 I'm Georgia. I introduced earlier. I work here at New America as part of the technology institute. So for the second panel, I'm actually going to have everybody introduce themselves mostly because I forgot to print out the bios and that way they can do themselves justice and I won't mess it up. So we'll just go through and start have everybody introduce themselves, talk about what you do and maybe why you think we asked you to be a part of this panel. But the general idea for this, the framing question for this panel is to talk a lot more about the nuts and bolts of every day, getting a job in tech, hiring people in tech who are from diverse backgrounds, the policies that go into place with that, the systems and technology that's part of that process. So anyone want to go first? Mona? You want to go? Hi everyone. My name is Mona Abdul-Halim Qashor and my background is sort of pretty unusual. I think actually a lot of women who end up in tech who have at least been in it for a while have come sort of through different terms. But mine started off as I was a scientist. I worked for a government contractor as a chemist and then I ended up going to business school and I also got my masters in public policy. And while I was at Carnegie Mellon, which is also George's alma mater for grad school, I ended up getting really interested into social innovation. So at the time you get an opportunity to do a summer internship. I chose to do mine in Silicon Valley with a venture capitalist who was writing up white paper on the reason why diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams in terms of investment ROI. And so that was a great experience and it sort of inspired me to then start my own company right out of grad school. And it was a social enterprise. We focused on developing technology to help job seekers get matched to the jobs that are best suited for them because there's a lot of very high tech algorithms on the employer side but not the job seeker side. And then ultimately that company about three years ago was sold and acquired by an organization that has different job boards for diversity candidates. So I think just because of all the different reasons I just mentioned, that's why I'm here and presently I work to manage the largest private label travel website, AmericanExpressTravel.com. So hi everyone, my name is Norella. I recently graduated in 2012 from New York University. I was doing my major in politics. Soon after graduation I got a job offer with the Department of Defense. So I first started off as an intern, then got promoted to administrative assistant and then eventually became junior financial analyst for the Department of Defense. And I have a hearing disability and one of the things that I noticed was that we would have a lot of veterans that would just use really small hearing aids. And I used this service that's called CART. Now many of you have been in a courtroom. All right, I will not ask why you've been in a courtroom. But essentially when you're in a courtroom there's someone that's typing down everything that's being said. And so that technology is incredibly useful for people that have hearing disabilities because rather than hearing we can actually read what's being said ensuring that we don't miss anything in the conversation. So I used to request this service when I was in the government and I noticed that it was a poor building facility but I was the only individual requesting accommodation. And I always noticed that it was always the same people, the same people that were kind of like sitting around me looking at the computer that was allowing me to read this conversation. And I was like, it's kind of like the same people. You guys following me around? I know I'm pretty, but come on. And so I noticed that they all seemed to have some sort of hearing disability because they would just ask people to repeat themselves or I would just notice, you notice this thing. And I asked them, why are you not requesting accommodation? And it was always a combination of fear of discrimination as a person with a disability and that kind of pridefulness that many veterans have. And so I went up to the director for the disability office for the DOD and I told her, hey, I think you guys have a problem because you have all these veterans that are requesting accommodation and you have these recent accommodations that are not given to them. And she said to me that three of them, she said, I didn't have enough experience with disability. Never mind that I've been deaf for almost two decades. She said that I didn't have any experience with communication. Never mind that I'm actually doing my master's in communication. And then she said that I wasn't in a long enough time in the government. And I'm a firm believer that you don't need to spend 20 or 30 or 40 years to know how something works. And so I was like, OK, well, that seems to be a problem. And so I found out about Code for Progress, which essentially is a program that teaches people how to create software and applications on the website. And I was like, this is so awesome. I have a communication background, so I don't know how to create a campaign. And then I have this incredible passion and social activism. And then now I'll be able to create software. I'll be unstoppable. And so I'm about to finish the fellowship program, Code for Progress, and it's been an awesome experience. So that's why I'm here. I'm done. OK. Thank you. Tom? Yeah. My name's Tom Conner. I'm here from the Motley Fool, right in Alexandria, Virginia. And I've been there for a really, really long time. I'm going to date myself. It was the late 90s when I started there. And in that time, I've been hiring, recruiting, doing a lot of people development, managing there. So I should say I'm the vice president of software development at the Motley Fool. And the last two years, we started thinking about hiring a little differently and started these programs. We gave them a silly name. There's a lot of silly things at the Motley Fool. And so the programs were these spandex programs. Anybody remember spandex, the fabric? It's kind of stretchy. OK. Yeah. Still around, right? Yeah. I think it's probably still in use. Yeah. OK. I might be wearing some now. The first year was Dev Smash. We were trying to hire developers. And the idea was to expand our ranks of developers. A terrible name. Anyway. So we started the program. And I've now done it two years in a row. And the basic notion is that we're trying to find the very best candidates that we can. So we bring in a bunch of people. And we actually just have them work with us for four, six months. And then towards the end of the program, well, we'll just kind of retain the very highest performers, actually. And so we've done that a little while. And it's been really interesting in terms of diversity, the kind of hires that we've been able to find that way, more so than normal conventional hiring, which is great. At the same time, we're also getting fantastic hires, which is obviously a goal. So anyway, been there a while, I kind of consider myself, I guess, a curator, if you will, of people and talent. And so yeah. And in terms of why I'm here, I'm just pretty passionate about the subject. And I think it was you, Mona, that mentioned that a diverse team is a so much higher performing team. And once you kind of get turned on to that, once you kind of recognize that, I'm trying to, I want our teams, we have about a dozen TAP teams at the Motley Fool. And I want them to be as high performing and moving as quickly as possible, of course. And having done it for a while, you kind of notice the teams that are more diverse, whether it's racial diversity, gender diversity, any kind of diversity, introvert, extrovert, whatever it is, those teams do better. And the teams where you have kind of a lot of people that think and act the same way, those teams don't do as well. And once your eyes are kind of open to that, it's like, oh wait, this is really important, this matters. And so here I am. My name is Brooke Hunter, and I am with InGen, and InGen works to support technology entrepreneurship. And so we work with a lot of the startups that people were sort of talking about on the last panel. And so just launched a diversifying tech caucus on the hill. It's a bipartisan, bicameral caucus, and we do think that there is like a role for policy and increasing diversity. And I think that that is a lot of why I'm here, in addition to the fact that this has been just a lifelong passion of mine as a woman growing up in the south. And as someone who really, I'm very proud of the opportunity I got at my last job, which was a public knowledge, to really increase the diversity there and see what a difference that made and the kind of work that we could do. I feel like we had a much stronger team when we had a more diverse team. And so I'm very passionate about these issues, and I'm really happy to be here. So I think you all mentioned as part of what you do, and I think it's something we've been talking about today about curating a diverse team. And there's lots of ways to do that. And I think I know one of the problems we have as a non-profit public policy institution is we don't always have money that we can spend on curating that. And so we look at how to work with other partnerships well. But I wonder if all of you could talk a little bit about that process and what you think works and doesn't work and practices that have been working. So you talked a little bit about the dev smash. And Etsy has a similar thing. Code for Progress is sort of a similar model, but an independent program. What do you see of the things like that that are working? How are they working? Talk about more of the specifics of some of that. How did you curate a diverse team of public knowledge? Those sort of questions. Good. Well, one thing to actually point out that I'm glad Tom brought up is it's not always diversity how we normally think of it. And in my last company, as we were trying to identify how do people recruit more for a good match of skills and not looking too much into things that we shouldn't be looking at, such as race or gender or orientation, etc. And so through that process, I actually developed a partnership with the MBTI Foundation. They do a lot of work on different personality traits, how they work together. And I would say one of the biggest ways that I've noticed discovery. Myers-Briggs. Yes, Myers-Briggs. Sorry. Yeah, so Myers-Briggs is MBTI. And so the theory is we all fall into 16 different buckets. But if you look at a lot of the studies that have been done around this, in general in the US, we push people towards a single personality type. We give more merit, I should say, outwardly to people who tend to be extroverted, more big picture oriented, more social. And that may not be how people really are, but we're pushing them towards that. So one of the ways that I've seen people across a lot of different organizations really bring out diversity is to do some of these trainings that make people self-identify the different ways that they digest information and make decisions that are complementary to one another instead of trying to conform. That's good. I think the Vice President of Engineering at Etsy also mentioned this as a separate notion than that one, and that is just make sure that you're not lowering your standards necessarily. It's not something that you have to do to hire diverse teams. For us, when I'm hiring, I'm kind of broadly looking at great communication skills and technology. Communications are very important, since particularly in software, you're dealing with things that are not physical, right? There's no physical manifestation. Everything's kind of abstracted, and then there's abstractions upon abstractions, right? So it turns out that being able to communicate is a very important thing. So looking for communication skills, hard technical skills, and soft skills. Getting along with a team, these small teams we have are sometimes two or three people, sometimes five, seven people. It's important that you can kind of get along with that team and that people like working with you. And so I think, what was the guy's name at Etsy? I can't remember, but he has a great video if you guys haven't seen it, check it out, but he kind of talks about this. And I think we've seen the same thing as well, which is across those three different things, communications, hard skills, and soft skills. I think it's not okay to lower your standards, like we want diverse candidates. We're gonna lower our standards and just bring people in here. But I think it is okay in terms of hard skills to have a different bar there, right? So if you can find a diverse candidate who is highly experienced and has great hard skills and soft skills and communicates, well, that's fantastic. It's probably gonna be difficult to find all three of those. And obviously that some of these numbers we talked about earlier in STEM was at 25, 30% diversity and tech. By the way, women of tech is 15% I counted. So pretty low, but I think also on par with some of the rest of the tech industry. If you wanna get those numbers higher, consider lowering what the requirement is for the hard skills, right? Which I think some people are not okay doing that. They're like, no, we need somebody who really knows, eight years of coding or whatever, that's gonna be difficult to find. So stick to your guns, Bay Scott. We want a great communicator, a verbal communicator. We want somebody who has great soft skills and can get along. And we're okay with the hard skills being a little bit lower. But you know what, that's something that you can address. And that's something that you can build up. And we've seen that over the two programs we've run. We've run people with lower skills and we're able to build that up pretty quickly. So I think that's another thing that works is, yeah, have a lower bar there. So I think for me, it's somewhat similar. It's about taking chances on people, like one of the best hires, I'm just gonna say this, that I ever made was just someone who was really talented, had not had a ton of traditional experience. And he just blew that job out of the park, and has gone on to have a very successful career, which I honestly think that we were able to help him by giving him a platform to really prove himself in a way that other people just weren't really ready to take a risk. And yeah, so I think some of it really is about knowing what you can teach people. And knowing what you really need them to bring to the table. But it's also someone on the previous panel was talking about, who do you know? What are your networks? If your networks look just like you, that's a real problem. And you need to be building more diverse networks. And I think you can't expect to increase diversity if you don't have diversity in your life. And I think that's something that everyone should be making. If you look around and you do that assessment and you realize that everyone you know does look like you, then you need to really spend some time and do some work to cultivate relationships with people that don't look like you. And have more challenging conversations and really put that effort in. And I think that that should not be optional. I think that's my major piece of advice is you've got to bake this into everything you're doing. And especially you're working with startups. That should be baked into the platform. You shouldn't have to wait for some venture capitalist to come along and say, how come you're not diverse enough? That's how everyone needs to start. I think it's an interesting question, the personality test piece, right? I think probably there's a lot of people who also like equally think Myers-Briggs is crap, right? I think there's people on all sides of it. Yeah, just because it's hard to if you put people in a box. So if we let people self-identify or if we talk about personality traits in that sense. You also then can end up with uniform cultural environments, right? So not necessarily, again, not diversity in how we typically talk about it. But if we are looking for people who fit in personality wise, you can end up with a pretty homogenous group that way, right? And that's not necessarily what you need either. I mean, it's the same thing of the social, we push people towards being a social communicator, organizer type of person. But then where does that leave room for people who are quieter, more introverted personality types, right? Or maybe who are hard of hearing, right? And I've just never, have always chosen to step back because they needed to. Like how do we make space for that and for other options in that pathway? I mean, in looking for jobs yourself, right? When you're applying to a job, are you looking for, do you aim more for a community that you feel welcome in? A challenge that you are going for, for starting something new? Like how to make that choice? I think, Marilla, you're applying to jobs right now, right? So what are the things that you're looking for in the companies that you're thinking about working for? What type of environment are you aiming to find? I think it's an interesting question that we all might learn from, too. I actually had an interview right before coming here. So I'm kind of like rushing for the day. But one of the first things that I ask in my interview is, will I have support? Because there's so much, there's only so much that you can learn in a fellowship let go for progress. There's only so many hours you can put. And it takes time. It takes a level of comfort that you don't always get in every position. Like you need to have support. You need to be in an environment where you know you're going to feel welcome. Because let's face it, if you've been to a conference in technology, there's usually like a room full of white guys. It's just the reality of it. And so when I go into those environments, I find somebody that has like a sticker for co-for-progress or hear me calling on me. Hey, I know you and we got to the same agency. And that's really, really great to have that kind of like support group. And now being in an environment where you really stick out like a sore thumb. So one of the first questions I ask, will I receive support in this organization? Will I have somebody that I'll be able to ask a question? If there's a line of code that I don't understand, just because it can be really overwhelming if you're just finishing a fellowship and then you go to a position where you are in a role of management and have an entire application and it's just really, really scary. So that's one of the biggest concerns that I have as a fellow of the co-for-progress program. Just is there going to be somebody that I could possibly like have a coffee with and ask about a line of code. So yeah, I think and support takes a lot of forms, right? Because there's an interesting question from the policy set of things. Like how could we build more structural support like for startups generally? Are there like organizations we can be pulling together that can help those pieces, what are the things that we could do from a more systemic perspective as well because that support might be at the organization. But if it's a small organization, they might not be able to do that. Like where else can it come from? Yeah, well, I think there definitely can be. I think there's a need for policymakers to really understand all the dimensions of this problem and that is one of the things that we're hoping to address with the Diverse Fine Tech Caucus is just that they don't necessarily always have all the research they need at their fingertips and that's one of the things that we would like to help them with. And there was a lot of talk about sort of implicit bias and I'm really glad that implicit bias has sort of entered the conversation as a term that we all sort of can now hopefully take for granted that most people understand, but I think that we need to make sure that everyone's aware that we're all operating with that every day and that when we're developing policies, we're developing policies that also reflect that implicit bias. And so a lot of it is just about educating policymakers and making sure that they are aware of all the dimensions of the problem. I mean, there are just so many different policy possibilities. I was really happy that Obama made working policies to support working families part of his State of the Union. I think those are things that a lot of work environments, they don't account for the needs of families, even though all work environments are made up of people who have families. Well, that's an interesting point because I now work remote for my organization and I've been reading up a lot about organizations that do allow telecommunication and working remotely. And it's funny because I would say now if I were to join a new organization, even if I didn't necessarily want to be remote, I would question them and make sure that they have support for people who do want to be remote because there's a lot of advantages. And that's another way that I've seen a lot of companies try and diversify if they're headquartered in an area where it is more difficult to get diverse talent. My startup was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the first few years before we moved it over to Chicago and we had to confront that reality. And we had people who ended up working in Boston and the Bay Area because we couldn't necessarily find the diversity of talent we wanted in just that one area. We actually, when I started at OTI, I was remote in New York and we only had a handful of people in our New York office. And when I started, a lot of people warned me that it was going to be really hard because the way DC institutions work, public policy institutions work, people just walk around to each other's desks and they're not like, no one's using chat, right? And so one of the big things was getting everybody actually using chat rooms, like being okay, sending an email to find out if you were available to talk before calling the person or showing up at their desk. And we use video chats constantly because now we have people in Miami and Philly and we still have people in New York. And actually New America now has someone in California again. So we're trying to figure out how to make it work. But it's actually, it's hard because people in the central space have to be really conscious about it, too. I don't know if, I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe think I'm Marissa Mayer at YAHOO. I wonder what you would have to say. Well, I'd rather not work at YAHOO. It's interesting. You should be remote and get called in there. I mean, their strategy has been quite opposite. They realize that they want to build out a culture. So in exchange for eliminating their teleworking policy, they're now infusing more benefits to those people who are willing to stay. Just because, I mean, that's a whole different strategy. It's something we struggle with in Motley Fool as well. We are increasingly international. We have presence in five or so countries at this point. And so it's difficult. And I think it's one of the things where, honestly, I think we're on the wrong side of history if we think that we have to have everybody in the same location, whether it's for culture or for the faster accelerated business practices or whatever it is, you're going to lose that battle eventually. I hate to admit it, but I'm still in that train of thought where I'm like, no. People have got to be here because that's the cultures here and the community. And it's all true. The level of collaboration is much higher. I still believe that you're adding some fraction of value when you're not at the mothership at the home base. But again, over time, that's going to be wrong thinking. So I'm the guy like, yes, the horse is the way to travel, folks. Like, yeah, OK, great. You're going to lose that argument. And eventually there's going to be a much more distributed workforce. We just have to figure it out, whether it's Skype. And we're trying things. But yeah, to me, you're still way better off. Part of that's because one of the only ways you can have a real conversation and address the unconscious biases that are in the team already is by talking face-to-face. We haven't, virtual communication hasn't gotten there yet. I love that notion that there are different bandwidths of communication. So face-to-face communication is the largest, highest bandwidth communication form there is. And then you get smaller and smaller as you get to video. And like I said, the bottom is, I don't know, text messaging or something. Wait, what did you tell me? Is that what you meant? No, no, I wasn't trying to say that. Didn't you see the smiley face? That's a very narrow bandwidth of communication. Yeah, it's a difficult problem, I think, the teleworking thing. But it's coming. Yeah, it can be. I think it's interesting as both a potential solution, because you're not limiting yourself to the people who live in an area. So you can actually expand past what is already an existing sort of diversity issue in any given city, but you then have to figure out how to handle the cultural bridging and making sure that you're actually still supporting people who wouldn't be in the same room, that sort of thing. Okay, so let's actually talk about resumes for a little bit, because Tom touched a bit on the idea of not necessarily lowering your standards, but also potentially lowering the bar. And I think that I'm going to guess that what you mean is addressing sort of what Anne-Marie mentioned on the first panel about not looking at standard credentials, like not necessarily requiring that people come through a computer science program, but making space for programs like Code for Progress to hear me code and having people show that they know how to do stuff, but might still need support. Where do we think that is right now? Like what are you seeing in applying for jobs from your experience with resumes? Some credentials actually can hurt you. Some can help you, but maybe they help you in the wrong way. I think there's biases built into that. Do we think people are actually ready to walk away from credentials and sort of support these other programs, other pathways? I think from a technology standpoint, certain things on your resume definitely can hurt, because the majority of employers out there use these applicant tracking systems that match and score your resume against a job description. And it's mostly keyword matching, but now it's becoming a bit more sophisticated, and it's using semantic technology. But a lot of times, especially if you're an entry-level candidate or someone who's applying to an industry for the first time, you have a lot of background that's not necessarily in the space you're stepping into. And then you're more likely to score pretty low against the job in those systems. But that's why I think people need to be more cognizant of how those systems operate and essentially think of your resume as a web page, something that you want to search engine optimize. And pick and choose your experiences. You don't need to talk about your time being a camp counselor if you don't think it's directly relevant, because having that information that's not directly relevant can actually hinder your score instead of bolster it. Yeah, I think that's right. Honestly, for me, a resume is not a super important thing. I don't care a lot about the school that you attended. Certifications, at least in the software side of things, are a little bit of an anti-pattern for me. When I see a lot of Microsoft certifications, I kind of go, ooh, it's a little bit of a sorry, no offense to Microsoft. I think that's not true on the engineering and the server side, the guys that I work with are much they want to see the Cisco certified or whatever. But for me, I think the resume is a pretty quick kind of just glance. Does this person have, are they even in the right ball park? Because you will get people who apply who are like 12 years of experience in the restaurant and food services industry. And you're like, that's great, but you don't have any experience in any technical area whatsoever. So kind of weeding those people out, we at the Molly Fool pretty quickly, and we did this in both of the programs, we pretty quickly go to a coding test right away. So right away we have a little project that you need to code up on your own time. And it's usually something pretty basic. I think we had like a little weather application where there was like an API that you would have to make use of and type in a zip code and show the weather in that area, something like that. And so I guess I'm much more interested in what you can do. And I want to see that. And I want to see that you prove that to us than I am what's on the resume and particularly certifications. So for a few months now I've been looking for a job. And I've kind of like worked around with my resume. And I feel that technology is like making coffee. Or trying to be a barista. People like Starbucks, they want to hire somebody that has experience. But the problem is that if you're applying for a job as a barista, you need to know how to make coffee. But you can get a job because you don't have experience. And it's like a circle that repeats itself. You can get a job because you don't have experience. You can get experience because you can get a job. And it's just a circle and a circle and a circle. And so for the last two, three months, I've been applying for jobs because I'm trying to get experience. And I keep telling people, well, I have all these skills, I have communications. I know how to reduce the situation. I know how to create buying power. I know how to put together a team. I know how to manage a project. And employers tell me, you're a great candidate. But we want somebody with a lot more experience. And that prevents me from getting the experience that I need to be able to get to an actual full-time position. And so I'm constantly looking for apprenticeship positions or fellowship positions so that I can get that experience. The problem is that a lot of those fellowship positions and apprenticeship positions are actually full-time management positions like costumed as apprenticeship. They expect you to create the next Facebook with just the bare minimum skills that you have. And so it's really important to be able to create these pipelines that we are constantly talking about that will allow people to get the experience they need to be able to get in those management roles that allow people to feel comfortable in creating really good code. But I think the great thing about technology is that you can kind of dive in, you know what I mean? So with the Starbucks example, yes, you need access to the $6,000 Italian barista machine, like how are we going to get one of those? But technology, you can kind of do it. So again, in terms of experience, go build something. It's almost free, right? You can go find some website and code up something in Ruby or Python or whatever it is and show something and experience that way. I'm not saying... I know you're probably doing that as well, but that's something that... And then again, on a resume, you can put that like, oh, yeah, I built this website and it does this little thing, whatever that might be. And then if you do have some coding tests or something, you know, you're able to kind of dive in pretty rapidly. But yeah, the good news is there's nothing really holding you back, right? At least in technology. And that's actually the reason why I decided to go in right after grad school to start a company because I figured going into the job market, I wouldn't be able to get the technology management jobs that I wanted because I didn't yet have that exposure. But I think that's where startups have a lot more openness to people without traditional backgrounds. And I think they are generally, you know, more willing to take that risk that I know Brooke mentioned earlier. Can I just comment on this one? So it's a pet peeve of mine that this country and a lot of businesses and nonprofits in this country really benefit from a huge source of unpaid labor, and that is interns and fellows who are not paid. And I think that a lot of the experience that you're talking about, you could be getting at a paid internship or a paid fellowship. And I think that this is something where, again, I feel like the tide is turning, but I want to just push it a little more and say, this is really important. And if we're talking about not taking chances on non-traditional applicants, the internship is a great way to develop new talents, to grow people's skills, to see what they can do. It's an internship or it's a fellowship. It's something that has a set time. And it's a way that you can identify future talent, that you can grow future talent, and maybe you can say this person isn't, you know, isn't at this point the right person for our organization in the long run, but at least, you know, you've gotten to know them and gotten to know their skills, and you've helped them develop skills that will be useful to them. But you can't do that if they can't afford, particularly in a city like Washington, D.C., it is so hard to live here and to find a sublet for the summer. If you're not being paid anything, it's presuming a level of privilege that I think we all need to acknowledge and I think we need to just start paying our interns. I agree. We pay our interns. But yeah, that needs to happen. And interns are a great way to find candidates. I definitely want to draw on that because I've been incredibly lucky that I have a family that's incredibly supportive. So as I'm struggling to try to find opposition within technology, my family has been incredibly supportive, helping me with, like, money for the rent, money for food, trying to keep me busy. However, for somebody else, somebody that has a job, somebody that signs their own website or something of that sort, for them to do internship or fellowship, even if it's paid, you're asking for an incredibly big sacrifice and a lot of people see that as a huge barrier to even get to an internship. So that's something that I really want to bring attention to. I also think it's just, I mean, Aliya brought this up on the first panel, sort of how we ask people, what we ask in interviews about trying to figure out if someone's the right candidate. Like, I think, you know, Maryleigh keeps talking about communication skills and communication skills are crucial, like Tom, you were mentioning it as well. And how, who and how you're good at communicating with and what you're good at communicating are, I think, it's something we don't always get at very well in interviews. Like, you know, one of the first, you were saying, like, you get to a coding test quickly, but how do we assess how people are good at communicating? Like, just from, can they work the interview? Or, like, what are good, what are good ways that we could start to understand how people would be good team members? In my mind, the short answer is there is no good way to do it in a three or four hour period, it's impossible. And that's why I think we have to bring people on into some kind of program. And again, we've run a couple of them. I know their companies have as well. I think it's Hungry Academy, right, Living Social and so forth, these kind of programs where you're not going to know. Really, you're kind of rolling the dice. The analogy I love the best is it's kind of like going out on a date or somebody with somebody for one night having dinner and they're like, we should get married. It's like, whoa, that's a pretty big commitment just based on one day worth of interviews. And frankly, I would challenge everybody, go run some metrics on your interview process, or rather, what did you think of people at the interview day and then how did they actually turn out later? Let's just say, I don't know, one to 10 scale, whatever it is, and see how well you're doing. And I think you'll find, when I looked at that, it's a little bit like rolling the dice. You're maybe marginally better than just random. So you might as well just have random people, monkeys, whatever, like, oh yeah, hire this person, hire that person. So anyway, it might work better. What if we randomly place people at jobs? Like if we just said, you know what, try there. Right. So communication skills, all these kinds of things. And also people put on an interview face, an interview persona. I don't know if you guys have had the experience I have of hiring somebody like, wow, this person's really energetic and talk. I'd know that was the interview day person. Once you hire them, they don't make a sound anymore, whatever it might be. So anyway, I would just challenge everyone, figure out a way to bring people on, try them out. Obviously, let them know upfront, this is a trial program where I'm not going to necessarily keep everybody at the end of this. But I think that's the only way to find out. Back to the dating analogy, maybe you have to be with somebody a little while before you marry them. Well, especially in a team setting, a lot of times, you need the wrong candidate to know how to target the right candidate. Because I've had that horrendous experience where, you know, someone came in, they just seemed perfect for the role, and then we brought them in and we realized it was the worst fit possible. And they realized it too, and thankfully it was just an internship, so they left and went to another organization. But then it made us realize our job description was completely off. We weren't targeting the right candidates. So then when we finally did target correctly, it was like magic. I think a lot of that can be addressed based on how transparent you are about your own culture. Because nobody wants to land in the wrong job and nobody wants to hire the wrong person for the job. And I feel like a lot of that is, again, on the employer to really show, for instance, do you have a lot of support for people? Is there going to be somebody who's going to be able to go get coffee or answer your question on code? Like some places that's just the answer to that question is no. And they owe it to you to tell you that in the interview process. And I feel like in the job description, you get a real opportunity to talk about this is the culture of this organization. And then, I mean, obviously it's also on the candidates to interview the place that they're being interviewed by to see, you know, who is it that gets, you know, how do people act in the interview? Do they seem all distracted? Are they, you know, are they all on their phones the whole interview time? And what does that tell me about the culture? Yeah, I think employers can do a lot more to be transparent and to say, like, you know, like Netflix does a good job of this and they're like hiring deck. If you haven't looked at it, it's really interesting. But you know, they say, like if you need support, you're not going to get it here really. I hope I'm not totally mischaracterizing that. It's not quite that like black and white, but it's similar. It's like we, you know, we need people who are really self-motivated that don't need a lot of guidance at this point, you know, and I think that that's really important. And then I as a candidate could look at that environment and say, well, I think I could work there or I don't. So Jordan is holding up the five minutes thing. So I'm going to say, does anyone have questions they want to ask? Hey, so my name is Bruce Arthur. I'm with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of Federal Agency here in DC. We've had a lot of success when we're hiring developers transitioning from resume review to portfolio review. We're asking them to send samples of their code and then we analyze it. It really lets us hire people who would probably never make it through a resume stage because their code comes from like their hobbies or things like that. On the other side, when I do that, I am taking a developer who's off a project that they're passionate about and telling them to devote a week of their time reviewing code samples, 90% of which will be bad. And there's a client for that project who will also be upset that they are temporarily losing a developer, even if there is obviously a payoff down the road. How can I help build institutional support for this superior way of evaluating candidates that takes a lot more investment on the front end? Yeah, so he was saying at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they have switched from resume review to portfolio review. So they're actually having people review code as part of the application process. But that means that he has to use a lot of resources internally to review that code. So how to manage that trade-off is basically his question. Two things coming to mind. First, it's important to have everybody on board with the notion that people are probably the most important resource your company has. I know that's true for us. I don't know if that's true for every company. I don't know if a company with a lot of patents or maybe Coca-Cola has their secret formula. Maybe that's the most important thing. But I think for a lot of organizations, people are A, perhaps your largest expense. Again, it is for us in terms of company benefits. And B, probably the largest opportunity lever that you have in the organization. In terms of, hey, if we were somehow able to see what's the upside that that would have, it's probably the most massive change and good for your organization possible. Anyway, so that's one notion. Get people on board with hiring is really, really important. And I do need your time to help me look through this stuff, through these code samples. But then the second thing is, a week long, that sounds like a little heavy duty. I would consider something a little bit lighter. So we did a thing where we had a Google spreadsheet or something and we had the candidates and their submissions, the URL for their submissions they didn't have to go through everybody. Maybe they just look at one or two peoples and so forth. And since it's in a spreadsheet, you can kind of see like, well, nobody's looked at this candidate's submission. So I'll look at that one. And so a week feels like a long time. I would suggest it's a couple hours spread across multiple different developers on the team. But yeah, you do need their time and they need to be on board with why it's important that they look at those submissions. Yeah, I read a really interesting article this weekend that was, the title was The Way We Hire Is All Wrong. It was on Medium, I don't know if people thought. But the premise was this company in Silicon Valley has started running rather than hackathons to have people work and build tools for them. They're actually doing hiring hackathons where they get people together for a weekend or two and have them pitch projects and work together and see how they sort of work in teams and filter each other out and work and projects from that weekend to look at. For me, it was a really interesting thing to think about how, we have trouble sometimes even just getting the jobs that we have out to networks to get applicants because it's hard to explain to people sometimes what developers at a think tank do. And we work on some kind of crazy projects. But sometimes we just don't get applicants. Why don't we do an event instead and actually get at that resource question quickly spend a day. I mean, there's a lot of prep to an event. The event does not just take one day. I think we all know that. But it just sort of begs the question for me, could we change how we are spending our time to do the recruiting process at all and make it more like a short version of a program like what you guys have or a short version of a Code for Progress or Code for Progress Hackmate more often. There's nothing that makes a developer more nervous than a whiteboard. Seriously, like every time I go on a whiteboard like every time I go on an interview and they basically tell me I want you to write a code on the board and I have to write the code on the board and then I have seven people looking at me that makes me sweat bullet. Like my brain just like danger, danger run away. It's very nervous. And so I think a better strategy would be hey, this is what we're working on. This is what we want the website to look at because a lot of coding really is about googling stuff. Like really, it's point black about googling stuff. I actually told my roommates how to code yesterday. The day before yesterday I was teaching them how to do HTML and they were like, that's it? Like, that's all it is? And I'm like, yeah. And then eventually they just went to Google at how to add images to the HTML. And that they were just like, that's so easy. And all you have to do is google stuff. And so I think a better strategy for these interviews rather than if it's divisible by three, I want it to write buzz and if it's divisible by five biz and then if it's divisible by three or five, there's buzz. Like what are you ever going to write an application that actually does that? So how about giving me an assignment for something that you actually want to create? For example, you want the image to scroll up and the test to scroll down or you want this button to hover or you want this to happen because that's what I'll actually be doing if I get to shop. And so I think that those type of interview strategies would be better. And asking me to do some really stupid code that where I will have seven or eight people just like stressing me out and I probably will not be able to like think properly. And I think that eventually changing that to something else that's actually more effective and applicable to the job would be way better. Jordan, can I go first? Jordan, you want to either one. We'll get to both of you. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Keisha Lee. I'm really interested in strategies for transitioning into an area that's technology focused for those of us who are not coders or programmers or developers but are probably also a little bit more advanced and further along the get an internship feel so that you can gain experience. She was asking about for people who are more later in their career transitioning so an internship doesn't necessarily feel like the right path but they want to learn more like learning to code or learning just to be in work and technology more opportunities and options in that space. Not just because an internship if you've had a job for a while the idea of going back to an internship is sort of hard to emotionally work through. Right? I think probably all of us can talk to that experience at some point. But yeah, does anyone want to take that one? So I think the first thing that you have to do is really identify what transferable skills you have because I do think there is a lot more to tech than just coding and so I think that there are possibilities out there. I would probably just spend some time looking at websites of companies that you think you would like to work for and seeing the kinds of job descriptions they have and seeing how you could fit your skills to those jobs if there is room to match and if there are discrepancies where those discrepancies are. I would also say that because we are in DC and it is super networking town there are so many opportunities to go out and meet people working in tech. There are meetups I feel like five times a day and so another thing to do is just to go and to talk to people and to see what path they took and get their advice and then you're also putting yourself on their radar so if they have a job open up later they'll say oh there was that person that seemed like she might be a fit so that's probably where I would start. Yeah and to add to that I remember when I first wanted to get more involved in web technology and not the lab technology that I was in I did the same thing just looking at my network on LinkedIn who had jobs that sounded really interesting and what were the steps that they took but I think if you're at an organization that has anything to do with technology which I think almost every organization does the best way to do it is to go speak to the people in your company who can vouch for your work ethic and give you a chance to do more within the organization you're in. I really welcome you to come to our Hack Nights for Code for Progress is every Thursday from 6-0-9. We cover a whole range of topics two weeks ago we did how to do data analysis on the voter registration and last week we did HTML and CSS there's an entire support group of women and people of color we're just an incredibly welcoming environment so I really encourage you to come to those Hack Nights in addition to that if you are kind of intimidated by the Code Academy and kind of like those websites honestly I find them incredibly boring they're useful but they don't have that little flavor that gets you excited so Code for Progress we really try to cut down the coding broke grammar language and really kind of like sink it down to the way I'm speaking in normal English so we kind of take this really difficult concept and talk to them in real life language so if you're interested in learning how to code we're talking to people about how they use their technology for whatever career you want to switch to Thursday is 6-0-9 you can come to me after this and I'll give you all the information you need just to add to that I think we're talking about coding a lot in technology and somebody mentioned it's not necessarily the same thing so I guess the thing I would suggest if you want to get more in technology is try to figure out what you're really passionate about what you're the most into because that's going to obviously be the best area for you to go so broadly speaking hardware, networking that kind of side of things and if you're interested in that try building a PC it's not hard there's all kind of things online try that out dabble with it like oh this is really cool I'm into this maybe heading into technical engineering server networking that kind of stuff is for you or maybe it's design that's another obviously area of technology yes there's software and coding is another area and then there's data these are high level areas so figure out which of those is the most interesting to you and dabble with it a little bit and you're like dude I love data this is amazing there's this table and I'm going to figure out what's the highest incident of some piece of data in there I'm going to pull that out if that's exciting to you maybe you should head into databases and SQL so yeah figure out where your love is I guess is what I'm saying first it's funny as you were saying that I answer that sort of in a slightly different type of figure out what you're interested in one of the patterns that people have found in research around women in some fields is that if the problems you're working on aren't social impact problems women tend to walk away just because it's like why am I doing this I don't know the why of the data so I would also recommend thinking about problems in the world you want to solve and then finding the organizations that are working on those and figuring out what they need like talk to people about how to make an impact on your project tomorrow because I care about that project like what should I learn how to do and focus your energies there because that will probably lead you down to the like we really need help with data or we really need help with design work and frequently it's design work I will just put that out there a lot of projects need design work and would love input on it but focusing on the problems that you're interested in solving is the way that I would recommend starting and then yeah Hey, I'm Rachel I'm a software developer at Sunlight Foundation and I have I'm a software developer I've pretty frequently been the only woman in a room I have also been the only woman at a company and it feels like a second full-time job sometimes when you're like the one who's like we don't have a sexual harassment policy yet we need a sexual harassment policy Hey guess what we still don't have a sexual harassment policy we really need a sexual harassment policy Hey, I know you guys have kids but none of you has ever thought about potentially being the like primary caretaker of a child like what are we going to do if I want to do that I mean I guess my question and basically at this point I don't think I would work at a company that was all men ever again and I can only imagine I can only imagine how much worse that would be if I wasn't also white so I mean that just cuts down the amount of jobs I am willing to apply for and the ability to sort of for companies who are start-off as three dudes to increase their appeal and diversity as well and it just feels like a stuck problem to me I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on both of you guys said I think you were involved in start-ups stuff and I don't know if you have any thoughts about that Well it's funny because with my start-up I was the one-person HR and I personally wanted to take that role for that reason in the start I was the only female we had I was on the business side not the tech side of things so I made it a passion to make the environment conducive to bring on female employees and developers and then soon after once we put in our healthcare policy in place we actually did then get our first lead female software developer who actually Georgia knows very well coincidentally but I do agree I think being out in Silicon Valley I've spent a lot of time out there and it is difficult if you're a female developer because you don't want to have to be the one to say well you know we need to think about these things you want it to be brought up even if it is just a completely male dominated organization and I think just culturally some of those things are naturally shifting because men are being more concerned about paternity leave and things like that it's not just becoming a women's issue but I do think it is going to take time and a lot of times you know you do have to make sure the organization has that representation to think about those issues and to be honest you know I myself probably would not jump in an organization if it was ten dudes and I was going to be the only woman unless I wanted to bring forward those issues that was one of the one of the other Code for Progress fellows named Kathy Ortiz who's in New York figuring out what she wants to do in New York said to me that she's asking a lot of the startups that she's interviewing with like why should I be your one female developer so sort of putting the question back at them but saying like make it worth my time to be your one woman because it is a lot of work I mean I think we it's funny within our own team here at OTI we have a heavier male tech team we now have a few women who are on the tech team right Codes every day and we talk about it a lot but all of us do emotional support for everyone and sort of more the culture of our office in a way that maybe we all need to do like less of that in general I think it's something that happens when you work in social causes too right if you're working on socially focused problems everyone's doing it because they're passionate about those problems and so you end up everybody ends up helping each other in that way it can be a supportive culture even if it is male dominated but it also there's you know there was the office housework article in the New York Times a week or two ago and a few of us have been sitting around the office and figuring out how we can use it like a intervention buzzword in our meetings be like you know what office housework I'm not going to do that I'm going to let you guys handle that one this time you can reserve the room make sure that the meeting happens do an agenda hand that off more because it's that sometimes still end up on the people who are willing to be the like caretakers in the office too but those aren't always just women I will say there are a lot of men who take on those roles too I think one solution obviously as an organization comes larger and there are women in the HR group and so forth these problems kind of work themselves out but it takes a surprisingly long time and I guess I've been surprised and there's a woman I work with who is telling me that we're over 300 people now but not too long ago she had to ask for the mommy room you guys know about the mommy room so you know and so the flip side that I just have to say is so anyway it can take you know organizations in 150-200 people before people free these things out but the flip side is literally just from my standpoint as a white dude I didn't know what that was I mean I was 35 years old I was like what why do we need to have a room I don't know and then slowly you know I was like oh you know only after I had kids that I like oh the young mothers with the babies have to go okay I got it you know and so anyway so I got it's a weird thing to bring up but I would also just promote like just let's just can we just talk frankly about this look we need to have a private room or women can go with young babies with their equipment you know and to take care of got it okay so the mommy room you know anyway yeah these things should just be open we brought me open as much as possible as a while I'm not saying that's easy when you're the only female at a ten dude company but you know prank discussion would help I feel like to questions anybody else okay all right well I thank you everyone for participating today I'm like it's I hopefully it was interesting to have the two panels but I really enjoyed it and I'm really glad to have had everyone here and hope everyone had a good time so thank you for coming and for helping us push the conversation cool