{"id":138,"date":"2021-07-29T17:17:30","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T15:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/?p=138"},"modified":"2023-04-14T14:37:49","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T12:37:49","slug":"i-want-to-recruit-women-but-often-dont-find-any-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/2021\/07\/29\/i-want-to-recruit-women-but-often-dont-find-any-why\/","title":{"rendered":"I want to recruit women but often don\u2019t find any \u2013 why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

22.Juli 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Stephan Breitfeld <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversity is a topic on everyone\u2019s mind. So it is on mine. I have a fairly diverse team for the work I do but since I recruit for other companies, it becomes a whole other story. As I\u2019m looking for candidates in many different positions, which are mostly on the executive level, I realized that I keep having only a small number of female candidates on my list. From my candidate list only 15-20% are commonly female and the rest is male. Different positions give or take. Leading to: during my active searches I find only very few female candidates in leading positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History repeating<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might not come as such a surprise to many since we\u2019ve all seen the numbers of female board members or executives in German DAX companies. But the pattern is really hard to break. In order to fill a position that used to have a male executive with a female candidate I have to present candidates that fit a certain profile. And even though I tend to look outside the box because a good fit isn\u2019t always obvious, it\u2019s also a question of \u201cmass\u201d. If I can\u2019t present a decent number of possible candidates I might end up, and so does the company, with no options in the end. So how does the \u201cdecent number\u201d end up being only 15-20 % female?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding female candidates<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take an example. Let\u2019s say I need to fill the position of a vice president of engineering in the medtech industry. People working in the industry are predominantly male, especially in higher positions. I want to fill the position with a female candidate. But I simply don\u2019t find ANY women in similar positions. I can go with aspiring women in positions a bit lower or in a totally different field. But it\u2019s of course harder to present these cases opposed to the obvious perfect male candidate. It takes skill on my side, and it takes quite a significantly open approach from the client\u2019s side. Meaning: it\u2019s not the easy way. No one says it has to be though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hard work of diversity\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversity is a matter of company culture, but it often starts with recruiting. And then it becomes my matter. And recruiting shows: it\u2019s hard work. But it\u2019s absolutely necessary because it\u2019s so easy for patterns to repeat and for culture to stagnate. Of course, the reason I don\u2019t find any women in comparable positions is because they haven\u2019t been properly presented as candidates before and \u2013 more importantly \u2013 haven\u2019t even been able to move up OR even get in the career paths in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 always pays off<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The frustration that sometimes comes with the good intentions of diversifying a candidate pool is an easy hurdle. Because the real payoff for the client comes with a diverse team. So, I dive into all the different techniques from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7     Diversifying the places I look for candidates<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7     Encouraging diverse candidates and sources to referrals<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7     Making the jobs descriptions more appealing to diverse candidates<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7     Convincing the clients<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To actually make my 20% female candidates become more and more every time. And it doesn\u2019t stop there. Diversity is a constant change process, not a race. How do you handle it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More… <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22.Juli 2021 By Stephan Breitfeld  Diversity is a topic on everyone\u2019s mind. So it is on mine. I have a fairly diverse team for the work I do but since I recruit for other companies, it becomes a whole other story. As I\u2019m looking for candidates in many different positions, which are mostly on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ingeniam.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}