How Do We Get the Best Team?

Diversity Struggles in IT

    I am the child of a single mother. In an era when working women were an anomaly, my mother was the first member of her family to attend college. Out of a sense of duty to family, she bypassed a traditional path of becoming a school teacher and instead pursued a Bachelor of Chemistry. She would go on to become Canada’s first female food and drug inspector and work in pharmaceutical chemistry with the largest companies in the world. My mother taught me so much. Through her spirit of always wanting to be the very best she could be, anything less than her best is a waste of the gifts of all the gifts she was born into. Mom, as smart as she was, went through the world with great humility and awareness that she was not all-wise, and that there was always someone else smarter than she was about something.

    As a manager, I follow in her footsteps and seek to surround myself with the very best people. I tell everyone that I want to hire people smarter than I am so that osmotically I can become more intelligent by learning from my team. I believe in surrounding myself with people who have strong opinions that are loosely held. When we differ in perspective on how something can be done, I delight in knowing that, by the time we have looked at our different approaches to a problem, we are going to have a great solution. It is amazing to be on a team where every individual feels humbled by the brilliance, work ethic. I keep my team challenged. I celebrate their success and respect what they bring to the table. As a result, everyone brings their best game to the field every day, every week, every time.

    A lot of the work that I do is leading technology infrastructure teams for IT. Over the last 15 years, I have seen that my field is incredibly tilted toward white men. I have been in organizations that often take the easy road of hiring engineers that are like them, with occasional diversity hires. African Americans, Hispanic, or Asian engineers are somewhat rare. Women in IT infrastructure are scarce. I don’t seek to hire non-white staff members out of a sense of political correctness. I aim to hire diverse candidates out of selfishness.

    I fear the echo chamber that comes with a team of “yes men”. If we have all come from the same culture, and if we all have the same gendered perspective, we could be totally blind to truly great solutions in favor of solutions that may be easy or comfortable. Men and women, because they have unique experiences from each other, approach the world in slightly different ways. Many white people know they have worked hard to get to where they are at and have no idea that so many doors opened for them that are closed to others. Overcoming adversity in society builds character and sharpens your ability to overcome challenges that might cause some to give up. Almost anywhere you go, your customers are going to be diverse, with different socioeconomic backgrounds, racial identities, and gendered perspectives. If, as a team, you can’t walk in the shoes of your customers, you can’t understand their needs and help them in the way that they would truly appreciate. A team of white guys is going to miss the boat over and over again.

    As a manager, I set the agenda for the standards we expect on our teams. We have to have a great customer service ethic and genuinely love helping other people. We have to be willing to think of creative solutions. We have to be good communicators. We need to respect each other and be willing to strongly defend our ideas until presented with a better idea. We have to be able to laugh with each other and cheer each other on. We have to hold each other accountable. We always have to be willing to learn. We must be ready to move out of what we are comfortable doing and learn how to do something new until we become comfortable with those new things.

    So, while we can’t lower our standards, I nonetheless tell HR and recruiters that I work with that I’m looking for a diversity candidate. I stress this for all the reasons I have listed here. I exhaustively interview as many candidates as I can find. I reach out to as many recruiters and recruiting channels as I can. And I keep coming up short on diversity. I cannot find enough diversity candidates and feel that I fail every time, even though I’m filling open positions with great people.

    As an example, in my most recent recruiting experience, I had an Operations Administrator position open. The OA is a jack-of-all-trades who must be deep enough in all areas of managing the infrastructure that they can solve the problems that our frontline (and talented) helpdesk staff cannot. Out of 48 candidates, I had one female candidate. She had a promising resume as an infrastructure consultant working with many of the technologies we use. Twice in a row, she missed the initial screening interview, and I usually would have passed on a candidate, but I wanted to give one more chance. My executive admin was rooting for her to be successful at first. When I finally was able to catch up with this candidate, she apologized for missing the interviews with a detailed story of personal health and life transition issues. She seemed excited about the opportunity, and I could tell that the Operations Administrator position was just the right next rung in the ladder of her career that would carry her higher. She thought that we had a fantastic sounding company and team (in my humble opinion, we do, and we do). Though my executive assistant was growing jaded at her attention to detail and the ability to show up at meetings, I asked her to schedule an in-person interview. She ghosted us. No show, no call, no email, no text. Nothing.

    I was excited to bring a different background, a different approach, and a different set of experiences to my team. While my team is excellent, like my mother, I’m a believer in continuous improvement and know we can be better. We came up short last time, but we will keep looking to find an amazing person. I am hoping that we find someone who will not only be great but will challenge us to be even greater. Like my mom, we will keep trying.