Tech firms' diversity gap: quick solution is to fix hiring process

I AM the co-founder of a company that helps clients find ways to diversify their workforce. We recently set up an interview at a major company for a senior African-American woman software engineer. After meeting with the hiring panel, she withdrew her application, telling us that she felt demeaned by the all-white male group that failed to ask her any questions about her coding skills. She described how one of the men had made it clear to her that she wasn't a cultural fit and that therefore they didn't need to proceed with technical questions.

I hear stories like this regularly, as I work with companies in Silicon Valley and beyond that want to bring more women onto their tech teams. Higher-ups declare their intention to hire more women. But the actual hiring is still all too rare.

There's a continuing debate about the reasons for the lack of diversity in the tech sector, including candidate pools that are mostly male, and stubborn, superficial notions of what it means to be a "cultural fit" for an organisation - the template for which is often based on young white men. But at least one small component of this problem is immediately solvable: many companies are alienating the qualified women who want to work for them, and who they want to hire, during the interview process itself.