To attract women, industry must change recruiting methods
Automotive News -- September 13, 2010 - 12:01 am ET
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Linda Hasenfratz Linamar Corp.: "There's just so few women in our company to begin with. It doesn't come naturally even at my company — and I'm the CEO." Photo credit: JOE WILSSENS Said Hasenfratz: "It doesn't come naturally, even at my company — and I'm the CEO." Increasing the number of women in the auto industry requires some new approaches to recruiting, said participants at a roundtable of some of the 100 Leading Women. One key is portraying fields such as powertrain engineering as cool, they said. |
Barb Samardzich, Ford Motor Co.: "I can’t think of the last time an engineer got to wear these incredibly great Armani clothes and date this really good-looking engineer." Photo credit: JOE WILSSENS Jay Iyengar, Chrysler Group's director and chief engineer, head of electrified propulsion systems, said automakers need to explain to college students the opportunities in hybrid-electric powertrains. Companies also should send female engineers to recruit at colleges, panelists said. Iyengar said a recent round of hiring in her department landed only four women out of 50 hires. |
Jeneanne Hanley, Lear Corp.: "If we don’t have a diverse work force, we do not have the best work force." Photo credit: JOE WILSSENS The female recruiters have a better chance of finding female employees if they go to colleges that have high percentages of women in their engineering departments. Only 17 percent of undergraduate engineering students are women, said Nancy Gioia, Ford's director of global electrification. And the percentage is lower at the best engineering schools in the world, where Ford historically has recruited. So Ford is re-evaluating which colleges should be on its recruiting list, Gioia said. For the past couple of years, the global automotive crisis has limited automakers' programs for recruiting and developing women. Instead, industry insiders would hear, "We have to get the plants up and running," said Linda Theisen, who was a Metaldyne vice president when she joined the panel but is now Fisker Automotive's vice president of purchasing. The panelists said they hoped the industry survivors once again would turn their attention to diversity. "We've gone too far not to leap ahead," said Jeneanne Hanley, a Lear Corp. vice president. "If we don't have a diverse work force, we do not have the best work force. We don't have time anymore. Our time is right now." |
