[zdragnar]

I have to disagree that this is a win-win. My friend recently went through another round of interviews trying to find a job.

He got tons of follow up interviews, only to be told that the company decided to hire internally, or some other excuse that strongly implied they already had another candidate in mind.

My friend, it ought not surprise you to discover, fits into several "minority" categories. The worst industry for this was academia, though his last round in the private sector was also tough.

Moral of the story: if you find a candidate that you want to hire, just hire them. Don't bring in a bunch of DEI candidates and make them feel like show dogs just so you can tick a checkbox that says you pretended to care about DEI.

[Spivak]

This isn't necessarily a DEI thing and more that the company has some dumb policy that you have to have job descriptions posted publicly for $x number of weeks and interview at least $y candidates. And then you make internal promotions go through the same process because reasons.

Source: have worked for companies that have this policy, academia especially is famous for this level of institutional incompetence.

[the_lonely_road]

Not sure why this guy is downvoted. His comment is 100% true in at least some contexts. In a past life I worked at a state university. Greater than 80% of positions during my tenure were filled by nepotism. Friends and family of a currently employed person. Every time they would post the job, bring in 2 poor sobs to interview alongside the friend or family member, and then hire the friend or family member even when they were glaringly weaker (the most egregious example I remember was for a position running a copy center for one of the colleges and one of the passed over interview candidates had 10 years of experience at a local Kinkos like shop. The actual person hired had been a stay at home mom for the last 10 years, and worked in retail before that. She was also a close friend of one of the people at the college where the copy shop was located. Both were asking for commensurate pay.)

[zdragnar]

Yes, academia and private can both be bad about this, but because of DEI initiatives, my friend got sent to many second and third interviews even though they didn't plan on hiring him.

Had he been a vanilla white guy, fewer places would have wasted his time. Instead they used him. Universities were especially bad about doing this, though not the only ones.

[zdragnar]

What was most aggregating is that, because my friend fit the DEI categories, he always got passed through to subsequent interviews even though they had no intention of hiring him, all so they could pad their DEI checklists.

Had be been your run of the mill white guy, far fewer of them would have wasted his time.

[waterhouse]

I've heard of a mechanism with similar results where certain positions (government contractors?) are required to be "offered" to domestic candidates, although the company would rather hire a foreigner because they're generally cheaper. So they technically post an ad somewhere (ideally in a place no one will read) and they'll technically interview domestic candidates who apply, even though they plan to say no.

Regardless of the reason, it wastes people's time and is somewhat dishonest.