If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: It’s so much easier to build a diverse company from the ground up than it is to try to retroactively unwind a white dude company later. So the sooner startups start thinking about a diverse workforce, the better off they’ll be in the long run. And if you need help to think about that diversity? There’s a startup for that: ScoutSavvy.
It’s a service that helps you leverage compound diversity. What’s that?
The concept of compound diversity goes beyond simply getting more people from diverse backgrounds into high paying tech jobs and then encouraging them to thrive in these roles. We must also give people from marginalized backgrounds and underrepresented communities the skills and resources that they need to become great leaders. These leaders will then use their positions of power to give even more people from marginalized backgrounds and underrepresented communities the skills and resources that they need to become great leaders. And those leaders will . . . well, you get the idea.
How did this come about?
“While working at a mobile development agency in Portland, I helped the CEO work on strategies to shift the culture during a growth period. We transformed from a ‘heads down, get your work done and leave’ culture to an inclusive, team-based culture,” said Kathryn Brown, founder of Scout Savvy. “We not only reinvented our public facing image and branding, we also worked on the internal culture. I remember one Thanksgiving I made everyone anonymously write down three things they were thankful for, directed at co-workers by name, and we all picked them out of the box and read them out loud during a team lunch. It was super hokey, but activities like this transformed our experience working together as a team. As the culture shifted, we noticed that more women and minorities were interested in applying for our open jobs.”
So how do Portland startups take advantage of this awesomeness?
HR departments can use ScoutSavvy’s web platform to find diverse candidates and invite them to apply for their open jobs. Company recruiting teams can search through the candidate database by location, skill sets, education, and career level, but they won’t see a candidate’s name until that candidate has clicked to apply for a job. The app also does not include profile photos of candidates at all. Instead, keeping with ScoutSavvy’s career path branding, each user is assigned a unique tree icon.
For more information or to start doing a better job of diversifying your company, visit ScoutSavvy.
