Social media company Pinterest’s new Head of Diversity has revealed her recruitment attitudes in an interview with Bloomberg.
The technology industry has faced criticism over representation, with many company’s employing a Head of Diversity to make their workforces more representative of society. Candice Morgan is the first to be appointed at Pinterest.
A frequently sounded option is quotas. But Morgan believes the problem with quotas lies in the very word itself.
“I’m not a fan of quotas. Quotas are kind of fixed numbers that an organisation wants to meet at any cost. And the goal is to aim for that target, but not at the expense of sacrificing those high standards and qualities that you look for in really strong people.” She prefers the word “targets” instead.
She said varied, or “experimental”, recruiting is the key to maximising the most value from a talent pool. In terms of diversity, Morgan suggests that the bias might lie in the criteria itself.
“When people automatically assume that diverse recruiting is lowering standards, or looking at different schools is lowering standards, they’re missing people.
“[Make the] criteria for success very, very clear, and [apply these] same criteria across all the people they talk to. I think that’s the same with anybody shooting for a career. They want to be tested, they want to work hard.
“If you’ve got 4.5% Latino people coming out of universities, we should be able to hire at that same rate. I think if we see women coming out of programs just as fast and approaching half of graduates, then why aren’t we hiring that proportion?"
She also wishes to reformulate what a cultural fit is: “It’s not a well-defined term. You’re actually eliminating perfectly qualified people because you’re asking the wrong question, that’s a problem.”
Do you agree? How would you redefine cultural fit? Let us know below.
