Remo Women in Tech: hiring and retention conference

remo_7-18-2019.txt

Remo hiring & retaining women in tech

Angelique Slob - consulting company called Hello Monday; in the Netherlands
Vanessa Tierney - runs a global smart worker platform that launched about 1.5 years ago called Abodoo.com; in Ireland
Stephanie Smith - runs publishing for Toptal; mostly marketing though she’s a self-taught programmer (American) 
Nadia Harris-Kosior - originally from Poland, recruiter/HR focusing on hiring and retention
company is called Talent Place, based in London

The usual problems - not enough women applying; the ones you get are more junior

Job description has to be welcoming 

Proactive sourcing - you can’t just sit there and hope women will apply

To help mitigate bias: clearly identify what you’re looking for before you start interviewing, 
vs. saying you want “the best person” where “best” isn’t defined 

Consider setting quotas for women in leadership positions

Q: Does hiring women in other departments in the tech company count as "hiring women in tech" 
until the tech skillset catches up?

Getting the job in tech encouraged Stephanie to want to learn to code; 
Angelique recommends having internal training programs to help women transition over if they’re interested in trying that

Getting more women in tech (in any roles) helps change the perception of “who’s in tech” 
which in turn helps the psychology of recruitment and hiring 

A lot of women don’t feel comfortable in these mostly-male environments, 
so the more diverse we can be, the more it will feed forward

Flexibility and remote work are very important 
(a lot of talking about how important this is and how it’s more common in US companies than elsewhere)

Angelique says Northern Europe and Scandinavia have a more ‘feminine’ leadership style, 
where Managers are responsible for the culture; 
vs. in the rest of Europe and the US where it’s more ‘masculine’, where managers are responsible for Results

Some discussion about confidence in interviews and how women are perceived

A great question someone asked that we didn’t have time to discuss:
Can we start distinguishing men's rules and women's rules in business world nowadays? 
women are still using practices defined by men - still "playing by men's rules"

For recruiting senior people, need to look at competitors - 
what are they offering, what can you offer that’s different or better in terms of culture or benefits

Advertise on Abodoo! 

Have to avoid having senior talent becoming painfully disillusioned due to misaligned expectations 
(particularly in companies experiencing rapid growth)

Vanessa recommends finding a mentor who is 10-20 years ahead of you on the same career path

Catarina Ferreira says she expected a survey of what benefits women 
wanted to show maternity leave and flexible hours; instead it was mentoring
She’s at Gitlab; she says having leadership publicly state that it’s a priority helps
Women tend to stay in the same job for many years, and are scared to apply elsewhere

Nadia says we should emphasize your skills and be more confident, 
not to focus so much on emphasizing that we’re women 
(I said that hasn’t really worked for me because being in denial about sexism doesn’t make it go away)

Tijana Momirov - software engineer (server side java for many years), 
then a product management,
now consults and advises startups at Startup Setup. 
She says women who go into tech have to really make a conscious choice, 
whereas men who go into tech often aren’t that deliberate about it

Ginger Dhaliwal - cofounder called UpFlex; solutions for remote workers to access great workspaces

Mel Lim - Founder and president of Maspira Groupe - innovation strategy consulting; 
focusing on accelerating tech startups through product development, strategic design; 
her background is in architecture (7 years); 
has worked in fintech, SAAS, blockchain, neuroscience, she’s also an author; 
and a board member; serial entrepreneur for 17 years; has 3 businesses right now and 2 kids

Mel says Women are more collaborative. 
She also told a story about doing an a/b test with a color scheme
she liked, that the men in her company thought was too bright, but her design tested better than 
the one that they liked. Having more women in design is really important for these kinds of reasons.