There is wide discussion and research about how diverse and inclusive teams increase debate, drive innovation, and ultimately make better decisions. When looking to build a diverse team, some managers will make a job posting and are disappointed to see that their applicant pool is lacking diversity.
Research shows that the language that we use to describe a position impacts who will apply for the position. The goal is to encourage as many qualified applicants as possible to apply to a job posting, not to scare them away.
For example, the term "rockstar" will show up in job postings because the poster might think it is playful or attractive, but in reality it is not descriptive of the actual position, tends to have a gendered association, and may deter many qualified candidates from applying to the job.
The job-description-linter is a tool intended to help review job postings for non-inclusive language. Paste your job posting into the tool and see if any terms get highlighted.
Just because a term is highlighted doesn't mean that you have to exclude it. You should consider why the language is used, read the reason for why it was flagged, and use your best judgement to determine whether or not to keep it.
The following are a set of best practices you can use when writing a job description:
- Role description has clear, measurable requirements. Only non-negotiables are listed.
- (If present) nice-to-haves are limited and in paragraph form.
- Bullet points are limited to less than 30% of the document.
- Uses friendly welcoming language. Avoids aggressive and forceful language.
- Includes lots of “We” and “You” statements.
- Includes lots of verbs.
- Free of corporate clichés.
- Includes positive phrases.
- Includes description “Why” take this job and benefits of position
- Language includes deliberate terms that appeal to women and underrepresented groups. Avoids stereotypically masculine terms.
- Avoids describing the candidate in hyperbolic language.
- Draft is shared with a broad audience for feedback before publishing.
- Final document is shared broadly.
The terms are flagged based on category of terms, for instance aggressive or gendered terms. Some of the terms come from the resources listed below.
If you think we missed something, please contribute!
We would love your help contributing to this project!
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Start by opening a new issue describing the work you intend to submit.
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Fork the project, and setup a new branch to work in. Each group of changes should be done in separate branches, in order to ensure that a pull request only includes the changes related to one issue.
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Push the commits to your fork, submit a pull request and follow the code review progress.
Women in Tech: The Facts | National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)
Solutions to Recruit Technical Women | Anita Borg Institute
Advance Program Research and Guidelines | University of Michigan