You’ve been on the hunt for a job, and finally have landed an offer.
It’s a terrible job market, and you’re tempted to quickly seal the deal. So what’s stopping you? Is there a tiny voice in your head that’s asking whether you can grow and thrive as a diverse candidate in this company? How can you be sure? Let’s take a look at a company’s signals on diversity in an era where many companies have taken their foot off the gas pedal of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Recently, we have witnessed a backsliding trend in companies’ approach towards diversity generally, and women in particular. Notably, Women Who Code abruptly closed, and while it has reopened under the aegis of a new organisation, LWT, there are many questions swirling around how it will be structured and its relationship with the grass roots community that built it. This merge has changed WWC’s focus towards “mid-senior leaders,” a shift from its roots supporting earlier career women. Women Techmakers, likewise, an important initiative for women builders from Google, has been deprioritised and, oddly, merged with Technovation, a program traditionally targeting a much younger demographic. The rare doubling-down of outreach, for example Progress’s scholarships for early career technical women since 2019, are rare to the point of being outliers.
While it may feel that there is less corporate investment in supporting technical women, in fact when observing diversity in the workplace in terms of representation, the data shows gradual improvement. Women now hold roughly 23–30% of board seats globally, with U.S. large-cap firms nearing 30% and a shrinking share of all-male boards. Women CEOs in the Fortune 500 have reached a record 11% though overall CEO representation remains in the single digits. All is not rosy, however, and a particular pain point involves startups. Early-stage startups are seeing a retreat in investment share for women-founded companies. Many companies publish formal diversity policies and annual reports, but legal and regulatory headwinds, including rolling back board-diversity mandates and disclosure rules, have produced signs of deceleration in transparency and momentum. We can’t measure what we can’t see.
What do these trends mean for you in an era of a tightening technical job market and retreats from corporate assurances around diversity, equity and inclusion? Given decreasing transparency around statistics in this domain, you are going to have to get a little creative in ascertaining culture fit.
Here are three things I watch out for when gauging a company’s commitment to creating a great place for diverse professionals.
- Transparent metrics
Even if they don’t have to by law, do companies publish any kind of metrics around its workforce and leadership diversity numbers? Does it set any goals and report on progress? If so, they probably mean business, rather than prioritising optics. Microsoft offers a good example. - Representation
Diversity should be reflected from the top down. Can you detect visibly diverse people in leadership roles in this organisation? How about during your hiring process, was your interview panel diverse? Do the folks who represent the company publicly (on social media, in ads, in sales, in imagery) reflect care around diversity? If not, it’s a red flag. - Inclusive language
Signals can come up right during your interviews. Did you experience inclusive language during your interactions? Did diversity come up as a topic of discussion? You can tell a lot about a company’s culture by how your interviewers discuss DEI topics either as a talking point or a real area of interest, care, and concern. Even before your interview, did the job description reflect inclusive language and indicate support for under-represented groups? Don’t forget to ask about ERGs (employee resource groups) during your interview.
Spotting these three ‘green flags’ served me well during my job hunt last summer, and sealed my decision to work at Cloudinary.
As you search for your next opportunity, do your due diligence to ensure a soft landing into a place where you can grow and thrive. These three tips will help you shape your search from a place where your gut feelings can be converted into a checklist to help you find your next big thing.
