I only noticed this because someone retweeted it, I haven’t seen the job mentioned anywhere otherwise, so maybe you’re just not reaching enough people in general?

Having read it now, I’d personally prefer more details – how big are the “teams” (if any), how do they communicate as its telecommute, is it maint work or new projects, how come such a wide range of skills etc.. The ad for a whole bunch of vague jobs at once is a bit.. vague.

None of this is female specific though, were I looking right now I might apply out of curiosity.

Also, stop worrying about that so much..

Offer paid training classes like the phone companies!

I have worked for a few science and IT companies, and the only one who had anything like a balanced ratio of male and female developers had a very specific policy – don’t hire IT graduates. Given that it was small, and had to compete with nearby super-IT companies, it probably may not have got the best IT grads anyway – so it recruited graduates from history, archaeology, english – and mature candidates on career changes. It tested for aptitude and then spent six weeks of very intensive training.

This obviously cost money – but it ended with a very diverse range of programmers, testers, project managers and architects, who were enthused, communicated well and worked superbly with clients.

You could perhaps look at offering placements to students from local colleges, with a focus on positive discrimination. That way you get to indoctrinate new geeks in the ways of data transparency, test out their aptitudes in a practical setting, and offer good people jobs at the end of their course. Plus your existing devs have the chance to improve their people management & mentoring / coaching skills.

For the students, they get to see the insides of a very interesting organisation, implementing neat ideas (perhaps their own) — and placements give solid industry experience outside a college curriculum, always nice on their CV.

This worked for me 10 years ago, when I was one of 3 women on a 23 person Software Engineering course. The company who gave me a placement was great, and I was very happy to accept a job with them afterwards. If it hadn’t suited me, well, a placement’s not such a long time, and once it’s over, there’s no remaining commitment on either side (not like trying to quit a job / fire someone who’s not a good fit.)

Perhaps this is a bit longer-term than regular recruitment, I’d see it as an additional strategy, rather than replacing your advert.

In my opinion, the best thing is to make everyone feel equally wanted. This post draws attention to the fact that they are apparently not (apparently they are a special case that deserve a separate post), and that is usually precisely the problem.

Instead of asking yourself ‘how can we get women on the list’, ask yourself what it is that apparently women haven’t considered applying. Have you done enough to ensure that everyone feels they are equally wanted, regardless of their gender? Does your job ad contain elements that appeal to female developers or did you go for the ‘tech savvy hungry for information, geeky and ambitious male developer’? Maybe you could mention the work life balance as well, how important family is to you and what that means for the work relationship. Next to the tech aspects of a job, those are things that more family oriented developers (both male and female) pay attention to these days.

@Ed

Diversity makes groups more productive. Actually, a recent Harvard study on group dynamics specifically found that groups that included women were more productive than those that didn’t because being a woman correlates with higher social intelligence (no biology necessary: social intelligence is learned and girls in school are held to higher standards that boys.) If everyone in your group shares the same background and skillset you are artificially limiting the ideas you can possibly come up with.

As for the job ad, the only thing I’d recommend would be adding something like, “even if you don’t think you have the background we’re looking for” after “Most of all, we’re looking for coders who look at the services we have built so far and think “I wish I’d been on that project”.” With that ad you are unlikely to get any highly-trained, experienced coders, but you are likely to get people who may have taught themselves Visual Basic to automate spreadsheet operations and Javascript to make a webpage and so forth, but don’t think of themselves as having two years of programming experience.
It is also true that women are less likely to apply for jobs they don’t believe themselves qualified for (even when they are), whereas many men will throw their hat into the ring for nearly anything. And so making it clear that it is more about whatever-it-is-you-actually-care-about and less about a checkbox is a good way to lower the barriers to application.

I’d also recommend reaching out through social networks (real-world or on line, either way). I came from a non-coding background and got my first job at a wedding, where I nerded out with a guy for a couple hours and at the end of it he asked, “oh, hey, would you like a job?” The more people, especially women, you can get looking out for candidates the more likely you are to find them. If your group so far is all-male, if any of them are straight and coupled get their partners in on the search. This is part of why once you have two or three women it becomes much easier to recruit future women (plus when people come in for an interview there isn’t the intimidating moment of “no one in the room looks like me”.)

Someone showed me this today. I didn’t see your initial ad, mostly because I wasn’t looking for a job… but to be honest, I think I’d be put off now knowing that you’re specifically looking to see girl devs, now, because I’d be unsure of *why* you want to specifically attract them.

I expect you just want to do a bit of outreach and diversify your applications, but if I got a job with you, a little bit of me might always wonder if I got it because you wanted more girls in your team.

Hmm. It’s a real tough one. Although I’m certain this post will get you a few more CVs.

(This is no slur on mySociety – I know some of you guys, and you’re all great… and I imagine you’re super nice to work for – if I was looking, I’d be tempted. Just a general muttering on positive discrimination practices.)

When your ad says TELECOMMUTE it should be open to women ALL over the world. By keeping it open to only UK women you are losing out on DIVERSITY.

Have you thought of advertising on the Linuxchix jobs list?
http://www.linuxchix.org/jobposts-list-guidelines.html
Especially given that almost all your projects are open-source!

For that matter – try Mumsnet or similar? Not a techie site, but a good way to plug into a network of parents who might, male or female, be very interested in doing the work they’re trained for from home.

I’ve worked on plenty of projects where the ratio was a lot better than 90:10 – it’s like the other Anna up there says, women techies tend to go where women techies already are. We’re not evenly distributed. Plenty of companies have none, other companies take their share instead. I’ve also heard women advised to go for big corporates if they want a family, as they’re less likely to be mysteriously made redundant shortly after they announce their pregnancy. (30K each year, according to the Fawcett Society, tho that’s not a tech specific thing).

From my point of view: I don’t find this call for more female applicants AT ALL discouraging. I find it very encouraging, it tells me you guys are serious about considering any application I might make fairly, and that you’re aware that fairness doesn’t just “happen”, you have to work at it. If I was looking, I’d apply.

I’d also like to support the call for more female applicants. As someone who works with mysociety, it’s the the most mature geeky organisation I know. It’s tempting to think about it as a bunch of male first year computer scientists, I was one once and the 20:1 ratio at that level is not good, but mysociety is not that. It’s a diverse organisation of passionate and professional people; I don’t know many people who’d be up to it, never mind their gender. Just do it.

A friend pointed me to this and I looked around your site. My immediate reaction to the photo on the “about us” section, was “hell, no”. The only person looking actually unhappy is female (yes, could just be distraction, but we’re talking first impressions here), and the overall atmosphere is, well, “blokey” (drinking, horsing around). That’s fine, but it will put some women off. And I hate to say it, but it’s exactly the sort of photo I would have expected from the last place I experienced sexual discrimination. So yeah, it would put me off applying.
Luckily, I love my current job 😉

The ad is certainly vague. As a mother, the travel aspect puts me off of applying, and I’d want more information on what telecommunications will be used plus how often I’d be expected to travel and check in at a real office.

You must bear in mind that there just aren’t many experienced female programmers out there looking for work, you’d get maybe three or four for every 100 applicants.

As a side note unrelated to gender, the ad mentions career change and building a career with you then later says “work with us for a little while”. With a family to support, that is confusing and the uncertainty would put me off applying.