voice.of.diversity

Do you see diversity and equal opportunities for your employees as a success factor for your business activities?

Have you set yourself the goal of making your company more innovative through diversity in the workforce?

voice.of.diversity offers you the unique opportunity to get in touch with highly qualified students at TU Vienna in a new, interesting way and to gain important experience and insights for your own application processes.

With voice.of.diversity, we bring students and employers together on the basis of a scientifically sound format. Together with the Center for Informatics and Society (CIS), the TU Career Center launched the DEBIAS tool to reduce bias and discrimination in the recruiting process.

Your advantages

Promote equal opportunities: Positioning as an innovative employer that takes the issue of diversity seriously.
Breaking new ground in recruiting: Making contact with highly qualified technicians who you might overlook in conventional application processes.
Reflect on your own processes: Learning to recognize and minimize unconscious discrimination processes. Gathering insights to optimize your own recruitment processes.
Attract diversity: Reach students who may not have previously considered a career in your company.

Dates

voice.of.diversity is a regular course at TU Vienna and is worth 1 ECTS in the transferable skills catalog.

The course takes place once a year. Dates for the winter semester 2024/25:

Preparation workshop: November 5th 2024
Anonymous auditions: November 7th 2024

What do you need to participate?

A corporate culture that already lives diversity and promotes equal opportunities with appropriate commitment
Openness and willingness to engage in new ways of recruiting and to reflect on your own practices and processes
Interest in recruiting from the chosen (English-language) fields of study at TU Vienna

Process Anonymous Auditions

The meeting of students and companies takes place directly at TU Vienna.

Step 1: 30 minutes DEBIAS chat

The students are asked company-specific questions in advance, in which they are briefly asked both professional and personal facts - without any personal details. In the next step, the DEBIAS chat in written form is used, in which company representatives can respond to the students' answers and ask further questions.

Step 2: 15 minutes face-to-face interview

Immediately after the anonymous chat, a 15-minute personal live interview takes place. The curtain falls for both sides. This is where the self-reflection begins.

Lukas Ramach (Managing Director BOC Group): „Diversität in all ihren Facetten war in unserer Firmenkultur verankert, schon lange bevor es ein Trend-Thema wurde. Wir sind überzeugt davon, dass uns diese Vielfalt als Unternehmen hilft zu besseren Lösungen für unsere Kund*innen zu kommen. Als wir dann von der “voice. of.diversity“- Initiative vom TU Career Center gehört haben, war gleich klar, das passt perfekt zu uns. Der klare Fokus, Personen eine Chance zu geben, die es vielleicht nicht immer so einfach haben und das Ganze mit einer wissenschaftlich fundierten Begleitung, hat uns sehr angesprochen. Das Format hat uns geholfen, noch einmal bewusster darauf zu fokussieren, wo wir trotz all unserer Offenheit mit Biases konfrontiert sind. Tatsächlich ist es so, dass man von den Antworten aus dem Chat-Tool nicht darauf schließen kann, was für ein Mensch dann wirklich vor einem steht. Es gibt eine Diskrepanz zwischen dem echten Auftreten der Bewerber*innen und dem inneren Auge, da gibt es einige Überraschungen. Das beste Resultat ist, dass wir aus jeder Runde Mitarbeiter*innen gefunden haben, die bis heute noch in unserem Unternehmen sind.“

What is unconscious bias?

Unconscious bias and related cognitive effects influence our perception in many areas of life: In recruiting in particular, however, these biases can have serious consequences!

Effects such as the "halo effect" make people we like appear more competent. Unconscious, internalized, racist or xenophobic tendencies can also influence our assessments simply by looking at a person's surname.

Sabine Leisentritt (Personalmanagement bei WIEN ENERGIE) fasst ihre Erfahrungen des Tages zusammen: „Durch das Event ist uns vieles bewusst geworden und wir möchten in Zukunft unser Recruiting neu denken, um mögliche Verzerrungen so weit wie möglich auszuschließen.“