Being one of only 2 females on our departments staff of 20 is sometimes a real drag. Since technical females fall into a special hiring class at this company there are a lot of special events and activities aimed at recruiting high level technical females to our company. When it comes to supporting these activities they always look to the current employee base. Since our department only has 2 female department heads the two of us always get roped into supporting this kind of crap.
Later this week I will be one of the companies representatives at this years WITI conference. This is nothing but a big female Rah Rah session. My biggest problem is that I do not support these kind of groups at all. As a hiring manager I want to be empowered to hire the best candidate for the job regardless of race, color, or gender. My current team is made up of 4 females and 6 males. This is a very good mix for a technical enviornment. However not a single one of the women were hired because they are female and I didn't have to do any speical recruiting to find them. I would hope I have my current job because I was the most qualified not because I am female....the fact that my company's policy on hiring makes me question this makes me so frustrated and mad.
So looking forward to this conference just puts me on edge. Yuck. I hate it. I did try to get out of it, and quite hard. In the end I decided not to make a big stink about it and just go ahead and attend. But I will basically just make show up make sure that I am seen being a "role model" and then I am headed back to the office to get real work done.
Here is a link to WITI so you can see the Rah Rah hell I will be living this week.
http://www.witi.com/
ooohhh I think the worst part of this entire thing is that I have to wear business suits for 2 days. Yuck.
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2 comments:
Ooooh I like business suits, wish I could wear them more, or ever...LOL.
I can totally understand the "Yuk!" factor and also agree that the best candidate should get the job, and for that reason only. Liberals! LOL.
Oh boy. Poor dear. I can relate with hating to be the "symbol" of my company's diversity efforts as well. I used to feel like such a fraud at those things, b/c some times, even I didn't think my co was doing a good job on the diversity end. Luckily, I DON'T feel that way about my current place, and ironically, they don't trot me out. Murphy's law, I guess.
About the diversity debate. Sigh. I won't get into another long one here. Poor zee had my long winded views on the death penalty. But, I just think it comes back down to hidden perceptions and values. For your work, I think its probably a little diff. b/c your industry seems to work a little differently. But, i cannot tell you how many times i was deemed unqualified b/c I was PERCEIVED to be a certain way, when I wasn't; and more qualified than the ones they did hire....
Try and not get too frustrated at the conference!
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