Approximately 15 minutes before the close of business on Friday (Eastern time), President Trump signed an executive order (full text here) to bar Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. and suspend all refugee admissions for 120 days. His order also blocks citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—all Muslim-majority countries—from entering the U.S. for 90 days, regardless of whether they’re refugees or not.
The order sparked protests at airports across the country and spurred business leaders to speak out against the administration.
The pushback shouldn’t surprise anyone. As Angelo Paparelli, a partner in the Business Immigration Practice Group of Seyfarth Shaw LLP, explains: “These orders strike at the core of their operations, and at their commitment to civic engagement, and the rule of law.” Paparelli notes that all of these businesses run on human capital, and that employers’ ability to immediately deploy vital personnel anywhere on the planet, wherever business calls, without regard to place of birth or nationality,” is vital to the creation of new jobs and for the U.S. to continue to lead the world economy.
Data from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a nonpartisan public policy research organization focusing on immigration and related issues, finds that a little more than half of U.S. businesses valued at $1 billion or more have been started by immigrants. NFAP also found that immigrants make up over 70% of the key members of management or product development teams at these companies.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FOREIGN WORKERS CURRENTLY EMPLOYED IN THE U.S.
Paparelli anticipates the added procedural hoops and bureaucratic delays will arise from the executive order. As the New York Timesreported, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said that “border agents had “discretionary authority” to subject travellers, including U.S. citizens, to additional scrutiny if they had been to any of the seven countries mentioned in the executive order, but it was not clear what that would look like in practice.”
Paparelli says that the last thing business leaders of U.S. multinational companies want to hear is that their green-card-holding employees cannot board a plane and be swiftly cleared by U.S. Customs & Border Protection. That’s because at this point, they’ve “reassured their nervous workers who have a choice of countries in which to work, who spent millions in lawyers’ fees, government filing fees, advertising for labor-market recruitment tests, and relocation expenses to comply with our complicated immigration laws,” he says.
HOW THIS COULD IMPACT FUTURE HIRING
Paparelli also observes that the executive order instructs federal agencies to study and issue a report on whether to require more in-person interviews at U.S. consular posts and immigration offices in the U.S., while also adding a nebulous requirement that they evaluate the “likelihood of [an employer-sponsored foreign worker] becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant’s ability to make contributions to the national interest.” The order does not specify how employers need to prove this.
This executive order did not specifically call out those workers who hold H-1B visas, one of the largest guest worker programs in the U.S. Others include international student work visas, business traveler visas, and visas for international students completing U.S. degrees. However, another memorandum from the White House issued last week suggests that the president may be close to signing another executive order aimed at limiting these skilled guest-worker programs.
Between 2005 and 2014, the U.S. government granted the top 10 IT outsourcing businesses 170,535 new H-1B guest worker visas, according to Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Howard University and a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute. These are jobs, Hira argues, that should be filled by U.S. citizens. However, research from the NFAP counters that their data show that for every H-1B position requested, U.S. technology companies increase their employment by five workers.
WHAT EMPLOYERS SHOULD DO NOW
CEOs and managers should keep communication open with their staff, and Paparelli recommends that employers let workers know that nothing is yet clear about the legality and scope of the orders. “There’s no immediate need to panic or take brash action,” he maintains. But he suggests that evaluating alternative options under the immigration laws or considering fallback options for employment if your company has a foreign office in a country whose immigration laws are more hospitable are good first steps.
Paparelli advises employers to stay on top of the latest developments, directly or through legal counsel. Next, he says, they must develop a new corporate policy or revise existing policy on the sponsorship of foreign workers affected by the executive order. “The policy should also include existing green card holders and other foreign citizens with temporary work visas or work permits who may be hurt by the Trump executive orders,” he says, and communicate it clearly to staff.
It’s possible, he says, that employers of especially valued or long-tenured workers might decide to sponsor them for other immigration benefits or participate (or encourage the employees to participate) in individual or class action litigation to challenge the orders in court. In some cases, though, Paparelli points out, the employer may be required to terminate a worker if the executive order or its interpretation or implementation under the immigration laws requires it.
And while a lot goes into determining individuals compensation packages, finding out that a coworker in a junior position makes more than you do can plant the seeds of dissatisfaction that are difficult to uproot. So what do you do? Confront your boss? Start looking for a new job?
Psychologist Art Markman helps this reader figure out her next step.
Dear Experts,
I’m in a really frustrating situation. I recently overheard my coworker talking on the phone (pretty loudly) with his financial planner and he mentioned his salary –it’s $10,000 more than I make.
This is an issue because he’s junior to me (I’m at the Associate level and he’s an Assistant). Not only that, but he also has far less experience than me and has been at the company for less time (he was hired a few months after me). We were hired by the same person and I feel like he maybe got more because he’s a man (I’m a woman) and he always talks up his accomplishments/thinks pretty highly of himself.
I assert myself and try to make my value felt and known, and have been building my case for a raise anyway but now I feel like I got the short end of the stick to start with. Even if I get a raise now, it will still put me on under the starting salary of the person under me!
Is there any way I can bring this up with my manager?
Thanks for your help,
AZBY
Dear AZBY
I agree that this is a very frustrating situation.
One of the big reasons why salaries matter in the workplace is because they influence our feelings that the workplace is fair. Most people have no problem finding out that someone with more seniority or more responsibilities is being paid more money. However, when they find out that someone doing a similar job or even someone more junior has a higher salary, it creates an immediate sense of inequity. That feeling quickly saps motivation and undermines the willingness to put in extra effort.
It is important to say up front that the situation you describe is actually quite common where people hired after you may end up making more money. While there is always the chance that this is related to gender, it may also reflect market forces. Right now, for example, the economy is good, and so there is a lot of competition for new talent. As a result, companies may need to offer high starting salaries to attract new hires. If you were hired in a softer job market, then you may have gotten a lower offer, because that was what the market would support. I see this a lot in universities where faculty who have been working at the university for many years may be getting paid about the same (or sometimes even less) than brand new hires, just because the market has gotten competitive.
I raise this potential explanation, because when you discover that you are being paid less than others who are doing a similar job, it is natural to assume that salary inequalities are a result of more nefarious forces. The problem with that assumption is that, if your company ultimately does agree to give you a raise, you might still walk away with a bad feeling.
That said, it sounds like it is time to sit down with your manager and to ask for a raise. You are already starting to put together a request, so you clearly felt it was time.
When you do have that discussion, you should justify your request primarily with your accomplishments in the workplace. There is nothing wrong, though, with pointing out that you are basing your salary request in part on your knowledge of what other people in the company are making.
The most important thing in your salary negotiations, though, is to ask for what you want. There is a tendency for people to make guesses about what they believe their manager will give them in salary and then to ask for something in that range, even if they feel that they should be being paid more than that.
There are three reasons to ask for what you really want.
First, you should never do your managers job for him or her. In salary negotiations, your manager is the one who has to figure out how to make the budget work. If you have an idea of what you think is fair, then ask for it. Let your manager decide how to make that happen.
Second, there is an important psychological phenomenon called anchoring and adjustment. Whenever we make judgments about numbers, we start by anchoring on a number and then adjusting that number based on other factors. The anchor is important, because people often do not adjust enough afterward. If you ask for what you want, then that request becomes the anchor for any subsequent negotiation. Even if your manager adjusts downward, initial request will work in your favour.
Third, companies want to keep their best employees happy. It is easy to think that the only goal of the company is to cut costs. But, it is usually much more expensive for companies to replace employees than it is to keep them happy. If you ask for less than you want, then your manager may assume that giving you what you asked for is going to make you happy, but because you have asked for less you are not going to be as happy with your raise as you should be. So, give the company a chance to make you happy. They may very well surprise you.
Are you really underpaid, or does it just feel that way? American workers are earning less on average than they were 40 years ago, after inflation. But at a more personal level, determining whether you should be getting paid more isn’t easy, and rectifying it can be even harder. Here’s a look at four of those situations, and what it might take to set things aright.1. WHEN YOU DIDN’T NEGOTIATE A GOOD STARTING SALARY
If you suspect you’re now paying the price for that, your first step is to check the facts, advises Philadelphia-based career coach Rita Friedman. Visit Glassdoor, PayScale, and other salary comparison sites to see how your paycheck stacks up. Your second step, says Friedman, is to “talk to your coworkers”—taboos be damned. You don’t need to poll the whole department, but even a couple of confidential chats with the colleagues you’re closest to who work at a similar level can put your own pay into perspective.
“It could be that your company just doesn’t pay people well—everybody is underpaid and it’s not just you,” she points out. Or you have one colleague who’s bragging about all the money she’s making and she’s just overpaid.”
If you discover you really are underpaid, Friedman adds, “go ahead and be angry for a day or two, but don’t let it fester.” Then it’s time to work through this checklist, which Friedman says applies to just about every situation where you’re trying to rectify being underpaid:
1. Reassess your skills. Now that you know how much more the competition makes, you need to figure out why. Do your peers have skills or knowledge or experience that you lack? Head to LinkedIn, search your job title, and start jotting down any standout credentials people at your level have that you don’t. And stick with listing concrete skills, not subjective qualities, Friedman advises—don’t let your frustration get in the way.
2. Define what you’ve done. Even if you are coming up short on certain skills, you’ve probably got some accomplishments under your belt that you can highlight. What’s the quickest way to pinpoint those? “Update your resume, even if you’re not planning on leaving,” Friedman says. Having to distill your achievements at your current job into an updated CV can help you “reflect on what value you’ve brought to the company, then start to build a case for a raise.”
3. Set new goals. Ask yourself: “If you were granted additional salary and responsibilities to go along with [a raise], what would you be doing differently?” You’ll need to explain that when you request more money, says Friedman. How would you answer if your boss asks, “What would you be able to offer me that you’re not doing right now?”
If you’re trying to negotiate more money at a company where you undersold yourself on the way in, Friedman suggests being honest about that. In your raise discussion, “Say to your boss, ‘I’m not thinking about leaving.’” Then continue to be candid, she says: “Hey, I was young and fresh and I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve gained so much experience working with this company; here’s what I’ve done for the company; here’s how I’d like my compensation to be raised based on what I’ve brought to the table.”
2. WHEN YOU’RE SWITCHING INDUSTRIES
Some industries pay a lot more than others, so if you’re going from a low-paid field into a higher-paid one, there’s a risk that some employers may see you as a steal and lowball their offer. Don’t let them, advises Friedman: “Once you have a good sense of what the market commands, that’s the salary you should ask for.”
Even if you’ve been used to low pay for years, you may have more clout than you think. And executive coach Corrie Shanahan wrote recently for Fast Company that your leverage is at its height the moment an employer decides they want you. Now’s the time to find out how badly.
Friedman even suggests pointing out the salary leap you’re hoping to take. “You can be honest that that’s part of why you’re leaving.” Still, she cautions, look at the total package. “Often in industries where salaries tend to be lower, there are some lifestyle benefits there—the salary is higher because the demands are higher, or maybe the benefits aren’t as great.”
3. WHEN YOU FIND OUT A COWORKER MAKES MORE THAN YOU . . .
Let’s say you’ve discovered you’re underpaid, not just relative to the job market, but in direct relation to a colleague. First of all, don’t rush to assume you know why.
Maybe they nailed that initial salary negotiation. Or maybe at the time they were hired, your employer was trying to lure talent in a competitive job market, and dangled fatter paychecks as bait. When you approach your boss to discuss a raise (after running through Friedman’s checklist first), follow the same rule you would in other scenarios: “Ask for what you want,” advisesFast Company contributor and workplace psychologist Art Markman.
This can be tricky because knowing your coworker’s pay sets a new mental benchmark, influencing your perception of what you should be earning. While that can be useful intel, it shouldn’t upend your strategy. When you ask for a raise, says Markman, there’s no harm in mentioning that you know what your colleague is getting paid. Just don’t use that as the main reason why you should be making more. Like Friedman, he also recommends “[justifying] your request primarily with your accomplishments.”
4. . . . AND IT MIGHT BE DUE TO SEXISM
Occasionally, the reason you’re being underpaid is a clear-cut case of gender discrimination. “If you can say that three guys were hired at the same time from the same school with the same GPA, and all three are making more [despite having] the same responsibilities,” says Friedman, “go for it.” But “usually,” Friedman says, “it’s fuzzier than that.”
“A lot of the time people aren’t aware of their own biases, so it’s very possible someone has been gender-discriminating against you” unwittingly, she explained. Many organizations are pouring resources into curbing these unconscious biases, particularly in recruiting and hiring, and there are even some early signs that technology can help weed it out of daily interactions as well.
There’s no right answer. “If your goal is to stay there, treat it the same way that you’d treat asking for a raise, she suggests. “It’s all performance-based.”
“If the machine is too big to fight and it makes more sense to go somewhere where you’ll be valued,” Friedman says, “sometimes it makes sense to really go for it even to the point of legal action.” But not all women may see that as a viable option, she acknowledges.
“Maybe you can’t risk being out of a job at all, and sometimes you may just have to suck it up and conduct a job search on the sly.”
“I went from a very average life to a broken life,” Sybrina Fulton told a crowd at Google’s offices in downtown San Francisco last November. After George Zimmerman shot her son, Trayvon Martin, in Florida in 2012, and was later acquitted of second-degree murder, Fulton transformed from a mother to an activist. Still, she said, she objects to people calling her strong. Speaking out was a matter of necessity.
“I didn’t want to live the rest of my life bitter, because that would have taken two lives instead of just one,” she said, name checking Beyoncé’s Lemonade, in which she makes a brief cameo. She said her son’s death forced her to speak out because “this country just did not see how broken it was.”
Evidence of that brokenness has been piling up since Martin’s death. It’s there in the frequent shootings of black men and boys by police, and in the white supremacists hailing Donald Trump after he was elected to the presidency after a campaign marked by bigotry.
It’s also there in the demographics of Google’s employee population: As at most tech companies, there are few black or Latino workers, especially among engineers. This explains why Fulton had been invited to speak as part of a series of discussions on race. Google—along with nearly every other tech company, from giants to startups—is struggling to get past that brokenness to a place where the workforce better reflects the audiences it serves.
When the company released its first diversity report in 2014, it essentially forced other tech companies to do the same, and confirmed longstanding suspicions about the industry’s makeup. But while the concept of annual diversity reports suggests that Silicon Valley wants to hold itself accountable for improving its dismal diversity figures, so far, not a lot has changed.
After spending two years and $265 million on the effort, Google’s employee population was only 2% black in 2016, the same percentage as it was in 2014. Fifty-nine percent of Googlers are white, 32% are Asian, 3% are Hispanic, and 3% identified as a mix of two or more ethnicities. A roundup of diversity reports, gathered by The Hacker Life in March, finds similar numbers at many tech companies.
This data reflects the gender composition of Google’s global technical workforce and the race and ethnicity composition of Google’s U.S. workforce as of January 1, 2016. For more stats, visit google.com/diversity.
In the U.S., African-Americans and Hispanics make up 26% of the population over the age of 21, Knatokie Ford, the former senior policy adviser for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, recently told Essence. But they make up only 11% of the workforce in industries related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “To see something significant where we’re actually hitting a market supply, you know, of 10% or something like that of hispanic and black Googlers, that’s going to take several years,” Nancy Lee, the company’s former diversity chief, told the PBS NewsHour in July.
In mid-December, Google’s efforts appeared to hit another snag after TechCrunch reported that Lee was retiring from the company. The company would not comment on her decision to leave, on who might replace her, or how its diversity and inclusion programs could shift in her absence. Lee could not be reached for comment directly.
Last month, the company’s employment data entered the spotlight again after the U.S. Department of Labor announced it was suing Google over its failure to provide the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) with compensation information related to its equal opportunity program. “Like other federal contractors, Google has a legal obligation to provide relevant information requested in the course of a routine compliance evaluation,” OFCCP Acting Director Thomas M. Dowd said in a statement. “Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so.”
In response, Google spokespeople have said the request for that information was too broad and risked divulging confidential employee information. “We’re very committed to our affirmative action obligations and to improving the diversity of our workforce, and have been very vocal about the importance of these issues,” Google told the Society for Human Resource Management.
The company has invested millions in a program focused on reducing unconscious bias in its employees, tweaked its policies to make pay more equitable, and also sought to address the so-called “pipeline” problem, the argument that there aren’t enough minority engineers to choose from, by improving its recruiting efforts. In recent years, Google has worked closely with historically black colleges in order to identify and recruit engineering talent. According to Essence, more than 400 recruits from that program are still at Google.
Google is also a hefty supporter of Black Girls Code, an organization that exposes girls of color to computer science and technology, and last year it set up shop in Oakland’s predominantly black Fruitvale neighborhood in an effort to provide technology training to locals. A second site is slated to open in Harlem, New York, this year. Google spent $115 million on diversity initiatives in 2014 and $150 million in 2015, according to USA Today. However, spokesman Ty Sheppard said it’s not divulging how much the company invested in those programs in 2016, or how much it plans to lay out in 2017.
But even getting diverse candidates through the door often isn’t enough. At Facebook, for instance, an experiment offered recruiters “double points” if they found a candidate that was a “diversity hire.” However, those candidates ran into trouble as a committee of high-ranking engineers often vetoed those candidates.
The effect of unconscious bias may even appear in the company’s search results. Google’s Photos app famously tagged two black people as gorillas, and image searches for common terms, such as “man” or “woman” (or, puzzlingly, “beautiful dreadlocks”) mostly produce pictures of white people.
When Google was called out for returning criminal mugshots when people searched for images of black teenagers, Google claimed that its search algorithms are based on the availability and frequency of online data, but that the results don’t reflect the company’s own beliefs. Still, as Bradley Horowitz, the manager who led Google Photos at the time of the gorilla incident, admitted recently, according to TechCrunch, a more diverse team would have noticed the problems earlier in the process. (The company has recently funded research into fighting bias in machine learning.)
Ethnic Diversity In Tech Positions for 2016: Nota bene: the U.S.A. row is based on “computer and mathematical operations” data row from the BLS report. Amazon does not separate tech and non-tech employees. Chart is by Nick Heer, Diversity of Tech Companies by the Numbers: 2016 Edition by PIXELENVY
This all helps to explain what has brought activists like Fulton to Google’s campuses, in an effort to nudge audiences to behave more inclusively. “We have to get to that space where it does not matter—if it’s your 6-year-old brother or or your 6-year-old son—the colour of their skin does not matter. Because I can sit here right now before you, and there are a lot of things I could take off . . . but I cannot remove the colour of my skin. Nor do I want to, because it’s who I am,” she said.
DECODING AND UPGRADING
Valeisha Butterfield Jones, who was hired as Google’s head of black community engagement in January 2016, is reluctant to predict how long it might take to create significant diversity among Google’s employees, who now number 65,000. She admits, “We have a lot of work to do.”
Sheppard, the Google spokesman, noted that with so many employees, even a small increase in the percentage of black employees translates to hundreds of workers. “While the percentage doesn’t appear to change, there is progress happening,” he says.
Valeisha Butterfield Jones
Jones was a youth organizer for Obama for America before joining Google. She’s looking at a number of ways to bring more black and Latino workers to Google, and to change the tech titan’s internal culture surrounding race. As part of a broader project called Race At Google, she helped launch a speaker series this year called Decoding Race, with the assistance of Michael Skolnik, the well-connected political director for the media mogul Russell Simmons. Jones so far has brought activist DeRay McKesson to speak to Googlers and hosted Van Jones as the star of a talk entitled, “Can Computers Be Racist?” Fulton’s talk was another in the series; she spoke alongside comedian Cristela Alonzo, Google’s in-house racial equitect Myosha McAfee, journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas, and moderator Michaela Angela Davis.
More than 3,000 Google employees have come out for the Decoding Race series so far, and many more have watched via Google’s internal live-streaming systems. (The discussion is also available on YouTube.) At least 10 more talks are planned over the next year at Google sites around the country, Jones says.
“Most of the talks have had a majority of white men in the audience,” she says. “That was so inspiring for me, to see that there was an appetite to come in and better understand the communities they work and live with.”
At least one black former Google engineer isn’t as inspired. Erica Joy Baker left her position as a site reliability engineer in May 2015 after almost 10 years with Google, largely because she was fed up with the company’s failure to address a culture of casual racism. After leaving, Baker cofounded Project Include, an organization designed to help tech companies achieve real diversity, with former interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. She’s also an engineer at Slack, which she says is doing its own work around diversity and inclusion. At a recent panel discussion, Leslie Miley, Slack’s director of engineering, urged Google and other tech companies to use blind assessments when looking for new recruits, something Slack already does.
Baker was still at Google when the company launched its unconscious bias program, which aims to train folks to recognize when they’re operating from places of unrecognized racism or sexism—including when interacting with coworkers or potentially hiring new ones. Last summer, the company reported that all new Googlers take the workshop as part of their orientation, and that over 65% of Googlers have participated in the workshops so far.
“Unconscious bias training is a way to say, ‘We’re working on it,’ but since it’s not required, the only people who show up are the people who are already thinking about and working on those biases, and the people who really need it aren’t going,” Baker says. She suspects the Decoding Race talks will appeal to a similar audience.
“YOU HAVE TO BE PREPARED TO FIRE PEOPLE”
Baker experienced a gauntlet of casual and overt racism at Google. During her first years at the company, in the mid-2000s, she reported a white male colleague for making racist and sexist remarks, and was told she could either put up with it or move from the office in Atlanta to another one in New York, she says. She chose New York, then later transferred to Google’s Mountain View, California, office.
Baker’s coworkers regularly mistook her for a non-engineer because of her race. Some assumed she was one of Google’s security officers, despite the fact that security personnel wear specific uniforms, while others thought she was her office mate’s personal assistant. Those kinds of biases were baked into Google’s beginnings, she says.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google 18 years ago, they wanted to “re-create grad life at Stanford at Google,” Baker says. They hired mostly white and Asian men, brought in ping-pong tables and pool tables, and kept the alcohol flowing. But nobody ever thought about how that culture might exclude others, she says.
Baker regularly witnessed discussions in which people talked about how, for example, they thought black people were less intelligent—or more prone to violence—than white people. “That sort of thing was permitted because there weren’t enough black people to speak out against it,” Baker says.
No amount of unconscious bias trainings or speaker events are likely to upend such behavior, say workplace consultants. For diversity and inclusion initiatives to really work, a company has to embrace them at every level—and show real accountability, says Y-Vonne Hutchinson, founder of ReadySet, a diversity consulting firm in Oakland.
“You need to bring in people who value diversity. Don’t just bring a person of color into a place that’s a little bit hostile and not bring in people who support diversity,” says Hutchinson, who’s also a member of Project Include. “You have to be prepared to make tough decisions. You have to be prepared to fire people.”
Asked if she ever saw anyone at Google get fired for casual or even overt racism, Baker exhaled with a bitter laugh. “No. Absolutely not,” she says. “They get to write it off as a different political opinion. It sends the message that someone can be blatantly racist, and this is a culture that tolerates it.”
Sheppard disagrees, saying that Page and Brin “have been very committed to diversity” at Google. Acts of racism among employees are grounds for termination, and Google has fired employees for behaving in racist ways, he says.
Beyond making employees feel safe and respected, there are solid business reasons for creating a diverse workforce, says Hutchinson: Heterogeneous companies make better products, while homogenous companies make worse ones. “As tech companies become more risk-averse, being able to derive revenue early on is going to become very important,” he says. “Ninety-two percent of startups fail in the first year—50% from a poor product fit.”
Rhoma Young, a human resources expert and member of the Association of Workplace Investigators, says she used to support diversity programs in corporations. Now she’s more reluctant to suggest them, unless a company is very committed to creating real cultural change in how employees treat each other from management on down.
“Unless they are willing to do it realistically and stand behind it, it’s going to become a joke and a sham. It’s going to give a mixed message,” Young says. Without that commitment, “it’s not worth the resources to raise an expectation level [about diversity] that’s not realistic.”
EMPLOYEE RETENTION MATTERS
In addition to the Decoding Race series, Jones is beginning to work on building bridges between Google and communities of colour. In early December, she facilitated a mixer in New York City where more than 300 black and Latino professionals mingled with Google employees and recruiters in an effort to bring more of those professionals through Google’s doors. Jones says she’s planning more such events in 2017, and also looking at how to retain black and Latino employees once they’re hired.
Hutchinson said focusing on retention is incredibly important. “Apple is a great example. They’ve made huge gains in diverse hiring, and then have seen incredible losses when they’re thinking about who they retain. Women are leaving. People of color are leaving. They’re not making sure that people feel like they belong and can grow in the company.”
Google does not make its employee retention data available to the public, according to spokesman Ty Sheppard.
Jones is also looking at the role technology is playing in the fight for racial justice, such as the use of live video feeds to reveal incidents of police brutality; she hopes to empower racial justice activists to make better use of tech and social media. “They’re showing that evidence of these injustices are there in plain sight. They have made it a more human issue for people,” she says.
Baker says it’s not clear to her whether Google’s newer initiatives are rooted in a real desire to change, or are a part of a public-relations effort, which she said was evident in 2014, when the company released its unconscious-bias training information through re:Work.
“They’re thinking about, ‘How does this make us look good?’” Baker says. “But the conversations on race need to continue, and Google needs to keep having them, whether it’s for PR or altruism. They need to keep pushing the industry to keep having them. If we can’t talk about the problems, we can’t fix the problems.”
Contract gigs can be a pretty sweet deal. By the very nature of the job, you’re expected to jump right in and start solving problems. Then, in three to six months or so, you can move onto your next exciting challenge, no strings attached. For some, this is truly an ideal setup. But many others may find themselves longing for the perks of a full-time position: the job security, the steady routine, and definitely the health insurance.
If you fall into this camp, don’t worry. Whether the job post explicitly says it or not, there is often an opportunity to turn contract work into a full-time position— f you play your cards right. Follow the advice below, and you’ll go from part time to full time in no time.
1. BE UP FRONT (WITHIN REASON)
Before anything else, you should make it clear that you’re interested in a full-time position during the interview.
“Some people are purely serial contractors, so your employer might not even know that’s something you could be interested in,” says Jamie Hichens, senior talent acquisition partner at Glassdoor.
But, she warns, there is such a thing as being too pushy. Immediately saying you’re only looking for full-time work or acting like a full-time position is already a sure thing for you are both good methods of getting on a recruiter’s nerves.
“The best way to express that you’re interested in a full-time job is to say something like ‘I’m so excited to join this team—I’m definitely interested in contract work, but if there were an opportunity for it to become full time, I’d be very open to that,’” Hichens recommends.
2. BECOME INDISPENSABLE
It goes without saying that a company won’t want to hire you full time if you underperform, but even meeting the expectations of your role isn’t always enough. To truly stand out, Hichens recommends that contract workers outshine the full-time employees on their team.
“We recently hired someone for a contract role of three to six months, but because she went above and beyond what was expected of her, we offered her a full-time role—even though we didn’t even have an open position for it listed on our site. She proved her value by thinking of new things to do in her role that weren’t expected of her—she redid processes and streamlined things in a way that proved to be invaluable,” Hichens shares.
3. MAKE SURE TO MINGLE
Sometimes, contract workers make the mistake of isolating themselves from colleagues since they don’t see themselves as a “real” team member. But this is a missed opportunity, Hichens says. If you don’t see yourself as part of the team, what are the odds that your team will?
“Don’t just be ‘the contractor,’” Hichens says. “When people really keep to themselves, it rarely works out in their favour. Even things as small as joining in on water cooler talk or sitting together at lunch are good ways to lean into the situation and act like you’re a part of the full-time team.”
4. DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Even if you follow the steps above, you can’t expect a job offer to simply fall into your lap—you have to take action. After a few months, check in with your employer to find out whether or not they see a chance to bring you on full time. Come to that meeting prepared not only to state your case for full-time employment, but also with clear expectations of what you want and need out of a full-time job.
“Be ready to talk salary and benefits, and always prepare to negotiate so you make sure you’re getting the best deal possible,” Hichens recommends.
Salary and benefits negotiation are an art form in and of themselves, but the first step is knowing the market value of your skills so you can push for fair compensation without pricing yourself out of a job. From there, the power’s in your hands.
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