Adweek published a fluff piece titled, As the Tech Industry Grows and Diversifies, Digital Agency Dress Codes Now Range ‘From Hobo to GQ’. Um, when did the tech industry diversify? It will probably happen around the same time the advertising industry diversifies—and the technology to predict that date has not yet been invented.
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Oh, didn't you know?
It's 2015, and "diversifies" and "diversity" are code words for "we've added more white women to our all-white staff."
Here's someone who's at least talking about a solution:
www.adweek.com/socialtimes/pinterest-lays-out-plan-for-better-diversity/624285
The interesting thing is, if you look at the numbers behind the scenes, Pinterest has a lot of white female end users, and relatively little interest from blacks or Hispanics. So they have a business reason to diversify and get more eyeball$, and you'd have to think that having staffers with insight into those groups might offer a solution that they haven't been able to come up with on their own, with their mostly white employees, since launching.
Either way, Pinterest is potentially going to "Implement a Rooney Rule-type requirement where at least one person from an underrepresented background and one female candidate is interviewed for every open leadership position."
See that, ad world? One person from an underrepresented background AND a female candidate. Which will hopefully keep the tendency shown in ad agencies (where they fulfill all diversity discussions with "hire more white females") in check.
I’d like to officially propose the Rooney/Pinterest Solution to address the massive diversity failures in the American advertising industry then.
For every open job, upcoming job, promotion, or vendor search:
“At least one person from an underrepresented US background AND one female candidate is interviewed for every open opportunity”.
It’s been suggested before:
http://multicultclassics.blogspot.com/2010/05/7663-rooney-rule-for-looney-mad-ave.html
http://multicultclassics.blogspot.com/2015/02/12514-quotes-on-quotas.html
http://multicultclassics.blogspot.com/2010/05/7666-more-rooney-rule-rants.html
Some agencies do try to interview at least one diverse hire (if you count white women as diverse).
And I can personally say that when they look at vendors they sometimes, very occasionally, throw one diverse choice in their to appease clients.
The problem, in my firsthand experience, is that on the few occasions they open up and use/hire someone new, it's entirely white women who they choose.
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