It's not sexist to say women aren't ambitious - it's about being gender bilingual

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A large engineering firm complained to me recently that they would “love to recruit more women, but they just don’t apply.” So we took a look at the job recruitment ads they use, the channels on which they published them, and the long list of bullet points that outlined the requirements for the job. Each of these things were unintentionally alienating female candidates.

Do your recruitment ads look like any of the following?

·         “looking for ambitious professionals determined to drive their careers to the next level and compete with the world’s best”

·         Black and white, unattractive ads with no colour or images, or images that show mostly (white) men

·         Ads and websites that focus on technology or other sundry widgets, and leave out humans entirely

·         Long lists of bulleted job requirements, not all of which are really necessary.  (If so the women who don’t meet them tend, more than men, not to apply)

If this sounds like your company’s ads, women aren’t likely to be overly impressed. While some men rejoice in competitive, career-enhancing and performance-oriented language, such as "The ideal candidate will be a high achiever with a passion that will inspire your team, along with the ability to manage those above and below you. We reward hard work…" ) , most women (and a growing number of millennials of both sexes) respond better to cooler, more collaborative language that points to a mission in the world.

One of Google’s recruitment ads that simply said “do cool things that matter,” or one of SHELL’s that asked “Is SHELL right for me?” Part of the flip is that companies now have to sell themselves to top talent rather than expect that they will be sold to...

Most managers think they speak in gender-neutral, “meritocratic” terms. But since most leadership teams are male-dominated (female chief executives in the FTSE 100 are still outnumbered by bosses called David) which outlines how little progress has been made in bringing diversity to the very top of UK plc. A lot of what happens in companies ends up reflecting how they look and sound.  The tone from the top defines how people talk — to each other and to customers. Most companies in traditionally male-dominated sectors (IT, finance, law, heavy industry) are unwittingly speaking and selling “male.”

They profess to be gender blind, but they actually need to become gender bilingual, able to speak compellingly to both men and women.

So here, are some examples of tweaking language to fit a dual purpose - attract the best candidates AND open yourself up to the best person for the job instead of just the best man.

•                Narrow, role focus TO   Inspiring, mission focus

•                ‘You will be the best, the biggest, the fastest’ TO ‘You will change customers lives

•                Competitive TO Collaborative

•                High-performing  TO    Excellence

•                Disruptive, ‘move fast and break things’ TO  Innovative and Improving

In our experience, clients who strategically designed gender bilingual recruitment ads ended up not only getting more women to apply, they also said the quality of men applying was notably higher. 

Turns out, many millennials aren’t crazy about the old command-and-control, competitive styles either. Nor are the ever-expanding group of older and experienced Boomers. So although women were the first to disrupt the existing status quo, now much of the workforce considers it unattractive or obsolete.

Advertising, websites, recruitment posts, and leadership gender ratios are the visible reflection of companies’ inner souls and employer brands. It’s not hard to become gender bilingual, but it only happens by design. Are you talking to 100% of the talent and 100% of the market? If not, why not? Note that in London, 86% of creative ad directors are men. It’s time to adapt advertising - all advertising - to the realities of the market, not the preferences of the past.

Data analytics shows which words and messages men and women actually respond to, and a company called TEXTIO will scan your recruitment ads to tell you whether yours are skewing male or female. You can change the gender ratio of applicants by changing your ad and where you place it.

Egalitarians who argue for sameness, or the post-gender crowd who claim that ‘binary’ is so yesterday may hate this stuff, but the fact that men and women are different is something marketeers have long known and used. Now that global graduates are 60% female, companies are increasingly interested in making sure they know how to manage what is becoming the majority of the educated talent – or risk losing it.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO of leading gender balance consultancy 20-First