Building diversity in finance

We just launched our first job advertisement — for a really exciting Analyst role — and we’ve hit a bit of a road block. We aren’t attracting enough applications from women. That’s an issue and we want to solve it.

When we started Ecotone Partners last year, my co-founders and I set out to move at pace so we could build an organisation that could have significant impact. Now we need to get great staff in to deliver faster.

We have a problem

We knew we’d have to hire and we knew we wanted to attract a diverse pool of candidates. Why? Quite simply, the finance sector has issues attracting and retaining women and people from diverse backgrounds. And that means we may not get the benefit of as many different perspectives in our decision making as we’d like, which we’re not happy about. We believe the first step to resolving this issue is ensuring applicants from all backgrounds feel confident in applying for jobs in finance.

So last Friday we launched our job ad, and we’ve been watching as the application numbers start ticking up. We are getting a fabulous response, and we’re thrilled to see a great mix of ethnic diversity, but we simply aren’t getting enough gender diversity. In fact, of the applications received to date, only 18% have been from women.

And quite frankly this doesn’t make sense. In management and commerce male and female enrolments are pretty much 50:50.

We know there are talented women with the right education background — they just aren’t applying.

What we are doing

So what have we done?

• We’ve spoken with our friend Rachel Yang from Giant Leap, who inspired us when she wrote about building a diverse talent pool last year. Rachel wrote about the barriers women experience in applying for roles and has given us a number of tips to help reduce those barriers;
• We are actively putting our role out across our network and encouraging more women and people with diverse backgrounds to apply; and
• We are using the Applied platform to ensure we run a fair recruitment process (more on that below).
• We are writing this blog to try and generate more applications from women!

So what do we think we need to be clearer on:

• The role title is a barrier — it covers both the level in finance services/investment banking and comes with hard wired expectations around sitting at a computer building financial models. That is not this role. We haven’t been able to come up with a better title so it might help to explain that while the role is at the Analyst level we aren’t looking for an Excel guru.
• We want purpose-driven applicants — while financial literacy is ideal, being purpose-driven with a capacity to learn quickly, and embrace a fast-paced team environment will go a long way. NB: An ability to laugh at yourself is also a must.
• We want someone who is a team player — we are a small but growing team and we want to bring someone in that can build an amazing organisation with us.

Our hiring process

Across our three founders we’ve hired well over 100 people, and as we grow Ecotone Partners we are being really deliberate about how we build our team. We want great people to work with us, and getting hiring right is essential.

So, how will our process work?

• We are using the Applied platform to help us run a fair recruitment process that is free of unconscious bias
• We won’t see names or resumes when we assess application questions so we’ll judge all applicants equally
• We will focus on how well suited an applicant is to the actual job, not the school they went to or their study or their work experience (and the questions we have included are all pretty close to our day to day roles)
• We will focus on potential, not historic roles. When we interview we will be looking for applicants who have passion and potential, as well as demonstrating a strong interest in the areas we work in.
• We will ensure the selected applicant meets our entire team (3 founders and 2 awesome staff) so you feel comfortable joining us and understand our motivation for what we do.

Are you interested?

We are growing fast and in the nine months since we started we have completed an amazing set of capital advisory, business strategy and sector strategy work across financial services, e-bikes, e-buses, waste management, demand management, disability housing, gender lens investment and carbon projects.

If you have the right skills and are keen to work with us in helping bring investors and high growth companies together to deliver great solutions for people and planet then we want you to apply for our Analyst role.

Studies have found that while men will apply for a job if they meet 60% of the qualifications, women will only apply if they meet 100% of them. What holds most people back from applying for jobs where they don’t meet all the criteria was not lack of confidence, it was actually a mistaken perception about the hiring process and on what basis hiring decisions are made.

So let’s be crystal clear about our hiring process: we aren’t looking for a perfect application — in fact Marie Curie probably put it best:

“Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it.”

You’ll score better if you demonstrate to us your passion for the work we are doing, your desire to work in a fast-paced environment and your interest in helping us build one of Australia’s leading businesses supporting the transition to a green economy.

And remember, for shortlisting purposes it will be the quality of your responses to our application questions that are considered, not your resume or background

Keen to apply? Please click here: https://app.beapplied.com/apply/9bkvxf38sz

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