I manage a team of about 50. I’ve been in management for about the past decade. Prior to that, I was a technical lead heavily involved in hiring. I’ve also run multiple intern programs that hire by the dozen each summer. I’ve hired hundreds and been in thousands of interviews.
Ive never once seen someone hired because of the color of their skin.
I do however aggressively look for people from different backgrounds to be in my candidate pools when hiring. That can really mean anything. Mono culture is a huge detriment to the org because then everyone ends up thinking the same way. I look for people willing to challenge the status quo and bring unique perspectives while still being a great teammate.
There are probably people I’ve hired who normally wouldn’t have gotten an interview based on their background but then were the best candidate. When I’ve had candidates that are equal, I’ve occasionally hired the one who is most dissimilar in skills/thought process/goals to my current team because that helps us grow. The decision was never someone’s skin color, but their background certainly could have influenced the items I chose as my hiring decisions.
DEI is not just hiring. DEI is creating a culture where people of different backgrounds can succeed. There are so many different ways to be successful at the vast majority of the roles I hire. It’s my job to make sure my org is setup so that people can be successful through as many approaches as possible. This is the part I see most often missed. If your culture only allows the loud, brash to lead, I would have missed many of my best hires over the years who led in varied ways.
I was put in a team as a “care lead” because I was Polish and the team was Polish too. Weren’t allowed to be the actual teamleader, that was given to a dude from the US. He was absent like 99% of the time, made like two one hour meetings to “transfer knowledge” over 6 months. Then he came back, started getting pissy that people treated me as the teamlead instead of him, went to his manager and got me “transferred” out. Also, all of the scrummasters (like 8 different teams) were black, went through the company “academy” (basically a 3 month bootcamp) without any prior IT / programming experience, with completely incomprehensible accents. Some of them were later fired for security issues (one took a company laptop with medical software and client data, hardcore HIPAA shit, to Africa, without disclosing it, getting it cleared / secured), incompetence or bad fit. I think three were left after a year I was there.
So three scenarios come up when I think of my experiences on selecting candidates.
One time, we had a woman apply. Which was almost unheard of, it was the first time I could ever remember a woman applicant. The thing was, she was also by far the best candidate. In a round of applicants that otherwise I’m sure we wouldn’t have bothered hiring, she nailed it. Retroactively, they declared the white guy that was interviewed the previous day the one to hire, who was kind of the best of the worst. Something vague about him having more years in the industry, but I overheard a concern that they didn’t trust one of our employees to behave himself in front of a very attractive hire, and that it was best for everyone to head off the sexual harassment by keeping him away from her. In which case a DEI policy would have actually been nice to counter the really bad behavior going on.
Another time, different company, we were about to do the interviews and then suddenly they were all canceled. Why? Management picked the person to fill the spot, and decided to skip all technical assessment. Because this time another woman actually applied and that was it, they needed a woman to make numbers. The person was about as well as you can expect for accepting the first person to come along. This was a position intended for an experienced industry veteran, but instead we got someone with zero experience and their education wasn’t even consistent with the work needed.
A third time, it was a hiring position where only black people were even allowed to apply. I don’t have complaints about the results here, because we got one of the best employees we’ve ever had out of it. But I can’t pretend that the specific hiring practice was fair. However the place is still, after all this, like 90% white men, so it’s not like white guys aren’t getting their chances.
My company (major conglomerate) keeps track of demographics like this, at every level. Even as specific KPIs like “women in semior executive roles.” While ive never actually seen any written plans or anyone admitting they hired someone for a role to meet a metric, there are a handful of things that do stick out as fishy.
There have been roles that have been upgraded in title but not scope when a non white male has taken over, and there are certainly a few people who you look at and think, “how the hell did you get this job.” That said, there is one person who is in charge of almost all my questionable experiences, and hes the kind of person who would do that to meet a metric because HR told him he had to, not because he sees value in it.
Most of our other managers approach it much differently. We try to widen our recruiting pool by going different places and by consciously making sure our recruiter team is diverse
I have been apart of interviews (at a computer repair shop, mostly men) where my boss said we had to hire the only woman interviewee because it looked bad to not to, and we needed diversity, even though she wasn’t very qualified. So we hired her instead of the person who had excelled in the interview.
At my next job we had some diversity hires. It was pre-DEI, but we had a diversity intern program. We hired a guy because he was black, he was qualified and was amazing. Later we hired a person who was also black and wasn’t very qualified, they struggled for months and eventually quit - we had hired them based on skin color too.
Not saying I’m for or against, but I’ve seen situations where diversity became more important than qualifications. I’ve also seen where both were equally important, and that was preferred.
Tbh, being labeled as hired in a “diversity program” sounds humiliating. You’ll have to work twice as hard to prove you’re actually capable of doing the job.
Possibly. In that situation the people were grateful to be hired, and they worked hard anyway. They didn’t express any qualms about how they were hired. If they did, maybe they kept it to themselves.
Has someone actually been on an interview panel, where you decide to hire someone because they’re black?
(I definitely haven’t.)
I manage a team of about 50. I’ve been in management for about the past decade. Prior to that, I was a technical lead heavily involved in hiring. I’ve also run multiple intern programs that hire by the dozen each summer. I’ve hired hundreds and been in thousands of interviews.
Ive never once seen someone hired because of the color of their skin.
I do however aggressively look for people from different backgrounds to be in my candidate pools when hiring. That can really mean anything. Mono culture is a huge detriment to the org because then everyone ends up thinking the same way. I look for people willing to challenge the status quo and bring unique perspectives while still being a great teammate.
There are probably people I’ve hired who normally wouldn’t have gotten an interview based on their background but then were the best candidate. When I’ve had candidates that are equal, I’ve occasionally hired the one who is most dissimilar in skills/thought process/goals to my current team because that helps us grow. The decision was never someone’s skin color, but their background certainly could have influenced the items I chose as my hiring decisions.
DEI is not just hiring. DEI is creating a culture where people of different backgrounds can succeed. There are so many different ways to be successful at the vast majority of the roles I hire. It’s my job to make sure my org is setup so that people can be successful through as many approaches as possible. This is the part I see most often missed. If your culture only allows the loud, brash to lead, I would have missed many of my best hires over the years who led in varied ways.
I was put in a team as a “care lead” because I was Polish and the team was Polish too. Weren’t allowed to be the actual teamleader, that was given to a dude from the US. He was absent like 99% of the time, made like two one hour meetings to “transfer knowledge” over 6 months. Then he came back, started getting pissy that people treated me as the teamlead instead of him, went to his manager and got me “transferred” out. Also, all of the scrummasters (like 8 different teams) were black, went through the company “academy” (basically a 3 month bootcamp) without any prior IT / programming experience, with completely incomprehensible accents. Some of them were later fired for security issues (one took a company laptop with medical software and client data, hardcore HIPAA shit, to Africa, without disclosing it, getting it cleared / secured), incompetence or bad fit. I think three were left after a year I was there.
So three scenarios come up when I think of my experiences on selecting candidates.
One time, we had a woman apply. Which was almost unheard of, it was the first time I could ever remember a woman applicant. The thing was, she was also by far the best candidate. In a round of applicants that otherwise I’m sure we wouldn’t have bothered hiring, she nailed it. Retroactively, they declared the white guy that was interviewed the previous day the one to hire, who was kind of the best of the worst. Something vague about him having more years in the industry, but I overheard a concern that they didn’t trust one of our employees to behave himself in front of a very attractive hire, and that it was best for everyone to head off the sexual harassment by keeping him away from her. In which case a DEI policy would have actually been nice to counter the really bad behavior going on.
Another time, different company, we were about to do the interviews and then suddenly they were all canceled. Why? Management picked the person to fill the spot, and decided to skip all technical assessment. Because this time another woman actually applied and that was it, they needed a woman to make numbers. The person was about as well as you can expect for accepting the first person to come along. This was a position intended for an experienced industry veteran, but instead we got someone with zero experience and their education wasn’t even consistent with the work needed.
A third time, it was a hiring position where only black people were even allowed to apply. I don’t have complaints about the results here, because we got one of the best employees we’ve ever had out of it. But I can’t pretend that the specific hiring practice was fair. However the place is still, after all this, like 90% white men, so it’s not like white guys aren’t getting their chances.
My company (major conglomerate) keeps track of demographics like this, at every level. Even as specific KPIs like “women in semior executive roles.” While ive never actually seen any written plans or anyone admitting they hired someone for a role to meet a metric, there are a handful of things that do stick out as fishy.
There have been roles that have been upgraded in title but not scope when a non white male has taken over, and there are certainly a few people who you look at and think, “how the hell did you get this job.” That said, there is one person who is in charge of almost all my questionable experiences, and hes the kind of person who would do that to meet a metric because HR told him he had to, not because he sees value in it.
Most of our other managers approach it much differently. We try to widen our recruiting pool by going different places and by consciously making sure our recruiter team is diverse
I have been apart of interviews (at a computer repair shop, mostly men) where my boss said we had to hire the only woman interviewee because it looked bad to not to, and we needed diversity, even though she wasn’t very qualified. So we hired her instead of the person who had excelled in the interview.
At my next job we had some diversity hires. It was pre-DEI, but we had a diversity intern program. We hired a guy because he was black, he was qualified and was amazing. Later we hired a person who was also black and wasn’t very qualified, they struggled for months and eventually quit - we had hired them based on skin color too.
Not saying I’m for or against, but I’ve seen situations where diversity became more important than qualifications. I’ve also seen where both were equally important, and that was preferred.
Tbh, being labeled as hired in a “diversity program” sounds humiliating. You’ll have to work twice as hard to prove you’re actually capable of doing the job.
Possibly. In that situation the people were grateful to be hired, and they worked hard anyway. They didn’t express any qualms about how they were hired. If they did, maybe they kept it to themselves.
Does it count if you’re saying: hire him as the best candidate but you have to make a high offer to get him because he’s black and in high demand
My field is white and Asian male dominated, so when the best candidate is an underrepresented demographic we need to jump on it
No but everyone’s uncle knows a guy who was so it’s definitely real.
There are a dozen first-hand experiences in this thread, and you’re discounting them all because you lack real-life experience.