This time last year, in an effort to provide some transparency to the issue of workplace homogeneity, Google launched a dedicated page detailing their employee diversity. After recognizing their numbers as shamefully low, they pledged to focus on making their workplace a more representative atmosphere, via various outreach programs, community groups, and by sourcing candidates through more creative channels.
So, did it work? This week, via a post on G+, Google discusses the progress they've made in the last year. Here are some of the highlights:
Female hires represent 22% of all technical hires made through campus outreach.
This is noteworthy considering women make up only 18% of total students pursuing Computer Science degrees. Google also notes that 21% of their tech hires overall in the past year are women, bringing up the overall number of women in tech roles by 1%.
Black and Hispanic Hiring Outpaced Overall Hiring
Google has made a point to recruit from a larger amount of Universities and increase their presence at Historically Black Colleges, and has seen some success. They write:
On the technical side, our Black and Hispanic communities grew by 39 percent in the U.S., compared to 28 percent tech growth overall. Our non-technical teams in the U.S. grew by 17 percent last year, while the Black community in grew by 38 percent and Hispanic by 22 percent in non-tech.
While there's clearly still a ways to go, Google notes that this progress is due to a handful of deliberate efforts, such as scholarships, university presences, and employee community focus, to make their offices more representative. Diversity recruiting seems to be on the minds of every big company, but so far Google is one of the only organizations to put their money where their mouth is. They close their post with charts detailing the updated statistics of their workforce:
