IT worker shortage? Recruit more women

Recruiters wanting to hire women for information technology positions have to go beyond the typical sales pitch emphasizing job promotion and security in order to get results, according to a Penn State research study of 92 female IT practitioners released today. While women represent almost 60% of the workforce, they account for only a little more than 32% of the IT workforce, said Eileen Trauth, professor of information sciences and technology in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology in a statement. Addressing women’s under-representation not only will help tackle the anticipated IT worker shortage but will help foster a diverse workforce, a cornerstone of both innovation and economic development, she added.  Human-resources personnel need to recognize that women have diverse values and motivations throughout their careers and tailor hiring and retention practices to fit those needs.  Recruiters and human resource departments need to look at other factors that become important to women over time, she said, such as job flexibility and accepting less money for increased time off, researchers said in a statement Traditional models for understanding workers have focused on “career anchors,” or the factors that motivate individuals‚ career choices. For their study, the Penn State researchers focused on three of those anchors–-technical competence, managerial competence and organizational security-–and interviewed women from a variety of racial and ethnic identities, ages and backgrounds.  The women work in IT positions ranging from CIO and upper-level managers to Web developers and IT administrators. Among the researchers’ findings are: Contrary to traditional theories, none of those anchors alone was a deciding factor in the women’s career choices. While about 30% indicated they valued careers that afforded them opportunities to perfect skills in technical areas, others said they wanted careers with managerial opportunities. In addition, there was little overlap among the women who reported that managers give up technical skills to develop management skills.  The researchers also discovered that women’s career choices are motivated by a number of factors, and those shift and change throughout their careers. This reinforces the researchers’ conclusion that static hiring policies won’t appeal to women, Trauth said. The research is described in a paper, “What Do Women Want”: An Investigation of Career Anchors among Women in the IT Workforce,” given at the recent SIGMIS Computer Personnel Research Conference in St. Louis. Co-author Jeria Quesenberry, an IST doctoral student, is extending this research area in her dissertation.  There have been other efforts to bring more women in to the IT field.  For example, last year  a group of 10 universities formed the Students and Technology in Academia, Research and Service Alliance with the goal of trying to diversify the IT industry in the U.S. by encouraging more women, minorities and disabled people to enter the field.  Backed by $2 million from the National Science Foundation participants include Florida State University, Florida A&M, University of North Carolina at Charlotte and  Auburn University. Florida State University research associate Anthony Chow says that a falling number of foreign nationals and immigrants entering the U.S. IT job market has left the door open for more women and minorities to fill many of the 1.5 million new jobs expected to arise over the next 6 years. While engineering environments are accepting of a wide variety of male personalities, they still don’t make it easy for women to fit in regardless of their traits, according to research from of the University of Edinburgh. The researcher said that if more women are to join the engineering workforce companies need to adopt sensitivity and diversity training that is supported from the top down.