Girls Smarter Than Boys?

In the TV1 Debat Perdana of the theme “Talking Points, Youth and the Future of the Nation” aired on 17th July 2005, DAP Deputy Chairman, Dr Tan Seng Giaw noted that from 1995 to 2005, the number of women in public universities is 472,279 (59.2%) compared with men 326,024 (40.8%). That’s actually a whopping 150,000 difference between the two genders over the past 10 years. This is probably not taking into consideration the fact that the gender gap is probably worse today than it was back in 1995.

I have a confession to make – my Malaysian office of approximately 60 employees is made up of approximately 70% ladies and 30% men. So, many clients as well as my staff often poked fun that I’m totally biased in my recruitment process – that I only like to hire girls. And they liked to do that when my wife is around!

I’d often argue profusely that I make absolutely no gender distinctions in my recruitment process (its true!). I’m pretty transparent about my recruitment process:

1. Most of the time, I use Jobstreet.com to advertise for candidates. I like Jobstreet because the website actually allows me to have an immediate overview of all candidates via a summary table with the key information. I’d shortlist and reject candidates immediately using the summary table by ticking the relevant checkboxes. The key evaluation criteria at this stage is the university the candidate attended, the grades achieved as well as the replies to my customised online tests. I’d only review the candidate’s complete resume at this stage if his grades/university falls into a “grey” area (in which case, his replies to the online questions and tests as well as his extra-curricular activities becomes crucial).
   
   
2. The shortlisted candidates are typically around 4-8% of the all the resumes I received. So, for 300 applicants, I would expect to shortlist approximately 10-20 candidates. These candidates will be invited for an interview. Some 10-20% of the shortlisted candidates will not attend the interview for a variety of reasons (usually it’s because they have accepted another offer already). It is usually during the interview stage that I find out about the gender of the candidates.
   
   
3. Out of the 8-15 candidates interviewed, offers will typically be made to 2-6 candidates, of which then another 1-2 candidates will reject the offer.

The process looks simple enough, and the only opportunity which I might have to be gender-biased will really be during the interview stage. Thankfully, the underlying statistics comes to my rescue.

I realised that after shortlisting the candidates from Jobstreet based on my criteria above, the gender ratio is already skewed typically to 60% females (or more). On top of that, from experience, I find that the likelihood of skipping an interview, rejecting a job offer as well as switching jobs within 1 month of employment is higher among guys.

Hence understandably, there are occasions whereby in a recruitment exercise, I may very well end up with no guys, and three girls. Absolutely nothing to do with any bias on my part!

Now, with this new statistics in hand made available by Dr Tan Seng Giaw, I’m now armed with another piece of reason as to why I end up with more ladies in my office, and totally absolves me of any gender bias – Girls are more intelligent, more hardworking than Guys!