What ever happened to best man for the job...err I mean best person.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. The Rooney Rule doesn’t mean any is given a job based on their ethnicity, just that there has to be a BAME candidate considered/interviewed during the process. I genuinely can’t see why anyone would have an issue with this.
Other than waste time it achieves nothing then.
How do you know it wastes time and achieves nothing?
Well if you’ve made your mind up on who you’re appointing but have to fill quotas anyway it’s a waste of time for all parties.
What ever happened to best man for the job...err I mean best person.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. The Rooney Rule doesn’t mean any is given a job based on their ethnicity, just that there has to be a BAME candidate considered/interviewed during the process. I genuinely can’t see why anyone would have an issue with this.
Other than waste time it achieves nothing then.
How do you know it wastes time and achieves nothing?
Well if you’ve made your mind up on who you’re appointing but have to fill quotas anyway it’s a waste of time for all parties.
Nobody would admit to binning an application based on it having an apparently 'foreign' name. I can't prove it has ever happened in fields of employment but on the balance of probability I have the impression that it has taken place. I also think the cost and disruption of maternity cover can lead to applications with seemingly female names has led to other applications being binned.
In this Rooney thing I don't recall anybody arguing anything other than the job goes to the best candidate. However having frequently interviewed people for jobs, you commonly get cases of four excellent people but only one job available. This is slightly different territory which asks the question about a group one of whom might be a woman, one ethnic minority person, one a gay person, one obviously indigenous for generations. All of a very similar age and ability.
Should one operate positive discrimination for the 'underrepresented' in such a situation?
This all comes down to unconscious bias, and it can be mitigated... name blinding CVs, and having diverse interview panels (male, female, different levels within the organisation, mix of races) for example. You will often get a mix of candidates with different advantages and disadvantages (I do a fair bit of recruitment, and can confirm this at least anecdotally), but if the same person, or type of person is making all the calls, then what they consider the best candidate will by roughly the same each time (in terms of race, gender, age as well as other reasons). A mix of interviewers with equal weight of opinion and least makes the playing field fairer.
I think most people have unconscious bus (or conscious bias) and I think reducing this can be helped by the measures you mention.
We are asked to demonstrate we have put forward a diverse slate of candidates which is not always easy for some senior insurance finance roles.
That said, my current senior direct reports of which there are currently only 4 and all of whom I have hired are: 1 black woman 1 orthodox male Jew 1 white woman 1 white man
they were all the best available at the time of recruitment In my view.
Everyone is able to do their job very well. In hindsight and although potentially discriminatory, I maybe should have thought harder about giving a reporting job that needs occasional Friday night/Saturday day work to an Orthodox Jew but tbh we manage between us when that happens. No matter who you employ there will be strengths and weaknesses.
The point with this ruling is to level the playing field, which I absolutely have no problem with and am nothing but supportive of.
There exists tons of different unconscious and conscious bias in the world let alone the workplace. One way of getting around it is to remove the ethnicity section, disability, the name and date of birth from all applications before they go to paper sift and purely go on the black and white of a CV.
something that people are keen to keep shtum about is the glass ceiling for middle aged white males currently going on. I know of 2 recent cases where people I know have been turned down at paper sift because of their age and ethnicity. This was told to me first hand by one of the recruiters and to my knowledge they don't have an agenda but did state the role was going to be filled by either a female or someone of colour which is a bit shifty at best
It isn't even necessarily overt racism that this is hoping to solve. People naturally gravitate towards people that look like they do. This goes for skin colour, gender, even the way you dress. Hence why in courts potential jurors are sometimes sent back to the waiting room on the basis of how they look (ie a smartly dressed white man may not be chosen to serve on a jury of a homeless non-white).
This. People would be mortified if they were accused of racism, but people who share their values and background etc... are more impressive to them.
Comments
We are asked to demonstrate we have put forward a diverse slate of candidates which is not always easy for some senior insurance finance roles.
That said, my current senior direct reports of which there are currently only 4 and all of whom I have hired are:
1 black woman
1 orthodox male Jew
1 white woman
1 white man
they were all the best available at the time of recruitment In my view.
Everyone is able to do their job very well. In hindsight and although potentially discriminatory, I maybe should have thought harder about giving a reporting job that needs occasional Friday night/Saturday day work to an Orthodox Jew but tbh we manage between us when that happens. No matter who you employ there will be strengths and weaknesses.
There exists tons of different unconscious and conscious bias in the world let alone the workplace. One way of getting around it is to remove the ethnicity section, disability, the name and date of birth from all applications before they go to paper sift and purely go on the black and white of a CV.
something that people are keen to keep shtum about is the glass ceiling for middle aged white males currently going on. I know of 2 recent cases where people I know have been turned down at paper sift because of their age and ethnicity. This was told to me first hand by one of the recruiters and to my knowledge they don't have an agenda but did state the role was going to be filled by either a female or someone of colour which is a bit shifty at best
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2840361-mike-freemans-10-point-stance-rooney-rule-a-lot-of-talk-and-not-enough-action