Amazon's the Latest Tech Company to Adopt the Rooney Rule: Here Are Some Others
Amazon is putting the so-called "Rooney Rule" in place to diversify its board of directors. But it's far from the first to try this tactic in the technology business.
May 16, 2018 at 07:04 PM
3 minute read
Amazon's campus.
Amazon.com Inc. announced this week that it will require women and people of color to be included in the pool of applicants for its board member positions. The policy is being implemented at the Seattle-based behemoth in spite of current board members' initial opposition, according to a report from Recode.
But Amazon is not the first major company to adopt the so-called Rooney Rule. It was first established by the National Football League in 2003 to increase the number of ethnic minorities in head coach and senior football operations positions. Since then, some in corporate America have embraced the policy as a means of boosting hiring diversity, including several tech companies.
Here's a look at some tech companies with versions of the Rooney Rule in place.
Lyft
The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company has its own version of the Rooney Rule. For any open position at the director level or higher, Lyft Inc. requires at least one woman and one person of color to be part of the final interview stage. Tariq Meyers, former head of inclusion and diversity at Lyft, told TechCrunch in September that the company's also tried to create a diverse slate of interviewers.
Uber
Following the release of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's report on Uber's culture in 2017, the company announced it would adopt its own version of the Rooney Rule. Like Lyft, Uber requires that at least one woman and one member of an underrepresented minority group get an interview for any key position, according to the Washington Post.
The Menlo Park, California-based company has said it has slowly but steadily increased its number of black and Latino employees, in part due to its use of the Rooney Rule. As of 2017, Facebook requires hiring managers to interview at least one underrepresented minority candidate for every job opening, Recode reported. In 2016, this policy was only for certain open jobs, but last year the practice was applied to all positions, according to Recode.
At the end of 2017, idea board website and application Pinterest released its gender and ethnic diversity statistics. The San Francisco-based company compared these statistics to the diversity goals it set at the beginning of the year, which included increasing hiring rates for engineers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds to 8 percent. While Pinterest fell short, hitting 5 percent, the company said it's expanded the talent pool for leadership positions by interviewing at least one woman and one person from an underrepresented minority group for each open job.
Patreon
Patreon, a platform that allows creators to raise money for their work, updated its diversity and inclusion policies at the end of April 2018. The company released its first employee demographic report and pledged to have its workforce composed of half women and gender minorities and half people of color and ethnic minorities by 2020. Patreon's applied the Rooney Rule in hiring practices to help achieve those diversity goals.
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