Bank rewrote ads for infosec jobs to stop scaring away women Australia's Westpac bank re-wrote its job ads for infosec roles after finding the language it used deterred female candidates. The land down under, like most other lands, has a shortage of cyber security professionals. "We realized our job ads were worded in a way that females deselected because they would look at it …
I think a lot of this nonsense originates from ISO9000 and its relatives. It starts with an innocuous statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. (NB this more or less knocks on the head any idea of recruiting the inexperienced and training them up). Then the next draft of the quality manual specifies a period of years. The next one says it must apply to all products in use. The next one says that departments must specify exact versions of products when recruiting.
If the penny ever drops that the quality manual is a millstone, in this and many other respect, it gradually starts being whittled down. Eventually it arrives at a statement that all jobs must be done by someone with relevant qualifications and/or experience. The ISO9000 certification simply becomes a badge saying the organisation wasted a lot of time, effort and money developing what is quite possibly a mediocrity management system - providing they're consistently mediocre everything's OK.
"One of the creators of Python was turned down for a position on the language he created."
Which one, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones or Terry Gilliam?
I'll get my coat, it's the one with the unladen swallow in the pocket.
Marty McFly "I suspected stalking & down voting was happening."
See, for example my post in https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/04/05/uk_digital_services_tax_review/ . 4 downvotes (at time of this posting) but no explanation of what they disagree with. There is no point getting upset over it. One poster, I forget who, claimed that one night every single one of his last thousand posts had been downvoted. My tentative suggestion that the log on names of people who vote (up to down) be provided received a lot of down votes.
Here is a 'downvote' with an explanation.
(note: I didn't officially downvote your post, which is why I used quotes around 'downvote'.)
I'd be against that proposal.
I understood your intent only to be to use it for good reasons - like to understand why people disagree with you so you can either better your own views, or attempt to enlighten those who you think should change their mind (all noble pursuits) but that's not all it would be used for. This is an Internet comments section, not some distinguished debate club where ethics and standards of debate are high. You yourself said someone claimed that someone trawled through a poster's previous comments to downvote them all. What if instead they'd done that to look for clues to where they lived in order to waylay them outside their favorite pub?
So yeah, this functionality you're proposing has good uses for noble souls that can accomplish moderate good, and bad uses that can get someone hurt, killed, or cancelled. The bad far outweighs the hoped-for good, at least in my opinion.
Edit: Extreme examples aside, even casual, uncalled for shenanigans like harassing someone by downvoting their last thousand posts to try to silence them is enough (for me) to say it's not worth it. So yeah, I was using extreme rhetoric, but it's not really necessary. Just the fact that it facilitates *any* retaliatory behavior is sufficient for me to say 'no' to de-anonymizing votes.
Thanks for your explanation. But surely it is the downvoter who is much more likely to stalk someone, or try to find out where they live than the person who receives the occasional downvote?
Ah well, I guess I'll just have to make do without ever finding out.
Feedback used to be* my favourite part of the magazine. Among other things it gave us Nominative Determinism, after all. I imagine 325 is simply a mis-transcription of "three to five"...
*Probably still would be if I was still a subscriber. I cancelled after one too many "WAS DARWIN/EINSTEIN/WHOEVER WRONG?" covers.
So things have truly come full circle. It sounds like they are trying to find, poach and employ Jen Barber, of Reynholm Industries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBY3yzbIS7A
30 minutes of Jen Barber Dancing. (but crucially, "InfoSec Intel" - sussing out her work colleagues).
YT at its best, as random and off the wall as it gets, let's get it to 1000 views.
That was my first impression as well. My second was maybe they're scaring aware good men as well as women - having been in recruitment a lot of potential recruits are honest and would deselect themselves IF the requirements were genuine.
My third thought on reading further was "media specialists!!!!!!!"
That would fit me - and I suspect it's part of my autism.
In the past I'e looked at many job adverts and thought "not worth applying". I either tick boxes in a way that offends my moral/ethical principles, or I know the application won't get past the first "did they tick all the right boxes" sift.
I learned early in my career to just ignore those requirements.
Was doing work at BP and they regularly posted ads for job openings asking for experience in ISP (International Systems Program) which was their own in-house ERP system. I asked the HR why they are doing that because no-one will have that experience. Was told that this is a requirement to be placed on the job posting.
"Far too many job ads include things like" XXX
Yeah it's like a running gag. But if this running gag keeps women from applying, it's time to replace it with a new one.
"Or equivalent [whatever] in a similar area of expertise"
^^== may be a good start ==^^
I dont think it's just autistic people that struggle with these types of adverts. Pretty much anyone low on confidence or whose relatively fresh on to the market looks at those types of adverts and thinks either I couldnt do that, or I havent got a chance. It's such a wasteful and lazy way to search for people.
Having knowledge of a particular program/skill might be important for the job, but whether you've used it for 3 months, 12 months or 20 years, it's unlikely to have too much of an effect if the person is good and able/willing to learn.
I'm sure we all know people who have used Word for 20 years, who still havent got a clue about hotkeys or shortcuts, which is a good counter argument that having 20 years experience in something doesnt necessarily make you good at it..
That's IF they are actually a minimum requirement.
Having knowledge of C+ would be a minimum requirement. Having a minimum of 5 years in C+ is not a minimum requirement, because is there really a big difference between someone who has used C+ for 6 months against someone who has used it for 5 years? The only correct answer is "It depends". Someone who has been using C+ for 5 years to create cookie cutter programs, is not going to have significantly more knowledge than the fresh graduate who has only been using it for 6 months. A proper professional who has used C+ for a variety of different use case will have more knowledge and know where the mistakes are to be made and avoided. But equally that could be achieved with 2 years experience or 20. So putting a number value there, really is just laziness.
It takes proper screening of applications, as well as knowing the right questions to ask in interviews to determine who has the actual level of experience you need (note need, not want), and the willingness to learn the rest, to get the right candidate. But that's hard work, which is why so many firms dont do it properly.
You could probably also look at it the other way as well, if a firm is that lazy when it comes to finding new employees, are they going to be any better once you are actually working there? Probably not...
I have 'experience' of C++ (only recently have the nightmares stopped).
Seriously, I had to write a program in C++ (when I only knew a bit of objective 'C') for Windows (no experience of programming for Windows and not a professional programmer at all) because someone wanted to install C++ on their home computer and didn't want to have to pay for a licence... (You would be aghast/appalled at the appalling/ghastly code I wrote.)
"...who network and can socialize well with people and are adaptive and flexible..."
I'd argue that this is the better 'deselector' for the neurodiverse. As someone on the spectrum, I read this as someone who has no clue about neurodiversity and will push 'team-building' and other non-required-but-really-required social extracurriculars down my throat.
Hard pass.
I'd argue that this is the better 'deselector' for the neurodiverse. As someone on the spectrum, I read this as someone who has no clue about neurodiversity and will push 'team-building' and other non-required-but-really-required social extracurriculars down my throat.
I'd argue you need a mix of skills/talents/abilities in a team. You want people who are strong at analysing data. This is what normal traffic looks like.. so what's this pattern that's just appeared? You want people who are intuitive or creative and can 'think outside the box'. So people that can look at a new system and figure out unexpected ways to break it. What happens if I try this? Why is that employee or visitor trying that? Then you'll probably need people who can do the more social skills who can observe people, and figure out if they're up to no good. Then patiently explain it to HR in ways they might understand.
And then because to perform that role well, you really need (or should want) a neurodiverse team. Which means managing that team to keep them happy and maximise their performance. A while ago a GCHQ chap wrote about this, and the benefits and challenges of managing a team like that. Part of which is keeping an eye on their mental (and physical sometimes) health. Plus also sometimes shielding them from company-wide, mandatory team building 'social' events that have no benefit, and might be stressful for some employees. Challenge then is to figure out team building exercises that help the team understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, and creates a more effective and flexible team.
I upvoted for your clear statement, but I don't think autism is anything as linear as a spectrum. There are several senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, balance, rhythm)* and each of these could be considered to be a 'spectrum' of its own. When things get 'wired up' differently to 'neurotypical' people (whatever they are) this is a whole lot of dimensions, not a line.
*The five Aristotelian senses are not the only ones we can find. Everyone has a sense of physical balance (and possibly of the horizontal, when hanging pictures or putting up shelves), and we each have a sense of rhythm, as well as senses of body shape, and, hopefully, a sense of humour, then there are the more ephemeral ones, like a sense of style, a sense of proportion and a sense of beauty. See, e.g., https://www.sensorytrust.org.uk/blog/how-many-senses-do-we-have
It's mathematically and logically flawed to say that because a superset exists, that no special conclusions can be made about a subset. Equating it with 'blood pressure' (without which human life cannot sustain itself and thus becomes unpersonhood i.e. dead.) Equating it with weight (without which you're outside the realm of everyday physics and would actually soon die in any number of horrible scenarios such as forcible ejection into deep space if something else didn't kill you first) is silly.
We're not talking about some property without which you'd experience sudden existential failure. We're talking about normal human variation like eye color or height. Your argument amounts to we all have legs' which would be very off-putting to someone born without any, or with knees that were reversed.
A few years ago when we were building our new InfoSec Team we promoted one person from our Infrastructure team to head the group. Then ran ads to fill his team. After 3 months we never got anyone applying for the jobs. We looked at the job postings and went to HR and asked why, "You are asking for requirements higher that the Director of the department possesses and offering a salary no one with those qualification would accept, it's no wonder you are not getting any candidates." It took quite a struggle to get them to change those requirements.
And I think you have hit the nail there.
The team that needs the person knows what they need, and what they would like, and are aware of what's on offer pay & benefits wise. But all to often, by the time it's been via HR (who don't know anything about your specialist subject), and then often a recruitment agency (who know even less about your business and your team), then you get this stupidity. Also, as already mentioned, at these various levels, they are all looking for easy (for that read "cheap") ways to whittle down the tsunami of "click here to have your CV, which as an agency we've mangled without telling you, to this company who actually specify 'no agencies' in their own advert (if you could find it)" applications they expect to receive.
And of course, they all "know" that "everyone" will exaggerate their skills/abilities - hence they inflate the requirements to suit. And that's a massive disadvantage to certain groups who have an ethical stance (or personality trait) of being literally honest.
I'm not autistic and that's what I assume. When I scan a job ad and see something under "requirements" that I don't have, I skip to the next ad. If it's a requirement and I don't have it, they're just going to reject my resume. Or I'll get to the interview stage and we'll realize we're wasting each others' time. I mean, it's a REQUIREMENT.
I don't think so. Many ads contain requirements which are in fact not needed, and the company realizes that when it has too few candidates. Too many are too lazy to make the difference between what is required and what is wished, and put all items in the same 'required' basket.
Yes, I'm autistic. But you know what? EVERY job description I've seen in the last 20+ years (and I've seen way, WAY too many of them) includes "clear communication" as a requirement. Guess what? When I'm looking at your job description, I am screening you. If you say "requires 5 years in X", then either you mean what you say--or you're "clear communication" is a rule for me but not for thee.
Hard pass.
I'm a mathematician. For money, I program computers. If you give me a requirement that x >= 5, that's what goes in the code. If you cannot manage for that? Hard pass.
Not autistic here, but I read the more verbose type of job req as "here's a list of what the team of five was doing when one of them left for better pay, and we reassigned those responsibilities to the three of them, but it was too much for two, so we need to hire a junior to accompany the one remaining employee who plans to retire in six weeks and oh by the way our hiring process takes eight, good luck!"
If they're brief, they're more likely to secure an interview with me.
Some traits are statistically more prevalent in males or females, and intersex adds whole set of curve-balls to that. So looking at all those characteristics one may make an educated guess, but without actual analysable DNA there is no way to be certain. Humans not sufficiently dimorphic for that to be possible based on just skeletal features.
DNA doesn't specify gender either.
There's a significant subset of "obviously" female who have XY chromosomes and "obviously" male who have XX. It's usually because a couple of genes are in a rare location, but not always as conditions in the womb have a significant effect too.
That's before considering rarer chromosome counts, like X, XYY etc, and intersex.
It's one of the reasons genetics professors don't ask students to look at their own chromosomes, or sequence their own DNA. Genetics 101 class is not a great place to discover you have a "rare" genotype/phenotype combination.
In the end, the only way to be certain of someone's gender is to ask them. And to be prepared that the answer might be "I don't know".
Please define significant. Also, where does this sit on the normal (Gauss-style) distribution ?
Yes, there are all kind of rare chromosome counts (and not only in humans), species that transition from one gender to another naturally during their life etc. but for the past tens of million years, reproduction (one of the attributes that define what we call a life-form) was largely being based on two individuals of opposite sex. Of course we all know biology is not an exact science, there's a lot of variability and statistics that are involved. This is why in domains like this scientists are always looking for a trend in order to define the object of their study.
Your last statement is interesting to me. According to what you're saying, in order to know for certain someone's gender, that individual has to be alive and conscious. What do we do if it's not the case ? Does this mean that if I'm dead or unconscious I will lose/change my gender ?
The prevalence in the healthy population is not really known, because such tests are generally only done when there are problematic symptoms. XXY and XYY are estimated to be about 1/1000 live births between them - so about 333,000 people in the USA.
So that's a little more common than lung cancer (Source: Cancer Research UK)
And don't be silly. Do you lose your name when you die? It just means anyone who didn't ask before you died doesn't know.
Perhaps someone who did ask will write it on a gravestone. That seems a relatively common practice - "Father to ...."
I think more accurately humans like to think of themselves as unique and special and different from the rest which is why they like to invent new things like this. The sad truth is a lot of these people need some level of psychiatric help to resolve an underlying issue rather than affirming 'care' which will just make it worse. Peer/social pressure, parental issues/abuse, past trauma, autism, aspergers etc.
"are either male or female, but with a well defined medical condition"
That is simply false. Do you mean having the physical, genetic or hormonal characteristics of one sex or the other? Because there are multiple combinations of all of these that are possible. You can't simply say that such an individual is male or female. How could a person externally male, but with internal female hormones, DNA and reproductive organs be "male"?
This post has been deleted by its author
The presentation appears to be saying that women are put off by job adverts when asked to display experience and skills that are relevant to the job at hand.
But he is happy to hire women because they can talk to other human beings. More or less what he said ;)
It appears to be a crass sexist statement to claim that male IT workers are shy, introverted geeks. That would be institutionalised bias! Pfffft.
"The presentation appears to be saying that women are put off by job adverts when asked to display experience and skills that are relevant to the job at hand."
That isn't what it says at all. I can only conclude that you reach such an absurd conclusion due to bias.
It clearly states that women are put off by requirements that are not actually requirements at all.
"We hire for type," Johnson added. "We're after people who are resilient, problem solvers who network and can socialize well with people and are adaptive and flexible. That describes lots of females I know who are actually very strong in that category."
No, that describes how a job advert should read no matter what. Unless it actually requires certifications in a specific fields, such as airline pilots must have proper verified paperwork for example, most jobs simply need someone who knows what the heck they're doing, can get along with people and pick up the dumpster fires we hired ofr and quickly get them extinguished!
was for a job that "required" experience with several items, with experience in several others listed as a "strong plus". I had almost none of them - in fact, no "professional" experience in IT, only hobbyist stuff - but listed half a dozen programming languages, plus a variety of OS's, on my resume. The manager showed me a sample of the language they used, which I had never heard of before, but it was close enough to C/Java that I could easily read it (and I demonstrated that).
I've been in that job for over a year now. It's going well, according to my manager and performance review. Ability to learn coupled with some skills related to those used in the job is far more important than a specific list of experiences "required".
This post has been deleted by its author
So after removing "5 years experience required in Widget ABC" from the job application they found more people applied, even if they didn't have 5 years of experience? Amazing.
Ideally they will recognize that they really don't need Widget experts and this is a great move, but here is my prediction: In two years when the pendulum swings back the other way, their hiring managers will be whining again that our new hires need too much training and don't have the skills needed on day 1. It takes too long to weed through applications. Maybe we should add some minimum qualifications to the application process? What we really need is people with 10+ years experience in Widget.
Mangling by a combination of HR droids, manglement and then job agencies
I can write down a spec for a job that says "Keen learner needed for writing CNC code using mastercam
By the time the job spec gets published on a job agency website the spec has turned into
"Self starting trainee needed with 5 yrs CNC and 5 years mastercam experience"
Which discounts 1/2 the staff already working here.............
I went for a job in 1991, the advert listed operating system and programming language requirements.
They had a test to find some errors in some code, there were 10 errors, I found 11. I thought it was a clever ruse to see if you stopped looking after finding 10, but there was a real error in there, which would have compiled OK but failed at runtime. Their head programmer wanted to hire me on the spot, but I needed a second interview with the managing director.
He failed me because I hadn't used the particular brand of PC they were using, telling them the operating system was all that counted made no difference. I lost the job down to the colour of the PC case.
This was at Birmingham University's Research Park.
I am a male (or I was last time I checked!) and I hate when I am job hunting and they say things like "Need 5 years experience of server support". I mean, laying aside the issue of which particular operating system you're talking about for the moment, are you asking about 8-hour days doing nothing but server support or are you happy with someone who's looked after a couple of servers for a company they mainly did deskside support for? "Must have 5 years of programming experience" was another - similar questions apply.
I think what happens is that the job of recruiting is passed off the HR (and then to an agency) who don't really understand what IT are looking for and put together a tick list. The reason this is done is to avoid accusations of bias due to race/gender/age etc etc etc. So HR take it off the managers hands to make sure it's done "properly", but don't really know what the manager is looking for and just send along some random who ticked the boxes and interviewed well. Jen Barber, in fact.
Job ads these days are a mindless morass of bizspeak buzzword soup, atrocious grammar and poor spelling. 3/4 of the ad tells you about how amazing the company is and 5% is spent on what's expected for that position. I see ads where they fail to make any mention of what the company produces. Some large companies that do this make it even more of a mystery as they have divisions that do all sorts of things. While many jobs are pretty much the same no matter the product or service, there are subtitles in how things are done in different industries and always big differences in nomenclature.
I found that most HR personnel in medium to large companies have no clue what they job they are supposed to hire for requires or what it is. They don't know that if somebody has experience using one particular software package, they can use the one the company uses without any issues since they are mostly the same as is common with most PC applications. While HR is supposed to act as a filter and pass along the resumés of qualified applicants to the next level, their filtering is hurting the company. A good manager shouldn't have so much turnover that they don't have time to review applications. Ideally, staff shouldn't be leaving very often if the company is as great a place to work as the adverts say. I can reduce a stack of applications to a more manageable pile in very short order. It's easy to do the first pass sorting which is all HR is qualified to do. The short list can be handed to HR to contact those people and set up interviews, do any required checks, etc. A manager's time isn't well spent verifying qualifications and references. Anybody can do those checks and looky here, there's a department of 'just anybodys' ready to take it on.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
