Sponsor an event for women in tech like Founder Friday or Girl Geek Dinners. Femgineers eat too!
By Poornima Vijayashanker (Founder & CEO, BizeeBee)
My boyfriend, who’s an engineer, and his CEO are part of a prominent Silicon Valley startup that are currently as they say “killing it!” They’ve managed to become pretty successful in the past year through bootstrapping their business. As a result, of their growth they are looking to hire more developers, and in particular they want to hire more women, because they fundamentally believe that a diverse workplace will lead to a better company.
What’s funny though is that these bright boys don’t know where the femgineers are hanging out.
Here’s the advice I gave them to help their recruiting efforts:
#1 – Post on Women 2.0’s Job Board
#2 – Don’t be a lazy startup boy. If you want a femgineer, you have to get out and meet her!
Fortunately femgineers hang out together and host meetups like Women Who Code. They meet weekly in San Francisco. There are Founder Friday events filled with femgineers, and you could also convince a nice geeky gal to invite you to the next Girl Geek Dinner (really hard to get in but so worth it!)
#3 – Sponsor an event by offering to cover food, Femgineers need to eat too!
Check out Meetup or Startup Digest for upcoming events being hosted by female developers.
#4 – Partner with those who are teaching the next crop of femgineers.
Femgineers are being created at Hackbright Academy and Girls Who Code.
#5 – If all else fails you can reach out to me.
I’ll start a search, but it will cost you a really nice dinner.
Now I’m sure the next thing you’ll ask me is “I found one! But how do I entice her to come work for me?” Stay tuned…
This post was originally posted at Femgineer.
Women 2.0 readers: Why do YOU build a product? Let us know in the comments!
About the guest blogger: Poornima Vijayashanker is Founder and CEO of BizeeBee. Prior to that, she was at Mint where she began as employee #3 in 2006, and stayed through the startup’s acquisition by Intuit for $170M in 2010. Prior to Mint, she was in the Master’s degree program for computer science at Stanford University but dropped out to join Mint. Poornima holds a double degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University. Poornima blogs on Femgineer.com and is a competitive yoga. Follow her on Twitter at @poornima.
