Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership

I almost broke out laughing when I came across an article in Fast Company magazine entitled Why You Can’t Find Women Engineers. This title reflects a common misconception among business executives about the shortage of technically qualified women at their firms.

This often-repeated “shortage statement” is only partially true, and if you believe it, you will never fill your firm’s diversity recruiting targets.

Let’s examine this shortage issue from a different perspective.

If you limit your perspective to the total workforce availability, you may be thinking about a long-term shortage of technically trained women coming out of college. But as a recruiter or executive, you should only be focused on recruiting the relatively small number of women you need at your firm. So if you stop worrying about the total supply and instead focus on the needs of your own individual firm, you will find that there is plenty of technical female talent available … and you can easily find them working across the street at your competitor!

So the answer to the “insolvable diversity recruiting problem” is actually quite simple. Develop a competitor recruiting process that effectively identifies and then recruits away the top female technical talent who are currently working at no more than a handful of the best firms in your industry. Read More »