I gotta be honest here. No matter how many times you tell me that affirmative action and quotas in hiring and school admissions are a good idea, I will never agree. “But aren’t you for equality?” Of course I am. “Don’t you want things to be fair?” Well, yeah, duh. But the only way hiring — or anything else, for that matter — will ever be completely equitable is for people to give no regard whatsoever to race or sex and focus solely on the credentials of the applicant.
Before we go further into this topic, let’s take care of the elephant in the room. I am a 28-year-old, well-educated, white woman from a middle-class background. I grew up in a two-parent home in a relatively safe, rural community, and atttended small schools where I received a lot of personal attention. In short, I’ve had a lot of advantages.
Quota-based acceptance rates are often geared toward supporting those who haven’t had the same advantages I have, but this isn’t about keeping down the other guy. The central reason is that I don’t think they actually do anything positive for the other guy — or for me, or for anyone at all. In fact, I think they make things worse. Here’s why.
Scenario:
Sue is a hiring manager. She’s narrowed her applications to two candidates for the open position. Applicant A, male, 34, is supremely well-qualified for the position, interviewed well, and is available to start immediately. Applicant B, female, 29, is less qualified with less experience, but also interviewed well and is available to start immediately. Sue reviews her notes carefully, and makes her decision. She wants to hire Applicant A, and the position’s manager and subordinates all agree that he’s the best choice. But when Sue presents her proposal and the offer package to her supervisor for approval, her recommendation is quashed because of a new hiring mandate geared toward evening the gender ratio in the workplace by hiring more women, and the numbers are way off. In other words, no way can they hire a new man. Applicant B gets the job.
Commentary:
This is the essential problem with quota-based hiring: It’s just as discriminatory as its non-quota-based counterpart. The man doesn’t get the job because he’s a man. How is that any different from someone not getting a job because they’re female or black or from a bad neighborhood? If you ask me, it’s the same thing.
Something you’ll here us say on this blog a lot is, “Who says it’s a man’s world?” Women have been increasingly present in the workplace and in their own entrepreneurial ventures over the last several decades, and I would hate to think that it’s because some quota forced companies to hire unqualified people simply to meet some arbitrary requirement. How is that fair? Getting a job because you happened to be more fill-in-random-physical-or-geographical-characteristic-here than the other applicants despite the fact that you’re less qualified is not a good thing.
Take a look at our scenario. Who’s going to feel good about this hiring decision? Well, Sue sure isn’t. She knows that the less qualified applicant got the position, and she’s probably going to feel resentful toward her supervisor for making her offer the job to the wrong person, and she’s also going to resent the new employee for making her feel impotent in her job as hiring manager. The person supervising the new hire isn’t going to feel good about it because he knows the wrong person got the job, too, and that his new employee isn’t as well qualified as the one he wanted and thought he would get. The subordinates of the new hire, who were involved in the interview process and are familiar with the appplicants’ backgrounds, aren’t going to feel good about it because they got the less well-qualified supervisor.
And Applicant B, who just got the job, probably isn’t going to feel too great about it either, not when she gets to work and finds that her boss and the people who answer to her are standoffish and sullen. She may not know why, but if she finds out that they’re mad a less qualified position got the job, that will do little for her confidence in the position or her relationships with her coworkers. If she doesn’t find out, she may feel that she’s being treated that way because she’s a woman (and technically, she’ll be right).
A Better Solution:
I’m all for diversity in the workplace, but it needs to be natural diversity, not the charade of forced quotas. How does that happen? Diversity-focused recruitment efforts. Companies need to attend career fairs, networking events, and university employment events in a variety of geographical and demographic areas. Need a more international workforce? Don’t just hire the first guy from China who applies. Target international career fairs and visit college campuses with a strong international component. Need more women? Try career fairs at women’s colleges, and advertise your openings with professional organizations for women. The more diverse your applicant pool, the more your raise your changes of having a top applicant who will add a unique background and social experience to your organization.
We also need to remember that diversity is more than just sex and skin color. Diversity can also be about religious beliefs, cultural upbringing, geographical origin, political affiliations, and anything else you can think of that makes people who they are. Focusing on the two most superficial elements of diversity is narrowminded and counterproductive.
The key to a truly equitable diverse workplace is not just getting the numbers right. It’s creating a corporate culture that embraces excellence in whatever form it comes, and striving to open opportunities to a wide group of people. If you’re hiring for five positions and the top applicant in each position happens to be a middle-aged white guy, hire five middle-aged white guys. But if all of your recruiting activities are happening in Portland, Oregon, and that happens, you don’t get to complain about the lack of diversity in your organization.
What do you think? Are quota-based hiring methods critical to workplace diversity? Leave a comment.
NB: A version of this post originally appeared on the now-defunct BizChicksRule.com in January 2008. The editor of the business channel where the site was housed provided the scenario above as a prompt for all of the bloggers in the section. This was my response.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I am SOOO with you on this. I’d rather be hired because I am the better person for the job vs. the better woman for the job.
I agree , we are currently discussing this in global studies, and this is definitely right ! People need to be hired based on their ability to do the job, not because they are black, white, male or female.
I’m currently debating this in class and i sooooo agree. I think were going to have the arguement in class:)
I totally agree with this article! I was recently denied a position with a state government in a field typically dominated by males. I recently earned a masters degree in the field and had two seasons working for this organization before I applied for the position plus two additional years of relevant experience with other companies. My interview was above par. I found out that an external candidate with a recent undergraduate degree and only a couple of seasons of experience was hired over me.
I found your blog while searching for such a situation. I work for a major employer. Recently, it was called to attention that a certain “minority group” was underrepresented in upper management. Their solution was to bring in a VP and Director with no relevant experience in our industry. Rather than source quality candidates, they patched the situation by putting the first people who fit the profile in the position.
Feel free to e-mail me if you’d ever like to discuss this