The New Talent Code

There are still too many barriers when it comes to hiring and advancing women in technical roles. Fortunately, those obstacles are being overcome with the help of people like Alaina Percival, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Women Who Code.

In the latest episode of The New Talent Code, hosts Ligia Zamora and Jason Cerrato revisit a conversation with Percival from Eightfold's Cultivate event. In this talk, Percival shares several pieces of advice on how to examine each breakpoint in the pipeline to design for inclusion and how to support women on their continuous upskilling journeys.

3 key quotes from this episode:

- "Make sure you're examining each break point in the pipeline for designing for inclusion. So if you realize that you're getting 95% male applicants maybe should be (shameless plug) posting on Women Wo Code's job board. If once you're going through the hiring process, and no women are making it past the whiteboarding session... you have a lot of opportunities for evaluating what questions are asked." - Alaina Percival [21:25]

- "The most important thing you can be doing right now is investing in the teams and the talent that you have inside of your company. And some of the things that you really need to be doing is helping women to understand what their path is inside of your organization and what they need to be doing to achieve that next position." - Alaina Percival [16:51]

- "Software engineers know that you have to continue developing your skills. You're not going to just learn one programming language, one framework. And for women, it's so difficult to decide to take the time to invest in yourself. And so you need to make sure that people have the avenue and the clarity that they should be investing in themselves, and that they have the support and resources to do so." - Alaina Percival [18:27]