Married or Single?
Fascinating.
My post on the experience of my young relative who was asked whether she was married or single in a tech interview has triggered quite a conversation in LinkedIn and other social media outlets.
A majority agree that asking questions on marital status, plans for kids (?!!), race, sexual orientation, religion is not cool when interviewing for a job.
But there are some who seem to be on a different planet altogether. Particularly interesting were a couple of responses that “married women” cannot handle the pressure of a tech startup.
I cannot believe I have to spell this out, but here you go:
Ability to handle pressure has nothing to do with married or being unmarried. I can argue that folks who juggle home, careers, kids, life in general are better at stress management than those who do only one thing. Key is to learn how to hire better people WITHOUT these biases. Hire great people, treat them well, and they will stay with you through thick and thin.
And yes, I know Indian startups have horror stories of their own. I sympathize with that, but the solution is not to hire with biases. Its to fix your recruiting process so you can hire motivated, passionate folks who care about your company and who have the smarts. And give them the infrastructure to succeed.
It takes a village to raise a child. If we built systems that allows women and men to work while taking care of their kids, they would not have to drop off. Do things like mothers room, pregnant women parking, subsidize day care, allow people to bring kids to work (it sounds radical but it works), flexible work hours, and the money you spend in these systems will be more than paid off in retention, high productivity and ability to attract amazing talent.
I may sound idealistic. But idealism is always a good starting point to building greatness.
Program Team Head, BITS Law School
8 年Interestingly, today LinkedIn is buzzing with this issue more than usual. I myself wrote something but from the legal angle to it. There's so much one can do to resolve this women brain drain! If I can only request you to share your views on my post, your feedback shall prove valuable.
Assistant Manager, Sales / Business Development at Transparency Market Research Pvt. Ltd.
8 年Punit Hats Off to your Idealistic Solution which is actually a long term & permanent solution for many organizations in India, taking care of the employees will ultimately give a great pay off to the organization & the facilities which you have mentioned can only come from an individual who has not only been brought up in a Professionally rich environment but an environment which entertains / accepts employees with combination of immaturity + great professionalism, instead of pin punting at small mistakes of employees & losing the employees just because the organization doesn't has a challenging management structure in place. Seriously a wonderful piece of article from your end Punit.
Talent Management & Development at Zscaler | Economic Times Emerging HR Leader 2024 | People Matters Emerging L&D Leader 2023 | Ex - Cisco, Infosys | Keynote Speaker | Marathon Runner
8 年Very nicely summed up what organizations need to focus on, rather than building biases within !
Seeker & Saadhak | Business Growth Partner | Passionate Communicator | Social Impact Advocate
8 年You are summed it all up very nicely. I am myself a working mother...rather a helicopter mom as they say these days and I must say that I love my busy days :)
TAM Leader - Head of Data, Analytics, Gen AI ISVs @ AWS | AMER Tech Leader - Edge Solutions Architecture | Amazon Bar Raiser
8 年I think Cisco here in US is great from that perspective. They have a day-care here in their office for the parents who bring their kids along ;)