[nxobject]

Having been on a few hiring committees, both in academia, industry, and state: no, it is not arcane; scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I have had mandatory trainings about this ad nauseam before I have been allowed to sit on hiring committees. One of the biases “DEI initiatives” warn against is being impressed by people who spew jargon without having done the work, and supporting people who have done the work (and give examples) without spewing jargon.

If the interpretation is “arcane”, that’s an institutional problem that goes far beyond interpreting an interview question that forms a fraction of the interview process. But claiming that’s inherent to organizations that mention diversity in an interview question is setting up a strawman, and HR will have it ground into your head that it is “inequitable”.

[Manuel_D]

> scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I don't doubt your lived experience, but in 3 out of 4 companies DEI initiatives took the form of explicitly discriminating on the basis of candidates' protected class. Practices like giving "diverse" candidates multiple chances go pass interviews where white and Asian men got one. Another straight up created a reservation system for diverse candidates.

I acknowledge that some people have had better experience DEI, but I'd encourage you to consider the possibility that many have witnessed explicit discrimination under the banner of DEI.

[nxobject]

Can you say more about where the "3 out of 4" comes from? I'll admit that I've worked on hiring committees in exactly four places, so it's been a straight 0 out of 4 for me. (One at a small liberal arts college; one at a tech consultancy; one at a state agency; another one at at govtech consultancy.)

We can haggle over how many is enough to make a sweeping generalization, if you'd like. But I don't think that's productive for any of us if we want to debate whether loyalty tests actually existed, or whether "DEI" reduces to religion, as the parents have claimed.

[Manuel_D]

One company outright designated a segment of engineering headcount as exclusive to women and URM candidates. Managers were prohibited from fulfilling this headcount with Asian and white men. This was done despite having an overrepresentation of women in engineering roles relative to their representation in the field. Another allowed diverse candidates multiple attempts to pass technical interviews where white and Asian men got one chance. A third company set a quota of 40% women in engineering hires in OKRs (contrast this with ~20% of software developers and ~10% of electrical engineers that are women, those two fields made up almost all engineering roles at the company).