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Pinterest Shares Goals To Boost Number Of Women, Minorities They Hire

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS Sacramento) -- Pinterest is looking to boost the number of women and minorities they hire.

In a blog post, Evan Sharp, Pinterest's co-founder and chief creative officer, outlined the company's hiring goals for 2016.

"We think one reason it's been so hard to get numbers to change is that companies haven't stated specific goals," Sharp wrote. "So today, we're doing something unprecedented – we're going on record with our hiring goals for 2016. We're also sharing details about the new programs and improvements we have planned."

Sharp said that the number of female employees grew from 40 to 42 percent, but that more needs to be done.

Pinterest's goals for 2016 include:

-- Increase hiring rates for full-time engineering roles to 30 percent female.

-- Increase hiring rates for full-time engineers to 8 percent underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.

-- Increase hiring rates for non-engineering roles to 12 percent underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.

-- Implement a Rooney Rule-type requirement where at least one person from an underrepresented background and one female candidate is interviewed for every open leadership position.

Sharp also detailed how they plan to achieve these goals. They include:

-- Expand the set of universities we recruit from, and launch an early identification intern program for freshman and sophomore students from underrepresented backgrounds.

-- Work with outside strategy firm Paradigm to set up Inclusion Labs at Pinterest, where we'll experiment with new ways to improve diversity.

-- Have every employee participate in training to prevent unconscious bias.

-- Support the creation of a training and mentorship program to maximize the impact of Black software engineers and students, led by one of our engineers.

"By sharing these goals publicly, we're holding ourselves accountable to make meaningful changes to how we approach diversity at Pinterest," Sharp wrote. "We'll also be sharing what's working and what isn't as we go, so hopefully other companies can learn along with us. Over time, we hope to help build an industry that is truly diverse, and by extension more inclusive, creative and effective."

As of now, 49 percent of Pinterest employees are white, 43 percent are Asian, 2 percent are Hispanic or Latin and 1 percent are black.

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