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Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

You can try to invite a wider audience to apply. Many firms just hire based on a short list of posh colleges and thus inherit whatever racial statistics apply to them. But it's possible to look for candidates of all kinds, to expand internship programs, to go to job fairs at inner-city colleges, and so on.

That really only applies to junior personnel, though. I'm not sure what you would do for hiring more experienced people.

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This sure makes sense. Invite a wider audience, go an extra mile to reach those who could meet the requirements but prejudices or other adverse conditions make it hard for them.

This is an opposite to narrowing your audience, because certain people need not apply.

I mean, I think employers should be able to introduce whatever filters they need for the job requirements ("our dance group only accepts ladies with prior dancing experience, older than 18, and no shorter than 6ft".) But I'd like them to be open about these requirements.

They do this already at a fairly large scale, for example the BOLD internship and development program where the goal is to "expose historically underrepresented students in this field to career opportunities in the industry." [https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html]

These programs are fantastic, and I think a great (albeit no silver bullet) strategy to grant greater OPPORTUNITY to underrepresented groups who may never be exposed to CompSci & Tech industries.

Things that are discussed in this article (if true) are clearly about reaching equal REPRESENTATION more than opportunity – and yeah, that's very disappointing since at the end of the day the only way to do that with immediate gratification is discrimination. (pipeline & societal problems don't get fixed overnight)

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