“Diversity” comes from factors that are usually beyond the scope of qualifications that get put down on paper, so no that wouldn’t be the case when it comes to the way we usually judge candidates.
But they aren’t dead equal in every respect. Their names are different, remember?
Just as one tiny thing, if you don’t have any other selection criteria to distinguish them at all, even diversity based ones, then randomness will accomplish better the goal of avoiding systemic bias than, say, always going with the candidate whose name comes first alphabetically in such situations.
(bolding mine)
But can you say that about the situation presented in the OP? I’d say hold off on the flipping the coin option until you can rule out the diversity question.
And yet you are using it to make your determination as to who does or does not get a job. Sort of a back handed way to interject it into the selection criteria yet not acknowledge that openly. I think your way is highly unfair, while leaving it to random chance if it comes to two candidates so equal that ‘names’ would be used seems a much more fair way to decide things.
The ‘names’ being difference is a meaningless differentiator between two supposedly exactly equal candidates. Maybe their cock/breast size is different to…should we measure those things as well? Or maybe one has a cock the other a pair of breasts. Perhaps we should go based on a difference in hair or eye color? Nose length or exact number of nose/ear hairs? Shoe size?
Random chance seems a much more fair way to distinguish between two exactly equal candidates than their NAMES being different. Of course, we aren’t really talking about ‘names’ here, are we?
-XT
Nothing backhanded about it. If someone asked me how I justifed my decision, I would feel perfectly great about saying “the two candidates seem equally capable of doing the job, so I decided to lean towards diversity in hiring Jones because I believe it benefits us more in the long run to have a workforce that looks like the people we serve*.”
That sounds more nuanced and thoughtful and than saying “the two seemed equally capable, so I flipped a coined.”
*if this situation applies
Not if you said you flipped the coin because you wanted to avoid any bias you might have against people with certain names. That sounds as nuanced as saying you thought different names might add diversity.
Not necessarily. I think that’s why more information is needed here. Names track very closely to qualities we associate with diversity. In this example the names are Smith and Jones. But we could be just as easily talking Smith and Garcia-Rodriguez.
I think this a good reason to justify the flipping the coin option.
Actually being serious,coin tossing could well be a good idea.
Say you decide to employ Smith for whatever reason theres a very good chance that Jones will,if only to save face tell himself and other people called Jones that the only reason that he did’nt get the job was was because of blatant Namism within the company which could make the company look bad and even cause other people called Jones to boycott their products.
But lets say that Jones gets the job,Smith to save HIS self esteem tells himself and others that the only reason he did’nt get the job was that the company was giving in to tacit P.C. blackmail or the usual term is “Political Correcteness gone mad” so that he feels resentment and the Smiths already employed by the company start wondering if Jones and future employees called Jones (and I really really am starting to get pissed off with these cover names we all know what we are talking about here really)
will get promoted over their heads purely to keep the P.C. community quiet
So,bearing in mind that theses people have identical skills and experience a coin toss may annoy some people but at least they cant be accused of namism.
Over here in the U.K AA is called positive discrimination and has caused significant amounts of anger amongst the majority community because it is NOT perceived as all things being equal etc. but employing less qualified applicants because they are members of a minority over and above those better qualified applicants but who unfortunately for them are white,males.
In some employment areas such as the Police a quota system set in place means that the police service is understrength even though there are sufficient numbers of qualified people applying for jobs they are WMs and they cant be employed until for example the requisite amount of Afro Caribbeans are on the strength.
But there aren’t sufficient numbers of ACs applying and many of those that do are below the educational standard required.
Personally whenI see a copper ,I see a copper,not an Indian,Chinese or Afro carib,
Maybe other people do I dont know but I do know that when people need a copper to stop being raped or mugged or beaten up they couldn’t care less if the person is an African Muslim who wears dresses at the weekend just so long as he/she is there and can do the job.
This is a tough case. I was going to suggest having the candidates arm-wrestle, but obviously they would also be perfectly equal in arm strength, so the match would go on forever without a winner.
Except they aren’t, as I said, identical. They’re identically impressive. So it’s more like one would win the arm wrestling, but the other would win at darts, and both games are essential to their jobs.
Which one is taller?
[Peter Griffin] Wrong! The ugly one. [/PG]
What if they could arm-wrestle while jabbing each other with darts?
Then they wouldn’t be looking for work.
Right. Someone mentioned “evidence of discrimination” – 45 Smiths and not a Jones in sight isn’t automatically evidence of that, but it’s certainly worth examining. I think rather than coin-flipping – which I agree makes sense in the “impossibly identical” scenario, but that’s not what I’m after – I’d start my decision-making process by figuring out which of the above reasons accounted for the Smith/Jones discrepancy.
Let’s assume we find that the number of Joneses in the company is disproportionate to the general population, because that’s more interestingly complex to think about. (In the other case, diversity seems to me a better reason for the decision than no reason at all, which isn’t particularly managerial. Well, not in a perfect world.) Say we then look at the questions ywtf outlined above, and find that we interview very few Joneses at all. Either they don’t hear when we’re hiring, or they think we won’t hire them, or they don’t want us to, like she said.
I’m starting to think I’d ask Ms. Jones why and how she decided to apply with us, and maybe try to figure out what the Joneses had to say in general about why they weren’t working for us. If they said they wanted to but felt that we only hired Smiths, I’d probably hire Ms. Jones so I could begin to change that impression, because in looking for the best talent possible I naturally want the largest pool to draw from.
How is “diversity of last names” a good OR bad thing?
It’s a Jones thing. You wouldn’t understand.
This is one of those examples where everyone loses.
Both are equally qualified? In every way?
Doesn’t matter who you hire, because if they are both so good then it is plausible that your company would miss out on something that the person who you didn’t hire would end up working on, or discovering something really great for you company.
It’s only a positive objective for Jones.