Facebook Still Struggles With Diversity Despite Recruiter Incentives

Facebook hasn’t made strides to improve its diversity despite offering incentives to recruiters, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The social media giant reportedly offered recruiters up to two points for bringing in a Black, Hispanic, or female engineer, the demographics least represented in the company. The points could translate to better performance reviews and financial bonuses, according to the Journal.

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But the system failed to bring any real change to the company’s diversity numbers. Its latest diversity report, released in June, showed that its workforce was only 2% Black, 4% Hispanic, and 33% women. Its technical workforce, which includes the engineers at the center of Facebook’s reported point system, was only 1% Black, 3% Hispanic, and 17% women.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment to the Journal about the point system and whether it was still a recruiting tactic used by the company. “We continue to experiment with a variety of approaches to help in our efforts to increase the diversity of our workforce,” the spokesperson told the Journal.

Facebook, like most of its peers in Silicon Valley, has publicly stumbled when it comes to diversity. In July, the company attempted to justify its diversity numbers by claiming there simply weren’t enough minorities or women available to hire.

“All of us are lost with diversity,” a former Facebook recruiter told the Journal. “We’re all rushing and sprinting to get diversity numbers higher and higher than other companies. It’s become a competitive number.”