[rmartelli]

Yes, the coding challenges and interviews are the same. But they are graded differently even before the packet is seen by the hiring committee.

I've talked to many interviewers at my company, and many people talk about how they bump up the score of "diversity candidates" even though management says that we don't lower the bar. This is talked about openly.

I've only seen this at a Bay Area company. Other companies I have worked at have had a very strong stance against using race or gender as a basis of making hiring decisions.

[zigzigzag]

It's also the case that the hiring pipelines can be biased in other ways. For instance if a woman fails a phone screen she may be given a second phone screen anyway, or even on-sites anyway, "just in case", whereas the man would have been canned at the first stage. Was definitely told this was happening by recruiters in the past.

[sporkenfang]

Interesting. We have done that for people of any gender in grad programs before when hiring for targeted roles suited for their specialty, but not to my knowledge for candidates by gender.