I recently spoke with a STEM coaching client, Zadie, who was leaving her employer. Her mistake? ‘Not paying attention to red flags before, and then not being willing to face them when they appeared later! If only I had learned all this at 30, I would have been so much better off!’
I thought I’d share some of her hard-earned lessons so you can avoid the same traps.
Red Flags in STEM Employment
Focusing Too Much on ‘Diversity Hires’
Avoid employers who are too focused on seeking credit for even considering hiring you. Zadie said her interviews were enjoyable, but self-congratulatory talk was routinely repeated in all her interactions at interview stage. While she had the degrees they sought, she wasn’t a ‘usual’ candidate for them. Besides her gender and race making her different, she was older and experienced in sectors in which they professed they wanted to move into.Â
The Boys’ Club Continues
Listen to water cooler chat that sheds light on their stances. The employer had a HR lead who had had to come down on sexual harassment hard, but then left suddenly. ‘I don’t like office politics, but her leaving was noticed by women at all levels,’ said Zadie. A few months later it shook me to hear a senior man’s response to accusations of harassment: ‘Well, our old D&I mad HR lead isn’t here anymore, so it doesn’t matter what those office juniors say’.’Â
Reputation Is Important
Do your due diligence. When Zadie finally looked, reviews at GlassDoor were less positive than she’d hoped. She noted: ‘In the future, I’ll ask more of my friends and acquaintances who have ever worked with or at that organisation what they think of the place. I made the mistake of focusing on just learning about the people who I was interviewing with, not who had been there before. That’s not a mistake I’ll make again.’
Equal(ity) Opportunities
Look for evidence of other people from diverse backgrounds moving ahead. ‘While they had a senior woman who is the same race as I am, I could have looked harder at her path. It turns out she was also an external hire … I know she hasn’t been given any of our most high profile projects. The remainder of their senior team have been with the organisation since they first earned their degrees, enjoying a steady trajectory upwards that I simply don’t see for people like me.’
Going the Extra Mile
Ask at the start how many interviews are normal for a position like the one you are considering. Interviews can be useful for both parties, but Zadie recalled that she had expected to sit for 2 interviews and in the end sat for 6, as the organisation wanted to ‘confirm they’d made a good choice’ – especially important considering she was so different from their usual hires. She reflected: ‘It felt like they had to convince themselves, which meant I had to jump through so many more hoops than I’d expected – and it was the same for the rest of my time there.’
Lessons Learned
Zadie realised that she no longer wanted to be that square peg feeling squeezed into a round hole. ‘While the employer said they wanted diversity, it felt like they wanted to turn me into female versions of them. That’s simply not a game I’m willing to play any longer.’ At the end of her session, she realised the experience had been a gift – both in getting exposure to a new sector, and in ‘training’ her how to handle difficult people – a challenge she, like all of us, realised she’d likely experience again. This time though, she knew she could parse those red flags beforehand.
If you want to learn more about what your saboteurs might be doing to hold you back in your career, keep an eye out for my next round of Peak Resilience Accelerator sessions! Or get in contact for some executive coaching sessions, or a webinar talk.
