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by nonethewiser 1223 days ago
DEI is about factoring in race. Race should never be part of the decision making process. On top of being morally reprehensible its also illegal.
1 comments

DEI can also be about looking past stereotypes.

A couple of decades worth of research has shown racial bias against URMs in hiring exists. Breaking past it with a requirement to interview and consider URMs is a start, not the finish.

https://hbr.org/2021/02/research-how-companies-committed-to-...

Alternatively, it could be ameliorated in a non-discriminatory way by anonymizing applications.
Sure. Which would require a specialized group of trained people at the company. This would involve such things as changing Alma Mater University to "completed degree". It would involve fudging things such as how long it took to graduate (which can be an indicator of familial status, in so far as people from poorer backgrounds are disproportionately likely to take longer to complete due to financial reasons).

Genuinely anonymizing an application is a difficult task without losing pertinent data.

Both of the things you listed are as simple as text replacement.
And how do you replace this text without losing important, non-origin context? What you probably need is an entire re-write. But a re-write, or even a bad text replacement, can make it look like the applicant is better or worse at grammar or writing in general.

This is not as easy a task as a simple text replacement.

The important content is their work history, projects, technical skills, etc. If the rewriting is awkward, it's affecting all candidates uniformly.