Growing a business is hard.
But it’s a little less hard when you have the right people on your team. A smart, humble and hungry team can make your business resilient, flexible and able to overcome challenge after challenge.
But let’s be honest…most businesses suck at hiring.
Finding the perfect fit when you’re hiring is so difficult, doing things like making sure you’re hiring from a diverse pool of candidates can get lost in the process.
As we’ve scaled to 20+ folks at WP Buffs, we’ve found that prioritizing diversity early has made all the difference. A diverse team approaches problems and challenges in a diverse way and the complex, elegant solutions we find could easily be missed by a homogeneous team that all thinks the same.
And after chatting with people like Kyle Maurer of Sandhills Development and Leah Knobler of Help Scout, I found a great way to get started in improving the diversity of your initial candidate pool.
Post to job boards that focus on helping you diversify your prospects.
It sounds simple, but after discovering some of these new job boards, we increased the number of applicants drastically while also increasing the diversity of that pool. Boom!
WordPress has done a decent job of empowering diversity, but there’s more work to do and plenty of it is in the hands of us business owners. So here are the job boards I posted to during our last round of hiring to keep us moving in the right direction when it comes to diversity.
1. RemoteWoman
RemoteWoman was built to help women find the best remote jobs at female-friendly companies
Many of the fastest-growing and most popular technology companies use RW to hire, including Automattic.
RemoteWoman also has a podcast! Jaira Romero, RWs cofounder, interviews women working remotely. She uncovers raw, real stories of their struggles and triumphs.
2. WomenWhoCode
Women Who Code is a non-profit focused on empowering women in technology.
They have a great job board but they’re actually much more than that! They also have great coding resources, leadership opportunities, a global community and scholarship opportunities for women around the world!
Companies like Microsoft and Shopify hire from here, so you’ll be in good company posting jobs at WWC.
Also, the name reminds me of Women Who WP, so it immediately resonated well with me!
3. Hire My Mom
HireMyMom is a platform to help mom’s around the world find remote work that allows them to continue to spend time with their children and family.
It also allows businesses to find quality talent quickly and affordably.
As a new dad myself (who’s also the husband of a new mom), I’ve had firsthand experience into how efficient a new mom can be with her time. My wife is absolutely crushing work while taking care of a new baby with yours truly.
So when I found this site, all I was thinking was how I’d hit the jackpot!
4. POCIT
POCIT (People Of Color In Tech) is a website that highlights everything diversity as it related to the tech field.
They’re more than just a job board as well. Interviews, articles, newsletters and a podcast allow them to tell robust stories in this area.
They also have a job board used by companies like Netflix, Snap, and Atlassian, so join them in hiring a more diverse workforce.
5. PostStatus
Now the PostStatus job board isn’t explicitly focused on helping you diversity your candidate pool, but we’ve personally seen candidates from a lot of great backgrounds come through PostStatus so we’ve included it here.
It’s also the most WordPress-centric job board in this list. The other job boards here are great if you’re looking for a new hire who doesn’t necessarily need WordPress community experience. But if you’re looking for a position that requires WP community experience, this may be your best bet.
There’s also WPHired, but I’ve actually never posted here. Worth checking out though!
Honorable mentions
The other job boards I post too may not be focused on helping me diversify my candidate pool, but that by no means suggests I don’t get candidates from different backgrounds applying from there.
I’ve posted jobs to WeWorkRemotely, Dynamite Jobs, Hey Marketers, and Support Driven and seen great candidates come from each.
Wrapping up
At the end of the day, there are plenty of things you can do to make the world a better place.
You can protest for your rights or the rights of people less fortunate than you.
You can donate money to Black Lives Matter, the ACLU or Lawyers for Good Government (full transparency: my wife works here).
Or you can be a WordPress ally and give every potential candidate a fair shot to work at your company. I can tell you from firsthand experience that having a diverse team has helped us solve a diverse set of problems and do pretty well.
I hope you’ll join me in becoming a WordPress ally, showing your support to underrepresented communities and transforming your business into a high performer.
P.S. WP Buffs is still hiring humble, hungry and smart folks to join the team. If you’re looking for your next great opportunity in the WordPress space, check out our open positions!
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