[LRUG] [OT] A blog post about writing tech job ads

[Eve Braun]

 Hey Thayer & Ali,


Really great you both brought this up. I've been responsible for building
up a small tech team within Barclays and we've had a push towards much more
diversity. This has been driven by the huge lack of diversity within the
existing tech teams. We are tasked with building prototypes which are not
business critical so we have a lot of space to move around with then other
areas of the company which require levels of experience & current ability
which traditionally bias against minorities facing oppression.


   - We avoided posting adverts on tech mailing lists and in places where
   women and minorities are underrepresented, instead using the same budget we
   would have used on places like unicorn jobs, in places such as in Ethnic
   minority related magazines and publications, LGBT related publications and
   websites (such as out.com). The cost of advertising was so expensive in
   tech related spaces we could cover many more adverts in spaces that would
   reach to minorities and we got an excellent response.
   - We never assume to know someones preferred pronoun. When responding to
   applicants we always ask for their preferred pronoun, even if it seems
   obvious (there's more than 2). The response to this has been great so far.
   - We've effectively had to create our own internal
   structure independent from the rest of the company to ensure that diversity
   is catered for. Slowly but surely though, we're affecting the rest of the
   business.

So far we've grown the team to 6. 4 of us identify as female (with one
being transgender) and 5 of us are PoC.

Eve.



*From:* Chat [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] *On Behalf Of *Najaf Ali
*Sent:* 06 May 2015 14:14
*To:* Thayer Prime
*Cc:* London Ruby Users Group
*Subject:* Re: [LRUG] [OT] A blog post about writing tech job ads



Konbanwa minnasan,



Strong agree with everything Hannah had to say in that blog. Here's what
I'd add:



* *Include a clear description of the application process* - A step-by-step
explanation of exactly what's going to happen from when a candidate sends
you an email to when you extend them an offer. This should include whether
or not they're being formally assessed at each stage and an approximation
of the time interval to expect while you're considering their application.
I stole this wholesale from here <http://matasano.com/careers/> (from "Our
hiring process" down). This helps busy candidates (who've probably had
*plenty* of horrible job application experiences) figure out how much
effort the process will take and how to prepare.



* *Mention the downsides of working with you* - Put genuine negatives to
working with you here. Be wary that you may have backwards rationalised
things to yourself that are unpalatable to the average developer (e.g.
"Rails 2.3 isn't so bad..."). Doing this serves to disqualify candidates
for whom these negatives are absolute deal-breakers, which is cheaper at
the application stage than it is during probation. It also adds credibility
to the rest of your post. Try not to insult the intelligence of the people
you're trying to hire though, they'll see right through veiled attempts at
aggrandising yourself framed as a negative.



** Ask ideal candidates for feedback on the job post *- Pick four or five
developer acquaintances of yours that fit your job description and ask them
nicely to review the post. Ask them to be brutal and uncharitable in their
reading of it. Is any of it unclear? Is there anything exclusionary? Is
there anything preventing them from applying? What other information would
they like to see? Thank them graciously for whatever feedback they give
you. You don't have to take all of their feedback on board but that's not
the point. Like in a good first UX test, you're looking for the
head-slappingly bad mistakes. In particular, if diversity is important to
you, I'd suggest that you include people from a demographic
underrepresented on your team in your reviewers. A nice side benefit of
asking for feedback is that if your "ideal candidates" happen to like your
job post, they may end deciding to apply to it (exactly what happened with
us, the candidate got the job).



All the best,



-Ali, http://happybearsoftware.com



*P.S. We were until recently hiring a senior developer using all of the
above for the job listing, but as I mentioned the position was filled
before we went public with it. It got broadly good feedback from reviewers
so let me know off-list if you'd like to see it.*



On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 8:00 PM, Thayer Prime <thayer at team-prime.com> wrote:

Just came across: "Writing an effective tech job description", by
@smokingpun >
http://contentedstrategy.com/blog/2015/05/01/Writing-an-effective-job-description.html#.VUnx3qbXiw0.twitter

It's got some really important and smart points in it, and I know
there's plenty of hiring and job description writing on this list,
figured it may help anyone in the position of writing ads to really
think about hiring for the team you want to be, instead of just hiring
for a project or work or back filling a role (likely, male) that just
opened up.

Particularly, as I was reading I was +1ing about the diversity stuff
she writes about.

We (Team Prime) get asked by all our clients to hire for diversity as
their number one priority (which is brilliant! Yay ace clients!), but
often that takes some changes in the org and structure to accommodate
what they're after. Well worth bearing in mind if you want to reap the
benefits of having a diverse team - it's not just about Getting More
Minorities Sat At Desks, it's about how you structure your company and
recruitment process to allow for diversity to be encouraged and
embraced.

Cheers
Thayer

--
Thayer Prime
--------------------
CEO & Founder
Team Prime Ltd
http://www.team-prime.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/thayerprime
http://www.thayerprime.com
@Thayer
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