> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team
"Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team."
The CEO should have run this blog post, and particularly this sentence, by a lawyer. It seems pretty clear that the above statement, if reflected in actual hiring practice by the company, is in violation of Section 703(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act[1]. It is also pretty easy ammunition for an employment discrimination lawsuit.
[1]https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm Section 703(a) reads "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer...to fail or refuse to hire...because of such individual's...sex" and "to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities" because of sex
I actually didn't know the employer qualification of Title VII. Thanks for the tip.
However, the second part of my statement still very much applies. This blog post can easily become Exhibit A in an employment discrimination lawsuit in a year when the company has more employees, or even against a completely different company run by the same CEO in the future, to establish a pattern.
Then you really don't understand hiring women. Most women don't want to work at a place where they're the only woman. Or the workplace is ridiculously imbalanced in one direction. Even in large companies such as Amazon, women cluster into teams.
Not having women on your team usually points to a culture issue, and who wants to have a terrible work environment? It's another area where avoiding false positives is probably going to be better for you in the long run.
For instance, my wife moved to a new team that is 50℅ women, from a team where she was the only woman engineer. Her co-workers really didn't know how to interact with women. Complaining to HR would cause the team to assume it was her. When a co-worker did complain to HR, a large section of her team assumed it was her and made the workplace even less hospitable.
Plus from a business perspective if you can open your business to a pool of talent that isn't well catered to, you'll probably reap some long term benefit.
So for future reference, best practice is to ignore any bad parts of an article that agrees with my political and moral leanings and only focus and trumpet the good parts??
If he had decided to give preference to (e.g.) Syrian refugees because he felt a sense of wanting to help, would you have the same response? If he gave preference to a veteran out of Patriotism or an ex-con out of a belief in "second chances" would you have the same reaction?
Yes, I would have had the same reaction. This is a great way to put a false limit on your potential talent pool. I'm not saying that adding programs or policies to add outreach to specific communities that are under-represented in your organization is bad. I'm saying that setting a hard-and-fast rule that your next hires must fit a particular trend to "balance the team" is a great way to frustrate your recruiting team (either internal or external), slow team growth to an unpredictable crawl, and will cause you to pass over potentially excellent candidates for the wrong reasons. The statement quoted by OP essentially equates to "the candidate had the wrong genitals at the wrong time", which is an absolutely absurd way to think about hiring. I would say the same thing about any of your counter-examples (e.g. to your Syrian Refugee example, "We won't be hiring you right now, because you're not a refugee from the right place" would be a rejection reason if you were trying to "balance the team" via preferential hiring treatment)
It's interesting that you brought up the hiring of veterans in IT. It's actually a real thing for many defense contractors and government agencies to give preference to former military members even in cases where they may be less qualified (citation needed).
Interesting argument. So you are equating being born the female sex the same as being a war time refugee, war veteran or ex-con? Could you explain that analogy a little better?
I was just presenting other situations where an employer might give someone hiring preference.
Is it just the idea that someone was getting hiring preference that isn't 100% tied to skills that is the issue? Or is it specifically because it was women that were getting hiring preference?
The wage gap means that at a given salary level, the women is going to be better and more experienced.
If you have budgeted 120k for a software engineering position, why WOULDN'T you choose the best person for the role?
And the best person for the role at this salary point is almost certainly going to be an overqualified women who is getting underpaid at her previous job.
>The wage gap means that at a given salary level, the women is going to be better and more experienced.
Yeah... no. The "wage gap" means the CEO makes more than the receptionist. For people with the same CV and same work experience women make just as much as men.
The CEO should have run this blog post, and particularly this sentence, by a lawyer. It seems pretty clear that the above statement, if reflected in actual hiring practice by the company, is in violation of Section 703(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act[1]. It is also pretty easy ammunition for an employment discrimination lawsuit.
[1]https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm Section 703(a) reads "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer...to fail or refuse to hire...because of such individual's...sex" and "to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities" because of sex