Diversity Decoded is a weekly newsletter of pragmatic, actionable insights to help attract and retain diverse engineering talent.

As a maker, what's your biggest roadblock to boost best practices for diversity?

@janicewilson need another option? We're already living it :) Happy to discuss why and share learnings though. Been solving the same problems for at least 9 years, but always keen to hear experiences of others.

@ethar_alali Meaning you have no road blocks? Well done, sir!What have you found to be most effective?

@ethar_alali @janicewilson I have threads and articles on this. So there's a lot to say. So my comment might get compressed by PH (again) if I put them all down. It's a poor platform for that explanation. So I'd say search Medium for Axelisys and my name. Suffice to say obviously, E,D&I is a journey for most and is a huge culture change. But if I had to give the place to start, then first and foremost, it is recruitment! Get rid of interviews and recruit blind! In tech roles especially. Interviews are ineffective judges of capability and character anyway. Failed interviews cost the company money in the time of the interviewers. So what's been happening is industry has used an expensive, poor recruitment process, for centuries. Attendance also costs the interviewee time and money they don't get back. It's exclusionary on most protected characteristics AND wealth. So screen blind, accept ANY application (including a GitHub repo) and have an unevaluating group clearing applications of any personally identifiable info. We use an external party to do that step. They're given screeners which correlate with particular characteristics, we evaluate the now anonymised application evidence and if the person passes the screeners they're basically in the company. Congrats. Well done. Secondly, segment and pay contract market rates at ticket level (works best when you're a truly agile team working end-to-end features and while it works for both, ideal with an internal freelance team). Their first ticket also becomes the technical test. but they are paid for that actual work, regardless. It's almost always cheaper fixing this than all the failed interviews cost. Thirdly, work from anywhere, any time. Not just offices and 9-5. Obviously, COVID-19 had brought home working to the fore, but it's more about what we now call "anywhere-first". Have a co-working space if folk want it, and allow people to work tickets around life. However they like. These are just a few. Hopefully it doesn't compress, but if it does, Google :)

@ethar_alali Interesting take on interviewing. While we diverge on approach (there's also a substantial cost to onboarding and deboarding), there's no question the realm of interviewing needs disrupting. A favorite quote from HBR: The executive engaged in the normal conduct of business devotes much of his time to interviewing. However, there is an appalling lack of effort given to systematic attempts at building improvements into this age-old process. Interviewing remains one of those activities which we think we know all about merely because we have been doing it so long; we have been lulled by habit. It seems apparent that a modest effort aimed at an analysis of our interviewing techniques would yield generous returns. (Laughing!) Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts! I like that you take a strong stand!

@ethar_alali @janicewilson You're absolutely right about the onboarding and offboarding of staff. It's usually a *minimum* of 1/3 of their annual wage to replace an employee. However, a few things are worth mentioning in accordance with that, which differ by your national legislature and also your team's operating mode, that also answers those concerns (I came back to this port this morning and my comment from yesterday night was hidden. So I've celebrated too early, but it'll likely happen again with this so I'm just going to go for it and complain to PH). 1. Here in the UK, when new personnel start, there is a probationary period which is defined by the company. Even in freelance and contract positions, it's usually a day's notice or a week, mitigating _traditional_ cost to offboard a bad hire. 2. If you use tickets as the payment method, when employing traditional freelance staff, you simply take the work away from them (or not assign them work) if they are a bad hire and typically the most it costs you is 1 one to 3 tickets, which are usually less than the costs of interviewing several candidates. The ticket is a much better cost spend and is the only predictor of work performance. An interview definitely isn't. 3. Unlike paid employment, there is no requirement for an employee to take on or be given new work. Indeed, in freelance cases, this actually creates a problem for them, because of the way disguised employment is seen by the tax authorities. If a company is obliged to give them work, the freelancer (who chooses to be one) is then seen as an employee and this hits ALL their revenue, not just the one from ours. 4. As I said, interviews are a really bad judge of character. For example, it prevents those who suffer from impostor syndrome, from performing at their best. This is despite the fact that, culturally, those with imposter syndrome are almost 3 times as likely to be top class candidates. In the UK, this disproportionately affects people from an ethnic minority background and Boomer, Gen X and most of Gen Y females in tech. So not only are interviews guaranteed to hire badly, and cost more, they also miss [and reject] key people who are actually pretty good. 5. Onboarding in our place, is about the new person telling us what they need, not what's foisted upon them. We will tell them what we have (platforms, policies, tools) but HOW they work is up to them. So it's completely flipped 180, but also costs us very little in real terms. A lot of classical things are just paperwork. We've eradicated that. Also, the worker telling us what they need fits around them without the junk they don't need *yet*. Reducing the costs to onboard substantially and in any event, the interview doesn't deal with that portion either. Make no mistake. It takes a long time to get where we are and most companies are not ready for it (after all, we've been doing since nearly the start of the 2010s). Though many have been forces into the first step of our journey due to COVI. However, I always suggest folk think about their interview process in recruitment, say and think about every question you they ask or what they ask the candidate to do. What would be the root causes why someone may not answer that to their fullest ability or lie? Because that's ultimately what cause the false hires or false misses (the type 1 and 2 errors) that have to onboard or offboard.

Fantastic project and mission!

Thank you, @hannahconway4! Your support is appreciated!

Love this!! Nice work Janice, the site and format looks great!

I appreciate the kudos, @kennethhorenstein!

Diversity Decoded

Refactor your tech team for diversity.

Refactor your tech team for diversity.

Diversity Decoded

Refactor your tech team for diversity.

Refactor your tech team for diversity.

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