5 ms·

Is it somehow secret knowledge reserved to "privileged" people that minimum requirements on job ads should be interpreted as a wish list more than a list of har

by ahtihn 5y ago

Is it somehow secret knowledge reserved to "privileged" people that minimum requirements on job ads should be interpreted as a wish list more than a list of hard requirements? It's commonly talked about in a lot of places online, including here. It's also something you very quickly learn when searching for your 1st job. If you take minimum requirements at face value, there's almost no jobs anyone straight out of school would qualify for.

coliveira 5y ago
When HR creates fake requirements the goal is exactly to be able to weed out anyone they don't like. If someone is not from the "right" group they'll just let them know that they don't meet the "minimum requirements".
- kapp_in_life 5y ago
  That's a separate issue. The first issue is that those groups don't apply _at all_.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  That’s a different thesis from what we’re discussing. To clarify, we’re assuming the interviews are fair and the min requirements are being munged by an HR department that doesn’t understand the list that engineering has given them and potential applicants are not even applying based on these garbled job postings. If you think that HR departments are biased and are making up fake requirements, that very well could be the case in some situations, but it’s not what we’re talking about here.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Is it somehow secret knowledge reserved to "privileged" people that minimum requirements on job ads should be interpreted as a wish list more than a list of hard requirements? It is definitely cultural knowledge that not all people have, and, more to the point, an understanding of what parts of a particular job ad that are stated as MQs are likely to be nice-to-haves and which are real MQs and which are nice to haves behind which are hiding real MQs (such as “Ph.D. in <field>” really meaning something like “a Ph.D. would be nice but a Masters is a hard minimum”), and therefore, how to evaluate whether it is worth expending effort applying for a job is non-universal cultural knowledge. This often requires understanding of the hiring cultures of the particular job-field, industry, employer, and sometimes organizational subunit. Which is, for people just starting out (or looking outside of their past experience), highly network dependent. And equally substantively qualified people from underrepresented demographics arr likely to have weaker, in terms relevant to the task at hand, networks and therefore less access to this cultural knowledge. > It's also something you very quickly learn when searching for your 1st job. Or not, in part because there are lots of places where its not true and if you act like it is you will learn hard. Lying about requirements in hiring may be common, but it is not a universal norm, and calling it out and denormalizing it is a good thing, even outside of discriminatory impact, but its also very much a practice that has particular adverse impact on underrepresented minorities.

by ahtihn 5y ago

coliveira 5y ago

When HR creates fake requirements the goal is exactly to be able to weed out anyone they don't like. If someone is not from the "right" group they'll just let them know that they don't meet the "minimum requirements".

kapp_in_life 5y ago
That's a separate issue. The first issue is that those groups don't apply _at all_.
throwaway316943 5y ago
That’s a different thesis from what we’re discussing. To clarify, we’re assuming the interviews are fair and the min requirements are being munged by an HR department that doesn’t understand the list that engineering has given them and potential applicants are not even applying based on these garbled job postings. If you think that HR departments are biased and are making up fake requirements, that very well could be the case in some situations, but it’s not what we’re talking about here.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Is it somehow secret knowledge reserved to "privileged" people that minimum requirements on job ads should be interpreted as a wish list more than a list of hard requirements? It is definitely cultural knowledge that not all people have, and, more to the point, an understanding of what parts of a particular job ad that are stated as MQs are likely to be nice-to-haves and which are real MQs and which are nice to haves behind which are hiding real MQs (such as “Ph.D. in <field>” really meaning something like “a Ph.D. would be nice but a Masters is a hard minimum”), and therefore, how to evaluate whether it is worth expending effort applying for a job is non-universal cultural knowledge. This often requires understanding of the hiring cultures of the particular job-field, industry, employer, and sometimes organizational subunit. Which is, for people just starting out (or looking outside of their past experience), highly network dependent. And equally substantively qualified people from underrepresented demographics arr likely to have weaker, in terms relevant to the task at hand, networks and therefore less access to this cultural knowledge. > It's also something you very quickly learn when searching for your 1st job. Or not, in part because there are lots of places where its not true and if you act like it is you will learn hard. Lying about requirements in hiring may be common, but it is not a universal norm, and calling it out and denormalizing it is a good thing, even outside of discriminatory impact, but its also very much a practice that has particular adverse impact on underrepresented minorities.