Diversity at Optiver

Hard to comment as a straight white male. The demographics are fairly skewed (95%+ of traders are men)

Very open minded.

Diversity is not perfect but rapidly increasing. Some recruitment campaigns are targeted at women in tech, etc. Retention is fairly high (90%+) for software engineers, but lower for traders. Issues such as sexual harassment are quickly shut down and offenders are fired.

The ratio of men to women at the company could be improved significantly, and ideally equal parental leave could help address this cause.

We have a number of diversity initiatives, especially focused on increasing diversity in hiring.

Not great diversity, respect to minorities is questionable

Not as diverse as I would want but we are doing what we can for it

There aren't special programs or concessions for various minority groups - the company generally seems to prefer a meritocratic approach. There is a stark lack of even women, let alone other minorities, especially in the trading department. This is not to say there aren't successful people who are minorities - a few of the team leads, at least 3 (each on >$1m t.c. p.a.) are from racial, gender, and sexual orientation minority backgrounds.

Optiver hosts many events, such as women in engineering, and promotes a wide diverse environment.

Looking around the office, diversity is very poor. I don't necessarily think this is the fault of recruitment, it's clear they are doing their best to improve the situation.

Representation of ethnic minorities, LGBT people, parents, etc is very good. Representation of women is poor. Particularly outside of the talent/recruitment/office management/back office teams. However, there is a strong and active effort to rectify this from management and recruiting, there are women in senior positions.

isn't as diverse and probably some bias in the interview process / candidate selection that leads to the workplace being mostly people of a similar demographic. some effort here to address this more recently

Diverse recruitment campaigns

Company sponsors various events across the world that focus on applications with less privileged backgrounds

Host/sponsor events

Scholarships

By offering really high salaries and not requiring existing connections into the company to get in. There are generally not many concessions to give advantages to those from less privileged backgrounds over those from more privileged backgrounds.

The hiring process is very background agnostic. You're either good enough at answering the questions, or you aren't.

Staff come from a variety of backgrounds.