- Female candidates for executive roles drop off during engagement efforts, but perform well during final interviews and placement
- Self-selection out of roles isn't always about confidence
- Improving the language of success can help combat bias
We know that women aren’t represented equally in the private equity-backed C-suite. But where is it that they’re getting lost along the way?
A recent comprehensive study conducted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) revealed that nearly 70% of all senior leadership teams are all-male and that women make up only 17.9% of all PE-backed positions worldwide. Private equity has a long way to go before the field achieves gender equality.
Recent FALCON data, unfortunately, mirrors the low rates of women in PE-backed finance. 12.5% of our screened candidates were women within the past three years. However, we’ve dug into our search-related data to investigate where women are falling behind in the executive search process. The next step is to figure out why — and how we can stop the drop-off.
The Drop-Off Point
FIG. A – Percent of Candidates Who are Female at Each Stage
According to a study of our candidate search process over the past two years, over 9,000 female candidates made it to the messaged stage of our process, meaning they were assessed as a viable candidate for a given executive search and were contacted about the potential position. A massive drop-off happens between the messaged and responded stages, meaning that women aren’t replying to attempts to engage them in the search process. The lowest percentage of women in comparison to everyone i...