Organizations should set gender hiring targets based on industry benchmarks and internal data, assessing the talent pipeline to identify gaps. Align goals with business strategy, ensure flexibility, engage stakeholders, and focus on inclusion. Use data, training, partnerships, and a mix of short- and long-term goals for sustained impact.
How Can Organizations Set Realistic and Impactful Gender Hiring Targets in Tech?
AdminOrganizations should set gender hiring targets based on industry benchmarks and internal data, assessing the talent pipeline to identify gaps. Align goals with business strategy, ensure flexibility, engage stakeholders, and focus on inclusion. Use data, training, partnerships, and a mix of short- and long-term goals for sustained impact.
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Setting and Meeting Gender Hiring Targets
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Understand Industry Benchmarks and Internal Baselines
Organizations should start by analyzing current industry benchmarks and their own internal gender representation data. This foundation enables setting targets that are ambitious yet achievable, reflecting both market realities and internal capacity. Realistic targets acknowledge existing pipeline challenges and help track progress over time.
Conduct a Comprehensive Talent Pipeline Assessment
Evaluating the entire hiring funnel—from candidate sourcing to onboarding—allows companies to identify where gender disparities occur. Understanding these bottlenecks helps in setting specific targets at each stage, ensuring hiring goals are not just numerical but address systemic issues in recruitment and retention.
Align Targets with Business Strategy and Culture
Gender hiring goals should complement the organization's strategic objectives and cultural values. When targets are connected to business outcomes, such as innovation or customer insights, they become impactful by driving meaningful change beyond numbers, fostering inclusive environments where diverse tech talent thrives.
Incorporate Flexibility and Iterative Review
Setting rigid targets can backfire if circumstances change. Organizations should implement flexible goals with periodic reviews to adjust based on progress and evolving market conditions. This iterative approach ensures targets remain relevant and continue to drive impactful results as the talent landscape shifts.
Engage Stakeholders Across the Organization
Inclusive target-setting requires collaboration between HR, leadership, diversity and inclusion teams, and technical managers. Engaging these stakeholders ensures targets are understood, funded, and supported, increasing accountability and embedding gender diversity as a shared organizational priority.
Focus on Quality and Inclusion Not Just Numbers
Realistic hiring targets must emphasize creating inclusive work environments alongside increasing representation. Organizations should track metrics related to hiring, retention, promotion, and employee engagement of women in tech roles, ensuring targets lead to substantive, sustainable impact rather than superficial figures.
Leverage Data Analytics and Reporting Tools
Utilizing data analytics can help organizations set precise, measurable gender hiring targets and monitor progress. Tools that track diversity metrics with transparency enable evidence-based decisions and reveal areas needing improvement, making targets both realistic and actionable.
Address Root Causes Through Training and Development
Setting impactful gender hiring targets involves investing in training programs that reduce unconscious bias among recruiters and hiring managers. Building awareness and improving evaluation methods in selection processes support fairer candidate assessments, increasing the likelihood of meeting gender diversity goals authentically.
Partner with External Organizations and Talent Networks
Collaborations with universities, coding bootcamps, and women-in-tech organizations expand access to diverse talent pools. By aligning hiring targets with outreach and partnership efforts, companies can realistically increase the availability of qualified female candidates, enhancing the impact of their diversity initiatives.
Set Both Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Organizations should establish a mix of achievable short-term targets to build momentum and visionary long-term goals to drive transformative change. This balanced approach motivates continuous improvement, demonstrating commitment while managing expectations realistically in the complex tech hiring landscape.
What else to take into account
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