Discussion on answer by motosubatsu: How, in practice, can I hire more diversely?

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07:12

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A: How, in practice, can I hire more diversely?

Unless the job duties specifically require it then hiring someone because they are black, white, green, male, female, etc is discrimination against the other candidates who weren't your preferred flavor of human. You mentioned "the midwest" so I'm assuming that you are in the US. In which case b...

thursdaysgeek

This! If your local demographics are 80% white and male, then you're getting good diversity in your hiring too. Otherwise, you're somehow not getting a good enough diversity in your applications. Hire the best of the applicants, but make sure you're getting a good selection of applicants.

DarkCygnus

"is discrimination against the other candidates who weren't your preferred flavor of human." - FWIW, this is actually a coined term: Positive discrimination. It may go by different name where you reside though, like Affirmative action

Gregor

Great answer. I'm not really shocked that OP is requesting assumptions like "Let's say that I've attended all the talks, I've read all the research..." and hasn't seen many many recommendations along this line.

teego1967

This is the best answer. If the OP is only considering diversity after interviewing the applicants, it's too late. Instead, the focus should be on the applicant pipeline before interviews even start.

SnakeDoc

Just imagine finding out sometime down the road you weren't the top candidate, weren't the first choice, and was only hired due to some physical trait of yours - the interviewer essentially feeling "bad" about you and deciding that was the reason to hire you. That is pretty awful...

Elliot Nelson

07:12

So, focus on the very top of the funnel, and make sure all other layers of the funnel are as free of bias as possible, picking the best of the candidates that make it through. (Whatever your definition of "best" is for the team.). Makes sense!

@Gregor FWIW, I've seen variations of the advice to "reach out to potential applicants" many places; I've just never found an article that explicitly stated "here are things you should and shouldn't do". Probably because it is already obvious to everyone but me. Live and learn :).

Gregor

I don't know how well I'd generalize "reach out to potential applicants" either, but I've definitely seen plenty of recommendations that are as direct as this answer - talking about finding ways to tap into and access networks that are more diverse to increase the diversity of the candidate pool.

TechMedicNYC

"If your region isn't diverse enough - advertise the position wider and state that those looking to relocate are welcome." Your answer is pretty good, but I find it unethical that a proposed solution to the problem is to screw over the local community, just to appear virtuous. Especially considering there were qualified candidates in the OP's example.

Daniel

@ElliotNelson From my personal experience, a really good place to look for diverse candidates for software engineering positions is coding bootcamps. They typically offer an excellent diversity of qualified candidates, but people often overlook them because of lack of Computer Science degree. This only helps if you're looking for (or willing to accept) junior engineers, though. You won't find seniors in coding bootcamps.

Mark

Note that you need to be careful when doing this. There have been court rulings (in real estate, not employment) that found that selecting where you advertise based on the racial demographics of the viewership constitutes illegal discrimination.

Lightness Races in Orbit

@DarkCygnus Always thought that was a strange term. Positive discrimination doesn't feel so positive to the people being discriminated against. Not your fault, of course. And, again of course, some people will tell you that this is some kind of justified revenge for distant ancestors you've never met enslaving some other people that nobody's ever met, hundreds of years ago. YMMV.

DarkCygnus

07:12

@LightnessRacesinOrbit yeah the term is... let's say not the best there is haha :) IMHO positive + discrimination = 0 ... however, big companies and entities (like UN) have policies enforced that specify they must hire x% of workers that are part of a minority group. But, again, that has it's benefits as well as its downsides I guess...

Lightness Races in Orbit

@DarkCygnus That's the rumour!

TheLoneMilkMan

@SnakeDoc - Personally I'd feel worse not having money to eat than because someone hired me for a reason I didn't like but that's just me.

Lasooch

@Daniel "graduates" of coding bootcamps, regardless of their characteristics, can very often be bad candidates though, even for junior positions. There is inherently a difference between someone who was writing software (even on a very basic level) over several years of getting a degree, and someone who first saw code 6 weeks ago. It's not necessarily even about the degree itself, just the (non-professional) experience.

Pedro A

I don't see how this will work. If the best candidates are statistically white males, increasing the sample size would simply bring the result closer to statistics (law of large numbers), not the other way around. What am I missing? Thanks for your time.

Daniel

@Lasooch ¯_(ツ)_/¯ what can I say? I've had a ton of success with recruiting boot camp grads. They do typically require more investment even than recent college grads but what they are missing in experience they often possess in aptitude and effort. You have to expect to have a significant ramp-up time for junior developers.

@PedroA what you're missing is that white males are not on average better than minority candidates. There's just an oversupply of white males in the technical job market.

Clay07g

07:12

@PedroA You can't really assume any particular group of people are inherently better at something than another. The fact is that in most labor supply demographics for software developers, white males are the majority. Therefore, if every race and gender had a perfectly equal chance at being good developers, the top ten candidate would be mostly white males (simply because there are more of them).

@PedroA Therefore, if you change the labor supply demographic from which you hire, you will have different results. For example, if I heavily advertise my position at an all-female school, the demographic who apply to my company will be mostly female, which is different than the population demographic. So if now 70% of my applicants are female, then it's much more likely that 7 of the top 10 candidates will be female, which would be a perfect balance. If you don't do this, and your applicant pool is 90% male, then it's more likely than 9/10 top candidates will be male.

@PedroA Therefore, changing your applicant pool demographic is the only way where you can still hire the absolute best candidates from those who applied, while also not unfairly giving jobs to people who didn't perform the best when compared to others who wanted the job. The only way this can result in lower quality top applicants is by either unintentionally lowering the number of people who apply, or it turns out that people of [X group] you didn't focus on are actually born as better developers (which so far has not been shown to be true).

mgarciaisaia

I used to think this answer was The Correct Answer™ until Parable of The Polygons

Anonymous