4 ms·
We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantitie
by simonbarker87 13y ago
We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female.
Reasons for this could be:
1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility)
2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.
- untog 13y agoYou might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.
- simonbarker87 13y agoAgreed, but thinking over the CVs we've rejected and the people we've interviewed it's been pretty balanced in the number of male vs female. Obviously its not a perfect 50:50, and nor should it be as that would indicate some sort of bias. Maybe the solution to this problem is to have recruiters and HR departments redact the name of someone and replace with a number. In the UK it's not a requirement to ask for someones age on their CV so maybe internal processes could be implemented to further reduce the likelihood of subconscious, or conscious, bias.
- yaddayadda 13y agoIndeed! Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
- kstenerud 13y agoUnfortunately, their software is broken. It goes through the test, and then the post test questions (I strongly prefer X, etc) just keep repeating over and over. You can't actually complete a test.
- streptomycin 13y agoOther possible reasons: 3. You didn't factor in an increased risk of sexual harassment problems 4. You didn't factor in an increased risk of getting pregnant
- petitbeurre 13y ago> My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that. I don't understand. Are you a gay male? How does that change your perception of the male dominated field bias?
- simonbarker87 13y agoSorry, poorly phrased sentence. What I meant was, where some of my friends see engineering as a male only field (ie. women can't do the job type opinion) I don't, this could be in part because my female fiancé is an excellent engineer who is head and shoulder above some of her male and female counter parts in knowledge and skills.
- alxndr 13y agoFWIW, even in English, a woman who you're engaged to is normally referred to as a "fiancée", whereas a man you're engaged to would be a "fiancé". Similarly with né and née, for people who have changed their names.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoI've never heard that before. And the searches I just did for it seem to reference "fiancée" as just a side note. It seems to me that "fiancé" is most commonly used to mean either. I for one was not confused one bit by the original statement.
- acjohnson55 13y agoWell now you know. It's a French noun, and most French nouns that refer to people add an extra "e" in the feminine form. It even works for a lot of names (Jean vs. Jeanne).
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoYes. The footnote I saw referred to that spelling as "the French spelling"... so (since I'm not French or in France) I think I'll continue to use the other one like every other time I've seen it.