In this episode Matt Alder talks to Sinead Bunting Marketing Director for Monster in the UK and Ireland.
Women are currently massively unrepresented in the technology sector and dealing with this problem is of critical importance for the growth of every company trying to succeed in our digital world.
On the back of their recent successful “Girls in Coding” event Monster has stepped up to help facilitate the debate round this issue in the recruitment sector. In the interview Sinead talks about the motivation behind doing this, highlights the seriousness of the problem and discusses some potential medium and long term solutions which are emerging from the conversation.
Links from the episode:
Monster’s Girls In Coding event and video
Sinead’s contact details – sinead.bunting@monster.co.uk
Martha Lane Fox’s Dimbleby Lecture
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Monster Worldwide. Monster has two products that are helping to shape the future of Social Talent Bin by Monster, which enables companies to source the best tech talent from the open web, and Monster Social Job Ads, which extends job advertising reach to target both passive and active candidates on social platforms, including on Twitter.
Matt Alder [00:00:41]:
Hi, and welcome to episode 15 of the Recruiting Future podcast. This week’s guest is Sinead Bunting, marketing director for Monster in the UK and Ireland. A few weeks ago, Monster ran an event which was fantastically well received. The event was called Go Girls in Coding how they will be Critical to Female Roles in the Future Workforce. This was the first stage of an ongoing campaign that sees Monster facilitating a discussion to come up with solutions to the problem of the lack of women in the tech industry. Personally, I think the event is a fantastic initiative from Monster. I’ve also known Sinead for a long time and I know that it’s something that she’s very passionate about. Her passion certainly comes across very clearly in the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:28]:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another recruiting feature podcast Interview. Today I’m in Monster’s offices in Chancery Lane talking to Sinead Bunting. Hi, Sinead, how are you?
Sinead Bunting [00:01:40]:
I’m great, Matt, how are you?
Matt Alder [00:01:41]:
I’m good. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do and kind of how you. How you come to do it?
Sinead Bunting [00:01:47]:
My name is Sinead Bunting, as you said. I am the marketing director for Monster for the UK and Ireland. So.
Matt Alder [00:01:54]:
Okay, yeah, that’s cool. Now, Monster have been doing a lot of work around the issue of the lack of females in the sort of technical and digital industries. Tell us a bit about what you’ve sort of been doing, the event that you ran and everything.
Sinead Bunting [00:02:12]:
So we had an event on April 16th of this year and the title of the event was Girls in How they will be Critical to Female Roles in the Future Workforce. Quite pithy. And the backstory to why we had the event, it all kind of began last July. I had got tickets to go and see the author, Caitlin Moran, who I’m a huge fan of. And I was about to go on holiday, so I didn’t want to be thinking about work, if I’m being totally honest. But she said something that got me thinking all about work. She said this kind of quote, which was, if 90% of coders are men, developing and owning the language of the future, women Won’t be part of the conversation. And that kind of really struck me. I was like, well, hold on, if they aren’t part of the conversation, they certainly won’t be part of the workforce. I thought, you know, I’d love to do something about this. This is pretty critical. And, you know, as marketing director of Monster, I thought, you know, we certainly, you know, with what we do, you know, our kind of strength and tech talent, it’s certainly something that, you know, we should possibly champion.
Matt Alder [00:03:24]:
Okay.
Sinead Bunting [00:03:24]:
And that was really it. So that was happened last July and, you know, it’s taken some time to kind of get off the ground because we had other kind. We had the relaunch last year, et cetera. So we kind of. I went to my boss and, you know, after I got back from the holidays and said, andy, do you know Caitlin Moran? And he goes, yes. Well, she said this, you know, 90%, da, da, da, da da. And I think we should do something about it. Didn’t know what he was going to say, just not, you know, he’s completely, you know, all for equality. You know, he’s got, you know, loads of women on the management team in the uk, but it was just in terms of business priorities and resource. And he said to me, absolutely, you know, do whatever you need to do. You have my 100% support. And it was probably the easiest pitch I’ve ever had to do in my time at Monster in terms of selling in marketing ideas. So that was great. And I think what we did was okay. It’s pretty broad topic, you know, you know, women in technology, women in general in the workforce. Where do you start? And I thought, when, you know, sitting down with the team, we thought, well, first of all, let’s raise awareness of it. So, you know, people in our industry don’t know it’s an issue, then people can’t do anything about it.
Matt Alder [00:04:32]:
And what’s the. I know you’ve got some stats around the actual problem, so what does the problem actually look like?
Sinead Bunting [00:04:39]:
Well, just to kind of illustrate it, I’ll give you three numbers. So 17, 24 and 745,000. So what do those numbers mean?
Matt Alder [00:04:51]:
Do we need to add them together?
Sinead Bunting [00:04:53]:
Well, what they mean is basically there’s 17% of females working in tech today. There are 24% females in the House of Lords. So, you know, the House of Lords may be seen as an antiquated, maybe old institution has more females than tech, which is all about the future. So something, something seriously wrong here. And the other number, which kind of provides a wider context is the fact that we need to recruit 745,000 workers with digital skills by 2017. That’s two years. And if we need to recruit as an industry, so many people in digital, we can’t ignore 50% of the population. You know, it just doesn’t make business sense and it’s just not the right thing to do. And I think also in terms of the females kind of working, you know, what we’ve kind of seen from, I think there was some research last year or a couple of years ago from Credit Suisse, which showed that companies that have more women on their board, who have more women in senior management positions, they make more money, they’re more commercially successful. So this isn’t something that we should do. This makes complete business sense. So we need to be doing it and we need to be doing it pretty darn quick.
Matt Alder [00:06:12]:
Cool. Okay, so tell us more about the event. What kind of happened? You started on this kind of journey, this initiative. What did you do?
Sinead Bunting [00:06:20]:
So the first thing we wanted to do was to get some credible people speaking at the event. And I kind of reached out to a number of women who are high profile in the tech industry and I sent them away email and just said, quoting Caitlin Moran, kind of saying, this is something we really want to do something about. Would you be part of our event? And can we. Because we’re working with the London Met Film School. Can we film you? Can we get your story on camera? Because what we find, which I’ll go into in a wee bit, is there’s no role models. And at Monster, certainly from a marketing perspective, you know, we’re very much about real people telling their stories of how, you know, they’re far and better. And, you know, so I wanted to kind of film those ladies as well. And everyone I spoke to, you know, even the people who weren’t at the event, all these amazing women in tech were just so helpful, so collaborative. And we got this brilliant panel. So we had the likes of Ann Maria Mafferton, she founded Stermet. And Annemarie is a member of the brainiest family in Britain. She did, at 11 years old, she did an A level in it, the youngest ever. And she works, you know, at a high profile investment bank. So an amazing person. And Amali Dalwes, who is the CEO of Code First Girls ex PwC ex, World Economic Forum. And Amelia Steer, who used to work at Jimmy Shoe in marketing and has set up her own coding company. So it was phenomenal. And that was really a key metric of the success of the day was we had amazing women who were prepared to give up their time and go and talk about the issues. And just in terms of the way we broke it down because it’s complex. Yeah. You know, how do you sort it out? So we just broke it down into long term. So how do we get more girls into the pipeline and midterm? Okay, you’ve got obviously females and males in your organization. How do you upskill them in tech, in coding? And the third issue was how do you go about recruiting tech talent today, but also how do you retain female talent? And what we’ve seen is a lot of women are leaving tech because it’s seen as, you know, an unfriendly female. Female unfriendly environment. Sorry. So there’s some stat like 50% of women quit the tech sector by their mid careers. So, you know, it’s no point in having this, you know, building a great pipeline if the kind of environment that women are going into, you know, isn’t, you know, friendly or conducive to them as a gender. So that’s the way we broke it down. We had three panels and some of the issues that came, you know, why do girls not get into tech? You know, you’ll know this. The toys that we’re given kind of goes right back to when you’re a baby, you know. Right, yeah, we’re given. Girls get, you know, dollies and kitchens. It’s all about, you know, being pretty and pink and being a homemaker. Boys get toys that are all about making something and solving something. So from a very early age, we’re conditioned and socialized into, you know, what route we should be going down. You know, the other thing is there’s no role models, you know, for young girls to aspire to and kind of. Oh, yeah, you know, there’s such and such. She’s a real inspiration. She can do it. I can do it. So there’s a lack of female role models in the media and it’s certainly portrayed that way. And I just think there’s a lack of awareness that you can get a really, get a great job in tech. And what was really interesting is that in terms of the pay, you know, the gap, it’s the smallest in the tech sector than any other sector.
Speaker B [00:10:00]:
Is it?
Sinead Bunting [00:10:01]:
It is, yeah. So it’s. As a woman, you know, you can get a great job, but you’ll also get paid a lot better than other industries.
Matt Alder [00:10:07]:
Yeah. So there’s kind of a sense of meritocracy and pay but not, it’s not reflected in the kind of, you know, the, the makeup of the sector as it were.
Sinead Bunting [00:10:16]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:10:17]:
And what were the, you know, what were the sort of conclusions from the day? What were the outputs? What, you know, what sort of, you know, did the event. That’s great. What’s kind of, you know, what’s the sort of next step which this, where is it going next?
Sinead Bunting [00:10:31]:
So I was kind of very conscious that, you know, it’s lovely having an event and you know, you know, it was, it was fully packed, it was great, the feedback was fantastic. But we kind of wanted a longer term solution and you know, we’re sponsoring a number of things such as Young Rewired State have a festival of Code that’s at the end of July. It’s the largest hackathon in the world. So 1200 kids from across the UK come together. So we’re the official recruitment partner for that. We’re working with Code First Girls in London Tech Week, doing, you know, workshops and everything. But that’s brilliant. Well done, monster. But that’s not going to move the dial, you know. And what I find from talking to all these amazing women is there’s some amazing initiatives happening. But you know, I’ve always thought this, that we need to, as an industry work together to collaborate and to kind of put together what we’ve just coined the Tech Talent Charter.
Matt Alder [00:11:25]:
Okay.
Sinead Bunting [00:11:26]:
And so our president, Andrea Pitoni, at the end of the event, you know, stood up and said, you know, guys, you know, it’s been a great event, we’re doing this, but you know, we need to work together to make a real genuine difference. And so we are forging the Tech Talent Charter and we have a number of organizations in our industry who have signed up to this.
Matt Alder [00:11:47]:
Okay, can you say who they are.
Matt Alder [00:11:48]:
At this point or is it.
Sinead Bunting [00:11:50]:
I don’t want to kind of, you know, you know, because I have NASA kind of, it’s building momentum, it’s building momentum. There’s some amazing organizations have signed up to it. It’s fantastic. And we’re having a steering group the end of June where we’re just kind of going to forge a kind of what that Tech Charter means and just to kind of give you. So what is the Tech Charter? What does that mean? Obviously it’s a kind of, we’re working on at the moment. But one of the examples that Ann Maria Maffadin, you know, gave me when I first spoke to her about, you know, being involved, this is what she said, she said, she said that what Happens is from a recruitment consultant perspective, she kind of was saying that they always put forward three male candidates. They don’t tend to put forward a woman. And the reason for that is that what they find in their experience is that the woman never gets the job. So they’re not, you know, gonna, you know, dilute their possibility of getting that fee by a third, you know. Absolutely. They’re a commercial organization. So what she was saying is, you know, we should have some kind of charter where we sign up. And it was. It kind of put me in mind of the Rooney principle in NFL football where there’s not enough ethnic minority coaches. So what this fellow Rooney did was you don’t have to recruit an ethnic minority, but in the kind of recruitment process, you have to at least consider one. And that’s just a way of kind of, you know, bringing kind of, you know, diverse audiences and groups up. So one of the things that we wanted to do with the tech talent charter, in kind of collaboration with, you know, companies in this area, is gonna, what can we do? Can we kind of sign up to go? We will always, if possible, you know, if they’re available, put forward one female just so that we can start to move the dial. The other area that kind of came up from how we present ourselves was that, I think was Amali mentioned that, you know, she gets approached by these companies and they go, we’re not getting any female, you know, candidates. I don’t understand why, you know, why is this happening, Mali? And she was saying, can you go onto their website and there’s pictures of guys, you know, hanging out, playing foosball, no women in sight. There are actual job postings, say, recruiting for a ninja. All this language is so not conducive or so welcoming to the female kind of target audience. So it’s like, there’s small things like that. So whether as an industry, as job boards, we kind of go, we will there be maybe a kind of kite mark at which this is a kind of job opening that is written in inclusive language. So that’s another start. So there’s many ways we can kind of, you know, skin the cat. It’s also how can we get the government involved? So it’s government and kind of industry working together.
Matt Alder [00:14:39]:
And are you involving recruiters in all of this as well? Is that kind of part of it?
Sinead Bunting [00:14:44]:
Oh, absolutely. So, you know, these guys are the coal face of doing this. And it’s interesting. I met with a big recruitment consultancy firm last week, and, you know, they made the point, which is Very valid. Which is often. And recruiters are the folks that, you know, are the consultants to organizations to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do, whether that’s, you know, employment law, etc. So if we have those guys on board, then, you know, we can make a genuine difference. And the point to Remember is there’s 745,000 digital skilled workers we need to recruit. That’s what we need to do as an industry. That’s 745,000 different briefs. So not only is it the right thing to do, it’s kind of commercially complete sense.
Matt Alder [00:15:27]:
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And what if people are listening? Companies are listening, they want to get involved. What should they do? Contact you? Or is there. What’s the. What would be the step for being involved in this? If the company wanted to get involved?
Sinead Bunting [00:15:45]:
I would love them just to drop me an email.
Matt Alder [00:15:48]:
Yeah, we’ll put your email address in the kind of show notes.
Sinead Bunting [00:15:51]:
And that’s the one thing I just want to add before we go is that, you know, I don’t know if anyone saw the Martha Leon Fox Dimbleby lecture. I know you did, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:16:01]:
I thought it was phenomenal. I think if anyone’s not seen that, look it up on YouTube. It’s all about the, you know, the digital future of the company, what the government’s role of the country, what the government’s role should be in it. I thought it was absolutely amazing.
Sinead Bunting [00:16:15]:
It was phenomenal. And she’s always been one of my, you know, inspiration since I kind of came to London first breakfast. We met back up back in the day. But what she said, which to me is why we should all be doing this, this is what she says, it is within our reach to leapfrog every nation in the world and become the most digital, most connected, most skilled and most informed on the planet. The prize of the UK doing that we built nhs, we can blooming well held, become the best digital nation. The prize is amazing, so we should be doing it and, you know, the kind of. What the rewards will be epic. So it’s such an amazing kind of vision and something to go towards. So, you know, let’s get more females in tech, let’s upskill the uk, you know, populace so that we become that. And that to me is something really exciting. So that’s what we’re working on and, you know, we’re just trying to do our bit and hopefully we can work with other folks to make that happen.
Matt Alder [00:17:09]:
Sinead, thank you very much for talking to me.
Sinead Bunting [00:17:12]:
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:17:14]:
My thanks to Sinead Bunting. I’ll put Sinead’s contact details and links to the campaign in the Show Notes. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or on Stitcher. You can listen to past episodes and read show notes@www.rfpodcast.com and also subscribe to the mailing list to get exclusive content and find out about future guests. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
