Gillian Whelan, Managing Director of international IT and business consultancy emagine in Ireland.
Gillian started out in financial services, rising through the ranks at Citi before moving into the consultancy and tech space. Continuing her ascent up the career ladder, Gillian took the country head role at emagine in 2023 learning many hard-earned insights about leadership, project and team management and what it means to be a female leader in a male-dominated sector.
Statistics on the proportion of women working in the tech sector vary but tend to be consistently (and often significantly) less than 30%.
This means women who are making their way in the tech world do so outnumbered and in direct competition with men in any application process. This should in no way hold a talented female candidate back. Recruitment processes should be focused on finding and hiring the best candidate for the job, entirely regardless of gender.
However, the major hurdle often occurs before a CV is submitted, with many women frequently having a tendency to sell themselves short without even realising it. I have seen it happen among extremely capable women in my team when opportunities for advanced training or progression have come up, and – until prompted – they wouldn’t even have considered themselves to be in the running for it.
But there are techniques and exercises for building confidence so that when it comes to the next step, the focus lies on being positive about skills and personal strengths rather than being put off by potential gaps.
Reframing to ‘I can’
A person’s mindset can be the biggest barrier to applying for the best jobs, with women holding themselves back through a lack of self-belief or fear of getting things wrong. This constant questioning of one’s own abilities leads to risk aversion and being blind to opportunities.
But with persistence it is possible to actively reframe that mindset into a positive ‘I can’ attitude. By doing so, women in tech can open themselves up and help shatter their own glass ceilings.
It takes time and effort to rewire one’s mindset. There are numerous techniques, daily exercises, and resources. A helpful place to start is with appraising one’s own achievements. One step that can be highly beneficial is to ask current or past colleagues for feedback on your work, or way of working. Whilst this can be daunting, the result can in fact be confidence-building. Feedback may reveal strengths you had not realised you possessed, or skills that you had not identified. Equally, anything negative is valuable information to reflect and learn from. What’s the worst that can happen?
It’s important to recalibrate the negative inner voice, which focuses only on risks and obstacles and circles relentlessly around anything that could or does go wrong. To be confident enough to keep applying for the bigger jobs and moving up the ladder, you need to embrace a positive voice, a cheerleader, instead.
One technique is to work on behaving in a confident way, even if you at first don’t feel confident. For example, by adding your voice to meetings when you have something valuable to say, rather than keep it to yourself, and not apologising or ‘qualifying’ your opinions with phrases like ‘You may not all agree with this but-’. This can take time, but constant practise will form new habits.
It helps to envision yourself further along the career ladder, to make it feel possible. Adding to the list of reasons to be positive about your abilities will also boost confidence. For example, a focus on continuous improvement such as attending additional training and finding other opportunities to learn and hone your craft will reinforce and build on your expertise so that ‘must haves’ and ‘nice to haves’ on a job spec can be ticked off ever more confidently.
The power of advocacy
Seeking out suitable mentors is a highly recommendable move to help women in tech step back, look at the bigger picture and carve out a path towards where they want to go, as well as nurturing skills and building confidence.
However, another powerful tool is seeking out advocacy. Women should have the confidence to ask colleagues or contacts with influence to advocate for them, to help push them forwards.
Advocacy goes beyond mentorship or guidance, it means actively championing women, pushing for their inclusion in leadership development programs, and vouching for their abilities. It can help talented women in tech to sidestep anonymous job searching and get their hat in the ring for the roles they really want and have every reason to be considered for.
Saying ‘no’ to professional vertigo
In any industry, the higher up the career ladder you go, the more daunting a job application or promotion can seem. The negative inner voice is likely to reverberate a little louder. But what you soon realise is that every rung of the ladder is just another job, with different challenges. This does not change the higher up you go, or if all your peers are men. The challenges and responsibilities keep changing but it is still a job and the skills and strengths you possess, which earnt you the role, are all you need to do it well.
Consciously working on boosting inner confidence is crucial for women in tech, but I believe tech leaders also have a responsibility to build confidence, encourage ambition, and create clear pathways to leadership for women. True change happens when leaders take bold steps to ensure women are not just present in tech teams but thriving and feeling confident at every level.
