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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

Immigration related jobs ads will have these qualities:

a) a very specific list of requirements, that just happens to match a specific person. Definitely not any choices of language in the list, but possibly degree or equivalent experience if necessary.

b) be posted in a newspaper and on their main jobs page, but not widely elsewhere

c) ask for submissions by mail only, by a certain date

B and C are more telling than A though, because a weird list of requirements could be just someone weird, but narrowly posting and requiring applications by mail are part of exactly following the rules for demonstrating lack of candidates.

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This is what happens when you over regulate hiring practices in the name of inclusion, fairness, and fighting bias. I've seen numerous issues with this in academia as well where someone will be a proven candidate who you know will excel at the job but you can't simply hire them because it's against the rules. You have to spend ages interviewing all of these unproven alternative candidates with focuses on minorities etc. If you reject all the alternative candidates arbitrarily and go with who you wanted in the first place then you risk getting slapped with a lawsuit. So instead we have to go through this huge song and dance where we write these fake job descriptions which as you say are obviously only written for one person, waste everyone's time, and flood the market with fake hiring opportunities. I've been on both sides of this process and it's very aggravating.

Even worse, sometimes orgs will set up basically fake interviews where they bring people in with no intention of hiring them just to put on a show to avoid a lawsuit.

What's an example of where the interviews are audited or inspected for "inclusion"? I've rarely heard about that. Usually if an org gets in trouble for alleged "inclusion" problems, it's because of who they actually do hire, not interview. Interview process auditing may be a side-effect of such claims, I suppose. And I would hope the inspectors study the actual job requirements and compare them to the job ad. Thus, putting bogus job requirements in the ad should be penalized. Job ads should match the actual job, not the person(s) one is trying to favor.

I can't point to specific suits off the top of my head, but I've seen a few from inside my former employer and heard my friends tell of instances where someone wasn't granted a position and sued on the basis of descrimination.

The issue is generally not that an org is descriminating, it's actually generally the exact opposite. The org is trying to institute policy which protects them from these suits and "standardizes" the hiring process. It's typically subunits or managers in the org who get fed up with the process because they can't hire who they want to efficiently, and circumvent it by writing these job descriptions. HR audits these employment calls and has no clue what half the words in the description mean or what the position actually entails, so it is not flagged.

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