[kylec]

Diamonds-in-the-rough are also a tremendous value. It's very cheap to hire someone that can't (or doesn't think that they can) get a job elsewhere. It really is surprising that more effort isn't spent trying to identify and hire them.

[seanmcdirmid]

Mining diamonds is hard work.

People are poor judges of value in other people, and don't want to spend that much time on it. So how would you "know" someone is a diamond-in-the-rough, and not just rough? That would require a lot more knowledge, perhaps a referral in the team of someone who has already identified them as good talent. Or you could just hire all the roughs and fire the ones that don't turn out to be diamonds.

It is like hiring someone with a criminal record. Ya, great value! But wait, what if they go back to their old ways? Biases are optimizations based on experience (or perhaps cultural influences); they are not perfect, but they often have groundings in reality. The best companies are able to work through all the pros and cons rationally, and known when the risks are worth it.

[ska]

This is only true if you both have the capability and choose to dedicate the resources to skill development. Many places either can not or choose not do this well.

[cubano]

So isn't that just really a form of exploitation of someone's low self esteem, background, or career ignorance?

[autotune]

Everyone looking to get their start needs to start somewhere.