If you are looking to hire tech talent from diverse cultural, racial, gender, and ethical backgrounds, as well as from different ages, then you have come to the right place.
This article will serve as a guide to help you do just that. Moreover, if your company is based in the San Francisco Bay area—which boasts one of the highest costs of living in the entire United States—and are looking to hire not only diverse but also remote tech talent, this article will also help you locate recruiting avenues for you to peruse for that purpose as well.
For starters, congratulations. The decision to intentionally hire diverse tech talent not only positively impacts your team and company’s creative culture, but also positively impacts the greater tech community as well. Black and Latinx tech professionals make up roughly 15 percent of the tech industry. However, statistically speaking, they hold very few management positions.
Code2040
Organizations like Code2040 are on a mission to dismantle the unnecessary roadblocks that hinder the upward mobility of people of color into management positions in the tech industry. Through their Early Career Acceleration Program, they pair new tech professionals with more senior tech mentors who help prepare the applicant for a management position inside the tech industry. They also host a fellowship program that places Black and Latinx tech students at both college and graduate levels in intense, nine-week summer internships at top tech companies in the Bay Area. Reaching out to the Code2040 organization might be an excellent place for you to start in your quest to hire diverse talent.
DivInc
DivInc‘s programs help underrepresented founders overcome barriers in tech and entrepreneurship. DivInc believes by transforming the existing entrepreneur tech ecosystem into a more inclusive environment. The Accelerator Program is an intensive 12-week startup accelerator to equip diverse entrepreneurs with strategies to grow their business.
Coding Bootcamps
In addition to pioneering tech diversity championing organizations like Code2040, coding bootcamps hosted by schools like Kenzie Academy are helping to create diversity in the tech world and provide top-notch tech education through avenues that are away from the traditional tech education institutions. The days of spending two or four years to earn a computer science, information technology, or software engineering degree are quickly fading from the mainstream. Instead, those looking to learn the coding skills necessary to break into the tech industry successfully are doing so through coding bootcamps. These short-term and hyper-focused programs take students from all walks of life—both young and looking to start their first career as well as those with an entire career in another industry behind them—from no prior coding experience to programming professionals in less than a year. In fact, with many coding bootcamps offering online and self-paced options, many graduates finish their program in just 10 to 24 weeks.
The rise in popularity of coding bootcamps has created secondary tech hubs outside of two cities—New York and San Francisco—that up until now served as the main and almost sole tech centers for the US. Metropolitan areas like Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, and Seattle have blossomed into tech hotspots. With the greatly reduced cost of living—compared to Silicon Valley—many tech companies are finding top tier talent in these areas, hiring remote employees, and, in some cases, entire teams at a fraction of the cost. Many Silicon Valley-based companies pay a hefty price to recruit local top tech talent, with many salaries being as much as 30 percent higher than the national average. So, if you are looking for diverse tech talent, you may find it easier and more economical to hire remotely in these new secondary tech hubs.
SEO
Among the top tech fields for diverse and remote talent is in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This practice of creative keyword focus content is helping many companies drive high amounts of web traffic. Skilled SEO Managers know how to look for the right keyword queries and create relative content that helps their company’s website rank higher in the search results on search engines like Google or Bing. Tech companies from all sectors of the industry are finding it beneficial to hire diverse and remote SEO managers and sometimes even entire SEO teams.
Between coding bootcamp programs and organizations like Code2040, you can undoubtedly find some great diverse and remote-based talent!
