Looking for female Sr Developer to join an engaging start-up IN [city redacted]
It sounded more like a nerdy classified ad than a serious intro from a recruiter, but nonetheless, that's the subject I was staring at when I opened my LinkedIn Inbox. Recruiters seem to get it wrong more often than they get it right - and while most of us have learned to look through the junk and the over-used pop industry phrases to see the real company beneath, it's still unfortunate for the companies whose true messages and needs are hidden behind these horrible first-encounters. I was immediately put off by this subject, but I opened the message anyway to read it to determine if the subject was just another obnoxious attention-grabber hastily penned by an over-eager but thoughtless recruiter, or if this was really the egregious faux pas it sounded like.
But before we dive into the message, let's go back to the subject for a moment and briefly analyze the ask... and how the recruiter (and thus the company behind her) failed with me from the start:
Looking for female - whoever crafted this message probably thought this would make their target audience (women engineers) feel *more* welcome. But as a female engineer, my visceral reaction - before my logical brain kicked in - was to be offended. Why should it matter that I'm female to work for this startup? After my logical brain kicked in, I thought... maybe it's a product for females. Cycle or pregnancy or other women's-specific-health tracking software? Something women's clothing-related? Electronic tampons?? But... if so, then why didn't the subject indicate that?
Sr developer - nothing wrong with this on the surface, but it's interesting that the ordering of the adjectives (senior came after female) makes it sound like gender is more important than level of expertise (and after I read the message, it turns out that it was). Additionally, this has nothing to do with gender, but the term "developer" is off-putting to people with "engineer" in their title. If you are looking for a developer, you're looking for people who write code, usually in a particular language or stack. If you're looking for an engineer, you're looking for people who design and build solutions, of which code is the basic building material. There is nothing wrong with being a developer, and there is nothing wrong with looking for developers to join your company. But those of us with "Engineer" in our titles are definitely not looking for "Developer" jobs.
Engaging start-up - what the heck does this even mean? Does it mean the start-up holds your attention, in the way that a video game or movie or speaker is "engaging"? Does it mean the start-up engages its customers/target market - and if so, does that imply that the interaction with customers goes all the way to the engineering staff you're trying to hire? Does it mean that I, as the potential developer, will find the job engaging - and therefore you've simply misplaced the modifier by applying it to "start-up"? After trying to puzzle this phrase out for a bit and concluding that it makes no sense, I'm left to assume that someone read some research on how to word job advertisements to appeal to women (for example this article enjoyed a lot of repeated popularity) and threw in the term "engaging" in support of that.
And now for the message itself.
I am recruiting for a start-up in [city redacted] that has created a cutting-edge product that helps people learn more effectively and interactively online. This group is collaborative, progressive, and highly experienced when it comes to the start-up world! I am looking for a Senior Developer who is excited by learning new technologies and likes a collaborative working culture. Additionally the CTO would love to add another female developer to his team.
I’d love to connect with you and discuss this role further as well as answer any of your questions. To save time, below you will find a link that gives you access to my calendar. Please feel free to select an available time. [link to recruiter's scheduling software redacted]
Whoa. Now I have a couple of thoughts and assumptions:
- There are absolutely NO technical requirements in this message. Nothing beyond the word "Developer" to indicate that I was matched for any of my skills and experience. No mention of tech stack, development approach, or anything. Just jargon, jargon, jargon female!
- The 2nd paragraph tells me this was just a form-letter email blast. Par for the course and not surprising, but still a bad sign for startups.
- The recruiter was asked by the CTO to make this message so blunderingly female-specific
- The fact that the *male* CTO "would love" to add female developers to the team, no matter how innocently motivated, just sounds awkward
- The product "helps people learn more effectively and interactively online". Sounds like there is nothing female-specific about this product, so there goes my hopeful theory from my reaction to the subject line.
As another non-gender-related note, the inclusion of links to scheduling software or online calendars is probably one of the worst ways to entice me to follow-up. It's bad enough when you get a solicitation from a recruiter, reply to the message directly saying you're interested, and then get a response like "who are you again and what position are you applying for" (yes, this has happened). Recruiters - you represent teams of *people*. You're looking for *people*. I know you're busy - we all are. But if you just send me a link to pencil in a 15-minute slot in your appointment book, you're telling me right off the bat that no matter what your message says, you're not interested in *me* - you're interested in filling a quota. You won't know who I am when I call at my appointed time. Please coordinate with us directly to set up a time and enter your own appointments yourself in whatever way helps you track them.
Back to the topic at hand - I did follow up with this particular recruiter. (NOT through her online appointment book. I insisted on setting up a time for a phone call via email chain, and only after getting more information about the company first.) I was concerned that the recruiter might be accidentally triggering all my androdev biases and thus I'd be missing an otherwise good opportunity.
During our phone call, she enthusiastically stressed that the CTO was a "great guy" and everyone "loves working with him" and he was "really interested in getting more women involved because he wants the female perspective and he loves working with women". We didn't get to anything technical until we got to the "do you have any questions" bit at the end - at which point I was incredibly frustrated at sitting through a spiel that was supposedly used for recruiting developers but included absolutely none of the technical information a developer would want to know to make a decision.
Even knowing that I was poised to hear the worst in this conversation thanks to the intro email, her words just made me shudder. I don't actually believe that the CTO of that company was seeking out women to work with for abusive or otherwise questionable practices, and I don't mean to imply that. I don't think I was about to be the victim of a workplace horror story. I do think that he genuinely believed that a mix of genders on his team would result in a more diverse perspective, which he hoped would propagate through to his product and make it better.
When I explained to the recruiter why I was concerned with the prevalence of gender in the job opening requirements, she was genuinely surprised. I desperately wanted her to take it back, or apologize for it, or downplay it, or really say anything that would indicate to me that she, as a woman, as a representative of that company, and as a representative of her industry did not *actually* believe that this strategy was the way to attract a more gender-diverse technical team. But she sided unfailingly with the CTO and (in an unfortunately female-stereotypical way) expected me to come around and get excited about this whole female-needed proposition.
I don't know if any other women responded to that job opening more favorably than I did. And if they did, I don't know whether they were hired. And if they were hired, I'll certainly never know if it was because they were qualified technically, or if they were "close enough" and their gender got them the rest of the way. Unfortunately, they will never know that either... and eventually, someone on that team in the male camp will wonder - is she just here because the CTO wanted a woman?
Ultimately, I chose not to interview not just because of the clumsy gender-forward recruiting, but also because I didn't agree with the technical direction the team had already decided on - and because it was clear that the design and direction was coming from the top. The person filling this role was not being hired for their input into the tech stack or development process, and I don't believe that had anything to do with their gender - it just wasn't what I was looking for.
I'm sure this example is not the worst out there, but hopefully it stands out as obviously bad. If you are a hiring manager or recruiter (of any gender) and you want women on your team... I respectfully suggest that you first consider the following:
- Why do I need women specifically? If you are building a product for a specific gender, consider keeping your gender-specific ask out of the hiring process. Instead of looking for people of that gender, require that understanding the gender-specific use case(s) be a prerequisite for the role. This can be demonstrated in the interview process regardless of the gender of the interviewee. (If your product is not gender-specific, go directly to step 2.)
- What qualities, that I usually associate with females, am I looking for in my team members? Once you have those qualities identified, include them in your role requirements. Make sure your interviewers know what they're looking for. Yes, it's harder - you're subjectively looking for soft qualities, and it's certainly much easier to just eliminate half your pool based on gender (or, in the tech world, much more than half your pool). But remember, you're hiring *people*, not medical records. If you do it right, that approach will eventually land you the person your product really needs, rather than what your assumptions led you to expect.
If you just have a preference for working with females (or males) even though the above logical analysis has shown that you don't *need* one gender over another, please keep it to yourself. Some people naturally prefer to work with people of the opposite gender, and others naturally prefer to work with people of the same gender. Unfortunately, building product doesn't have room for those preferences.
Specifically asking women to join your team may sound like a welcoming strategy, but is actually a great way to foster just the sort of atmosphere that will be counter-productive to a focused, efficient team. Someone will always be wondering, "why is she really here"?