Why Diversity Is The Smart Approach To The Skills Shortage In The IT Industry – Women in Tech, 20 September 2023

The conversation about the IT skills shortage is often misdirected. The real need isn’t just for more coders, but for people who can think logically and apply technology constructively. The smartest, most effective way to fill this gap is to embrace genuine diversity. Innovation flourishes when you combine people with common skills but diverse backgrounds and lived experiences.

However, simply creating a pathway is not enough. Many corporate diversity programs, while well-intentioned, fail to understand the immense life stressors that candidates from disadvantaged or neurodiverse backgrounds often face. To truly succeed, these initiatives must be more than just recruitment funnels; they need to be supportive, empathetic, and designed with sound educational principles.

Ultimately, the biggest barrier is unconscious bias. Consider the cybersecurity graduate with a Master’s degree, who is hyper-focused and perfectly skilled but is rejected because he is on the spectrum and interviews “oddly to our cultural bias.” We are actively filtering out the talent we desperately need.

This is where AI can become a powerful mirror. When you build an AI model for a task like hiring, it forces you to confront the biases embedded in your processes. It makes the unconscious conscious, giving us the critical opportunity to design fairer, more effective, and more innovative organisations.

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