Young women still face recruiting biases, workplace bullying

Dive Brief:

It looks like HR and recruiters have their work cut out for them, as more than 30% of young American women want to be entrepreneurs and work for themselves rather than working for a company, according to a survey of 1,050 U.S. women aged 18 to 35.
The survey, commissioned by the 1,000 Dreams Fund, a national scholarship program for young women, and Recruiter.com, an online global recruiting career service, also reports that 77% of women surveyed say that being "too young" has been a problem in landing job interviews or getting hired. Also, 32% only keep their existing jobs just to pay off college debt.
Finally, while 22% chose their college major as a way to make money, 58% picked a major to follow their dream. The report also mentions that 20% say they've experienced workplace bullying - though these these incidents are primarily perpetrated by other women - and 21% report that sexism has affected them at work.

Dive Insight:

This survey, done by Quicksurveys, focuses on the challenges young women face in the workplace, but it also points to the issues most employers today must fix in trying to boost gender diversity and attract Generation Z and millennial women into their workforces.

So what's a member of the industry to do? When it comes to eliminating the recruiting bias reported by some of the women in this survey, experts have already pointed to the potential of machine learning processes. Others have turned to new concepts like "reverse mentoring" in order to address sexism and workplace prejudice. But it's clear that neither of these ideas are perfect solutions to the problems they seek to address.

Employers consistently say gender diversity is important, both with new hires and in leadership roles. But the survey results clearly demonstrate that employers may be failing to properly support younger women early, and that may cause them to seek alternatives, such as entrepreneurship. In fact, recent research has shown that women lose out to men consistently when it comes to that first promotion.