The digital-scrapbooking site announced Thursday it is setting goals to hire more women and minorities and plans to share its findings with the public.
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About 42 percent of Pinterest’s workforce this year are women, up slightly from 40 percent in 2014. Pinterest shared a majority of its staff are white or Asian.
In the context of the workforce diversity goals laid down by Pinterest for 2016, Evan Sharp asserted in the blog post that the company seriously committed to improve its diversity numbers; and added: “We think one reason it’s been so hard to get numbers to change is that companies haven’t stated specific goals”.
By next year, Pinterest hopes to have more full-time engineer positions filled by women and underrepresented ethnic backgrounds, by increasing the hiring rate for full-time engineering roles to 30% female and to 8% underrepresented minorities.
Pinterest recently released its workplace diversity statistics on its official blog. The company is also examining its hiring process, including eliminating that all engineering interview candidates code on whiteboards and candidates referred by employees will no longer be given priority, Pinterest spokeswoman Jamie Favazza said. Companies in Silicon Valley and beyond are taking note, including Pinterest, which took inspiration from the National Football League for its latest diversity initiatives.
Pinterest has been praised in the past for its gender and ethnic diversity.
Pinterest is also committed to interview at least one female and a person from an underrepresented background for all openings for the leadership position.
The engineering department, for instance, is another story with a 81 to 19 percent male to female split, with 66 percent from Asian backgrounds and another 31 percent Caucasian.
Increase hiring rates for non-engineering roles to 12 percent underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.
The company said it would launch early internship and mentorship programs, as well as work with the outside strategy firm Paradigm.
It will also require its current employees to participate in the Pinterest and Paradigm’s unconscious bias training that will hopefully help improve their diversity numbers and avoid issues bred by cultural differences. Inclusion Labs will be the continuation of these efforts – with the hopes of using Pinterest as a test bed to understand what’s working and what’s not and share that with others.
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“We have said, ‘if you don’t measure it, you don’t mean it.’ Clearly, Pinterest means it”, Jackson said in his statement.
