> it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance
How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that means that under-represented people get green lighted at the resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview stage.
But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the median over-represented applicant?
If the bar is sufficiently high, the median applicant, over- or under-represented, won't get the job anyway. I've heard from people who work at companies (specifically big tech) that have diversity interview quotas (but not hiring quotas). In practice, you just end up interviewing more people: the candidates you would have interviewed anyway, plus some diverse candidates with closer-to-the-median resumes. And then you end up hiring the people you would have anyway, because interviews are much harder to pass than resume screens. It's a fairly pointless exercise that mostly disadvantages the interviewers, who have to spend more time interviewing, and the "lucky" candidates, who almost never outperform expectations in the interview.
If you're doing this at selection time, you're already late.
* Make sure you have a campus presence on a diverse set of universities. I'm not American, but as I understand it that could mean Historically Black Universities, and not just the Ivy League or a place where the current workforce went
* In line with that, think through which organizations you partner with. An employer that traditionally hired from/sponsored fraternity-like organizations that are mostly white, could also work with student associations that represent a broader spectrum of potential talent, or that specifically represent underrepresented groups
* One job ad I saw had a line "Did you know women are less likely to apply if they don't meet all criteria, whereas men are more likely to apply when they meet a few? If you think you can add value to our team, we encourage everyone to apply". I thought that was helpful.
Anyone can still apply, and the best candidate gets picked. Just not the one that happens to come from a specific background.
I've sat in on group interviews where we usually have a side chat discussing the candidate. Wouldn't you know, every time a candidate of color was being interviewed one guy on our team would take much longer to convince they knew what they were doing.
White women and men, got an ok much more quickly.
I asked my boss if he noticed this, and he said he did not, but when I asked another PoC on the team, he definitely noticed.
This is the way things usually go.
How does that look in practice? In most companies it seems that means that under-represented people get green lighted at the resume screen step at a much higher percentage than over-represented people. But the bar is the same at the interview stage.
But don't you see how that is a big dis-advantage for the median over-represented applicant?