Ehh, it is hard. I think that’s why govs haven’t managed to do a good job with naming it.
On the main point, I agree that there is often a perception/“PR” problem for these policies.
But then, in the UK where the policy was just “when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, choose the under represented one” still got done in the right wing media as “law mandating hiring on unqualified individuals”, so I don’t think that adjusting would do a huge amount of work.
I think the contention is that I think that colouring hiring policies have been shown to not work, because it’s very hard to implement in practice. At least collecting identity data would stave off the level of head-in-the-sand France reached.
If the hiring process has an interview stage, how to make it identity-blind?
How to deal with the perception of people, especially women, in a management position?
I do agree that the main thing is hitting the underlying perception issues, but how to do that without creating a world where they’re visibly untrue is trickier. But if it was an easy problem there’d probably be less division on how to tackle it.
On the main point, I agree that there is often a perception/“PR” problem for these policies.
I think calling it perception/PR problem is misleading, because it implies it is just misunderstood. If that was the case, it would just be a question of how to inform people. The issue is informed people dislike these policies as well, because they genuinely are unfair towards individuals and people are rarely willing to to be treated unfairly for the good of the society. People are also extra sensitive to governments and other people in positions of power treating people unfairly, arguably for a good reason.
But then, in the UK where the policy was just “when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, choose the under represented one” still got done in the right wing media as “law mandating hiring on unqualified individuals”, so I don’t think that adjusting would do a huge amount of work.
Yeah, obviously political parties fear mongering about the policies to get votes is a very big issue on it’s own. But even if the criticism is way over exaggerated, can you rationally defend even that policy? Two simple points:
There are no two equal candidates in practice, you can always add more tie-breaker criteria, like their expected salary, volunteering activities, … So despite how it is worded, in reality, it just gives the decision to hiring managers, since they can just decide to only check basic qualifications and call all candidates equal, if they want to preferentially hire the diverse ones or they can keep adding criteria until the candidates are not equal if they dislike the policy.
Winning tie-breakers is a significant advantage. Casinos never lose, and in most games it is just because they win in case of ties. Meaning it can still be significantly unfair.
And again, I don’t see how you could defend it other than insisting it makes things more fair overall even if it is unfair to individuals.
If the hiring process has an interview stage, how to make it identity-blind? How to deal with the perception of people, especially women, in a management position?
Yeah, it is a really difficult issue that probably does not have a single answer that can be applied everywhere. There probably have to be individualised solutions for various scenarios. There even may be situations where it can’t be fixed at all until peoples perceptions improve and biases erode. Hopefully, showing people their biases are incorrect in different situations will be enough to do that. I really think normalizing diversity through means people perceive as fair could do that.
I do agree that the main thing is hitting the underlying perception issues, but how to do that without creating a world where they’re visibly untrue is trickier. But if it was an easy problem there’d probably be less division on how to tackle it.
Yeah, unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult issues our society faces. :(
I feel like instead of trying to implement one solution right now, we maybe should try to encourage workplaces to experiment with various policies and collect data back. Try to find working solutions by iterating and continuously improving policies like we do in engineering. Hopefully, it can help find decent enough solutions to chip at peoples biases.
UK job applications have the requirements, essential and ideal, written out beforehand so the hirers can’t just add their choice of extra ideal qualities later - does the US generally let firms have such leeway and lack of paperwork with hiring?
(I know that in practice, especially with internal hires, the specification can be written with a candidate in mind to make it much easier for the individual in mind to get the job, but I think that’s a different problem overall.)
Your idea of allowing different organisations and spaces to experiment and see what works is probably the best way to do it.
Giving smaller groups freedom to try things and then studying and itetating is much better than top down intervention, provided while we exist under governments that their is a gov. backstop to stop that freedom being used to impose more discriminatory practice.
Thank you for the time, effort, and thought out replies.
does the US generally let firms have such leeway and lack of paperwork with hiring?
I don’t know for sure. With their at will employment, I would be surprised if they had such requirements in most states. In Czechia, we have no such requirements. We brainstormed interview questions in the office hours before the interview.
UK job applications have the requirements, essential and ideal, written out beforehand
Writing them ahead of time does not really change my point much. Write many requirements if you prefer hiring “on merit” or as few as possible if you want to give preference to diverse candidates.
Thank you for the time, effort, and thought out replies.
Thank you as well, it is so refreshing to be able to genuinely discuss and find common ground about topics like this these days.
Status aware… I don’t like that. Protected groups… Even worse. Minority groups… Feels odd applying that to women, and various intersections…
Statistically Disadvantaged/discriminated identities?
Ehh, it is hard. I think that’s why govs haven’t managed to do a good job with naming it.
On the main point, I agree that there is often a perception/“PR” problem for these policies.
But then, in the UK where the policy was just “when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, choose the under represented one” still got done in the right wing media as “law mandating hiring on unqualified individuals”, so I don’t think that adjusting would do a huge amount of work.
I think the contention is that I think that colouring hiring policies have been shown to not work, because it’s very hard to implement in practice. At least collecting identity data would stave off the level of head-in-the-sand France reached.
If the hiring process has an interview stage, how to make it identity-blind?
How to deal with the perception of people, especially women, in a management position?
I do agree that the main thing is hitting the underlying perception issues, but how to do that without creating a world where they’re visibly untrue is trickier. But if it was an easy problem there’d probably be less division on how to tackle it.
I think calling it perception/PR problem is misleading, because it implies it is just misunderstood. If that was the case, it would just be a question of how to inform people. The issue is informed people dislike these policies as well, because they genuinely are unfair towards individuals and people are rarely willing to to be treated unfairly for the good of the society. People are also extra sensitive to governments and other people in positions of power treating people unfairly, arguably for a good reason.
Yeah, obviously political parties fear mongering about the policies to get votes is a very big issue on it’s own. But even if the criticism is way over exaggerated, can you rationally defend even that policy? Two simple points:
And again, I don’t see how you could defend it other than insisting it makes things more fair overall even if it is unfair to individuals.
Yeah, it is a really difficult issue that probably does not have a single answer that can be applied everywhere. There probably have to be individualised solutions for various scenarios. There even may be situations where it can’t be fixed at all until peoples perceptions improve and biases erode. Hopefully, showing people their biases are incorrect in different situations will be enough to do that. I really think normalizing diversity through means people perceive as fair could do that.
Yeah, unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult issues our society faces. :(
I feel like instead of trying to implement one solution right now, we maybe should try to encourage workplaces to experiment with various policies and collect data back. Try to find working solutions by iterating and continuously improving policies like we do in engineering. Hopefully, it can help find decent enough solutions to chip at peoples biases.
Winning tie breaks is a solid advantage.
UK job applications have the requirements, essential and ideal, written out beforehand so the hirers can’t just add their choice of extra ideal qualities later - does the US generally let firms have such leeway and lack of paperwork with hiring?
(I know that in practice, especially with internal hires, the specification can be written with a candidate in mind to make it much easier for the individual in mind to get the job, but I think that’s a different problem overall.)
Your idea of allowing different organisations and spaces to experiment and see what works is probably the best way to do it.
Giving smaller groups freedom to try things and then studying and itetating is much better than top down intervention, provided while we exist under governments that their is a gov. backstop to stop that freedom being used to impose more discriminatory practice.
Thank you for the time, effort, and thought out replies.
I don’t know for sure. With their at will employment, I would be surprised if they had such requirements in most states. In Czechia, we have no such requirements. We brainstormed interview questions in the office hours before the interview.
Writing them ahead of time does not really change my point much. Write many requirements if you prefer hiring “on merit” or as few as possible if you want to give preference to diverse candidates.
Thank you as well, it is so refreshing to be able to genuinely discuss and find common ground about topics like this these days.