literate. just it at school was pants.
I was only a student, not a teacher, but anecdotally, I have seen a pretty big change in the past 10-15 years where I am. When I first started taking security/networking classes in 2008, out of 30 students, there were maybe four women, all of whom were already in the field, and just there to keep their skills current, and maybe one just starting out. I had to quit for health reasons after a few terms, and when I came back, while there still wasn't parity, maybe 1/3 were women, and skewed younger. I think that there has been some success in at least getting more young women at least starting out. Of course, with the culture being what it is, how many *stay* is another matter entirely.
It's not as simple as that. Firstly you can make a job description biased very easily and accidentally. Secondly these people did not apply at all, if you read the article you'll see that companies are asked to contact candidates on this site. How many women are signed up and how many are shown in search results is more relevant but if they company is producing reports like this, they should have their own biased algorithm sorted already.
It seems to be a statistical analysis done by people who don't understand statistics. There's no control group and the percentages haven't been normalised to a baseline to account for the relative numbers of men and women applying. You might as well say "There is a huge bias towards hiring people who are alive".
The simple fact is that not many women are taking tech-related qualifications, which results in a large imbalance in available candidates. Many tech companies are going for 50% representation of women in engineering roles, which by its very definition IS excluding candidates in a discriminatory fashion. The only targets tech companies should be aiming for is the same percentage of women or minority groups as the candidate field presents. Anything more is discriminatory, and I'm seeing this evidenced first-hand where I work.
It depends very much on the proportion of candidates who were men and the average number interviewed.
Take an example where the candidates were 50/50. If only one candidate interviewed* then an unbiased average would be 50% of interviews to be exclusively with men. If 2 candidates were interviewed then 25% would be exclusively men - and 25% exclusively women and 50% one of each.
Depending on the mix of candidates and number of candidates interviewed 37% might be about the expected, substantially more or substantially less.
However I'll stick my neck out and suggest that the people writing PR stuff and claiming an understanding of statistics is less than the number of people writing PR stuff and claiming to have an understanding of statistics but who actually do have an understanding of statistics
* There's nothing to indicate such a practice so the possibility can't be excluded from the interpretation.
"Choose the people of whatever age, sex, racial background, etc who are best suited to the job"
Yes BUT candidate selection processes are not very good at finding the people who are best suited for the job, and are usually limited by timing, geography, and what they are willing to pay to who their best-guess would be the best fir out of a limited pool of candidates about whom the only knowledge you have is 2 sheets of paper and half an hour on a video call. That makes the thought process "I'm good at this, so someone like me is probably good at this" quite common, even if unconscious
I few years back there was a long discussion here after an article reporting that out of those new graduates who found a job the men were earning more than the women.
But digging deeper into the numbers rather than reading the headline the report showed that a higher proportion of women graduates had found work commensurate with their degrees.
Certainly one way to read the data was that the men were demanding more money and therefore found fewer employers willing to take them on while the women graduates were more prepared to accept the salaries offered.
It can always be hard to draw good concisions from these reports.
What does it matter who they chose to employ?
It matters because discrimination is a nasty business, and sadly history is full of examples of discriminatory employment on many aspects.
However there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. If a business is genuinely employing the best folks they ought to reflect the population distribution of those qualified for the jobs within sane distance limits, but we know that STEM is under represented by women and that problem is far deeper than the employment market, it goes back to school and society and fixing that takes a lot of time and high-level support (actions, not weasel words from politicians).
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Even the Victorians quickly realised that businesses don't exist outside of society. Left to their own devices, businesses were employing children to crawl under dangerous machinery, up chimneys and down mines. In some parts of the US, child labour is coming back using precisely the arguments you make.
Businesses that serve only their owners have no place in society - there's no point in making money solely for the purpose of making money. The rest of us are entitled to set the rules under which businesses operate and under which those owners get the benefit of education, transport and the legal protection of their assets that society offers them.
One of those rules is that you can't keep the sweeties for your mates.
"RIght wing" = something the poster disagrees with...
Go and have a look at the news over the past week. The 'pretenting to be cats' (and other animals) is clearly an issue in some schools, albeit one which may well have been exaggerated. There have been quotes from specific teachers who have encountered the issue, it's not just "apocryphal".
No idea how it is "right wing", though, to be honest.
Bullshit. Show a link to a story about a real school that has or had at some point an official policy of making litterboxes available to students identifying as cats. I'll wait.
Everytime someone has claimed to have found such a case it turns out to be a fantasy. Either the school mentioned in the article doesn't exist, or the school has no such policy.
Can you please quote the sentence where I made any mention of litter boxes?
To save you the trouble, I'll point out that I didn't - you made it up.
I even pointed out that these situations "may well have been exaggerated" (given that you appear to need it spelled out in detail, that was referring to litter boxes).
Note of this negates the point that kids pretending to be animals is clearly a problem in some schools though - and one which needs stamping out as it's of no benefit to anyone.
There are a lot of kids in US -80 million or thereabouts. Some of them very young. If a genuine example of a kid pretending to be a cat appears in some news journal how relevant is that to what is happening in schools? If there were 80 that'd be one in a million. Among that 80m there are about 4 million in preschool. And acting as animals, cat or otherwise,is hardly a very shocking thing for little uns. Nor is a small proportion of older kids who's emotional escape from Psychological burden is to act as a furry animal. i.e. there would have to be a pretty decent number of examples of kids in older age groups and without trauma, to make that story anything more than a bullshit piece of moral panic inducing nonsense.
Its a problem when the teachers start believing it and telling the pupils that they have to address the other pupil as a cat and tell the dissenting one that they should go to a different school. To make it easier for you here's the link again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2l2k2NtenM
@DS999
"I see you are subscribing to the apocryphal right wing fantasy about schoolchildren "identifying as cats" and schools making litterboxes available to them"
I was thinking of the idiot woman (from Norway?) but I did hear something about that (someone mentioned it yesterday). I was disappointed to read the teacher scolding the pupil as despicable for sticking to reality instead of the latest fad (dunno if that is the same incident).
> I see you are subscribing to the apocryphal right wing fantasy about schoolchildren "identifying as cats" and schools making litterboxes available to them
Only the litter box aspect was proved to be false and a post-event joke. The rest is unfortunately true. A part-time teacher lost her job because of it.
One of the best/funniest/upsetting interviews that I have ever seen...
"So what you're saying is "... Cathy Newman beat herself up in that interview....
ESG is causing more problems than it is solving BUT BlackRock etc have an financial investment so they will keep pushing hard....
Years ago a hiring manager for a government agency told me I was fully qualified and he would really like to hire me. However, because of my race & gender he could not so so. He was required to fill the position with a candidate from a different demographic, regardless of their ability to actually perform the job. Of course this tidbit didn't turn up until the actual interview because the screening process was blind to those details.
And that is the problem. We need to include all legally protected characteristics on job applications. That way certain undesirable demographics can be automatically screened out before the interview process. If we have already reached our quota of white heterosexual males, then those can be placed in the round file. No need to actually interview them.
Seriously. Let's quit playing this stupid game of pretending to ignore legally protected characteristics. The process is broken. If companies are being held accountable to interviewing & hiring percentages of certain characteristics (ie: this article), then let's make it easy to do that. Stop pretending to hire the best person for the job.
"Acme Corp now has positions open for <insert race>, <insert gender>, <insert orientation>, individuals seeking rapid career advancement and personal growth. Applicants not meeting these minimum requirements will not be considered."
I've had the same experience, except that the hiring manager told me that before an interview was arranged; a "diversity candidate" (as he put it) was subsequently hired without me ever getting an interview. Were they more qualified? Who knew, the manager wasn't allowed to look at my resume until all the diversity candidates were declined!
Thats because they are best suited to leadership roles by having no skills, as the last thing you want is to try to find a senior engineering lead with 10 yrs plus experience at whatever technical stuff your company does
See also 'B ark'
Back on subject, we had 4 people for the PFY job last time around, only the woman impressed me with her attitude and education, hence she got the job (and a slice of nepotism as she was related to an employee).
In that time she's proven herself to be good at learning technical stuff , having the right work attitude, and being ok to get on with, plus speaks her mind with honesty. all vital skills needed.
if only some of the male PFYs we've previously hired had been like her
Over the past few years, I’ve had to deal with a lot of THOSE cases. Y’know, the HR ones where IT mysteriously becomes the evidence collector for frivolous claims made against employers where the claimant can’t be named in any official meetings but where you’re expected to dig up everything related to their name, initials and any activity data associated with their work between X and Y dates using a mix of KQL queries, SQL queries, ad-hoc scripts, specialised content indexing and various “eDiscovery” systems…
I can’t be the only one casually observing which demographics appear to cost the most to employ long-term. Conscious bias must eventually play a role when an employer has been around the block for long enough, especially when certain demographics may appear to be much more of a liability (at least from their own anecdotal experiences) than others.
Having seen what I’ve seen, I know I would be biased if I was directly in charge of hiring!
So… why would anyone assume *unconscious* bias instead of the obvious?
The report has its own bias. It is selective in the data it shows, by only showing data on selected demographics to support its narrative. When data is included that does not fit the narrative it is ignored. Also a large part of the data is answers to a questionnaire given by respondents who are not employed in tech jobs. 77% of the respondents work in HR.
An example of 'only showing data on selected demographics to support its narrative' can be seen on page 7 "Opportunity Gap and Hiring Bias" also the image shown in the Reg article. The two graphs "Positions Sending Interview Requests to Only Men" and "Positions Sending Interview Requests to Only White Candidates" are to support the narrative of a male bias, a white bias and therefore a white male bias.
But without the results of the other demographics there is no evidence to suggest any form of bias. For all we know "Positions Sending Interview Requests to Only Asian Candidates" may be higher than Only White Candidates.
Page 12 "The Wage Gap and Wage Bias" displays the "Wage Gap by Race and Gender" seems to be an example of data that does not fit the narrative being ignored. Unlike other parts of the document where a group having some success in closing the wage gap is noted they fail to do that here. Maybe because the group in question is "White Men".
This report says more about the bias of its authors than it does about the "State of Wage Inequality in the Tech Industry"
Job ads in SE Asia typically tell both the desired sex as well as the age range considered for almost every type of position.
While this of course is way out of line in the USA, I almost think they should include the desired age range. I went to sooooo many interviews where I aced everything and then never heard even as much as a rejection later. Yet I had to go to satisfy unemployment. Why waste everyone's time?
Could be a coincidence, but so would be all the planets aligning one day.
So the interview request bias Hired are reporting on is from the anonymised CV’s that Hired makes available to prospective employers?
Is this yet another case of a recruitment company not following its own advice, or is this a sales pitch for their “ Bias Reduction Mode and Diversity Goals” feature and thus their AI-driven approach. Yet if this were a sales pitch, surely you would give results (of bias reduction) to show how effective your “AI-driven” approach is?
What I find notable is the total absence of disability discrimination from the report.
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