Want to Increase Workplace Diversity? There’s an App for That

To say that the tech industry has a diversity problem would be an understatement. Even though some companies keep the number of female and minority hires under wraps, it’s no secret that a “brogrammer” likely developed the app you just downloaded. But having a diverse team has many benefits (such as more creative ideas, a larger market share, and profitability), so Silicon Valley is fixing the situation the way it knows best: through an algorithm.

Created by Entelo, the staffing platform used by tech giants Facebook and Yelp, Entelo Diversity sifts through social media profiles and other online data to gather clues about a candidate’s gender, ethnicity, or military experience. Let’s say a recruiter is looking for an African American JavaScript engineer. For $10,000 a year, the search tool will present a filtered list of talent qualified to do the job. This objective process, Entelo said in a press release, “ensures that hiring practices aren’t discriminatory in nature.”

Given the recent Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s affirmative action ban in public universities, Entelo CEO Jon Bischke expects to raise more than a few eyebrows.

“It started with companies telling us, ‘We want to bring more women onto our engineering teams,’ ” he told The Wall Street Journal. Although he’s “sensitive” to claims of reverse discrimination, he pointed out that recruiters regularly source female, minority, and veteran talents from professional and campus networking events. Also, hiring managers are already looking at candidates’ LinkedIn photos and social media profiles to guess race and gender, a process that Entelo simplifies.

Tech recruiters seem to need a lot of help. Only 6.1 percent of men and 8.2 percent of women employed by Silicon Valley tech companies are African American, Latino, Native American, or Native Hawaiian, according to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Even when women earn degrees and successfully land tech positions, they often don’t fit in. Harvard Business Review found that 56 percent of female professionals quit science, engineering, and tech fields to escape “hostile macho cultures” and extreme work pressures; 63 percent of women experienced sexual harassment.

“There’s active discrimination going on today, and we hope this will mitigate that,” said Bischke. So far, Entelo Diversity has proved 95 percent accurate in predicting gender and race, and if it dodges privacy lawsuits, it may help bring a number of women and minorities on board. With issues as complex as workplace diversity and discrimination, however, it’s going to take more than an algorithm to bring about real change.