Start with this question. When companies answer with "No! it reveals a lot about how they tackle this and probably any other problem. Gender diversity in tech is a social problem, a bias itself. Every company deals with it. Saying, there is no problem, is just logically a lie. This is a red flag.
Companies often have a good gender balance. But often not in your department. Tech, legal, sports, sales usually come with more male employees. HR usually is a female-dominated department. The company should try to find at least a 20% balance. The opposite gender should not be the only team member in a team. It creates friction. In female-dominated departments not so much as in male-dominated departments. The reason is, regardless of our gender, we commonly tend to belittle women. Creating a healthy environment, where people can get used to communicating with other genders will put down communication barriers.
Did those women in leadership start in your company with a leading position or did they grow into it?
It is good for the company to hire people from the outside to get a fresh perspective. But you also want to see, if the company builds upon the people it already has. So what does the company do, to build a career for their employees?
Here it gets serious. Some companies or even some individuals find gender diversity important, but is it built-in into their everyday working life? Individuals will promise you the stars, but then you realize you are heading against a wall when you speak to individuals such as their bosses.
hat gives her an idea if not only the company values diversity and inclusion but also if the employees value it. Yet, everyone can they, they value it.
PAST: What are your recent achievements and near-term goals?Can you give me some examples of specific actions from your team/the company that demonstrate your value of diversity?
Check the company out to differentiate between lip service and real values. This goes really deep. Regularly attending women in tech and LGTBQ+ meetups is an advantage. Sponsoring those is even better. This makes sure the company does not only leech the community but also sustains and grows it.
Digging deep here as well, to avoid talking instead of doing, we will find out, what the company has done so far for hiring diverse. Especially when working in a field such as tech, you often face a majority. A majority, that is so overwhelming, you wonder, why the company hasn't done any efforts yet to balance it out.
Ask this if you hadn't yet met a person like this from the interviewer pool. Some companies often don't have anyone available and had to substitute in a designer or PM), which is a signal. If you are a person in tech, you want to speak to a person in tech.
What do you do, if your male employees have a colleague with a female lead? How were previous incidents handled?
Women feel the need to prove themselves. It has a reason: Women are often forced to prove themselves, over and over again. And once they have done that, it is still not enough. Because of (gender) bias, people will find various kinds of reasons, not to like a specific human being. This is a topic of cognitive dissonance. Someone will always find a mistake in another person. You want to know, how the company deals with this type of conflict.
What activities are proactively done by your managers to remove their biases related to diversity and inclusion?
A question to prove, if a company means it. Observe if they start to think and only find sloppy answers. It means firstly, they haven't thought about reducing biases, and secondly, if they did, they haven't aligned yet. You also want to know whether the company came up with a strategy on how to raise awareness and sustain diversity. A company can hire pretty much diverse. But how many of them actually stay at that company?
What kind of training does management undergo in order to improve communication, especially within to improve diversity?
What does the company actually do, to improve the awareness for how to communicate with someone who is not male, white, and heterosexual? You want to know if the team members are trained regarding everyday biases.
How do you and your teammates promote inclusivity day-to-day? Can you provide any specific examples?
Look for topics like meeting etiquette behavior and written forms of communication to ensure it's not an environment where someone with the loudest voice wins.
Has the company thought about how a woman would love to get back to the company? Some women would love to get back full-time right away. Some others like part-time. Does the company support day child care? Also, pregnancy and a single mother carrying for her children are often seen as having less performance. From the company, you want to know, if mothers have the same opportunities as any other person in the company, where many of them could be dedicated fathers.
A reasonable evaluation makes sure, that you will be evaluated by professional metrics and not by biases. As soon as information is missing, people will fill it in with biases. You want to make sure, that the company is aware of that and has created a path that is equal for everyone.
Competence over confidence. You want to know how the company selects and grows its leaders. What are the criteria? Check in the gender ratio in leadership.
You want to know, what the company does to uncover any unprofessional acts from employees. Topics can be unprofessional comments up to sexual harassment. My blood pressure is still rising hearing the story of one of my mentees. She felt a lot of pressure from her CEO. When she reported this to her CTO it resulted in her being fired, because both of them reasoned, she would create unnecessary negativity inside the company. When you ask this question, dig deeper into how a company would handle a situation like this.
Did you ever wonder, why your peer has screamed at you when his country had Corona-lockdown? Did you ever wonder, why your report is working slowly and seems to be psychologically not present? Do you wonder, why your colleague is always reacting defensively? Or why do so many people quit?
Do you have people with disabilities, chronic illnesses and neurodiversity on the team? How do you ensure they feel psychologically safe and are set up for success?
I'm sure many companies simply won't hire anyone who is neurologically different, because they can't even imagine what it means. Another case is, they would think about it as a weakness and think, the person is not able to provide performance as anybody else. We forget, that we put everyone in the same environment. I have seen heavy fire doors, that people with physical disabilities haven't been able to open themselves and I have never seen a concept for people who have ADHD, which is pretty much common. Also, everyone not diagnosed with ADHD has a certain potential to get distracted quite a lot. Who of you has played the Facebook games, when they were big? You don't need Corona to get digitally distracted - Just to raise a bit of empathy. ;)