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If the ability to do the job at hand is evenly distributed, but somehow only blue marbles can pass the interview, then you've got a problem: you're actually goi
by andrewaylett 6y ago
If the ability to do the job at hand is evenly distributed, but somehow only blue marbles can pass the interview, then you've got a problem: you're actually going to be picking incapable people over capable people because of your hiring bias.
If we pick 20 marbles (to avoid rounding errors) then you expect to see ten blue, eight red and two white. But you actually see 17 blue, one red and two white. Your processes tell you you've found the best candidates. But statistics tells you that you could probably have done better.
The blue marbles might not be happy about that: they know they're obviously more able to do the work than the red marbles, because they passed all the interviews. Bringing in "less able" red marbles feels like a bad thing. But the key here is that they're not less able to do the work, they're less able to demonstrate they can do the work.
- dx034 6y agoI think that's one of the best analogies I've read on this. I believe especially the unknown biases are a problem. Many companies don't know why they hire less diverse, so they either deflect it (e.g. by blaming universities) or they introduce quotas. Quotas might be the best thing in this situation but ultimately, only finding and rooting out biases can lead to a truly fair process. Especially since quotas only work in large numbers. Hiring for upper management, in niche roles or in small companies cannot be accomplished fairly with quotas.
- jkoudys 6y agoThe difficult challenge is that the skills aren't uniformly distributed, because the discrimination goes back way earlier than the interview. I remember how aggressively hostile the general culture was towards girls focusing on "geeky" pursuits like computer hardware and software when I was a kid, and that's been amplified into self-perpetuating disparities today as those things became more important. It's obviously influenced the perception of interviewers as you've described, but education, training, representation in media, etc are all essential. Much like the other problems in the article, there's no obvious villain, and it's a long process to change a deeply flawed system.