We sat down with Tomokazu Betzold, who oversees our team specialising in tech recruitment, to discuss the significance of male leaders tackling the advancement of women seriously. What are the ripple effects of his efforts to recruit female consultants over the past few years since stepping up as a director?
In the tech industry, more and more companies want to create a diversity-rich organisation. Do you share the same goal?
To be honest, my team, which specialises in recruitment and career support in the tech industry, is the least gender-balanced department in the company. When I took over as director about eight years ago, there was only one female consultant in the department. Since then, I have been on a mission to change this. I think part of it is the image of tech industry itself. The industry struggles to recruit women, and if you take an even further step back, there are fewer females who are interested in STEM education compared to men. It means that we are facing the same challenges as our clients, so I try to proactively talk about this when I interview female consultant candidates.
How were you able to successfully increase hiring of female consultants?
The first step was to become aware of the problem, and to instil this awareness among my management team who are all men. The lack of females in our department was something we needed to address. We talked about the need to hire women as soon as possible as well as to consider long-term strategies. I thought that hiring women would be the solution. I don’t think we were interviewing candidates thinking we want to hire a man, but the end result was that we were not bringing any women into the team.
I wanted to find out why we weren't able to hire enough women, so I sat down with the managers and talked to them. One of the things that came up was that the team itself at the time had a low percentage of women. During our screening process, candidates are interviewed by several departments. And if they were to ask how many women or how many female managers are on my team, they would quickly find out that my department had the lowest number of female consultants. Therefore, I thought it was important to continue emphasising the need to increase the number of female consultants and female leaders who have grown and succeeded and are now in management positions.
Over the past 10 years, we have improved to the point where women make up 25% of our department. In the process of recruiting female consultants, we try to set up lunches and round tables with female leaders within the department. Our current female consultants encourage candidates to ask as many honest questions as they like which helps to resolve concerns that I, as a male, and my team of managers cannot understand. This helps make people feel at ease when they join the company and I’m very happy to see how our efforts over the years are coming to fruition in this way.
Being a recruitment consultant in the tech industry seems to be something that women tend to shy away from. Is there anything specific you are doing to address this?
We try to clearly state our expectations. For example, we carefully explain that just because we support hiring in the tech industry doesn’t mean we only want to hire people with a background in tech. We believe that it’s our job to teach people about technology after they join our company. In fact, we have trained our consultants, both male and female, on the tech industry and the nature of tech-related jobs. We try to remove any concerns or obstacles by explaining that we intend to train them and that we don’t hire based on prior tech knowledge or skills.
As Japan is experiencing a severe talent shortage, what tips do you have for attracting skilled female candidates?
As more and more companies want to support the advancement of women, competition for talented female engineers has become the norm in the tech industry.
Even in our hiring process, candidates have the option to choose which department they want to be assigned to. In some of our departments, several female managers have achieved great success while working under female directors. Our department, on the other hand, was almost entirely male. Even if there were excellent female candidates, we would lose out to other departments.
I can still vividly recall a conversation I had with a female consultant I hired about two years ago during an interview because it left such a strong impression on me. She was an excellent candidate and we were competing with other departments to hire her. When I looked at her resume, I noticed that she had been involved in running a women's leadership conference. I could tell that this was a candidate who cared about women's advancement and leadership, so I approached her at the end of the interview.
I openly told her about the lack of female consultants and female leadership in my department and why that was the case. I also explained my ideas on how to change the situation. After our conversation, she decided to work in my department and was hired.
In my case, I think the fact that I was able to be candid about the issues I was facing and my attitude towards solving them enabled her trust in me.
Any tips on how to create a rich culture of diversity and inclusion within an organisation?
We place importance on sharing values. The company as a whole and the entire team share the values that diversity and inclusion create, and we hire people who already have this mindset beforehand. Although we may sometimes have conflicting opinions from work pressure, conflicts that arise from background, culture, values, and language are not desirable. We try to create an organisation where there is no confusion between the two.
Diversity is one of our core principles, so no matter how good a candidate is, we will not hire someone with a closed mind who does not accept diversity. Even if they join us, they won't fit into our corporate culture and I don't think they would be able to succeed. I think it’s because we hire people who are open-minded and understand the value that D&I bring that we don’t have to worry about conflicts arising from diversity.
Hiring of female consultants has progressed within our department and several female managers have emerged. I’d like to continue my efforts to create an environment where women can play an even more active role, not only within the department but also within the company.
