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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

As a result of this, could companies be expected to have a workforce age profile reflective of the local area or national pool, as might be the case in other recruitment efforts? How would they do by seniors or those approaching retirement age and reflecting those proportions in their workforce.

As the demographics change does a company's workforce have to change along with it, if so to what degree and with what allowable lag?

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One would hope that the age/gender/race/etc profile of a company would at least reflect the profile of the applicants.

I take issue with that. What if it's graduation time and a whole group of graduates without experience decide en masse to apply somewhere. Or lets say a group of retirees are given an assignment to liven up their lives and apply at places they would not normally consider. There are reasonable expectations.

It's more complicated than that. Even given that there is no demographically inherent advantage (something I generally believe), the hiring process is only one of the last steps in a long pipeline that can be damaged earlier on to skew the ratios.

I also take issue with that. Certain age/gender/race profiles tend to fair worse than others in the interview process. Think h1b visa abuse.

For example males tend to have resume's which over qualify oneself vs females. Asians and Westerners also have these kind of differences.

This causes the rate of resume to hire to be different for different demographics.

Generally though interview feedback will state the facts and can be pulled up to back a companies actions. This is what needs to be judged.

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