Tackling diversity in InfoSec.... HELP!
Kris'' Rides, CC
Founder | Cyber Security Staffing SME | Conference Speaker | Diversity Ally | Board Member | Penetration Testing | Virtual CISO
I've been thinking on how we can do our bit on improving diversity in our community. I push for more diversity in the speakers we have at conferences etc. but I wonder what we can do as a business and would love to hear some ideas.
As a Recruitment and InfoSec Company, internally we are good at this, but it doesn't feel like that's a conscious thing and I don't feel its impacts the community much as we are small. With that in mind I am trying to come up with ideas that may allow us to do our bit to improve the diversity we see in our community.
As a recruitment company we do not make decisions about who our clients hire, however we do give them options and so perhaps we can increase the diversity of the options we give. When we are retained or exclusive providers we have more time to put into this but much of the time we are in competition so that can make a difference. Either way as a company we need to continue sending options that can do the job regardless of background so committing to some sort of specific split on candidates sent wouldn't be fair.
The only thing that I've thought about so far is giving a bonus to our Recruitment Consultants based on a target of sending a minimum number of candidates of diversity or perhaps a commission increase when a diverse candidate gets hired. The assumption being that this would motivate them to hunt harder and put more time into finding more diverse options. This would have to be closely managed to ensure we weren't increasing the diversity of candidates sent at the expense of quality (their ability to do the job).
So, if there is anything someone is doing specifically out there, or someone has some ideas please share!
InfoSec Advisor | Board Member | MSc, MSDA | PMP, CISSP-ISSMP/ISSAP, CSSLP, CCSP, CGEIT, CRISC, CDPSE, CISA, CCNA, CPCNA
6 年*EDITED* This sounds like a great program!
Talent Acquisition Leader
6 年Great article Kris Rides! Looking forward to having you on the recruiter panel at #ShellCon where we can talk about this very subject. I'll also be giving a talk at 2pm on Friday for more tips. There are some sourcing tools that claim to have diversity sourcing capability but another way is to partner with organizations in the community and make yourself available (which you already do very well). At NCC Group we partner with Hackbright Academy, to name one group.