Originally posted by Andy_Faber
View Post
There has also been a move to blind short listing whereby the ethnicity age and gender of applicants weren't know to the short listing panel, it was done purely on qualifications and experience. All of which helped to avoid the inevitable bias that everybody has towards being favourable to people that resemble themselves and who they are familiar with.
Certainly I experienced instances where a firm wanted to recruit a woman because the workforce, management team or board was mostly male. But even where I personally "lost out" or where a woman was recruited, they always had the relevant qualifications and experience.
I don't doubt that some zealots would stretch this in some instances, but closer examination of claims where DEI had resulted in "sub standard recruitment, has not been proven to be true, either in my own personal experience or on closer examination of some of the claims made in certain sections of the media. A point in case being the allegations that the application of DEI had impacted US Air Traffic Control, when its clear that no under qualified or inexperienced applicants had been appointed, but it was and is the case that there had been a recruitment crisis due to low wages coupled with a lack of investment.
I can cite many cases where a white male applicant without the relevant quals and experience or who was patently useless being appointed due to their connections, or because the recruiting team was useless. Indeed one might look at Trump's appointments and figure that they demonstrate the exact opposite of DEI.
As with all these issues, there is often a grain of truth, that has been overblown and made into an issue it isn't, mostly it seems by privileged white blokes who don't seem to be able to accept that other people different from them might just be able to do as good a job if given the chance.

Comment