THE ROOT CAUSES OF VERY TYPICAL PROBLEMS IN SOURCING FEMALE CANDIDATES

Fewer women than men identify for internal promotion: Our research told us that in the workplace women spend more time doing and less time networking. That is not to say that they don’t place as much value on communication as their male counterparts, there quite simply seems to be an inclination to place more emphasis on the job well done than on leveraging contacts to succeed and progress. Perhaps this is because there are fewer contacts to leverage in the form of mentors and sponsors and so the goal has to be to get noticed for doing a fabulous job and unfortunately it appears that there is often an assumption amongst female employees that they will be contacted and called to the fore for an obviously relevant career opening. We know that this is not always the case and that a lack of female mentors and sponsors in senior leadership, coupled with unconscious bias might count against proactive contact for internal roles.

Locating and engaging hard to reach and invisible external candidates: Our experience tells us that women in external organisations are hard to reach, difficult to engage and sometimes absolutely invisible. Women are often not at all proactive in maintaining an eye on the outside for something bigger and better – they tend to focus on job in hand until such times as a new job is absolutely necessary. I have often found that female candidates have no CV prepared – I don’t think I have ever spoken with a man that does not have his résumé to hand, fully updated, ready to send & submit instantly. Time constraints also play a part.

 We were surprised to uncover just how many thousands of female professionals are not members of social & business networks. Many scientists, R&D and tech professionals have an aversion to our beloved LinkedIn!

 Untargeted advertising: Despite corporate efforts made in generating appealing material, it is often the case that not enough, if any, women identify for advertised roles because they are not looking, often because, relative to their male counterparts, women have no time to look.

 Incredibly and whatever we might like to believe in this age of supposed equality, tradition is still firmly in place in very many homes and families and across many cultures wherein the woman quite simply prioritises time outside of the workplace above switching the laptop back on to explore advertised career openings. Priorities include homework, bath-times, bedtimes, housework, shopping for essentials, DIY, car maintenance and managing finances, etc

Risk Aversion: Research tells us that risk aversion is particularly relevant to gender diversity sourcing, often severely hindering efforts made in gaining consent to progress female candidates in a hiring process. Many, many female professionals have stated that they ‘don’t pick up the phone to head hunters and almost go on red alert if an approach is made directly by talent acquisition within a competitor organisation.’ There is often an inherent fear of being seen to be seeking alternative employment, that somehow it will be leaked that a conversation has been had with a search firm or, worse still, a talent acquisition specialist from a rival firm.

Perception of availability of talent - geographic and cultural considerations: It is often assumed that in certain geographies or business sectors there will exist a smaller pool of female candidates for cultural and /or historic reasons. Where this truly is the case, it is within these geographies and sectors that we must dig deeper to advance women in leadership, in order to move the needle in gender diversity in years to come.

More often than not however, the pool is significantly larger than is immediately apparent. It may surprise you to know that women in business are occupying more senior positions and achieving greater advancement in the workplace in some regions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, than in parts of western Europe, including Switzerland, Germany and Austria, as well as the USA where only 20% of senior management roles are occupied by women (Catalyst), against a global average of 24%. Some of our more developed markets suffer from such shocking gender imbalance in senior leadership that government quotas have been set in place.

Where The Search Industry Falls Short: It is with great disappointment that our clients advise us that their chosen external search partners, however excellent, have not included enough female candidates on shortlists to create a balanced slate. More worryingly they are led to believe that such candidates do not exist, or are ‘not as good’.

Professionals within the search industry in fact experience the same difficulties in sourcing senior female talent as our clients.

1.  We have databases full of male candidates with an eye on the outside for the next challenge, the next step.
2. There is always a far greater response from male candidates to advertised roles or requests for referral.  
3. Most significantly where there are huge numbers of highly talented, geographically mobile male candidates registered and open to career moves for senior roles, consideration must be made of the commercial viability of our utilising additional resource and digging deeper than that which is already at our fingertips.
4. It pains me to add that unconscious bias in the search industry also plays a part in the shortlisting of candidates. Assumptions and decisions are often made without conversation, where relocation, a challenging market or a male boss potentially seeking to recruit in his own image might be issues that potentially impact upon the likely success of placing a candidate.
5. Unfortunately cultural and market perception still dictates that competent women will be overlooked and under-sourced by very efficient, but uninformed, results-driven search consultants

  In summary and for the most part, the challenges that are peculiar to sourcing and hiring female business professionals lie in reaching and engaging with women that do not readily identify for available roles as well as ensuring that women who are absolutely open to considering a career move, to relocate, to travel and to become commercial leaders, are not overlooked as a result of preconceived ideas around family commitments and mobility.

MNNERS MACLEAN LONG TERM ENGAGEMENT SOLUTION

The solution lies in a long-term engagement methodology for sourcing female talent. This methodology entails building and maintaining long term contact and relations with business professionals that may consider a career enhancing opportunity in future months and years, developing a strong understanding of the professional wants and needs of that individual, tracking their career development and ensuring that they are advised of all relevant openings and canvassed for referrals where their network may yield highly relevant candidates for a specific opportunity.

It is a proven methodology that delivers tangible results for external sourcing and the entire Manners Maclean Diversity division's business model is based upon it.