By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Facebook confirmed Thursday that it had implemented a hiring strategy meant to improve workplace diversity that is similar to practices used by a major professional sports league.
Specifically, Facebook spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina said in a statement that the company had adopted the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule” – a measure that requires teams to interview and consider at least one minority candidate for every senior position, including head coaches. It is named after chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team Dan Rooney.
The measure was very controversial when the NFL first implemented it in 2003, but has led to greater diversity in senior positions in the decade since implementation.
Critics have charged for years that Silicon Valley has failed at hiring a diverse workplace even as the user bases of many services including Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat host a growing number of women, blacks, Latinos and other minorities.
Facebook employs more than 10,000 workers around the globe. According to a diversity report released by the company last year, approximately 57 percent of its American workforce is white. About a third of employees in the U.S. are Asian, while blacks make up just 2.7 percent and Hispanics only constitute 4 percent.
Worldwide, women make up roughly 31 percent of Facebook’s employees, but occupy only about 15 percent of tech jobs.
Facebook announced that it would reveal new figures regarding diversity by the end of June.
The company’s founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that he and his wife donated $5 million to a scholarship fund that helps undocumented young immigrants attend college in the U.S.
“If we help more young immigrants climb the ladder to new opportunities, then our country will make greater progress,” Zuckerberg claimed in a Facebook post. “The investment Priscilla and I are making will go towards creating college scholarship programs for more than 400 young immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next five years,” he said.
