8 ms·
In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intention
by Clanan 9y ago
In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intentioned policies don't weed out the upper echelons of the "over-represented" groups anyway - they'll just use position/elite network to get in the door. Instead, the policy weeds out the "working class" applicants who must rely on merit, but who have the wrong skin color.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago+1 I have first hand experience with this. As a normal working-class white guy with poor parents and no connections (I worked my way through school), I had a hard time even landing an interview at first. As a social experiment, I changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, kept everything else on my resume the same, and reapplied to all the jobs that didn't want me previously. Every single company that rejected Joe was overjoyed when Joanna applied. In every case I got a email within the week wanting to meet and interview me. It was kind of eye-opening. I didn't follow through as "Joanna" because the sexist hiring policies were enough to put me off working at these companies entirely. I eventually found an employer that wasn't sexist and have been happy with them so far...
- Clanan 9y agoA similar thing happened to me, although unintentionally. At a previous job I discovered that I was given an interview because they thought I was black (based on my name). They would have otherwise passed on my resume.
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoSorry to hear that...