Intel, Apple report “doubled” diversity hiring in 2015

In January, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich addressed the well-publicized issue of hiring diversity within major tech companies by saying that his company would broaden its hiring practices. His announcement largely hinged on a campaign to invest $300 million over the next five years to broaden the applicant pool—particularly by donating at the university level, where the money would go toward teaching and empowering a new generation of minority engineers and tech workers.

A "diversity in technology fund" may very well pay off in future years, but it can only go so far in changing short-term hiring numbers—which makes this week's diversity reports from both Intel and Apple all the more interesting. According to Intel's lengthy report, based on first-half 2015 stats, Intel is "tracking" to having 43.3 percent of its 2015 hires comprising women and "underrepresented minorities," meaning African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

In a USA Today interview, Krzanich confirmed an additional detail not included in the company's own diversity report—namely, that such hiring numbers double Intel's underrepresented hiring from 2014, which amounted to roughly 20 percent of its hires last year. That news was followed by Apple's 2015 diversity report, which claimed that so far this year, Apple had hired "more than double" the number of women, Hispanics, and African Americans hired last year.