In our previous blog, we looked at the numbers – and they weren’t pretty. Women make up just 22%-35% of the global tech workforce, hold fewer than 25% of leadership roles, and leave the industry at alarming rates.
We named the problem.
This blog is about what we can collectively do.
Specifically, it’s for the people in a position to actually change something: talent leaders, heads of recruiting, and sales managers who decide who gets hired onto technology sales teams. The gender gap in tech isn’t going to close itself, and the companies that figure this out first will have a measurable competitive advantage.
The Business Case Is Settled, but the Solution Isn’t.
Let’s start with the data that should be on every hiring leader’s desk. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 39% more likely to financially outperform those in the bottom quartile, according to a McKinsey & Company report. That’s not just some talking point. That’s a performance metric.
That correlation has been consistent across four McKinsey reports spanning nearly a decade, and it holds across industries and geographies. McKinsey is careful to note that correlation does not equal causation: Financially successful companies may also be more likely to invest in diversity efforts. But the pattern is persistent and significant enough that the business community broadly accepts it as a meaningful signal.
What we can say with confidence is this: Companies with more gender-diverse leadership consistently outperform their less-diverse peers, and the gap has widened over time. The technology sector has little reason to believe it is exempt from that pattern, and strong reasons to believe it has more to gain than most.
There’s also the talent pipeline argument.
The cybersecurity workforce alone faces a shortage of millions of unfilled roles globally. The sales side of the technology industry has similar structural gaps. The talent pool that companies are currently fishing from – experienced, credentialed, traditionally profiled tech candidates – isn’t big enough to fill the demand.
The organizations that figure out how to hire and develop women into tech sales roles aren’t just “doing the right thing.” They’re building a competitive advantage that their more conventional competitors won’t be able to replicate quickly.
The “Broken Rung” Problem and Why It Starts Earlier Than You Think
Here’s something that surprises many hiring leaders when they first see it: The gender gap in tech leadership isn’t primarily caused by women failing to reach the top.
It’s caused by women not making it through the first promotion.
Ninety-three women are promoted to manager-level roles for every 100 men. This single data point, known as the “broken rung,” explains much of what plays out at every level above it. If fewer women make it to manager, fewer are in the pool for director. Fewer directors mean fewer VPs. The gap doesn’t start at the CXO level. It starts at the first step up.
In technology sales, this plays out in a specific way. Entry-level sales roles are often the first place women with transferable skills can break into the industry. But if those roles don’t come with meaningful training, clear advancement criteria, and managers who actively develop their people, they become a revolving door rather than a launching pad.
The implication for hiring leaders is direct: Who you hire matters, but how you develop and promote them after they’re in the door matters just as much.
Why Tech Sales Is an Ideal Entry Point – and Why Hiring Leaders Should Lean Into It
There’s a persistent myth in technology sales hiring: The best salespeople are the ones who already know the product. That IT experience is a prerequisite. You need to hire from inside the industry to succeed inside the industry.
But the evidence doesn’t support this.
What separates high performers in technology sales isn’t technical certification. It’s the ability to build trust, ask the right questions, understand a customer’s business problem, and navigate a complex, multi-stakeholder buying process. These are fundamentally human skills, and they come from all sorts of backgrounds.
Consider what women bring from adjacent careers:
- A nurse or healthcare administrator who can translate clinical needs into technology requirements for a healthcare IT solution
- A teacher who can explain complex concepts clearly to non-technical buyers
- A hospitality professional with an exceptional ability to read a room, manage relationships, and handle pressure
- A marketing professional who understands how to build a story and speak to what buyers actually care about
Women from adjacent careers can be genuinely strong fits for IT sales if the company is willing to invest in bridging the technical knowledge gap. You don’t need to lower your bar to hire women into tech sales. You need to widen the door and build the on-ramp. That’s exactly what structured IT sales training makes possible.
Programs like FastStartGO! are built specifically to take people with strong sales instincts and transferable skills and get them fluent and comfortable in the technology landscape, cloud, cybersecurity, AI, and managed services, in three to four months. The learning curve that used to be a barrier to non-traditional hiring has become a solved problem.
What Actually Changes the Numbers: Four Things Hiring Leaders Can Do
Awareness of the problem is necessary, but alone, it doesn’t move the needle. Here are four practical places to start.
- Rewrite the job description. Most technology sales job postings are written to attract the person who already has the job. They lead with required years of industry experience, specific certification, and technical jargon that filters out exactly the non-traditional candidates who might excel in the role. Audit your JDs. What’s truly required versus what is assumed? What skills matter most, and are you actually listing them?
- Expand where you recruit. If your pipeline looks the same every cycle, you’re fishing in the same pond. Women-focused professional communities, career-change platforms, university programs outside of traditional computer science departments, and organizations like Women in Tech networks are all underutilized sources of candidates who are motivated, capable, and looking for exactly the opportunity your company could offer.
- Invest in structured onboarding and training, and make it part of the hiring pitch. One of the most powerful things a company can do to attract non-traditional hires is to make the training specific. When candidates know that the company has invested in a real onboarding program – not sink-or-swim shadowing, but a structured curriculum – it lowers the barrier to application and signals that the organization is serious about developing its people. This matters – especially to career changers who may be talented but uncertain about the technical gap.
- Measure what happens after the hire. Diversity hiring without retention tracking is a revolving door with extra steps. If you’re not measuring promotion rates, tenure, and engagement by gender, you won’t know whether your hiring efforts are translating into genuine inclusion or just short-term headcount changes. The goal isn’t just to get women in. It’s to build a culture where they stay, grow, and lead.
The Competitive Window Is Open, But It Won’t Be Forever
Here’s the honest reality: Most technology sales organizations are still hiring the same way they always have. The profile is narrow, the pipeline is shallow, and the talent shortage is real.
That’s actually an opportunity.
The companies that build infrastructure now – the inclusive job descriptions, the broader recruiting channels, the structured training programs, the internal advancement pathways – will have a meaningful head start when the rest of the market catches up. They’ll have larger, more diverse, better-trained sales teams. They’ll understand their customers more broadly. And they’ll be able to attract talent that their competitors are still overlooking.
The business case for hiring women in tech sales isn’t a feel-good argument. It’s a compounding growth strategy. The organizations that treat it that way will outperform the ones that don’t. The talent is there. It always has been. The question is whether your organization is ready to recognize it and build the infrastructure to develop it.
Where to Start
If you’re a talent leader or sales manager in the technology space and this resonates, here are three concrete starting points:
- Audit your last 10 hires. Look at the backgrounds, the genders, the career paths. What patterns do you see? Are they serving you or limiting you?
- Explore training as a hiring enabler. FastStartGO! was built specifically to make non-traditional IT sales hiring viable. This program is designed to make new reps productive in three to four months, regardless of their prior tech background. If you’ve been hesitant to hire outside the traditional profile because of ramp-up time, that hesitation has a solution.
- Start the conversation internally. Bring the data to your next leadership meeting. Share this post. Ask the question: Are we hiring the best people for these roles or just the most familiar ones?
Progress in this industry is possible. It’s happening slowly. But it won’t happen by accident, and it won’t happen fast enough without leaders who decide to move intentionally. That decision starts with hiring.