Attention, Men! A List of Best Practices for Hiring Female Tech Talent
Yawn repeatedly, don’t look her in the eye, and make sure your fly is unzipped. Then pat yourself on the back for ending the gender pay gap.
Only hire women for marketing, HR, assistant or lunch-lady positions.
Invite the candidate to work a full trial day—paid, of course. Ask her to respond to customer complaints about your company’s unresponsiveness for at least five hours. Introduce her to your female employees who are exactly the same age and ethnicity. Give her a tour of the office, including the room with the bunk beds where several of these female employees sleep at night. Tell her she’ll hear something next week, but never pay her or respond to any of her attempts to reach you.
Ask the candidate to rewrite a thought-leadership article about an issue facing women in tech. After four interviews, explain to the candidate that the job requirements have changed and that she no longer qualifies. Wait a month, and publish the candidate’s article with minor changes under the name of one of your executives. Don’t worry about all those Glassdoor reviews accusing your company of using the hiring process to crowdsource content. Clearly, the commenters are bitter, because there’s no way an organization would be foolish enough to waste that kind of time and money.
Ask the candidate to plan your family’s trip to China in detail, including flight times and not-touristy activities in Beijing. Invite her to your architectural gem of an office in SOMA for an interview consisting entirely of questions about what she likes to do for fun. Make sure not to make eye contact—you know where to look. Have your parent company’s virtual assistant, with whom she’s never had contact, send her a form letter thanking her for applying. Enjoy your vacation. She can live vicariously through you with three months of targeted advertising from the Opposite House hotel.
During the interview ask her what she sees in her career future. When she starts to respond, interrupt her and say, “I’m sure you’re mostly concerned with having babies.” Surreptitiously glance down at her baby maker.
Insist that the position primarily consists of completing your expense reports despite your partner telling her he’s looking for a strategic thinker. Tell her during the interview that you’ve been practicing your social skills. Yawn repeatedly, don’t look her in the eye, and make sure your fly is unzipped. When she’s on her way out, ask her if she wouldn’t mind washing the office’s dishes.
Have someone in HR call and say she is the top candidate. Call your top candidate, and after she answers a question, laugh piteously and explain that the challenges she’d face in the role are a little more “sophisticated” than what she described. Wait a week, and send her a text asking her for a date.
Put up an admin/office ad on Craigslist offering $90K for someone to work at your stealth-mode start-up. Strongly suggest that candidates post a video introduction on YouTube. Have no intention of hiring anyone, and instead plan a “movie night” with your bros. Screen the video submissions using a complex cleavage-rating algorithm. Drink every time one of the job seekers claims she’s a hard worker.
Please note: If you are a “businessperson” and recognize yourself or your organization in this “satire,” please comment below that I am ugly, angry or crazy. I would so love for my Bay Area job-search experience to be exactly like my Bay Area dating experience.
