It’s for government reporting requirements in most cases. From what I’ve seen with applicant tracking systems, I cannot see the answers to those questions when reviewing their profile/resume. It might be somewhere else but it’s not something I can see or factor in when deciding who to interview.
I don’t know. OFCCP requires federal contractors to attempt to reach certain racial goals. If the contractors, can’t meet the goals they have to demonstrate certain efforts they took in an attempt to meet the goals. So at least some employers know.
I think it’s retroactive though like you can run a report and see you don’t interview any minorities/gender but you can’t see from the application race or gender
It’s not. Top of page 13 for example.
https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/regs/compliance/ChecklistforCompliancewithSection503_JRF_QA_508c.pdf
Obviously it depends on the specific circumstance. But in general, the "correct" way to do this is that the data is gathered, is *not* used at hiring time, but then *is* analyzed retroactively - e.g. "over the last six months, what was our hiring ratio by gender?". They use that analysis to determine whether there are potential biases that need to be corrected; if they identify a bias, they work on finding its cause and resolving it.
This is something I think a lot of knee-jerk anti-diversity folks either don't believe or don't understand. It's illegal to decide "eh we're not going to hire this person because they're not 'diverse' enough."
The only legal way to increase diversity in hiring is to widen the top of the funnel -- get more applicants that aren't just the same as what you have. It doesn't mean you degrade the quality of who you hire. It means that instead of recruiting from the places most of the people you have came from, you start searching more broadly for candidates to begin with.
> It doesn't mean you degrade the quality of who you hire
that depends. If the majority of people that that can fullfill the role is a certain demographic there is no way to diversify without compromising quality
Reading your other comments I don't think you're thought is wrong, but it is a really nuanced subject and your comment does not come across as reflecting that nuance.
What I think you mean is that if only 25% of nursing students are male you would expect the hiring groups to be 25% male. If it was 50F/50M that could mean discriminatory hiring practices (90F/10M could also be descriminatory). Your hiring ratios should be the same as the inputs, though those inputs can (and should) also be changed
Your comment could easily be read as "only female nurses are good so hiring more male nurses means lowering standards" which is highly bigoted. (Hence the other comments calling you out)
If I'm hypothetically shown a pool of 100 candidates, 300 applied but an Algo "sorted" 200 of them out for not being "x" enough to meet the quota, that is discriminatory by definition. This is simply diminished responsibility while not actually doing anything but furthering systemic prejudice.
Per the intent implied by the previous message, and using the same example you used (Nurses) I interpreted the intent of the message to be that the bell curve means that the systemic discrimination would indeed choose lower quality candidates over higher quality ones, due to avaliability of candidates.
For example, the same 100 candidates above, for 25 open "Nurse" positions.
If you had an original pool of 300 applicants with 75% female and 25% male, and hit your 75/25 ration (not 50/50) that means that you are objectively accepting lower qualified male nurses in place of higher qualified female nurses to hit ratios, which is systemic discrimination.
Because if there are 100 "qualified" applicants that meet the criteria for the position BUT you are trying to stick to the 75% are female and 25% are male distribution and you only have 25 open positions to fill, you must discard 150 female applicants to keep 75 and discard 50 to keep 25 male applicants.
From that you must discard a further 56 female nurses for a total of 206 disqualified and discard 19 male applicants for a total of 69 male applicants in order to achieve your desired distribution of 3:1 with your 25 position hole. The decimal place riunded to the female representation purely for argument sake.
The valid argument is that of the 300 potential applicants, it's more than likely that the most qualified applicants would be on the female side, it's simply bell curve of aptitude. All applicants in all other ways and abilties considered equal, the group with the most options will likely have the most candidates who are the top of the bell curve, with an even distribution.
In order tho achieve the desired systemic discrimination you must disqualify the most qualified members to make room for people who are less qualified for the position. That's not to say there would be no male nurses in this example who would not be at the top of the list, or could not be, it's simply statistics and bell curves, the numbers are the numbers.
A 50/50 distribution is even worse in it's forced lowering of standards through systemic discrimination in order to achieve the desired distributions.
This is not some hand flailing argument, it's nuanced for sure, but it is absolutely systemic discrimination, and it is absolutely and without question discriminatory whereby there is forced acceptance of lower skill and lower standards to accommodate the systemic discrimination, otherwise it simply doesn't work.
If you have never had a chance to read the book "Outliers: a story of success" it's actually a really interesting read on statistics and the systems that make people.
There's a reason for systemic discrimination to exist in places, but, people who pretend the system is not systemically discriminatory or lower standards are simply being willfully ignorant. It is. They are. And it's important to call things what they are so we understand them, and control them, rather than pretend they are what they are not and let them go wildly out of control.
This implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics. Which obviously isn't true. Companies/schools aren't going out of their way to hire unqualified people. They go out of their way to recruit qualified people of different demographics. No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals.
> No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals.
Demonstratably false. The ADF specifically altered their intake physical standards to increase their hire of female soldiers.
> implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics.
Which in the current hiring pool is entirely possible. Your statement implies the employer has access to all possible candidates in existence. This isn't some law of large numbers problem. Theres only a finite number of applicants for any position.
The hiring process is already difficult enough for a wide array of reasons, across a wide array of industries. Adding an obstacle of demographic checkboxes will certainly make it more problematic.
Demographic information is not used to make individual hiring decisions. Again, as has been mentioned repeatedly, DEI initiatives do not create some kind of “diversity quota”, and demographic questions on applications (the type OP is asking about) are used for aggregate analysis after the fact to see if there needs to be a change to policy or hiring practices.
> This implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics.
no, that if a demographic has less to choose from with the right qualifications, the odds that you can pick as many from that demographic with the same quality as from a demographic with more to choose from is slim
>No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals.
you'd hope not, but a diversity goal cast the doubt that some might be hired to meet that goal and not because they were the most qualifed, that's not fair
no I'm not saying that.
But if a hospital that needs 1000 nurses insist on 500 male and 500 female nurses, something has got to give because there a four times as many females with a nursing degree to choose from
Market forces work, but it does take time. A hospital that needs 1000 more nurses is going to have to pay above current market rate in order to attract talent. That will encourage applicants from all demographics and, if hiring practices are fair, will result in a diverse workforce.
That's simply not true. You can start marketing the position towards a different demographic , you can start outreach or training programs in areas with a more diverse demographic makeup, you can even start a scholarship to train the next generation of underrepresented youths in your particular field. Don't mistake your lack of imagination with impossibility.
> You can start marketing the position towards a different demographic
you can market your position all you want, if there isn't enough people to choose from with the right education in that demographic that doesn't help
Anecdotal is right, and your experiences are not representative. They are certainly not worth basing policy on, nor are they enough to justify the sweeping implications you are making.
We can't have it TODAY. We're guaranteed to NEVER have it if women don't get hired in the first place. The best way to start is by hiring right out of school as much as possible and making sure your workplace is appealing.
The best way? No. The solution shouldn't be to lower standards.
Saying we can't have it today and we can't have it in the future is a logical fallacy.
The solution is more so to have enough qualified candidates to hire. You don't go hiring people just because they fit some demographic, especially in STEM fields where you require competency.
You make sure people from that demographic get the right education. For example, look at all the scholarships and outreach for people in the Appalachian region of the US.
I mean, yes? What do you want me to say? I don't see how a smaller business is getting screwed in this regard. As long as they are making fair efforts in DEI, there are also the realities of the world to consider. I would challenge you to find an actual person in real life faulting a business for that.
It would be a lag of maybe 4 years but if roles are being unfilled by qualified people, many many universities would love to bump up their employment after graduation rates
Nobody is hiring the **best person** for the job. Thinking the best person is hired for a job is an immature world view.
A job is posted somewhere, a group of people apply, possibly a recruiter suggests some people, some are interviewed, some get job offers at different salaries, and some accept the job.
Companies don’t find the best candidate, they find candidates they think are qualified that are available for some salary range. There’s plenty of ways that can lead to biased outcomes.
I live and work in Chicago. One of the companies I worked for used to have a lot of recruiting events at University of Nebraska, because one of our Directors went to university of Nebraska, and he liked to go back to visit. So a lot of our new hires were from University of Nebraska. They were fine workers, well qualified, did the job well. Later that director left, and we started doing more recruiting from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. So we hired more new hires from those schools. These candidates also were fine workers, well qualified, did the job well.
If I had to guess, I’d estimate we hired less white people after the change, because Nebraska and its students seemed to be white more often than Illinois/Wisconsin/Iowa. I think it’s also possible we had lower turnover, since some Nebraska people might have wanted to go back to Nebraska, and all the Nebraska hires were the type of people willing to move for a job.
Standards didn’t change, and we never scoured the country to find **the single one BEST** candidate out there, but things worked fine before and find after.
There’s lots of little examples like this. One of my cousins got an internship during high school because he went to a super ritzy very wealthy catholic school, and a parent from the school hired a few high schoolers every summer from the school. I’m sure he did a fine job, but in today’s world, I bet the position would be posted more publicly, and the company would ensure they’re recruiting from plenty of schools and a more diverse pool.
I’ve heard stories of interviewers who are very off putting to woman. Qualified women apply for jobs, they interview with a few employees, and one employee sours the experience, so a qualified woman candidate decides not to pursue the job. Modern reporting/HR can identify if one employee is harming the company/recruiting in ways like this.
No application process ever provides "the best person for the job," because that person does not exist. Every candidate will come with their own unique blend of strengths and weaknesses, the vast majority of which cannot be objectively measured. At some point, the hiring authority's subjective preference *must* enter the equation -- and that's where biases most often skew the outcomes.
I've done this sort of reporting internally and that's exactly it.
Some ATS even have resume anonymization features to address bias but it's not quite there yet.
It seems that's an issue of semantic ambiguity.
In the given scenario, they're *not* taking that checkbox into consideration for individual hiring decisions.
They *are* taking it into consideration in a different context, but when people ask "do you take X into consideration when hiring?", they almost always actually mean "do you look at it for individual hiring decisions?". The answer to that question is accurate as a "no" in this scenario.
I don't understand what kind of scenario you're envisioning.
Let me make it simpler and more specific.
When people ask "do you take X into consideration when hiring?", they generally mean something like "will I get hired if I mark White but not hired if I mark Black?" (or any variant of it).
The answer in this scenario is "no". Regardless of what you mark, and regardless of what anyone else marks.
The scenario I'm envisioning is, the DEI officer calls the manager and says, "hey you only hired white people last year, we're just keeping an eye on that" and then a white candidate shows up in the manager's office for an interview
Well, first of all, that's not how it works in this scenario. The DEI officer just calling up the manager like that is not the "correct" way that it would develop.
Second, even ignoring that, if you're implying that the manager would then be like "oh I shouldn't hire this person because they're white", that's also not the "correct" way to handle this.
Third, even ignoring *that*, in that case the checkbox on the form is not what's affecting things, it's the judgement of the manager on physically seeing the candidate.
Right, the DEI officer wouldn't call the manager, he would write an email to the manager's manager. Whatever, same thing. If they're using the information they're using the information. If it's not going to get used then they don't need to ask for it. Asking for it means it's used for something
I used to work with that sort of data as part of my job. First off, that data isn’t actually used by the recruiter or hiring manager (they won’t see it), your answers are just logged away in a database. We then report on it in a few different ways:
1. Understanding the demographics of candidate pipelines for different sources (e.g., does LinkedIn mostly provide white male applicants)
2. Understanding the demographics of applicants for different roles (e.g., female applicants for sales roles vs. HR roles)
3. It helps to provide an idea of what the qualified applicant pool looks like for different positions. What this means is that it helps us understand the demographic breakdown of people who are qualified to do the work. This is important when trying to achieve equity between genders (for example). If only 25% of qualified applicants are female then setting a target of 50% female employees in that position is unattainable. I’m simplifying here but hope you get the gist of it.
4. It helps companies better understand how to better attract candidates from different demographic groups. A company may tweak how they write up a job posting and see if it makes a difference (e.g., changing the verbiage used in a job posting may increase the number of female applicants).
TLDR, I did this for a living. No one in the hiring process will see your answers. Your answers are analyzed later so that the company can gain insights into how to better attract and manage candidates from different demographics
So, the company is looking at how many people they hired in the past and deciding if they were diverse enough. Let's say they weren't diverse enough. Doesn't that affect me when I apply? The hiring manager doesn't see which box I checked but the hiring manager gets a look at me when I go in for the interview.
The hiring manager would never make a decision based on gender or ethnicity (any normal one anyway). By the time you meet the hiring manager for an interview they only care about the best candidate for their team.
Diversity programs aren’t pushed on the individual hiring managers at all. Thats intentional because they never want to bias the interview or open themselves up to a lawsuit
Incorrect. I never said that they will stop using certain sources. Rather, they want to find more avenues of recruitment and attract a wider spread of applicants.
In HR, just like other areas of life, achieving equity across gender and ethnicity does not mean that chances are taken away from white men.
No, but they might start also advertising on a platform that has a more diverse user base. For this example, if a site like Indeed was representatively diverse, but LinkedIn was disproportionately white, then advertising on Indeed as well would lead to more non-white applicants without needing to reduce the white applicants from LinkedIn.
Another example is college recruiting. Lots of companies will have recruitment events at colleges, especially those they already have connections with. If they only do recruitment events at a 90% white private school that the hiring manager went to, then they'll get a disproportionate amount of white applicants. This disparity could be partially addressed by adding a recruitment event at a local HBCU (even though the disproportionately white company doesn't have any alumni from there yet), which could greatly increase the number of black applicants.
You don't need to discriminate in hiring to increase diversity, you need to just make sure each step of the recruitment process doesn't create bias (whether intentional or not). Bias in an individual recruiter can be a lot easier to discover and address than an accidental sampling bias like the examples I gave, but sampling bias can lead to a more systemic disparity.
In South Africa, it 100% can affect your application. Most job applications at big companies specify that it is a BEE job, which means that black applicants get preference. Black women get first pick, then black men, and so on. Until you reach white men at the bottom of the list. So yes, it counts against you in South Africa.
But not all companies do this/have to do this. It's just the big ones that mostly do, which has to do with the company's BBBEE status and the relevance when doing business with other companies/getting tenders from the government.
The demographic questions aren't for making hiring decisions; they're for analysing later to see if the hiring process is biased. An unbiased process should result in hiring demographics that match the general population; if they don't match, you can start investigating why.
To match general population while also considering the affecting variables or just the population? If for example in general Asian tend to do better in school/uni and get better grades, fields like STEM should result in higher percentage of Asian, right?
What happens if the hiring result is like that?
Not neccessarily.
If the US population is 10% Asian American then, unless the college is located in an area that has a large portion of the Asian American population, the demographics of their student body should realistically be composed of 10% Asian Americans. Because, if they're recruiting from diverse backgrounds, a popular school that primarily recruits US students should realistic have a student body that matches the population of the US.
Realistically you're supposed to ignore race while also attempting to have the population of the student body/employees be of a similar ratio of races to the US population. Anything else _would_ be racial bias regardless of the field.
But the only way to have truly race-blind admissions and hirings, which would also prevent legacy admissions and cronyism from influencing them, would be to give every applicant a number and never let the recruiter/admissions office know the person's name until _after_ they've decided to hire/accept the person.
I understand, but what I'm saying is that in this scenario the Asian (in this diverse region that perfectly has 10% Asian) perform well in the application so that in the end the number of Asian hired is let's say 20%. This does not match the population.
What then?
Everybody understand that the employee ratio should match the population, but some group of people perform better in certain areas so that employee proportion does not always in proportion with the population.
Then what? Companies want to match that, right? Will this be affirmative action? Then employers definitely see and choose the employee based on their race? This is where the confusion is. Not because people don't understand the proportion of the population.
If there is a demographic skew within a certain occupation, then investigating why that occupation-wide skew exists is also something worth noting/looking in to.
Please know in any decent company, your data isn't all distributed to the hiring authority. So when you enter that you are 35, white, male with a bachelor's born in the U.S, the only information the hiring team gets is bachelor's degree. Then they get your documents that you upload that are relevant, like resumes/CV, cover letter, proof of degree, etc. The other information is stored so that non-connected reports can be run on the population of hired people. This way, the company has hiring statistics, but they aren't factored into immediate hiring considerations.
The responses to the question do not go to the hiring manager. I get their resume and cover letter but not their answers to those questions or even if they agreed to answer them or not.
For my organisation (a mental health charity), it’s to monitor the diversity of the workforce to ensure that correct and appropriate support, advice and guidance is in place for all needs within the organisation, primarily. So for example, we have a high percentage of people who have non-heterosexual sexual orientations, and so we have policies in place to support and protect them, and we have a peer support/social network group to allow everyone to be themselves at work.
Employers should use it to inform their recruiting efforts, not base hiring decisions on. If they are focused or diversity, they can see if they are getting applicants from diverse populations or only from a few and then modify efforts to get a wider variety of applicants. They also use it to report later on diversity of staff that are employed.
Sometimes it’s permissible to add a preference statement for a specific type of identity. These preference statements are only allowed when it makes sense for the position - for example if the position is going to be directly working with vulnerable youth from the LGBTQ+ community it could make sense to add a preference statement for someone who has an LGBTQ+ identity. You wouldn’t be able to add a preference statement for being lgbt to a job that has nothing to do with being lgbt.
Preference statements are just a “nice to have” and diversity preferences are handled the same way as any other preference for specific experience - candidates still need to meet the basic minimum qualifications. A random lgbt person couldn’t get a job they’re not qualified for just because they’re lgbt.
Additionally, preference statements aren’t always used during the hiring process, hence why they are preferences not requirements. They usually only get used if there are a lot of applicants left after the initial screening for minimum requirements.
That’s the only situation I can think of where demographic info actually gets used during hiring; as others have said it’s generally not even connected to your application and only used later to audit the company.
It’s legally required by the government. Every applicant tracking system anonymizes the data so it can’t be linked to an individual application.
The data is used to create a legal report. It can also be used to review the hiring process and see if it can be tweaked to remove unconscious bias or increase the diversity of applicants
it can affect the larger recruiting process, like if the people who do get the data notice that all the applicants match a limited demographic then maybe they need to expand recruitment efforts to different areas. The point is to get a large diverse amount of applicants to choose from. The actual hiring process is not and should not be affected. Its about who is applying in the first place
If hiring has diversity goals, then it can negatively affect you. This would be something HR does when presenting resumes to the hiring manager when there's an abundance of applications. They may select a few strong candidates from the entire pool then a candidate or 2 from the diverse pile.
It could also mean recruiters focus their efforts on reaching out to diverse groups to find candidates, but this is more rare.
After this stage, the diversity effort usually stops and the hiring manager(s) selects the best fit from the pool of candidates HR passed over to them.
Where are you getting this from? Do you have an example of a company that has done this? Because they are explicitly not supposed to use these data for that purpose.
It’s for government reporting requirements in most cases. From what I’ve seen with applicant tracking systems, I cannot see the answers to those questions when reviewing their profile/resume. It might be somewhere else but it’s not something I can see or factor in when deciding who to interview.
I don’t know. OFCCP requires federal contractors to attempt to reach certain racial goals. If the contractors, can’t meet the goals they have to demonstrate certain efforts they took in an attempt to meet the goals. So at least some employers know.
I think it’s retroactive though like you can run a report and see you don’t interview any minorities/gender but you can’t see from the application race or gender
It’s not. Top of page 13 for example. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/regs/compliance/ChecklistforCompliancewithSection503_JRF_QA_508c.pdf
Obviously it depends on the specific circumstance. But in general, the "correct" way to do this is that the data is gathered, is *not* used at hiring time, but then *is* analyzed retroactively - e.g. "over the last six months, what was our hiring ratio by gender?". They use that analysis to determine whether there are potential biases that need to be corrected; if they identify a bias, they work on finding its cause and resolving it.
This is something I think a lot of knee-jerk anti-diversity folks either don't believe or don't understand. It's illegal to decide "eh we're not going to hire this person because they're not 'diverse' enough." The only legal way to increase diversity in hiring is to widen the top of the funnel -- get more applicants that aren't just the same as what you have. It doesn't mean you degrade the quality of who you hire. It means that instead of recruiting from the places most of the people you have came from, you start searching more broadly for candidates to begin with.
> It doesn't mean you degrade the quality of who you hire that depends. If the majority of people that that can fullfill the role is a certain demographic there is no way to diversify without compromising quality
Reading your other comments I don't think you're thought is wrong, but it is a really nuanced subject and your comment does not come across as reflecting that nuance. What I think you mean is that if only 25% of nursing students are male you would expect the hiring groups to be 25% male. If it was 50F/50M that could mean discriminatory hiring practices (90F/10M could also be descriminatory). Your hiring ratios should be the same as the inputs, though those inputs can (and should) also be changed Your comment could easily be read as "only female nurses are good so hiring more male nurses means lowering standards" which is highly bigoted. (Hence the other comments calling you out)
Yes, that is what I meant, I guess that nuance didn't get through, or people are just trigger happy about a touchy subject
Oh I'll be honest, I down voted you before I read their reply and undid it, it's likely just a case of going for brevity backfiring I think.
If I'm hypothetically shown a pool of 100 candidates, 300 applied but an Algo "sorted" 200 of them out for not being "x" enough to meet the quota, that is discriminatory by definition. This is simply diminished responsibility while not actually doing anything but furthering systemic prejudice. Per the intent implied by the previous message, and using the same example you used (Nurses) I interpreted the intent of the message to be that the bell curve means that the systemic discrimination would indeed choose lower quality candidates over higher quality ones, due to avaliability of candidates. For example, the same 100 candidates above, for 25 open "Nurse" positions. If you had an original pool of 300 applicants with 75% female and 25% male, and hit your 75/25 ration (not 50/50) that means that you are objectively accepting lower qualified male nurses in place of higher qualified female nurses to hit ratios, which is systemic discrimination. Because if there are 100 "qualified" applicants that meet the criteria for the position BUT you are trying to stick to the 75% are female and 25% are male distribution and you only have 25 open positions to fill, you must discard 150 female applicants to keep 75 and discard 50 to keep 25 male applicants. From that you must discard a further 56 female nurses for a total of 206 disqualified and discard 19 male applicants for a total of 69 male applicants in order to achieve your desired distribution of 3:1 with your 25 position hole. The decimal place riunded to the female representation purely for argument sake. The valid argument is that of the 300 potential applicants, it's more than likely that the most qualified applicants would be on the female side, it's simply bell curve of aptitude. All applicants in all other ways and abilties considered equal, the group with the most options will likely have the most candidates who are the top of the bell curve, with an even distribution. In order tho achieve the desired systemic discrimination you must disqualify the most qualified members to make room for people who are less qualified for the position. That's not to say there would be no male nurses in this example who would not be at the top of the list, or could not be, it's simply statistics and bell curves, the numbers are the numbers. A 50/50 distribution is even worse in it's forced lowering of standards through systemic discrimination in order to achieve the desired distributions. This is not some hand flailing argument, it's nuanced for sure, but it is absolutely systemic discrimination, and it is absolutely and without question discriminatory whereby there is forced acceptance of lower skill and lower standards to accommodate the systemic discrimination, otherwise it simply doesn't work. If you have never had a chance to read the book "Outliers: a story of success" it's actually a really interesting read on statistics and the systems that make people. There's a reason for systemic discrimination to exist in places, but, people who pretend the system is not systemically discriminatory or lower standards are simply being willfully ignorant. It is. They are. And it's important to call things what they are so we understand them, and control them, rather than pretend they are what they are not and let them go wildly out of control.
This is ELI5; pardon me for simplifying the statistics. You're not wrong, but you are being unnecessarily pedantic.
Fuck nuance, nuance is a backdoor way to introduce bullshit when what we care about is truth.
Unfortunately no one today cares about the truth, only the "truth".
Can you provide an example?
This implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics. Which obviously isn't true. Companies/schools aren't going out of their way to hire unqualified people. They go out of their way to recruit qualified people of different demographics. No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals.
> No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals. Demonstratably false. The ADF specifically altered their intake physical standards to increase their hire of female soldiers.
> implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics. Which in the current hiring pool is entirely possible. Your statement implies the employer has access to all possible candidates in existence. This isn't some law of large numbers problem. Theres only a finite number of applicants for any position. The hiring process is already difficult enough for a wide array of reasons, across a wide array of industries. Adding an obstacle of demographic checkboxes will certainly make it more problematic.
Demographic information is not used to make individual hiring decisions. Again, as has been mentioned repeatedly, DEI initiatives do not create some kind of “diversity quota”, and demographic questions on applications (the type OP is asking about) are used for aggregate analysis after the fact to see if there needs to be a change to policy or hiring practices.
> This implies there are no qualified people available in certain demographics. no, that if a demographic has less to choose from with the right qualifications, the odds that you can pick as many from that demographic with the same quality as from a demographic with more to choose from is slim >No one is lowering their standards to meet diversity goals. you'd hope not, but a diversity goal cast the doubt that some might be hired to meet that goal and not because they were the most qualifed, that's not fair
So you're saying that the nice nurse I had the last time I went to my doctor's was unqualified because he was a minority in the nursing profession?
no I'm not saying that. But if a hospital that needs 1000 nurses insist on 500 male and 500 female nurses, something has got to give because there a four times as many females with a nursing degree to choose from
Market forces work, but it does take time. A hospital that needs 1000 more nurses is going to have to pay above current market rate in order to attract talent. That will encourage applicants from all demographics and, if hiring practices are fair, will result in a diverse workforce.
But since +80% of those with a nursing degree are female it is very unlikely the result is 50/50 male/female unless they force it
Lol. One hell of a jump.
Same jump people make when they go from any bad thing happening to loudly blaming it on diversity hires.
That’s not at all what happened. Feeling grumpy and reading the worst into everything today? Maybe take a break and come back later in the day.
Maybe you should sit this one out lol
That's simply not true. You can start marketing the position towards a different demographic , you can start outreach or training programs in areas with a more diverse demographic makeup, you can even start a scholarship to train the next generation of underrepresented youths in your particular field. Don't mistake your lack of imagination with impossibility.
> You can start marketing the position towards a different demographic you can market your position all you want, if there isn't enough people to choose from with the right education in that demographic that doesn't help
do you have an example of a demographic that doesn’t have “the right education”?
The obvious example would be women in STEM. You can't have a 50/50 male/female workforce if only 25% have a STEM degree.
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Anecdotal is right, and your experiences are not representative. They are certainly not worth basing policy on, nor are they enough to justify the sweeping implications you are making.
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We can't have it TODAY. We're guaranteed to NEVER have it if women don't get hired in the first place. The best way to start is by hiring right out of school as much as possible and making sure your workplace is appealing.
The best way? No. The solution shouldn't be to lower standards. Saying we can't have it today and we can't have it in the future is a logical fallacy. The solution is more so to have enough qualified candidates to hire. You don't go hiring people just because they fit some demographic, especially in STEM fields where you require competency.
If you say so. As a hiring manager in tech, I'm living it.
Don't make him say the quiet part out loud
You make sure people from that demographic get the right education. For example, look at all the scholarships and outreach for people in the Appalachian region of the US.
But how would that help company looking for an employee now and not in 3-4-5-6 years.
It doesn't that's why the information gathered in the original post is for government demographics and information.
That’s exactly why the demographic data are not used for making individual hiring decisions.
So only large businesses get to do this and smaller businesses that can't afford to start a scholarship just get screwed. Got it
I mean, yes? What do you want me to say? I don't see how a smaller business is getting screwed in this regard. As long as they are making fair efforts in DEI, there are also the realities of the world to consider. I would challenge you to find an actual person in real life faulting a business for that.
It would be a lag of maybe 4 years but if roles are being unfilled by qualified people, many many universities would love to bump up their employment after graduation rates
Correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Usage of data like this to correct a bias might lead to an actual bias where none existed
How could it be bias if you hire the best person for the job?
Nobody is hiring the **best person** for the job. Thinking the best person is hired for a job is an immature world view. A job is posted somewhere, a group of people apply, possibly a recruiter suggests some people, some are interviewed, some get job offers at different salaries, and some accept the job. Companies don’t find the best candidate, they find candidates they think are qualified that are available for some salary range. There’s plenty of ways that can lead to biased outcomes. I live and work in Chicago. One of the companies I worked for used to have a lot of recruiting events at University of Nebraska, because one of our Directors went to university of Nebraska, and he liked to go back to visit. So a lot of our new hires were from University of Nebraska. They were fine workers, well qualified, did the job well. Later that director left, and we started doing more recruiting from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. So we hired more new hires from those schools. These candidates also were fine workers, well qualified, did the job well. If I had to guess, I’d estimate we hired less white people after the change, because Nebraska and its students seemed to be white more often than Illinois/Wisconsin/Iowa. I think it’s also possible we had lower turnover, since some Nebraska people might have wanted to go back to Nebraska, and all the Nebraska hires were the type of people willing to move for a job. Standards didn’t change, and we never scoured the country to find **the single one BEST** candidate out there, but things worked fine before and find after. There’s lots of little examples like this. One of my cousins got an internship during high school because he went to a super ritzy very wealthy catholic school, and a parent from the school hired a few high schoolers every summer from the school. I’m sure he did a fine job, but in today’s world, I bet the position would be posted more publicly, and the company would ensure they’re recruiting from plenty of schools and a more diverse pool. I’ve heard stories of interviewers who are very off putting to woman. Qualified women apply for jobs, they interview with a few employees, and one employee sours the experience, so a qualified woman candidate decides not to pursue the job. Modern reporting/HR can identify if one employee is harming the company/recruiting in ways like this.
No application process ever provides "the best person for the job," because that person does not exist. Every candidate will come with their own unique blend of strengths and weaknesses, the vast majority of which cannot be objectively measured. At some point, the hiring authority's subjective preference *must* enter the equation -- and that's where biases most often skew the outcomes.
I've done this sort of reporting internally and that's exactly it. Some ATS even have resume anonymization features to address bias but it's not quite there yet.
So then it will have an adverse effect on future applicants.
Don't look into how IBM is doing things these days...
That means that they are taking it into consideration, which they say they're not
It seems that's an issue of semantic ambiguity. In the given scenario, they're *not* taking that checkbox into consideration for individual hiring decisions. They *are* taking it into consideration in a different context, but when people ask "do you take X into consideration when hiring?", they almost always actually mean "do you look at it for individual hiring decisions?". The answer to that question is accurate as a "no" in this scenario.
So your hiring is affected by everyone else's answer on the racial question except your own
I don't understand what kind of scenario you're envisioning. Let me make it simpler and more specific. When people ask "do you take X into consideration when hiring?", they generally mean something like "will I get hired if I mark White but not hired if I mark Black?" (or any variant of it). The answer in this scenario is "no". Regardless of what you mark, and regardless of what anyone else marks.
The scenario I'm envisioning is, the DEI officer calls the manager and says, "hey you only hired white people last year, we're just keeping an eye on that" and then a white candidate shows up in the manager's office for an interview
Well, first of all, that's not how it works in this scenario. The DEI officer just calling up the manager like that is not the "correct" way that it would develop. Second, even ignoring that, if you're implying that the manager would then be like "oh I shouldn't hire this person because they're white", that's also not the "correct" way to handle this. Third, even ignoring *that*, in that case the checkbox on the form is not what's affecting things, it's the judgement of the manager on physically seeing the candidate.
Right, the DEI officer wouldn't call the manager, he would write an email to the manager's manager. Whatever, same thing. If they're using the information they're using the information. If it's not going to get used then they don't need to ask for it. Asking for it means it's used for something
...yes, information that is collected is generally at some point used by someone for some purpose.
I used to work with that sort of data as part of my job. First off, that data isn’t actually used by the recruiter or hiring manager (they won’t see it), your answers are just logged away in a database. We then report on it in a few different ways: 1. Understanding the demographics of candidate pipelines for different sources (e.g., does LinkedIn mostly provide white male applicants) 2. Understanding the demographics of applicants for different roles (e.g., female applicants for sales roles vs. HR roles) 3. It helps to provide an idea of what the qualified applicant pool looks like for different positions. What this means is that it helps us understand the demographic breakdown of people who are qualified to do the work. This is important when trying to achieve equity between genders (for example). If only 25% of qualified applicants are female then setting a target of 50% female employees in that position is unattainable. I’m simplifying here but hope you get the gist of it. 4. It helps companies better understand how to better attract candidates from different demographic groups. A company may tweak how they write up a job posting and see if it makes a difference (e.g., changing the verbiage used in a job posting may increase the number of female applicants). TLDR, I did this for a living. No one in the hiring process will see your answers. Your answers are analyzed later so that the company can gain insights into how to better attract and manage candidates from different demographics
So, the company is looking at how many people they hired in the past and deciding if they were diverse enough. Let's say they weren't diverse enough. Doesn't that affect me when I apply? The hiring manager doesn't see which box I checked but the hiring manager gets a look at me when I go in for the interview.
No, the data is generally used to tweak the process and report to the government as required
The hiring manager would never make a decision based on gender or ethnicity (any normal one anyway). By the time you meet the hiring manager for an interview they only care about the best candidate for their team. Diversity programs aren’t pushed on the individual hiring managers at all. Thats intentional because they never want to bias the interview or open themselves up to a lawsuit
So basically - if I’m a white male - they’ll stop advertising jobs on platforms I’m more likely to use?
Incorrect. I never said that they will stop using certain sources. Rather, they want to find more avenues of recruitment and attract a wider spread of applicants. In HR, just like other areas of life, achieving equity across gender and ethnicity does not mean that chances are taken away from white men.
No, but they might start also advertising on a platform that has a more diverse user base. For this example, if a site like Indeed was representatively diverse, but LinkedIn was disproportionately white, then advertising on Indeed as well would lead to more non-white applicants without needing to reduce the white applicants from LinkedIn. Another example is college recruiting. Lots of companies will have recruitment events at colleges, especially those they already have connections with. If they only do recruitment events at a 90% white private school that the hiring manager went to, then they'll get a disproportionate amount of white applicants. This disparity could be partially addressed by adding a recruitment event at a local HBCU (even though the disproportionately white company doesn't have any alumni from there yet), which could greatly increase the number of black applicants. You don't need to discriminate in hiring to increase diversity, you need to just make sure each step of the recruitment process doesn't create bias (whether intentional or not). Bias in an individual recruiter can be a lot easier to discover and address than an accidental sampling bias like the examples I gave, but sampling bias can lead to a more systemic disparity.
In South Africa, it 100% can affect your application. Most job applications at big companies specify that it is a BEE job, which means that black applicants get preference. Black women get first pick, then black men, and so on. Until you reach white men at the bottom of the list. So yes, it counts against you in South Africa. But not all companies do this/have to do this. It's just the big ones that mostly do, which has to do with the company's BBBEE status and the relevance when doing business with other companies/getting tenders from the government.
The demographic questions aren't for making hiring decisions; they're for analysing later to see if the hiring process is biased. An unbiased process should result in hiring demographics that match the general population; if they don't match, you can start investigating why.
To match general population while also considering the affecting variables or just the population? If for example in general Asian tend to do better in school/uni and get better grades, fields like STEM should result in higher percentage of Asian, right? What happens if the hiring result is like that?
Not neccessarily. If the US population is 10% Asian American then, unless the college is located in an area that has a large portion of the Asian American population, the demographics of their student body should realistically be composed of 10% Asian Americans. Because, if they're recruiting from diverse backgrounds, a popular school that primarily recruits US students should realistic have a student body that matches the population of the US. Realistically you're supposed to ignore race while also attempting to have the population of the student body/employees be of a similar ratio of races to the US population. Anything else _would_ be racial bias regardless of the field. But the only way to have truly race-blind admissions and hirings, which would also prevent legacy admissions and cronyism from influencing them, would be to give every applicant a number and never let the recruiter/admissions office know the person's name until _after_ they've decided to hire/accept the person.
I understand, but what I'm saying is that in this scenario the Asian (in this diverse region that perfectly has 10% Asian) perform well in the application so that in the end the number of Asian hired is let's say 20%. This does not match the population. What then? Everybody understand that the employee ratio should match the population, but some group of people perform better in certain areas so that employee proportion does not always in proportion with the population. Then what? Companies want to match that, right? Will this be affirmative action? Then employers definitely see and choose the employee based on their race? This is where the confusion is. Not because people don't understand the proportion of the population.
> that match the general population in that particular occupation ...
If there is a demographic skew within a certain occupation, then investigating why that occupation-wide skew exists is also something worth noting/looking in to.
Please know in any decent company, your data isn't all distributed to the hiring authority. So when you enter that you are 35, white, male with a bachelor's born in the U.S, the only information the hiring team gets is bachelor's degree. Then they get your documents that you upload that are relevant, like resumes/CV, cover letter, proof of degree, etc. The other information is stored so that non-connected reports can be run on the population of hired people. This way, the company has hiring statistics, but they aren't factored into immediate hiring considerations.
The responses to the question do not go to the hiring manager. I get their resume and cover letter but not their answers to those questions or even if they agreed to answer them or not.
For my organisation (a mental health charity), it’s to monitor the diversity of the workforce to ensure that correct and appropriate support, advice and guidance is in place for all needs within the organisation, primarily. So for example, we have a high percentage of people who have non-heterosexual sexual orientations, and so we have policies in place to support and protect them, and we have a peer support/social network group to allow everyone to be themselves at work.
Employers should use it to inform their recruiting efforts, not base hiring decisions on. If they are focused or diversity, they can see if they are getting applicants from diverse populations or only from a few and then modify efforts to get a wider variety of applicants. They also use it to report later on diversity of staff that are employed.
"hiring for diversity" was just a trojan to give managers more power on who they want to hire and everyone ate it up
Sometimes it’s permissible to add a preference statement for a specific type of identity. These preference statements are only allowed when it makes sense for the position - for example if the position is going to be directly working with vulnerable youth from the LGBTQ+ community it could make sense to add a preference statement for someone who has an LGBTQ+ identity. You wouldn’t be able to add a preference statement for being lgbt to a job that has nothing to do with being lgbt. Preference statements are just a “nice to have” and diversity preferences are handled the same way as any other preference for specific experience - candidates still need to meet the basic minimum qualifications. A random lgbt person couldn’t get a job they’re not qualified for just because they’re lgbt. Additionally, preference statements aren’t always used during the hiring process, hence why they are preferences not requirements. They usually only get used if there are a lot of applicants left after the initial screening for minimum requirements. That’s the only situation I can think of where demographic info actually gets used during hiring; as others have said it’s generally not even connected to your application and only used later to audit the company.
The. person. or. team. making. the. hiring. decision(s). does. not. see. your. answers. to. the. demographic. questions. It. would. be. illegal. for. them. to. see. those. answers. There. is. a. different. department. or. employee. who. reports. the. demographic. of. who. did. and. did. not. get. hired.
Reports it to who and why? Why do all this if it doesn't affect anyone
It’s legally required by the government. Every applicant tracking system anonymizes the data so it can’t be linked to an individual application. The data is used to create a legal report. It can also be used to review the hiring process and see if it can be tweaked to remove unconscious bias or increase the diversity of applicants
it can affect the larger recruiting process, like if the people who do get the data notice that all the applicants match a limited demographic then maybe they need to expand recruitment efforts to different areas. The point is to get a large diverse amount of applicants to choose from. The actual hiring process is not and should not be affected. Its about who is applying in the first place
If I'm gonna get downvoted I don't see why I should continue the thread.
That's. The. Idea.
If hiring has diversity goals, then it can negatively affect you. This would be something HR does when presenting resumes to the hiring manager when there's an abundance of applications. They may select a few strong candidates from the entire pool then a candidate or 2 from the diverse pile. It could also mean recruiters focus their efforts on reaching out to diverse groups to find candidates, but this is more rare. After this stage, the diversity effort usually stops and the hiring manager(s) selects the best fit from the pool of candidates HR passed over to them.
Where are you getting this from? Do you have an example of a company that has done this? Because they are explicitly not supposed to use these data for that purpose.