>> Hey, I'm Erica.
>> I'm Ashley and this is THE OPEN SOURCE SHOW.
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>> Hi, I'm Ashley. I'm a developer advocate.
>> Hi, I'm Erica. I'm an engineering manager.
I think my whole name is down there.
>> So, Erica and I go way back.
So, this is a really fun show for me.
So, you do a lot with diversity and inclusion and one of
the things that you've done is created Project Include.
Ok, tell me a little bit about the history of that.
>> Yeah. We want to just give everybody a set of
guidelines for making startups
more diverse and inclusive at the beginning,
because it's really hard to add these things
in later on when your company's huge.
When you're small and like still building,
so it's like baked into
the culture of the company as it grows, and so,
we put it at projectinclude.org,
and basically anybody can go there and view
guidelines, tips for how to build
a diverse and inclusive culture at their company.
>> Right.
>> Ellen Pao and I were friends on
Twitter and one day she DM'd me.
and she's like we need to get A,
some ideas together about
how companies can be better at diversity inclusion.
B, we can't do this alone.
So, we're going to think of
the people who would be really great at working on this with us.
We definitely need a lawyer,
we need someone who's been an engineering leader,
we need someone who's running
a company and we came up with this group of
women who are from all parts of the tech industry.
VC, lawyer, engineering leader,
engineer (myself) and we put
all our thoughts together about things that we've experienced,
ideas that we had and
we have a whole set of
guidelines that exist at projectinclude.org.
>> It's basically packaged up.
There's a bow on top. Check it out.
There's a lot of content there.
So, you package it up very nicely,
but it's not a whole solution.
So, things like job descriptions being inclusive.
What other tips do you have outside of what Project Include has?
>> First step for hiring managers putting up
job descriptions is run it through Textio.
Textio is a third party service,
and you can do a free trial,
you run your job descriptions through Textio and it'll tell
you that this is more masculine language
and this is more feminine language,
and you can make your job descriptions more welcoming.
Second thing is be just super verbose about the role,
about the company, about the benefits, lay it all out there.
So, there are no surprises for people
who want to come work at your company.
If you are reaching out to someone to have them come interview,
tell them exactly how the interview's going to go.
That's really helpful for a lot of people who
have some level of testing anxiety.
But if you give them a heads-up about how the day is going to go,
what the schedule is going to be like,
who they're going to talk to, what
they're going to be expected to do.
It puts them at ease.
I think that's great for everybody not just
for diversity inclusion. It's just like for building
a better culture, for being empathetic
to your teammates or future teammates.
>> So, outside of hiring managers
because they get a lot of attention,
if you are applying for a job,
what are some tips as you are applying for jobs?
Because I know that people get discouraged applying for
hundreds of jobs and not getting any calls back.
>> As a hiring manager I see a lot of resumes and the quality
varies resume to resume.
I've seen resumes that are just like
maybe half a page long and it's like I worked at place,
I worked at place, my name is this,
done and it's like I don't know anything about
you from this resume.
On the other hand, I have seen resumes like four pages long.
>> Too much.
>> So, make it very distinct,
make it very targeted.
These are the things I did,
these are the things that I accomplished,
these are the wins that I got,
these are the things that my team did,
these are the things that changed because of my work.
Sell yourself. That's the best way to get the attention of
a hiring manager is just like tell
them exactly what she could do and how well you can do it.
>> I for one, I'm not very good at selling myself.
Have somebody review your resume,
somebody that knows you and maybe
some people that don't really know you.
Maybe some of your ex co-workers they can
play to some of your strengths that
maybe you just didn't even know you had.
>> I love that. Have multiple people look over
your resume and tell you the honest truth.
Definitely get a friend who will be honest with you because we
all have that friend who just tell you everything you do is great.
>> Not that friend. What if you are applying for
a job and you love the company,
but the rec that you see is maybe not the most inclusive?
>> I think if they have looked at
the company and they've done some research and
they get good signal from everywhere else,
bring it up in the interview.
When they're talking to the hiring manager is like, "Hey.
So, love this company,
really love the role."
"Want to let you know that maybe your job requisition
is pushing some folks away",
and it's good for the employees and for the potential employee to
know how that manager will respond to good feedback.
Because they're like whatever this person thinks they know it all
whatever and they're not
open to the feedback, that's good signal that
you don't want to work for that person.
But they take it in and they're like "Thank you for that feedback.
We're going to fix that."
Then you know that okay, this is a person who I can work with,
who is willing to change.
>> That's really good advice. Once somebody's
accepted for an interview,
there're some biases that can come into place.
What are the three things that you think
that hiring managers should be aware of?
>> This is for hiring managers and also for
people who are interviewing,
when you work at a tech company often,
you're doing this big panel interviews.
But if you are one of those panel interviewers,
three tips are to first,
try not to or check your bias
if there is a communication style or language barrier.
Second, don't bias on what a person comes in looking like.
They're here to do a job not to win
a fashion award or third, coding interviews
are the worst, especially the white board interviews.
There's a way to test coding ability without doing that.
You can give a candidate to take home test.
Very important, don't give them a time limit for it.
People have different things going on at home.
You can't say drop everything and do this in two days.
But when they do finish it, have them bring it in.
When they bring it in you say, "Okay.
Why did you make this choice here?
What is this thing right here going to do?
How can you improve this code? Where are the bugs?
Then you can learn about a person's coding style and ability and
>> problem-solving skills.
>> Problem-solving skills and ability to be an engineer.
Engineering is not just writing code,
it's about seeing in code where there's a place for improvements,
where the bugs are,
and you can test for that with that process.
You can't do that with whiteboard interviews.
>> You can't. So, show empathy in
your coding interviews as you would in your code.
On top of Project Include where there's just tons of material,
what other resources are out there?
>> My favorite managerial book
is the Managers Path and I have to do a full disclosure here.
The Managers Path was written
by a friend of mine Camille Fournier.
But it is one of the best books out there on how to be
a manager and I'm not the only one who thinks it's great.
>> Follow her on Twitter. Camille is awesome.
I also endorsed the book, super helpful.
>> It's really great.
>> Are there are any other links
that you suggest people check out?
>> Too many links,
can we add them later?
>> Yeah, we can add them somewhere in this general area.
>> Down here things moving in this place here? Cool, yes.
>> So, make sure to check out the links & to like us as well.
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