Reply to Does Diversity Add Value in Engineering or Just Complexity?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are hiring fairly, there is some objective formula that you are measuring each candidate with, correct? That formula aligns pretty closely with the job posting. Not sure how subjective merit is…I suppose it can be when you want to veil your biased hiring decision.[/quote]

Of course it is subjective, how can you objectively determine if someone can do the job, or, more relevant to your question, how can you objectively assess from the interviews/resume that one person can do the job incrementally better than another person? That's what you are saying when you say that it should just be based on merit.

Often there are a couple of people who mostly/completely meet the requirements and mostly/completely meet on fit and you have to pick one. The extent to which they are outside of the typical hire you make (add diversity) can be a factor that tips in favor of one of those people. [/quote]
I am not saying the hiring decision should be solely based on merit, I am saying if a company doesn’t have a defined set of criteria that they measure each candidate against, equitably, they are opening themselves up to all kinds of discrimination lawsuits. It is in the best interest of a company to show some objective, repeatable process is being used to hire. Those could be assessing knowledge via transcripts/degrees/certifications, asking  quantitative, close-ended interview questions , project examples that they can share (GitHub repo, project websites, research papers, etc), verifying years of experience and quality of that experience via references/and speaking to previous managers.

There are tangible metrics to objectively evaluate and compare merit indicators. You have to do this anyway to properly vet resume rockstars. Even soft skills, like communication, problem solving, teamwork, these can be quantified when they answer qualitative questions about their professional and/or academic experience. You are opening up a can of worms to hire based on wisdom and intuition.[/quote]

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