support for this podcast comes from Monster Worldwide. Monster has two products that are helping to shape the future of social recruiting. Talent Been 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. Hi, and welcome to episode 15 of the recruiting feature podcast. This week's guest is Shannade 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 Girls Encoding, 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 Shannade 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. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another recruiting feature podcast interview. Today, I'm in Monster's offices in Chancery Lane, talking to Shannade Bunting. Hi, Shannade, how are you? I'm great, Matt. How are you? I'm good. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do and kind of how you come to do it? My name is Shannade Bunting, as you said. I am the marketing director for Monster for the UK and Ireland. So, 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. So, we had an event on April the 16th of this year, and the title of the event was Girls and Coding, how they will be critical to female roles in the future workforce. It's 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 and 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 or men developing and owning the language of the future, women will be part of the conversation. And they kind of really struck me as like, well, hold on, if they aren't part of the conversation, they certainly won't be part of the workforce. And 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, we're kind of strength and tech talent. It's certainly something that, you know, we should possibly champion. 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 grind because we had other kind of 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, you know, Andy, do you know, Caitlin Moran? And he goes, yeah, so that was, she said this, you know, 90%, 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 quality. 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 you'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, 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. And what's the, I think you've got some stats around the actual problem. So what does the problem actually look like? 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? 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, maybe seen as an antiquated movie, 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 away. 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, you know, we should do. This makes complete business sense. So, we need to be doing it. We need to be doing it pretty darn quick. Cool. Okay. So, tell us more about the event. What kind of happens? You started on this kind of journey in this initiative. What did you do? So, the first thing, you know, we wanted to do was to get some credible people speaking at the event. And I kind of reached out to a number of, you know, women who are high profile in the tech industry. And I sent them a wee email and just said, you know, quoting Caitlin Moran, kind of saying, you know, this is something we really want to do, something about, would you be part of our event? And can we, you know, because we're working with the London Met films, can we film you? Can we get your story on camera? Because what we find, which I'll go on to 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, 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 Maria Mathegen. She founded Steremetz. Okay. And Anne-Marie 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, you know, at a high profile and bit investment bank. So an amazing person. And I'm Ali to Al West, who is the CEO of Code First Girls, XPWC, X World, you know, really economic forum. And Amelia Stere, 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 a dime, 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? Yeah. And, you know, mid term. Okay, you've got obviously females and males in your organization. How do you upskill them in tech encoding? And the third issue was, how do you, well, how do you go about recruiting, you know, tech talent today? But also, how do you retain female talent? And, you know, what we've seen is, you know, a lot of women are leaving tech because it's seen as, you know, an unfriendly female, you know, 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 grid pipeline. It's a 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 a dime. We have 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 giving, kind of go right back to when you're a baby, you know, we're giving girls get, you know, dollies and kitchens. And 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. From a very early age, we're conditioned and socialized into, you know, what route do we should be going down, you know. And the other thing is, there's no role models that, you know, for the young girls to aspire to and kind of go, "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 great job in tech. And what was really interesting is that in terms of the peg, you know, the gap, it's the smallest in the tech sector than any other sector it is yet. 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. Yeah. So there's kind of a sense of meritocracy and pay, but it's not reflected in the kind of, you know, the makeup of the sector as it were. Absolutely. 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 the, you know, did the event? That's great. What's kind of, you know, what's the sort of next step with this? Where is it going next? 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 a young, rewired state, have a festival of code. That's the end of July. It's the largest hackathon in the world. So 1200 kids from across the UK come together. So were the official recruitment partner for that. We're working with Code First Girls in London Tech with 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 found 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. Okay. And so our president, Andrea Petoni, at the end of the event, you know, stood up and said, you know, guys, you know, 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 a tech talent charter, and we have a number of organizations in our industry who have signed up to this. Okay. Can you say who they are at this point? Or is it? I don't want to kind of say, you know, because I have NASA kind of. So it's building momentum. It's building momentum is some amazing organizations have signed up to it. It's fantastic. And we're having a steering group towards 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 I'm Maria Maffodin, you know, gave me my first spoke to her about, you know, being involved. This is what 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. Right. So they're not, you know, going to dilute their, you know, possibility of getting that fee by a third, you know, absolutely their 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 and NFL football, where there's not enough ethnic minority coaches. So what this fellow Rooney did was what 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 the 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 go, 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 a, how we present ourselves was that, I think with a Molly 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, Molly? And she was saying, okay, you go on to their website. And there's pictures of guys, you know, hanging out, paying food, no women in sight. Their actual job postings say, recruiting for a ninja, you know, all this language is so non conducive or so welcoming to the female kind of, you know, target audience. So it's like, there's small things like that. So whether as an industry, you know, as job boards, we kind of go, we will, there'll be maybe a kind of kite mark at which this is a kind of job, you know, opening that is written in, you know, an 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. And are you involving recruiters in all of this as well? Is that, is that kind of part of it? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, these guys are the cool 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 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, et cetera. 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 it not only is it the right thing to do, it's kind of commercially complete sense. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. And what if people are listening, companies are listening, they want to get involved. What's that they do contact you? Or is there, what's the, what's what would be the step for being involved in this if the company wanted to get, you know, get involved? I would love them just to drop me an email. Okay. Sure. You know, I'll put you email address in there in the kind of show notes. And that's great. Yeah. The one thing I just want to add before we go is that, you know, I don't know if anyone saw the Martha Lee and Fox Dimbleby lecture. I know you did map. I know. Yeah. I thought it was for normal. I think if anyone's not seen that, look it up on YouTube. It's all about the, you know, the digital feature of the company, either what the government's wrote at the country, what the government's wrote to be in it. I thought it was, it was absolutely amazing. It was phenomenal. And she's always been one of my, you know, inspirations since I kind of came to the London, you know, first brick with your map, back up back in the day. But what she said, which to me is why we should all be doing this, you know, 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, you know, doing that, you know, we built the NHS, we can bloom and well hell become the best digital nation. It's such the prize is amazing. So we should be doing it. And, you know, they kind of, what the rewards will be at the 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. That's up skill, 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 a bit and hopefully we can work with other folks to make that happen. Snails, thank you very much for coming to me. Thanks, Matt. 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 at 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. This is my show. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
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
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