The challenge of all-male founding teams

An all-male founding team has to work harder to bring in women into the organisation. All-male founders often drag their feet in the initial days of the startup when it comes to building diversity of the talent pool. Building diversity in the talent pool means going beyond gender, sexual preferences, race etc. Here are some ideas to think about

Many startup founding teams can trace their origins to the college campus. A bunch of Dreamers get together to build the organisation. Without a diverse talent pool, the ideas cannot be executed. After all you cannot hire someone who has not applied to your company.

1. Rethink the language of the job ad

"Gender-neutral jobs not only draw a broader applicant pool, they also fill three weeks faster on average than jobs that are biased at either end of the spectrum."

Textio analysed 350 million job ads and found some interesting elements that you can keep in mind as you write your next job ad

• The sentences must have less than 13 words. And no more than 600-700 words in the ad work best

• If you are hiring for AI, use words like s “deep learning” and “neural net” instead of using words like "machine learning" or "machine intelligence" and even "artificial intelligence".

• Inclusive language helps you build a better pull for your organisation.

Read more

"Blind hiring"

When it comes to hiring, we continue to use resumes and interviews to make decisions. Most recruiters spend on six seconds looking at the resume of a candidate. The information in a resume plays to our biases.

In India, most names can immediately tell you the candidate’s place of origin, sex and more.

Even the educational institution's name can play to your bias because some colleges are seen to be “premier” and the others rank lower.

The same goes for the previous employers listed on the candidate's resume. The brand name of the previous employer impacts how we view the candidates. If your job ad lists prior experience, you may not hear from people who have fewer years but deeper skills.

Blind hiring can help you focus on what really matters - the skill needed to do the job. Try it. Better still, put the hiring team through training to understand unconscious bias. (Read this)

The "bro-culture" is a barrier

Homogeneity in the leadership team is a challenge in many startups. Startups are famous for their bro-culture where a handful of the founders buddies are among the first employees. All decisions have to be blessed by this inner circle.

The work norms and celebratory rituals all carry the stamp of the bro-culture. All social activities and benefits are designed for males. Norms around sexual harassment, work-life balance or even maternity benefits are seen as irritants that the HR team brings up. Most resolve this by having a compliant HR person in the seat.

Here are some ideas your organization can try to build more diversity:

1. Build a variety of career paths. Preference for cross-functional experiences need not be viewed as a sign of low ambition.

2. Benefits around child care/ elder care can work wonders for diversifying the talent pool.

3. An always-on work culture is not a sign of passion. People are passionate about their work. Working 20 hour every day is not how they want to prove their love for work. Being sleep-deprived is not a badge of honour.

Here is a sketchnote that summarises many ideas I have detailed here.

Additional resources

1. Read the twitter thread by @HungLee

2. My book Dreamers and Unicorns explains why every Dreamer will not become a Unicorn

3. Y-Combinator's advice on how to find the right co-founder

Question for you:

What in the culture of the startups makes it hard to attract and retain women candidates? Do leave your comments below

Thanks for reading and sharing

@AbhijitBhaduri