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Comment by jmpman | Hacker News Reader

What if the hiring manager had a stack of 10 applicants, and of those 10 applicants, only 2 had a resume which appeared qualified. Let’s assume those 2 candidates were not “diverse”. But out of the remaining 8 non-qualified resumes, 1 was “diverse”. Could they interview the 2 qualified candidates, and the 1 “diverse” candidate in order to meet the requirement of interviewing at least one diverse candidate? Would this be considered the scenario the lawsuit is talking about? Or do they need to wait until they have one diverse candidate with a competitive resume?

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I think the issue was closer to one where the interviewer (all but) hires the "non-diverse" candidate and then as an afterthought interviews the "diverse" candidate. This clearly defeats the spirit of the plan.

As for your specific hypothetical, it still seems to be contrary to the stated goals. My guess is you'd want to cast your net wide to get a cross-section of qualified candidates and maybe not just hire from the same sources that produce homogenous candidates

I’ve had job opening where I’ve had maybe 5 applicants. They were all subject to the same screening questions, all well documented and interviewed by multiple people. Usually within the first 2 questions you could tell if the person had even the slightest chance of being a good fit. Yet, we would have to continue the interview in order to be fair to all candidates. With our company’s salary (low), hiring in a competitive field, we were lucky to get any applicants. Yet we had to wait for a diverse candidate to apply. We had already interviewed the previous 5, already has them stack ranked, and as soon as a diverse candidate applied, and was dutifully interviewed, the job was offered to the most qualified. I don’t see how this is any different than what is being raised as a concern.

But the application forms always say that answers to the diversity questions don't count towwards the decision. How do they justify?

Counting towards the decision and counting towards a chance aren't exactly the same thing.

There are various methodologies for increasing diversity in your hiring pool that don’t require “token” efforts. Eg https://hbr.org/2023/06/when-blind-hiring-advances-dei-and-w...

Not sure about banking, but at least in tech, you'd be a horribly incompetent hiring manager in the US if you couldn't attract a diverse pool of candidates.

I mean, horribly incompetent.

Like, what'd you do? Post your job ad in the mens room of a cracker barrel in rural Arkansas? How'd you manage it?!

I wish that were the case. I would have loved to have a more diverse pool of candidates apply. This was a mid-sized tech company (1500 employees) that is very well known in its vertical. We'd post job openings on Twitter, LinkedIn and the company website at least.

Yet the pool of US-based applicants was anything but diverse. Very few women and almost zero URM (Under-represented minorities). Also the candidate diversity was worse for more senior levels.

Maybe offer hiring bonuses to diverse candidates. Many people are secretly diverse, they just need a bit of motivation, to disclose they are non-binary or queer!

Also it is very important to respect privacy. Many people have a family, that does not know about their secret gender identity or secret sexual orientation!

Sounds illegal

Really? I'd guess for the typical tech job posting your applicants will be 90% male and 90% under age 30. Racial diversity may vary but will be mostly White, Asian, or Indian.

Unfortunately it can be harder if you're looking for senior people with specialties.

At age 60, I have worked with exactly one black programmer. I've only interviewed one black programmer (who was actually from Africa, not an American).

Unless things have drastically changed recently, I have no idea how normal companies can find black programmers. As I understand it, the FAANGs are able to hoover up a lot of the diversity to meet their DEI goals, because they can outbid everyone else.

I worked in Big Tech for years and saw very few black programmers. Then I work for an insurance data provider based out of Atlanta and I met loads. It's mostly about the proportions of said people within commutable range of your office.

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