22. Consider running structured interviews
Consider running structured interviews. There is no reason you can’t explicitly state exactly what you need to know about a candidate to evaluate if they are the right fit for the position. This is the only way to avoid being influenced by your unconscious expectations during an interview. Create a set of questions before you start interviewing candidates, and only ask questions that appear on the list that are most relevant for that particular candidate.
Don’t leave questions out. It’s common for us to expect less of someone we see as part of the “out-group”, and to a bunch of dudes a woman would be considered part of the out-group. When we expect less form this out-group, we don’t offer them the same opportunities as we do the in-group. So we may expect her to not be as competent as she is and fail to ask her the hard questions, creating a situation where it’s impossible for her to impress us by answering the hard questions.
Don’t ask questions that aren’t relevant to the job. It’s a common mistake after narrowing down the list of candidates to a few people who are equally qualified, to then choose the person that has the most in common with other people on the team. Maybe it’s hobbies and pastimes, or interest in books or movies. But what happens is when favoring the candidate that is most like us, and the team is a bunch of dudes, you end up favoring the candidate that’s a dude. So keep it focused on skills and qualification. And then when you’ve got it down to the best of the best, choose the person that can add the most value to the team by choosing the person that adds a new perspective to the team. It won’t always be the woman, but sometimes it will be. Sometimes, it could be that your team is a bunch of extroverts, so you might consider the introverted candidate. The point is, diverse perspectives is where innovation comes from.
If you’re not sure why you need a diverse team, I’d like to remind you about Apple Healthkit. Apple’s comprehensive health tracking app, that was said to centralize all of your health information into one app. Sounds great. Except it didn’t include the collection of any data around reproductive or menstrual health. No so much as a simple period tracker.
How does an oversight like this even happen? I think it’s no coincident that there were no women on that development team. Can’t blame a bunch of dudes for it not occurring to them, it’s not something they think about, and that’s fine. It’s also exactly why we need diversity on our development teams. If we don’t have representation in the development of the technology we rely on, we can expect to continue to be overlooked and forgotten about.
Prescriptive bias is also a big player at the interview stage. Women even applying for tech positions are already violating prescribed social norms. On top of that, we have an idea of the traits we’re looking for in a candidate and they often include confidence, personal achievement, and we even expect them to negotiate for a good salary. And this is when we enter what I call,