Given that resumes with black-sounding names get fewer callbacks than the identical resume with a different name (http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873), it's pretty clear we're not very good at doing that.
In fact the submission by the founder of interviewing.io seems to imply that more technical evaluations (focus on ability) lead to more diversity:
> At interviewing.io, we rely entirely on performance in anonymous technical interviews - not resumes - to surface top-performing candidates, and 40% of hires are people from non-traditional backgrounds and underrepresented groups
How does one judge someone's "character and ability" if the resume went into the trash because of their name?
The alternative is to artificially add advantages to one group, and like the poster said, it leads to resentment and people questioning if a job was given for merit or quota. And I would add that the focus in jobs becomes more of a political and social one, as your in-group fights for process advantages, versus focusing on skill.
I suspect you find out the person's name at some point.
> I did not find original poster's stated goals to be disagreeable: hire based on character and ability.
I don't find the goals disagreeable.
I find our ability to do so - even when we've the best of intentions - very questionable.
So what similar ideas can we do in tech? I don't need to know someone's name to read a resume, in fact a unique identifier would be more useful than a name.
For example, they checked for some class associations:
> Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race.
and this bit:
> First, we examine whether the race-specific names we have chosen might also proxy for social class above and beyond the race of the applicant. Using birth certificates data on mother’s education for the different names used in our sample, we find little relationship between social background and the name specific callback rates.
> ...
> We also argue that a social class interpretation would find it hard to explain all of our results, such as why living a better neighborhood does not increase callback rates more for African American names than for White names.
This bit likely controls indirectly for class, as well:
> Whites with higher quality resumes receive 30 percent more callbacks than Whites with lower quality resumes, a statistically significant difference. On the other hand, having a higher quality resume has a much smaller effect for African Americans.