[Closed] Graduate Recruitment - gender bias

Girls mature quicker than boys?

But, what's the role and would your top choices come out well in the Technical interviews?

Not grads, but we have DofE volunteers at parkrun, generally aged 14 - 16. The female volunteers are almost always (I can think of 1 exception) more engaged, more reliable and better organised.

Non scientific opinion.
#1. I think women generally mature earlier mentally.
#2. Probably tie into #1, but I think in general women are a bit more contentious at a younger age.

Millions of exceptions I know, no data to prove just an worthless opinion.

Years ago I was in charge of a school leaver recruitment campaign for a bank. The difference between the girls and boys was vast. The girls came across as young adults, whilst all the boys were basically kids who were more interested in football

Sort of related

In my time in the NHS I have seen a huge cultural change around how (medical) consultants interact with the rest of the staff. When I first started 90+% of consultants were men. Now its at least equal or the majority women. 2 generations of doctors have trained in that time and those now coming thru the ranks have only worked with women with modern attitudes as consultants and role models and even the men being promoted rarely anymore have the " god complex" that used to be so dominant in the old culture of male only consultants

I know of the girls mature earlier but I would have thought it would have evened out by the time they had graduated university.

Not sure about technical skills as I deliberately didn't test those but it is easier to train someone for a technology - they change so fast that what you did at university is almost immaterial - than to train someone for an intellectual approach.

The roles was a generic 'data engineer' so loads of different options and working for a company of 500,000 there is always something we can use them for.

PS If anyone out there is an experience data architect / cloud / solutions architect and fancies a change then pm me.

An example of one of the questions I ask. I don't mind how they answer it but there are some of the possible tasks shown I do not expect anyone to get all of them or exact matches. Some people add others but it is just to let them show their thought process

What steps do you go through to deliver a solution? Imagine I say - Write me a timesheet system - them tell me how you approach this?

1) Qualify the requirement
2) Review and research what else is already out there
3) Develop a draft design
4) Validate design with client against requirements
5) Develop against design
6) regular comms and reviews with client
7) Test against requirements
8) Deliver and deploy
9) Training and handholding
10) KT and BAU

Most said things like - Design, Develop, Deploy, project management

The top three explain what they were looking to achieve and why they thought it was important. The actual tasks were almost a side note of this explanation.

I interviewed ten Graduates in 2019 (none in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic 🙁 ) and the top two were male the next six were mixed and the bottom two were also male. This is for Engineering and research.

The worst by far was a Cambridge graduate who had almost no knowledge of the skills required or of the company he'd chosen for a potential employer. The best two were Polish Graduates from Imperial.

In the end I hired three blokes. The top of the middle group were almost equal on skills and on personality, I would have hired the American girl in the group, but long term, the slightly weaker Bristol bloke in the mid group had the better prospects for us as a company. He's now doing a PhD sponsored by us.

I'm not a fan of quotas and targets, I understand why they're used, but I think it just muddies the water for many people. Meritocracy + Personality all the way.

On the face of things, my team is predominantly, white, middle aged men, but in the 35 of us, there are 15 different nationalities, 5 different religions, 2 views on Brexit and massively different mindsets on a variety of socio-political and technical topics. Diversity of thought is, to me as important as other forms of diversity.

Different bias, but I found when interviewing graduates some just didn’t want to go onto topics off their degree course.  I did, because I wanted to see them think not regurgitate.

massive generalisation warning

Rough split ended up with ivory towers university graduates being able to think from first principles, former craftsmen who’d decided they wanted a degree could reapply experience in interesting ways, firmer polytechnic graduates could explain to me why I wasn’t allowed to ask them things that weren’t on their course and why they weren’t going to answer.

Surprisingly I warmed to the first two and not the latter.

Of course keep them on topic and the former poly folk weren’t bad. I think they’d been well taught (too well taught?) and knew how to commit things to memory then trot them out - but I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted the ability to tackle new problems and issues.

Male/female made little difference.

I would have thought it would have evened out by the time they had graduated university.

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I think that about covers it.

I think that about covers it.

+1

I've done a couple of rounds of grad recruits at my old job. 1st one the outstanding candidate was female, she progressed rapidly within the company, 2 lads one we took on but wasn't really as driven and the other if you'd have stood him in a field you could have come back the next day and he'd still have been there (straight As and a 1st).

2nd time round there was a decent mix but the standout was male but so was the worst candidate as was the case the 3rd time round. Final time was for a slightly more advanced role and the females were strong but we took the strongest female and the one lad we interviewed but at a lower grade.

The major issue I had with the young men was an overconfidence compared to their competence and an inability to adapt to the interview situation. The women tended to lack confidence as the main issue.

generally come across as if they were already seasoned professionals rather than raw graduates

Why do you want that, or place high importance on it?

I would always take a raw graduate with ability and potential, as long as they have some base level of soft skills, and I see them being able to develop into coming across as seasoned professionals. Appearing to be seasoned is a short-lived way of gaining/retaining the trust and confidence of others, it doesn't get the work done. It's important for graduates like this (and those that work with them) to be aware of where they're at in terms of competence and experience.

If I was a big consultancy wanting these people working for clients straight away then maybe I'd have to choose people based on coming across as seasoned, so I could more easily get away with passing them off for roles they don't have the ability/experience required.

I often have a hand in late stage decision making for similar roles.

I kind of get what you are saying but would also add that the below have a much larger impact (in my experience anyway):

* Have they taken a gap year and worked in industry at top tier tech co that deliver product to enterprise co’s. They will ace your questions if any good.

* Family member already worked in industry and mentored them / taken them into office. If Brother / Sis is a few years older and already a CTO / Product Manager at enterprise space startup they will ace it.

* Spent own time working on hobby projects with diverse global team. They may not ace but will likely do ok and be able to communicate well at the level you are asking. Especially if working with more experienced team remotely via Slack or similar.

* UK vs US Uni. You can get a 1st in comp sci at UK red brick and know none of what you are asking for. As an experiment try increasing asking salary and taking a high GPA candidate from Stanford. You won’t get the bad male outcomes described.

It’s very nice to see things changing quickly in the UK. At top end I see no difference between genders or however people decide to classify themselves - I’m finding it goes way behind male / female with today’s grads and co’s are working to accommodate. If I simplify and take a 50/50 male / female split over average quality candidates the females will often do better in terms of empathy and social skills.

End of the day there are good, bad and average candidates. I don’t believe the aspects people have no control over such as gender make a significant difference at scale.

Men are immature dickheads until at least 25, women are not. Generally 🙂

1. You have a very small sample size. Differences could be just random chance.

2. There may be a selection bias at work. For example, if your organization is competing for graduates against better known or more attractive rivals, you will tend not to attract the top rank of applicants. However, there could be a gender bias against females by those rivals, so you end up with more qualified female applicants than male applicants.

3. It's not very obvious what the point of your assessment is. Trying to confuse or trick candidates in job interviews is generally not a good idea because it doesn't reflect their actual ability to do the job - it's largely a matter of luck whether people succeed in tasks like that so you might as well just roll a dice. It's possible that females have more experience of being given silly instructions and complying without question and the males just thought you were a clown and couldn't be arsed trying to accommodate you.

Just asked the wife who runs the a global graduate fast track program for a large pharma company and she says for her there’s no difference but she can select the best from 1000s of applicants. So maybe at that level you don’t get any weak candidates.

A part of my role at work is mentoring engineering apprentices every year. I see a huge difference in attitude, approach and motivation between the sexes, in favour of the female of the species.

Even at 25 (we have older apprentices) the boys are still generally still pretty aloof, and have the perception that because they're now quite experienced, opportunity should come to them, not the other way.

There is also a perception amongst them that females can climb the ladder easier. Aye, we do have some equality targets, but the reason their opposite sex counterparts sometimes jump ahead of them is that of the aforementioned attitude and motivation.

I've one in particular who is excellent, has shown a fantastic interest in her current role and future, and has made huge efforts to get to know people and create relationships at work. For that reason, I'll help her any way I can.

The boys seem too interested in tits and loaded fries to see this.

Recently moved to a bank so got my first experience of a grads and they are basically what i thought they would be. Of the 4 I have met (yes this is a massive generalisation) they are all upper class white males who simply want to work for the bank and don't care where they end up. As someone whos wanted to be a designer since they were 12 their lack of passion for my craft irks me.

… opportunity should come to them, not the other way.

I run relatively small mentoring and selection exercise and was interviewing last week. The above is the attitude we got from most of the recent graduates tbh. Those who weren’t graduates seemed to have a bit more about them.

Why do you want that, or place high importance on it?

When they talk as if they know everything, then people will assume they do, and possibly not show or teach them the skills they need.

No such thing as a stupid question.

I could barely string a sentence together until my mid twenties. It is hard because you have to make recruitment decisions based on what’s in front of you, but there were a couple of influential managers in my mid twenties who saw potential and gave me some breaks. The job I do far exceeds what they ‘achieved’ in career terms, but had it not been for them my life may well have taken a radically different turn, so I am eternally grateful to them.

If somebody seems ‘hopeless’ I always at least try to reflect on whether there might be more potential there than seems apparent…

I could barely string a sentence together until my mid twenties. It is hard because you have to make recruitment decisions based on what’s in front of you, but there were a couple of influential managers in my mid twenties who saw potential and gave me some breaks.

This is why traditional interviews are largely a waste of time. Managers tell themselves, "I'm a good judge of character," when nobody is actually a good judge of character. Interviews reward people who are shameless bullshitters, which might be a useful skill for some jobs, but is generally not what you want in an employee. Properly structured assessments to judge whether applicants have the cores skills needed for the job are much better.

I don't know if it is still the case but when my wife was involved in this type of thing at her work (both new and internal recruits) there was evidence to suggest men are more confident and over estimate their abilities and take risk. This led to them being more likely to apply for promotion, women would wait until they new they were capable.

In the OPs situation maybe the men thought they'd blag it and were naturally going to get the job. The women put in more prep and research. When I've been doing mentoring its something I encourage. When I was doing interviews it was something I'd check. Ask the candidate what they new about the company, our activities and our competitors. At least have typed the company name into google, read some of the recent news articles and read the wikipedia entry for paint.

If it’s tech you can give them a simple test that they pass or fail blind of age / gender or any other attribute. They either pass or fail, no opportunity to overstate their ability. In the UK if they lie you can very easily ask them to leave your co within 2 years.

I really don’t get mind games and abstract questioning. It’s like everyone read how Google used to interview 15yrs ago and is trying to copy.

I think the real issue is attracting the right candidates in the first place. Pre 08 it was easy for banks. Not so much today. Especially in tech when most of them spend more on ad campaigns than their own apps.

Thols2 has it.

Too many interviews seem to be geared to make the interviewer feel superior. With the age and experience I have now I'm fairly confident that I'd simply be able to outwit that sort of asshattery (and I'd take great delight in doing so) but in my 20s I wouldn't have had a clue. I'd just come away demoralised and dejected, like I'd played D&D with a DM whose primary goal was to kill off half the party.

Recruitment forgets that it's a two-way process. You see this in job adverts even, two pages of what they want and not a whiff of what they're offering in return. If you're lucky you might get an afterthought footnote of "competitive salary" or some other meaningless weaselly bullshit.

Traditional interviews just aren't appropriate for a candidate whose CV only comes close to filling a page because they've used a 16pt font and their collective experience in the role is "none whatsoever." You need a different tack.

Back when I was interviewing prospective apprentices, HR did the usual bollocks ("What are your strengths?" "What are your weaknesses" etc) and I superficially did the tech side of it, but similar to WCA the tech questions were vagueries like "a user rings and says their computer isn't working, what do you do?" There's no wrong answers here, I just want to see what they do with it. I'm hoping for a bit of investigation, getting the caller to elaborate on what they mean before diving in with random possible solutions they've just pulled out their arse, but at the level they're at "put them on hold and come and ask you" is a totally valid answer and I'd far rather they did that than bugger something up even further.

But, mostly I'd just chat with them. I've said this before on STW in "help with my CV" threads but a Hobbies & Interests section is a gold seam here. One young lad we interviewed, I've never seen anyone as nervous, he was shaking like a shitting chihuahua through most of it. I spotted on his CV he mentioned he was into football. Regular readers will know my interest in football but I asked him about it, "just watching or do you play?" His entire body sort of exhaled and he was away, he was on his home turf now. He enthusiastically told us all about his team, the league he played in, how long he'd been playing, etc etc... we hired him. He lasted all of six months under me before another department came to head-hunt him, he turned out brilliantly. Interviewing is often about finding the right thread to pull.

As for gender, I dunno. In the last batch of apprentices we took on (that I still had any dealings with) we had ten candidates and it was the easiest set of interviews I've ever known because there were three very clear stand-outs above the others, one of which was the only girl in the group. Sadly though we ended up having to let her go. On the other hand, we have another female former apprentice who was a runner-up Apprentice Of The Year a little while ago. It's difficult for me to gauge because the sample pool is too small, I work in a tech department for a tech company so it's essentially a sausage-fest. We do have female engineers but they're very thin on the ground.

Aside: one of the best Pen Testers in the country is female. This is likely not hindered by the fact most blokes are too busy gawping at her legs / chest to notice she's just pwned their network. (-:

When I was doing interviews it was something I’d check. Ask the candidate what they new about the company, our activities and our competitors. At least have typed the company name into google, read some of the recent news articles and read the wikipedia entry for paint.

And this is what I was talking about. Why?

What does that actually gain you? What does it tell you? The argument is perhaps that it "proves they can prepare for things" or "take the interview seriously" but it doesn't, does it. It proves that they've had a previous interview elsewhere so know you're likely to ask about it, and it's soliciting them to blow smoke up your ass about how great you are. See also, "why do you want this position?" It's a waste of time, regardless of how they reply both you and the candidate already know the real answer. The elephant in the room that recruiters need to accept is that no 20-year old on the planet actually gives a **** about your paint, they're just hoping you're going to give them money.

When they've been in the trade for a couple of decades it's different. I might want to move from Joe's Paints to Geoff's Paints because I believe it to be a better place to work or offer more opportunities. Straight out of college, it's preferable to shelf-stacking and burger flipping.

and the other if you’d have stood him in a field you could have come back the next day and he’d still have been there (straight As and a 1st).

Seems odd you didn't give him the job if he was outstanding in his field.

I don’t know if it is still the case but when my wife was involved in this type of thing at her work (both new and internal recruits) there was evidence to suggest men are more confident and over estimate their abilities and take risk. This led to them being more likely to apply for promotion, women would wait until they new they were capable.

I was once accused of sexual discrimination after interviewing four folk for a position in our company. The one woman candidate just couldn't believe she wasn't the best person for the role, she was just that sure of herself.

Diversity of thought is, to me as important as other forms of diversity.

Said the white middle class man?

Why do you want that, or place high importance on it?

When they talk as if they know everything, then people will assume they do, and possibly not show or teach them the skills they need.

No such thing as a stupid question.

I'd consider that to be more of a problem with people who come across as seasoned/competent where they actually aren't, than with raw graduates. Not sure if you're backing my point or challenging it.

I touched on this in my post about them (faux-seasoned grad) and others knowing where they're at, for the reason you give plus not messing things up due to thinking they know everything, and others not picking up on that because they don't feel it necessary to supervise.

Just offer them some bread and see if they choose butter or olive oil. This will determine whether they are a capitalist or socialist.

https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1426664504864043008

Diversity of thought is, to me as important as other forms of diversity.

Yes, this is often overlooked. A lot of managers make the "hire your own reflection" mistake. People like working in a team where everyone gets along and decisions are made by consensus, but it's very easy for that to turn into groupthink and anyone who questions things is seen as a troublemaker. Colin Powell is a prime example. He was a fairly smart guy, was an infantry officer in Vietnam, but people who served with him criticized him as being a careerist. He was a capable leader and said the right things and kept getting promoted, but when the world needed him most, he was an abysmal failure because he just stood up and repeated what the boss wanted him to say.

This is a tricky one for managers to deal with because you don't want someone who is just reflexively contrarian, that's just being a pain in the arse. You need people who can ask sensible questions to explore possibilities that might have been overlooked, and you need an environment where that is dealt with in a positive, constructive manner. For most managers, it's much easier to just hire people like Colin Powell who are competent but follow orders without thinking too much.

I teach Engineering at FE level and usually the girls perform better than the boys. I think at just comming from school most lads are just a bit lost and looking for some direction and spark to grab them. Yeah lots are bluffers all bravardo and BS but generally the term id use more is aimless. Not idle, not useless just lacking direction. But 16 you can't expect more.
Some earlier said best employers seem to think it's one way.

I always like project presentations from the apprentices as you get to see who relly has potential vs those who dont bother and just there for the money.

If its any measure we usually see greater growth (in work ethic at least) at HNC level, but by then the apprentice system is almost stacked against them unless they already have one or go straight into a degree apprenticship.

For what its worth i'm usless at interviews, i dont sell meyelf enough. Last interview i had was for head of department. The interview pannel all knew me as it was internal but the role went to someone external with no experience at Further Education. My feedback was i was to informal and spoke as if we were all freinds round a table.
So 1 year later and i have made the decision i can't work or the new boss his managment style doesnt suit me (i was also noted thats he would need our help to get upto speed on things) and i've gone from being quite close to the managment team to practically ignored. I've tried to work with him and we have both tried to change style a bit (i made sure we had chats about why we seem to be clashing and how we can work through it, both of us) but it's just not working and my health is suffering for it.