So.....how do I go about getting a more diverse team?

[merithyn]

You've gotten some really good suggestions from folks, so I won't belabor those. As for how to keep employees longer than 18-24 months, that's hard. The younger generations are looking for alternative ways to grow their experience as that's what they've been told is what they should be doing. My current finance department is primarily younger folks. Our average turn-over is 24-36 months.

Our Sr. VP has started a program of rotating employees around to different projects within the company every 18-24 months. Each shuffle is voluntary, and it allows the employees to delve into a different aspect of the work we do. This way we don't lose their expertise, they get to build their knowledge, and the company isn't adversely impacted by having to hire new people so often.

It sounds like your company is smaller, so I'm not sure how much diversity you have in the work the teams do, but it's working well for us. Our turn-over rate has dropped dramatically since this went into place.

[Iormlund]

Meri's right. I've seen that shuffle work, though admittedly in huge companies.

OTOH, why restrict yourselves to candidates in their 20s? In my experience there tends to come a time when people become less prone to jump ship. In fact, "I want stability" was my answer when the interviewer asked me why I wanted to leave my old job. There's no way 25 year old me would have said that.

[crazy canuck]

Don't do what a senior manager of mine once did and make a really awkward speech encouraging people to go and tick a box on the HR system declaring if they are gay, and if they don't feel comfortable doing that come and speak to him about it.

I'd say to not be afraid to look beyond university graduates. Especially in the US I would imagine the link between having a degree and being good at your job, especially in a field like coding where universities do nothing more than give out bits of paper, is low. I've ran into some great programmers who never went to university.

No question. There are a lot of really great developers out there without degrees.

Our struggle is that we are consultants in a very niche market (small to medium sized equipment financing) where knowing the market is critical. But we have a very specific technology stack (mostly Salesforce/Apex). So finding people with industry experience is very, very hard. Finding GOOD people with Salesforce experience is not as hard, but the good people are generally established and very, very expensive. Finding good people with industry experience? Basically not possible, or so rare that we cannot scale that way.

So we are kind of figuring that if we cannot find them, we will build them ourselves. Take young, ambitious, bright tech people out of college, and get them the industry experience ourselves. That takes...a long time. And I am worried that we are going to find that the moment we take them, teach them, and get them understanding both the technology and this industry, we are going to lose plenty of them.

Anwyay, it is certainly interesting.

This is my main issue.  It takes years to train an associate to the level we need them to be and more to take them to the level where they can attract their own work.  I am not sure how transferable this experience is, but I have had very good retention and I think it is because I give over as much authority as possible and perhaps more than the person themselves thinks they are ready for with the understanding that they can always call for help and I will step back in if required without downside to them.  That way they have a path forward while also having a safety net.  The fact that they can see a future benefit down the line keeps them here.  The grass is no longer greener on the other side of the fence - more like a jungle.

[Sheilbh]

On law firms I saw an article today about City firms signing up for a pledge to work on this, but there was one interesting stat:

According to research by Rare, many BAME lawyer do not find their firms' cultures inclusive and, on average, BAME lawyers spend 20% less time at firms than their white colleagues before leaving.

So it isn't just about hiring but also retention.

I think the pledge includes commitments to analyse interview and offer rates, retention rates, pay and promotion rates - also to have racism covered as part of the induction and exit process, plus annual surveys as well as formal mentoring and reverse mentoring stuff. All of which seems fairly common sense and will hopefully identify issues.

Edit: Also I wonder if it'd be worth considering name blind CVs - especially if a recruitment team or recruiter does some weeding out. There's really strong evidence of the impact of names on a CV in a lot of countries.

[Oexmelin]

I think the pledge includes commitments to analyse interview and offer rates, retention rates, pay and promotion rates - also to have racism covered as part of the induction and exit process, plus annual surveys as well as formal mentoring and reverse mentoring stuff. All of which seems fairly common sense and will hopefully identify issues.

Most of these exit processes result in a hefty amount of BS if the culture of the firm was not welcoming in the first place. Bringing up issues of racism brings out a lot of defensiveness from white colleagues / supervisors, and the last thing you usually want, is to confront that sort of conversation yet again while you are on your way out.

[Sheilbh]

Most of these exit processes result in a hefty amount of BS if the culture of the firm was not welcoming in the first place. Bringing up issues of racism brings out a lot of defensiveness from white colleagues / supervisors, and the last thing you usually want, is to confront that sort of conversation yet again while you are on your way out.

I don't know. I've never left anywhere with an exit process so have never experienced. It's a fair point but I think it's normally handled by another team/external consultants because they're more likely to be honest - and in Britain especially it's less likely to lead to an uncomfortable conversation. I mean even if it's not racism I imagine people get very defensive if they're being told why people are leaving, so they might take it more seriously if it comes from someone sort of outside their team?

[HisMajestyBOB]

We hire nearly all of our junior analysts straight out of undergrad and they typically leave after 2-4 years. A handful will stay on longer and get promoted into a senior analysts or even go on to management, but most leave for graduate school or other opportunities. We fully recognize that we're not going to keep them around for more than that, and we support them by providing workshops on applying for graduate school. We also train them with their short tenure in mind: in my practice, a typical new hire will spend two to four weeks exclusively on training and then a month on a mix of training and client work. After two months, we expect that they should be experienced enough in at least one project type to be able to take an active role, though a more experience senior analyst will do the second review. By six months, their work should be of sufficient quality that another junior analyst can do it (i.e., someone with over a year experience), and by a year, they should be able to do some training for the new hires. In the four years I've worked there, I've seen good and bad analysts, but the system overall seems to work well. The exact system isn't necessarily transferable, but I think the key idea, of developing your training and expectations around the idea that most young people will leave after a short period of time, is.

[Berkut]

We hire nearly all of our junior analysts straight out of undergrad and they typically leave after 2-4 years. A handful will stay on longer and get promoted into a senior analysts or even go on to management, but most leave for graduate school or other opportunities. We fully recognize that we're not going to keep them around for more than that, and we support them by providing workshops on applying for graduate school. We also train them with their short tenure in mind: in my practice, a typical new hire will spend two to four weeks exclusively on training and then a month on a mix of training and client work. After two months, we expect that they should be experienced enough in at least one project type to be able to take an active role, though a more experience senior analyst will do the second review. By six months, their work should be of sufficient quality that another junior analyst can do it (i.e., someone with over a year experience), and by a year, they should be able to do some training for the new hires. In the four years I've worked there, I've seen good and bad analysts, but the system overall seems to work well. The exact system isn't necessarily transferable, but I think the key idea, of developing your training and expectations around the idea that most young people will leave after a short period of time, is.

Yeah, that is exactly how I feel.

I think if a few stick around longer, that should be seen as a bonus for us, and we should value them greatly. Leaving after a year is probably not ideal, in that we don't get much useful out of them mostly, but after two years it should almost be considered the norm for hiring right out of college.

[Iormlund]

My employer simply pays more than the competition. To get a job that pays better I would have to move to Barcelona or Madrid, and I'd need a raise of at least 20-25% just to overcome the CoL differential. Our juniors make well over typical entry positions as well (and none has left in the past 5 years).

My brother's employer is one step beyond that. Their conclusion was that it was most efficient to only hire devs with 10+ years experience (and pay top-euro).

[Maximus]

Maybe not directly applicable but somewhat related:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/study-finds-salary-history-bans-boost-pay-for-african-americans-women-11592472602?st=8qn3xc11iqii1vk&fbclid=IwAR3qil1APo9UguBfUTcClremfV4WlZNGQYxpk5vEYl1DvLGUOtni_WaZ994

[Berkut]

Maybe not directly applicable but somewhat related:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/study-finds-salary-history-bans-boost-pay-for-african-americans-women-11592472602?st=8qn3xc11iqii1vk&fbclid=IwAR3qil1APo9UguBfUTcClremfV4WlZNGQYxpk5vEYl1DvLGUOtni_WaZ994

See, this is fucking awesome.

I mean that literally - what a great example of how institutional bias can be perpetuated without the person doing the perpetuating even knowing they are doing it, or even THINKING ABOUT it at all.

I do that all the time when I interview someone who already has a job. Once they have gotten beyond my initial investigation into whether I want to hire them based on their skills and fit, the question of salary expectation always comes up, of course. I want to know what it will take to get them to come to my team, and whether that makes sense. So I definitely ask, as nicely as I can, "What are you looking for" and "What are you making now?"

And I am not a fool, I am not going to pay someone more just because, so if they say they are making X now, I am going to offer them X+some percentage.

It would never even cross my mind to consider that if they were making less because of their gender or race, I just offered them less money on that exact same basis.

I don't know what the solution is though.

[The Brain]

Do people in the US say what they make now before they've heard an offer?

[Habbaku]

Do people in the US say what they make now before they've heard an offer?

It's a very common question to be asked during the interview process. The best response is typically a vague range with maybe a little inflation rather than a direct amount.

[The Brain]

Do people in the US say what they make now before they've heard an offer?

It's a very common question to be asked during the interview process. The best response is typically a vague range with maybe a little inflation rather than a direct amount.

Yeah, seems weird to give away that kind of information in a business negotiation. And you're not only giving away information about yourself, you're also giving away information about your current employer, which isn't really a classy thing to do.

[Iormlund]

I've been asked that question in pretty much every interview. I don't think I've ever answered truthfully. I know that they are going to use it against me, so I tailor my answer accordingly.