Seriously, Don’t Say That Shit about Wanting Women in Tech Ever Again

First of all, you should all watch this video by the brilliant Cindy Gallop. Everything she says about recruiting women for jobs as Executive Creative Directors applies exactly to women, black , Hispanic or Native American men applying for jobs in technology or for investor funding.

Did you watch it? Good! Let me reinforce one of her points.

1. If you do not have diversity in your team or portfolio it is BECAUSE YOU DON’T REALLY WANT IT.  If you cannot find women/ Latinos/ Native Americans/ African-Americans  it is because you are not looking hard enough.

The last software intern we hired was Native American, which I discovered when her tribal enrollment card was one of the documents she presented on the first day of work. The two software developers we hired before her were both Latino. One of our artists is Native American which I discovered when I said we had hired him in part because we were so impressed with the paintings he did of scenes with Native American subjects and he mentioned that he is Ojibwe.

We found good people by reaching out to the people we knew for recommendations. We posted on our company and personal Facebook pages, posted on our company blog, tweeted on our company and personal accounts. See the number of times I said “personal” in there?

We did not go to any major efforts to have a technology company that is 66% minority employees.  I gave a presentation on a panel at East Los Angeles College and we have hired two people from there since.

A couple of our employees were referred by mutual acquaintances who knew them and knew what we needed and forwarded our position announcement.

We aren’t prejudiced against white males any more than I am going to assume that you are prejudiced against African-American women or Latinas. The question is, how many do you know? My best friend is Latino and so, not coincidentally, is his son. We hired his son as art director because his work is a perfect fit for the games we are creating. See below.

If the people in your network are mostly white men, that is probably going to be most of the people you get as applicants.

Try reaching out to people outside of your network.

Post your internship opportunities at East Los Angeles College

Contact Sabio coding bootcamp and recruit their graduates

I know there are many, many places you can find diverse talent. There are two I just thought of off the top of my head from which we have recruited people. I know you have access to some electronic device, since you are reading this. It’s not that hard to find people, if you really want to do it.

Come back tomorrow for “I’m sick of that bullshit about not being able to find women in tech: part 2″