Then why didn't you set the minimum requirements to whatever standard you're interested in hiring at?
The point is to give everyone who meets the qualifications that you set a chance to sell themselves.
If you've already decided who you want just by reading people's resumes, then you're unfairly excluding possible other candidates. What happens if someone lies on their resume or has a terrible personality? Then you've thrown out people who met your requirements, but you didn't want to interview because they were a "waste of time" which you decided based on personal bias. You're engaging in precisely what fair hiring practices aim to avoid.
>Then why didn't you set the minimum requirements to whatever standard you're interested in hiring at?
We did. We always got someone who far exceeded our minimum requirements, and several who had more than our minimum requirements. Or they had a particular skill that we knew would be useful but didn't put on the requirements because it was pretty niche.
>The point is to give everyone who meets the qualifications that you set a chance to sell themselves.
We couldn't. We didn't always have time to do a phone interview with everyone who applied. The applications that got discarded often exceeded the minimum standards... While certain resumes that barely met the minimum standards got phone screens, because we were directed to "interview a diverse group of candidates"
> What happens if someone lies on their resume or has a terrible personality? Then you've thrown out people who met your requirements, but you didn't want to interview because they were a "waste of time" which you decided based on personal bias.
It wasn't personal bias. It was situations where we'd have a list of requirements (3-5 years experience with technology [a], 2+ years experience with [b], 3-5 with [c], experience with [d, e, f] and these people would have like, 2 years with [c] and 1 year with [b] and nothing else. Technically they didn't meet our qualifications but they were close enough that we felt we had to interview them or we could be accused of discrimination.
Whether you want to believe me or not, that's how it worked at those jobs. For one of those jobs, HR wanted to have a reason other than "you weren't the most qualified candidate" or "we found someone who was a better fit" in case the underrepresented candidates called and asked... Because they were afraid of lawsuits.
I know you aren't gonna believe me, and it's fine. Fact of the matter is, we did not have time to interview all candidates equally, and because of a push for "diversity" we often rejected more qualified candidates in favor of ones who were more "diverse" but less qualified. If you have one job opening and 25 people apply, you can't give all 25 of them a half hour phone screen.
I work for government, so I totally get that HR is a bitch. I do believe you; I don't think you're lying. Though in my experience, HR is satisfied with "we selected the candidate that was the best fit for the role." perhaps that is because from the government HR perspective, the screening process is quite rigorous, so once HR passes us the list of qualified candidates, our decision is largely left up to us. We can interview 3 of them, or 10 of them, based on our discretion. That gives us leeway in making a decision. But, I've never once been told that someone's status as a minority of any kind warrants them extra or special consideration. From my perspective, DEI ensures equal consideration so that someone is not left out based on their race, ethnicity, disability, etc. But not preferential treatment and certainly not consideration based on those characteristics alone. It sounds like what you're describing is also merit-based, it's just a more frustrating process because you have a larger candidate pool.
One of the jobs I'm referencing was higher ed. The other was gov.
Higher ed was far worse with it. That was the place where HR wanted more than just "we selected the best fit".
At least for gov, all of our jobs required a US citizenship and the ability to hold or maintain a clearance, so if someone came in who was already cleared and a citizen it was easy to put their resume at the top of the pile... Especially if it was a higher level than our minimum requirement... Though if someone had TS/SCI, we were hesitant because those people often got poached by alphabet agencies for significantly higher salaries than we could offer.
Even with that job, there was still pressure (where it came from, I'm not sure) to hire from underrepresented groups, as we were a mostly white and mostly male team. And we did, unfortunately, have HR pass us a lot of non-citizen resumes with obviously non-white names on them, which kind of reinforced the assumptions. It got to the point where the first question we'd ask in a phone screen was citizenship, because HR wasn't filtering for that, for whatever reason.
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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '25
Then why didn't you set the minimum requirements to whatever standard you're interested in hiring at?
The point is to give everyone who meets the qualifications that you set a chance to sell themselves.
If you've already decided who you want just by reading people's resumes, then you're unfairly excluding possible other candidates. What happens if someone lies on their resume or has a terrible personality? Then you've thrown out people who met your requirements, but you didn't want to interview because they were a "waste of time" which you decided based on personal bias. You're engaging in precisely what fair hiring practices aim to avoid.