Technically Female:

Announcements from large tech companies such as Facebook, Bing and Google the workplace in America has shown a need for diversity for female employees in the technical field. Although this is a great thing it has put a bit of a damper on hiring female employees for other developer roles for smaller startup companies and the competition has become somewhat fierce. So, what exactly can startups do to appeal to those few female workers who are looking for employment?

On the surface, there is no singular formula that will resolve this dilemma but there are a few notable things to consider when appealing the female employees who are looking for employment within technical, developer, and innovative atmospheres.

Here are a few notable things to remember when recruiting new talent for a startup company:

• Women desire the opportunity for flexibility. This makes remote openings ideal for many because they balance their careers with being mothers and other obligations. The ability to work from home provides the best options to suit this need. This makes remote and work-from-home jobs extremely appealing to women of all ages.
• Women want to be able to work in fields that allow them to maximize their creativity but they also want to make the money that will profit them most. This means that larger companies that offer high-paying salaries are likely to beat out a small startup that only offers sweat equity or an internship. Though these types of opportunities may be promising, to someone in need of capital these types of opportunities are more than likely to be dismissed when a company offers a living wage and salary that is more fitting for a person’s base needs.
• Women want to bridge a gap between their ideal roles and the capacity they have to expand knowledge and be leaders within their fields. Women within the technical fields especially desire to be treated as equals in major roles, not just supplemental or supporting roles as is commonly found. If a company wants to attract women, they need to offer them the same opportunities to advance into higher-paying leadership roles or prime talent is likely to turn to other sources.
• Within the technical community, very few women have been allowed to head technology departments and often they keep their positions once landing one within their field since these positions are hard to come by and once a woman lands one she has no desire to turn her attentions elsewhere because of the rare opportunity she already has. To attract new and established talent, a startup company would appeal most to them with the opportunity to advance in multiple ways and by offering experiences that otherwise may not be made available to them by a larger entity.

Though all the above will assist in acquiring promising new candidates within the technical field, it is also important to note that women with technical and developer degrees are a rarity of their own merit. Google projected that only thirty percent (30%) of their entire technical workforce was female while Facebook’s statistics sit at about thirty-two percent (32%.) At Google, only eighteen percent (18%) of that workforce hold technical positions while at Facebook that number is only slightly lower at a whopping sixteen percent (16%.) These numbers alone prove how few of the employees with either major entity hold technical positions and are female but to add more to that the racial diversity amongst both corporations is even more concerning with Google holding a sixty percent (60%) Caucasian and thirty-one percent (31%) Asian and only two (2%) percent of those employees being African-American.

One thing is for sure, to attract more female talent to startups having more women in leadership roles is impressive and seems to be the main way to bring more women into the software and the technical developing world mainly because other women will see this as a welcome and surprising change and will be encouraged by the knowledge that women do hold strong positions and are working diligently in a field with so much potential and opportunity.