First, there is no such thing as a diverse candidate. A person is not diverse. A team may be more diverse if it hires a candidate that is different from its current members in one or more ways, and the team may well be improved by becoming more diverse. When you call a person diverse, you other t...
@SolarMike Kate is telling OP not to hire white males and instead to hire someone that is non-white because since they have different skin colors, the company will be more successful. This is not based on any logic or reason, only because a company with more skin tones is more "diverse". I shouldn't have to tell you this, but banning white people from being hired is racist and illegal.
@Jack When you relate "indirect speech" it would be good not to loose its meaning completely. Kate never said anything about hiring first any particular race. If anything I understand Kate advocates not to discriminate against minorities.
@ArthurHavlicek if 2 people are presented... and the 'white guy' has more experience is more qualified but you hire the 'other guy' because of race or sex? There is no grey area... you're breaking the law... "not discriminate against minorities" By hiring them instead because skin color ("not discriminating against minorities" but actively discriminating against non-minorities). This isn't a complex issue... it's made complex with the mental gymnastics required to justify racism.
@Jack, you're wrong. If two people are both qualified in terms of being a recruiter or a developer or a lawyer, and one will improve your team by bringing a background that is not currently represented, then they are not equally qualified: the one who brings new insights or connections is more qualified and should be hired. My answer argues AGAINST hiring unqualified people simply to tick boxes and insists the OP learns how to understand that minorities can be qualified too, and deserve to be hired too.
@WernerCD, you still equate "more experience" with being "more qualified". That is wrong, because it means you only look at a subset of qualifications, the technical ones.
@KateGregory You think skin color determines how diverse a person is which I'm sorry to say is a position only racists hold. Did you know Elon Musk (I hope you know who that is) is South African? Millions of African Americans have never even step foot in Africa. Using your "policy" of discounting the white male because they are not "diverse" enough (short sighted IMO) because they lack the skin tone you are looking for will cost you a potential Elon Musk and eventually bring your company down. Judge a person by the content of their character, not their skin color aka diversity of thought.
@Jack please read the first sentence of the answer again. A person is not diverse. I do not discount white males. Nor do I hire them by default. I am advocating for hiring those who make the team better. It might be "everyone we have is great at A but we have no-one who can B, let's hire someone great at B even if their A skills are weaker than everyone else" and it might be "let's hire someone who has experience none of us has." You put words in my mouth and argue with them; I will spend no more of my Sunday morning being part of that argument.
as for the "you're hiring black people because of their connection to Africa omg at least one white person has a connection to Africa" I just have to say you're being ridiculous. Have you ever been to South Africa? I have, and am well aware it is racially diverse. Nobody is saying "hire black people because of their connection to Africa." And as for missing the chance to hire Elon Musk, lucky me, because even if he is a genius he is mercurial, self-obsessed, and (like me) would make a terrible employee. There's a reason some of us start businesses.
@SimonRichter meanwhile... The alternative is how based on skin color or other mertrics? When you hire, generally you're looking for the person who can fill a goal... Do a task... Literally the most qualified person is the one with the most experience... It's the technical qualifications which get the job done.
@WernerCD, if I just want a job done, I contract a freelancer, which is significantly easier than hiring for a permanent position, but has the drawback of not keeping knowledge in house because people leave after the job is done. If I want to keep knowledge, I need to retain people, at which point I need to look beyond the immediate needs of the company, and plan longer-term, and the importance of technical skills drops compared to cultural fit.
@WernerCD, "cultural fit" for single applicants means "similar culture as the existing team", but I'm planning far ahead here and don't want to paint myself into a corner -- so ideally I'd want to build a team that is already diverse, so "cultural fit" doesn't limit my candidate pool to "white men that are not offended by off-color jokes", because that too would be a limitation on hiring that isn't based on skill.
A quibble: OP does not work at a recruiting firm; she works as a recruiter at a consulting firm. Thus, she is typically recruiting consultants, not other recruiters. So there's not really the "recursive" aspect you're riffing on. The part of this answer that's about qualifications of recruiters is not very relevant (very occasionally OP might be recruiting a recruiter for her own team). ...
... Saying "You're a RECRUITER! You should know this sort of thing. You may have clients that want..." is trying to relate multiple levels, recruiting for OP's own firm and for clients. But OP recruits only for her own firm, not for its clients, because her firm's business is not recruiting.
The problem I see here is that when you decide that someone makes a team more diverse based on the skin color of that person .. well, then that is racist. You cannot say "this white guy doesn't bring diversity to the team because they are all also white guys" .. because then "diversity" means "different skin colors". Color of the skin shouldn't be a factor at all. You're not hiring a blue eyed person because they bring "diversity" to a team of otherwise brown eyed persons, after all.
@WernerCD Taking your argumentation that hiring people based on how well they add to the cultural background of a team is discrimination because it favors e.g. non-white people can be applied the other way as well: Hiring people based on hard skills (experience) is discrimination based on skin, as, unfortunately, white people can enjoy far better education than their peers. Thus, making a decision based on "hard skills" is inherently discriminatory by your argument.
@Jack What on earth is this notion that this is about "skin tones"? Why the obsession with calling it a "skin color"? Your life experiences, while living in the same country as a black person, are radicaly different. Your life experience as a dude is radically different than a woman's. It is absurd to strawman this into "genitals" or "skin tones" - it is about having a different perspective, because you lived your whole life as a fish that doesn't know it's wet, while someone else is drowning in water, and doesn't have a choice but be aware of it.
@KateGregory I can totally support your argument about skills, but all the skills should be part of the "being qualified" part anyway. So having a different skin colour or ethnic background would rarely mean you bring a different skill relevant to your profession to the table. In most cases that would already be part of the CV and not something you'd need to derive (or rather generalize...and thus be racist in some low level sense if you want) from their ethnic background.
@KateGregory Exceptions might be if you need PR representatives or product designers where the job is more about creativity driven by a persons background, i.e. making sure you understand your customers of all backgrounds. Then it sure can make sense to have people with different backgrounds in the team. But the more technical you get the more unlikely that this has any benefit. I don't care whether my bridge is built by a white or a black guy, as long as it does not crumble. Considering slavery issues when deciding about a statue, sure, a black guy might increase the chance this will come up.
@KateGregory You're obviously also right that connections etc. can help for certain positions. But for these side qualifications based on background the skin colour/ethnic background alone is too rough a filter if applied before looking at candidates. It depends in these cases also on when you filter based on ethnic background. Not sure which way it is in this case, it may actually be just an additional point when considering candidates - i.e. do they get all considered and then just go back to the pool instead or are the whites being outright filtered before even being sent.
The second paragraph seems to lean more towards all qualified candidates are the same. I need a database administrator...any would do...That is just not the case for the vast majority of technical jobs. 2 database administrators with 10 years experience are going to be drastically different in how qualified they are. Hiring one over the other based on race shouldnt be the answer. The candidate which can integrate into the team and perform the best should be chosen...with race/gender/preference/etc not considered.
Something that should be pointed out is that more experience does not always mean more qualified as you can keep working at a somewhere even if you are not the best at the job. It is very possible that someone with less experience is actually more qualified for the job.
@FrankHopkins I have no doubt you believe "having a different skin colour or ethnic background would rarely mean you bring a different skill relevant to your profession" but you are wrong. Across thousands of different jobs it turns out that women, immigrants, racial minorities, gender noncomforming people, people with physical challenges and so on all have important background knowledge. Eg: some perfectly valid last names are only 2 letters long. Designing a "hand detector" for a bathroom dryer that detects dark skin as well as white. Noting the ways a stalker could use a product. And more.
Look, where did I say "never hire the white guy"?? Nowhere. What I said is, sometimes the "minority" candidate (who might be white but in SOME WAY is different from the current team) has something to offer. You don't just always hire the white guys. Sometimes you hire someone else and leave the white guy in the pool. That's not a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy when you left the not-white not-guys in the pool. This is why there is a pool. Stop telling me that automatically rejecting the white guy for being white is bad. I already know that and am not recommending that.
@KateGregory But they are not an automatism based on skin colour etc. They are an increased likelihood. The determining factor is the individual person's background. And we may have a different understanding of skill. To me having a two-letter name is not a skill. The knowledge around that neither, but it can be a helpful additional qualification or support a skill. So we have a good overlap of agreements and just a few notions that I view differently and that could be clarified but I think the biggest thing might be how we understand the process works.
@KateGregory Fore me rejecting white males before even looking at the underlying backgrounds is what they appear to be doing, i.e. the candidates remain in the pool without being really looked at because they are white males. That's different from them being considered for the position, rejected because there are overall better minority candidates, and being placed back into the pool. It's a small difference in process but a big in whether it's discrimination or just the outcome of a (perhaps well balance, perhaps slightly biased) assessment.
Given my understanding of the question, your answer seems a bit too focused on "yeah but there are good reasons" cases, which true, they exist, but the well thought through cases you provide wouldn't seem to fit the process being applied. So, if I'm correct in assuming you interpret the question such that all candidates get considered but repeatedly the white guys end up back in the pool for whatever reason, maybe clarify that in the answer. Because I think both readings are possible in principle, while I would (obviously^^) tend to read it like I did, with a strict filtering as a first step.
@KateGregory This answer seems to wrongly assume OP doesn't know the arguments in favor of hiring diverse teams. As such I believe it doesn't answer the question. As I understand it the question is clearly about declining white male candidates just because of them being white and/or male. It's not about simply choosing a non-white non-male candidate from an equally qualified pool.
@Jack: What you're dealing with here is the nature of public perception. Suppose I hire people devoid of any discriminatory bias (not knowing the candidate personally, only testing their skill). If the best applicant for each position happens to always be of the same gender/race/... then it's going to start looking like I'm only hiring people of that gender/race/... Is that true? No. Will people think it is? Some of them will. Companies will get bad public perception even if in reality they did nothing wrong. So it's understandable why "diversity hires" are a thing, even if discriminatory.
@Jack: And just to be clear, I'm not saying that that makes it allright. I'm pointing out that sometimes you have to steer your behavior because you are judged (and suffer the consequences of it) based on how you are perceived, not what is the actual truth.
I understand some teams can benefit from diversity. I didn't mean to imply with my post that we end up hiring someone who isn't qualified. I should have made it clearer that there are many many applicants who are both "diverse" AND qualified. Those are by no means mutually exclusive, obviously. However, there have been instances where we've hired for diversity over qualifications - that is to say that the selected applicant was qualified, just less so than another applicant. Those are the instances I have issues with and were the inspiration for this post.
I think you make good points and would be interested in your views with the info I just added. I think your post focuses a lot on the post as it was read previously, specifically referring to two equally qualified candidates with one being selected over the other to fill diversity quotas. Does your thinking on the topic change considering what I've added?
Discussion on answer by Kate Gregory:…
Discussion on answer by Kate Gregory:…