6 ms·

Couple points: First, this is where the meat is: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170118-0 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp2

by tabeth 10y ago

Couple points: First, this is where the meat is: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170118-0 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170118-0 Second: "...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications over other qualified applicants in the Professional Technical 1, Individual Contributor Job group and in the Product Development job group at statistically significant rates." [1] [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20170071.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease... --- Perhaps I'm naive, but I'll say it again and again until someone with influence hears me: large companies should do anonymous interviewing. I've interviewed with Oracle, Cisco, and many of the "old corporate-y" companies. There's ZERO reason the interview process can't be completely anonymized. Their interviews (from my limited experience) are completely impersonal and done on an ad-hoc basis anyway. That being said, it seems this issue may be more of an H1B1 issue, which inherently cannot be made anonymous.

Spooky23 10y ago
Government civil service was like this. You'd take a test and the top 3 scores were hireable.
grepthisab 10y ago
When you say anonymous, how do you mean it? As in: the interviewer meets face-to-face without a resume in front of them, or the interviewer has a resume but the interview is done over the phone, or a phone interview with no resume?
- rudolf0 10y ago
  Well, for one, you can hide contact info from a resume (which is still stored in a system somewhere, with a unique ID). And you can also make the early stages of your interview email or text-chat based (or just a Google Doc, like some companies do), to eliminate any potential bias in things that can be inferred from voice like accent, region, and gender. Obviously once they're on-site for an interview, you can't anonymize much anymore, but anonymizing every stage before that seems like a win-win to me (excluding potential costs of implementing the system).
  - bubbleRefuge 10y ago
    Well, I can tell the way sentences are formed in many cases if I'm dealing with a native speaker or not.
    - hueving 10y ago
      Would you kindly do the willingly and explain how? :)
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - mixmastamyk 10y ago
        Explaining the human brain's ability to pattern match will take more than a few sentences.
      - mschuster91 10y ago
        It's pretty easy, but also pretty rough - if you're good, you can certainly distinguish between an American, a British or an Indian English-speaking person writing.
        grepthisab 10y ago
        I could be missing the mark here, but I'm pretty sure you were replying to satire. Based on the grammar used and smiley face.
      - zaroth 10y ago
        Maybe add </s> next time, although the smiley should have been a dead giveaway.
      - gotrecruit 10y ago
        You mean do the needful?
    - rudolf0 10y ago
- jdavis703 10y ago
  I think they're referring to something like the blind auditions orchestras used to deal with their own gender disparity issues.
- johansch 10y ago
  Native English speakers would then need to fake an "asian" accent?
- tossracct88 10y ago
  I applied at Treehouse learning and they have a take on 'anonymous' hiring. It's 'anonymous' in that they don't see the resume you submit, or so they claim, until after reviewing short essay answers to some questions. No knowledge of tools used, name, DOB, companies you have worked at previously, is where Treehouse starts in assessing your application materials. These were silly simple questions, like assign an empty array to a variable in Python, then append N items to it, and print it on the screen. No FizzBuzz at this stage anyway. More like "describe how you would handle situation X" or "walk through how you'd solve this real problem we recently saw, given this information". My intuition suggests they are assessing communication skill first. stuff like tone and clarity in writing. I can't say if that's accurate or they were looking for a "right answer" type response, however. FWIW, it was actually the easiest application process I've been through. Something about the anonymous part made me feel more relaxed. Like I'll be judged on my own words, not a bullet list of skills. That said, didn't hear from them. :-/
- insickness 10y ago
  We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews. https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
  - smnscu 10y ago
    Your project is something I had in mind as a potential idea for a long time, and the fact that you went as far as doing that is insane, in the best possible way. Kudos, guess you've just gained a new newsletter subscriber.
ftrflyr 10y ago
One reason why I believe it won't matter is such: Companies require a real name. Most require social profiles or a website. If you refuse to give your real name and supporting materials, you will be passed over.
- frandroid 10y ago
  Of course you don't submit an anonymous résumé; companies handle this. HR departments can have specific people outside the selection process hold the table matching candidates' realnames and candidate ID #.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  I've never heard of a company that requires a social network profile or website. Technically, they don't even need a name or any other personal info until they're ready to make an offer.
orionblastar 10y ago
No reason, I agree! This sounds like a website some startups can design to automate the interview process and anonymize candidates info so the employer can't be biased. I'm sure that even conversations can be encrypted so the job seeker and the interviewer can see, but nobody else can. Just make a Chat web client based on the FTP servers or whatever works for everyone. This would be good for those of us who are 40 and over and have a lot of experience and skills.
wang_li 10y ago
There are plenty of affirmative action organizations that would be very upset with anonymization of applicants.
- omginternets 10y ago
  Out of curiosity: do you know of any organizations that have voiced such opposition?
  - wang_li 10y ago
    No, because I don't know of anyone who has made a serious suggestion that such anonymization be carried out. There are plenty of advocacy organizations that badger, and attempt to shame, companies into buying their "consulting" services. Services that consist primarily of coming in, counting your employees by the hue of their skin, or whether their genitals are innies or outies. Then, after you've paid them stupid amounts of money, they provide a seal of approval. See Project Include or the Rainbow Coalition.
explainthisth 10y ago
I hope your anonymous interview system can authenticate applicants properly. Because we get cheating attempts in the online screening test we use for hiring. Recently, we got five submissions from recent grads of universities around the country. They were modified trivially (with different indentation and variable names) but clearly drawn from the same work. There is no way of knowing if someone was hired to do the test, and didn't share the results. We have also gotten people in on-site interviews who were not the same as the person in the phone interview.
facepalm 10y ago
But how would you guarantee to meet the quotas with anonymous interviewing? There was for example a study showing women did worse in (phone) interviews when they were masked as men (digitally replacing the voice). So the assumption that everybody would do equally well with anonymous interviewing seems to be wrong.
MarkMc 10y ago
"...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications...at statistically significant rates." I would be very wary about what counts as 'statistically significant'. If I flip a coin 10 times and it lands heads 10 times, is that 'statistically significant'? Not if I'm going through a jar with 1000 coins. And splitting Oracle's workforce into 'job groups' makes it much easier to find spurious rates of discrimination. Eg. there is discrimination in the 'Professional Technical 1' group but not the 'Professional Technical 2' group...etc. (This discussion reminds me of this Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 )
- bagacrap 10y ago
  Yes, or the xkcd with the jelly beans.

by tabeth 10y ago

Spooky23 10y ago

Government civil service was like this. You'd take a test and the top 3 scores were hireable.

grepthisab 10y ago

When you say anonymous, how do you mean it? As in: the interviewer meets face-to-face without a resume in front of them, or the interviewer has a resume but the interview is done over the phone, or a phone interview with no resume?

rudolf0 10y ago
Well, for one, you can hide contact info from a resume (which is still stored in a system somewhere, with a unique ID). And you can also make the early stages of your interview email or text-chat based (or just a Google Doc, like some companies do), to eliminate any potential bias in things that can be inferred from voice like accent, region, and gender. Obviously once they're on-site for an interview, you can't anonymize much anymore, but anonymizing every stage before that seems like a win-win to me (excluding potential costs of implementing the system).
- bubbleRefuge 10y ago
  Well, I can tell the way sentences are formed in many cases if I'm dealing with a native speaker or not.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Would you kindly do the willingly and explain how? :)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
      Explaining the human brain's ability to pattern match will take more than a few sentences.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      It's pretty easy, but also pretty rough - if you're good, you can certainly distinguish between an American, a British or an Indian English-speaking person writing.
      - grepthisab 10y ago
        I could be missing the mark here, but I'm pretty sure you were replying to satire. Based on the grammar used and smiley face.
    - zaroth 10y ago
      Maybe add </s> next time, although the smiley should have been a dead giveaway.
    - gotrecruit 10y ago
      You mean do the needful?
  - rudolf0 10y ago
jdavis703 10y ago
I think they're referring to something like the blind auditions orchestras used to deal with their own gender disparity issues.
johansch 10y ago
Native English speakers would then need to fake an "asian" accent?
tossracct88 10y ago
I applied at Treehouse learning and they have a take on 'anonymous' hiring. It's 'anonymous' in that they don't see the resume you submit, or so they claim, until after reviewing short essay answers to some questions. No knowledge of tools used, name, DOB, companies you have worked at previously, is where Treehouse starts in assessing your application materials. These were silly simple questions, like assign an empty array to a variable in Python, then append N items to it, and print it on the screen. No FizzBuzz at this stage anyway. More like "describe how you would handle situation X" or "walk through how you'd solve this real problem we recently saw, given this information". My intuition suggests they are assessing communication skill first. stuff like tone and clarity in writing. I can't say if that's accurate or they were looking for a "right answer" type response, however. FWIW, it was actually the easiest application process I've been through. Something about the anonymous part made me feel more relaxed. Like I'll be judged on my own words, not a bullet list of skills. That said, didn't hear from them. :-/
insickness 10y ago
We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews. https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
- smnscu 10y ago
  Your project is something I had in mind as a potential idea for a long time, and the fact that you went as far as doing that is insane, in the best possible way. Kudos, guess you've just gained a new newsletter subscriber.

ftrflyr 10y ago

One reason why I believe it won't matter is such: Companies require a real name. Most require social profiles or a website. If you refuse to give your real name and supporting materials, you will be passed over.

frandroid 10y ago
Of course you don't submit an anonymous résumé; companies handle this. HR departments can have specific people outside the selection process hold the table matching candidates' realnames and candidate ID #.
jonathankoren 10y ago
I've never heard of a company that requires a social network profile or website. Technically, they don't even need a name or any other personal info until they're ready to make an offer.

orionblastar 10y ago

No reason, I agree! This sounds like a website some startups can design to automate the interview process and anonymize candidates info so the employer can't be biased. I'm sure that even conversations can be encrypted so the job seeker and the interviewer can see, but nobody else can. Just make a Chat web client based on the FTP servers or whatever works for everyone. This would be good for those of us who are 40 and over and have a lot of experience and skills.

wang_li 10y ago

There are plenty of affirmative action organizations that would be very upset with anonymization of applicants.

omginternets 10y ago
Out of curiosity: do you know of any organizations that have voiced such opposition?
- wang_li 10y ago
  No, because I don't know of anyone who has made a serious suggestion that such anonymization be carried out. There are plenty of advocacy organizations that badger, and attempt to shame, companies into buying their "consulting" services. Services that consist primarily of coming in, counting your employees by the hue of their skin, or whether their genitals are innies or outies. Then, after you've paid them stupid amounts of money, they provide a seal of approval. See Project Include or the Rainbow Coalition.

explainthisth 10y ago

I hope your anonymous interview system can authenticate applicants properly. Because we get cheating attempts in the online screening test we use for hiring. Recently, we got five submissions from recent grads of universities around the country. They were modified trivially (with different indentation and variable names) but clearly drawn from the same work. There is no way of knowing if someone was hired to do the test, and didn't share the results. We have also gotten people in on-site interviews who were not the same as the person in the phone interview.

facepalm 10y ago

But how would you guarantee to meet the quotas with anonymous interviewing? There was for example a study showing women did worse in (phone) interviews when they were masked as men (digitally replacing the voice). So the assumption that everybody would do equally well with anonymous interviewing seems to be wrong.

MarkMc 10y ago

"...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications...at statistically significant rates." I would be very wary about what counts as 'statistically significant'. If I flip a coin 10 times and it lands heads 10 times, is that 'statistically significant'? Not if I'm going through a jar with 1000 coins. And splitting Oracle's workforce into 'job groups' makes it much easier to find spurious rates of discrimination. Eg. there is discrimination in the 'Professional Technical 1' group but not the 'Professional Technical 2' group...etc. (This discussion reminds me of this Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 )

bagacrap 10y ago
Yes, or the xkcd with the jelly beans.