Ask HN: I might have a problem with discriminatory hiring practices | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I might have a problem with discriminatory hiring practices

9 pointsBaronVonSteuben4 comments

Posting this for a friend to protect his anonymity:

I currently work for a startup that is getting close to IPO. Part of my duties include giving technical interviews to potential candidates. Lately, I have realized that I am much more lenient on women and minorities than I am with white men. I often give them more hints and offer deeper guidance when solving whiteboard problems than I do for white male candidates, and I tend to rate them higher than I would for their experience level, compared to how I would rate them if they were white & male.

Another thing that I've realized, is that we are only giving offers for entry level positions to people of color and women. We really don't need entry level people right now; we desperately need experienced/seasoned engineers. Because of that we pass on entry-level/junior applicants that are white males. However, because we value diversity highly, we often hire entry-level/junior candidates who are minorities despite not really needing junior people at the moment.

I normally wouldn't reach out to strangers on the internet with something like this, but I'm really conflicted about this, yet am afraid to say anything about it to others in the company.

Now that I'm aware of this, I have been trying to change how I approach these interviews. However, when I'm honest with myself I don't think white males deserve the position as much as minorities and women. They've been reaping the benefits of their privilege for years, and now it only seems fair to reverse it. I still recommend hire for strong white male candidates, but not as readily as for a minority candidate.

I believe that most of us in the hiring pipeline do the same as I do. People rarely criticize a minority candidate during the internal discussions post-interview. It seems taboo to criticize a person who is not white/male.

What would you do in my case?

To your friend:

Why do you think of them as white males? Do you think of your friends as the white male, black friend, asian dude, indian girl?

2 routes to improve your hiring process - go more objective or go more subjective. Right now, you're applying the worst practices of both points of view.

1) Be more objective. If you're going to treat candidates as a category of people instead of individuals, you should do it correctly. Establish defined metrics/values that the candidate must have in order to pass the interview. Evaluate based on those metrics, and completely ignore other signals or red flags that aren't part of the evaluation criteria.

2) Be more subjective. These are people. Treat them like individuals instead of categories. Look at them as potential friends, colleagues instead of just a category of people.

Either way, you're stuck in a one of the more unfortunate human biases, it's cognitively easier to continue to do what you're doing than it is to do the above.

Thank you. I do think setting objective metrics would help. It wouldn't be hard to have a set of questions that we ask every candidate during the whiteboard problems to check for understanding. It might not completely eliminate the subjectivity, but it will at least ensure that we are asking the same slate of questions to all and looking for specific areas of knowledge.

I'm also thinking about a more traditional "code a solution to this" challenge where results can be easily checked against a test might be a good idea. It's useful to see how a candidate thinks, but if it opens up the possibility of bias then it may not be worth it.

These sounds like good steps. Bias can still exist in functional/effective HR pipelines because it is after all a pipeline run by humans, not robots, but they shouldn't outweigh the most important values required for the role.

This is pretty tough. What you’re doing is probably illegal, at least now that you’ve realized it, and particularly as you’ve qualified it based on your own opinion of white privilege.

I’m going to go ahead and say the unpopular thing: the best way to make the world a better place is to fake it until you make it. Be kind and treat applicants fairly and equally. Hiring people you don’t need or hiring below your standard will only drag your team down over time.

We need to change the way we post jobs and market opportunities to women and minorities. Constant internet message boarding is mostly a white dude thing. If you want different candidates, you have to go to them.

But please don’t think a personal, sneaky morality crusade is the best way to improve your team.

My two cents.

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