Not commenting on the rest of their assumptions, but to be clear, auto-rejecting candidates that could reasonably fill roles in your company isn’t a defense against incompetence accusations— it supports them.

I was referring to the discrimination rant

even candidates that might fit a poorly implemented affirmative action program are likely getting auto-rejected

nobody knows if its helpful to mention their race or disability, or whether its hurtful

My "discrimination rant" is informed by my ex-girlfriend being hired for an M&S/OpenCL job as a non-programming mech-e. Why? Because all the work was already done and it would look better to the government client to have a female, black engineer sit around in a SCIF doing nothing all day. Stuff like this is absolutely rampant.

This is absolutely true. Government contractors have what is effectively diversity quotas. People will get hired to fill the quota regardless of what they actually do. It’s absolutely not true that diversity hires are all useless, but there are significant incentives to create diversity numbers in order to gain a government contract. Hiring 100 people to do nothing and get the lucrative contract is better than hiring based on need and not getting the contract.

It’s clear you just want to be heard but that doesn’t prove that’s what happened to your application

“assumption” doesn’t imply a lack of truth, it points out your inability to know that out of all possibilities, which possibility applies

it means there is no point in doubling down on your data point of 1 in 1 niche industry when there is this other industry wide practice occurring as well

an industry wide practice that would affect minorities applying as well as existing employees alike

I’m not an HR person, but I’d be surprised if the ATS bouncer algorithms even have access to the eeo information, and making assumptions about ethnicity based on name seems unlikely to be a feature. Sure, someone could code their own solution easily enough but I really doubt that’s a common enough occurrence to warrant discrimination accusations at the auto-reject level.

It's not an assumption, Affirmative Action along with many other requirements is mandated for the contractors working with the US. You can start from here https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/fe...

I have worked for a few defense contractors in my time. There is significantly more diversity outside of defense than inside defense.

I had a team of 14 with 2 women and 1 non-white male. I had a team of 10 with 0 women and 0 non-white male. I had a team of 20 with 1 women and 0 non-white male.

Looking at it another way, thats 40 successful white male hires, and 4 successful non-white male hires.

if only having access to 91% of jobs instead of 100% is the reason you can't get hired....

edit: To clarify, as a software developer of 10+ years both in defense and faang, I have never once had a team where there was less than 50% white men.

I haven't worked in FAANG but I recently applied to Amazon in Australia. I interviewed with 3 asians, 2 indians and 1 white guy. YMMV.

but its implementation different per organization and at any moment in time.

it could just as easily be any other reason, like the one I identified

its an assumption to know what's being applied to you.

its obvious that the frustrated guy just wants to be heard, it is still an assumption. that doesn't mean its not happening. it means its an assumption about what exactly applied to you.

unless they specifically said that and you won an employment discrimination case then you literally dont know.

I couldn’t agree more. Hiring for tech workers is insanely broken. I was a hiring manager at a FAANG company. I wanted to hire my ex intern (he’d gotten stellar reviews, then gone on to finish his degree while attaining highly relevant additional skills) Since he’d already applied when I reached out I was told by my hr people that I had to wait for the process to complete. They flew him out for onsites (now mind you I’d worked with him previously and vouched for him and would have simply made an offer immediately) They sat him through the whole suite of interviews. You know the kind, panel interviews with people unrelated to the role asking stupid questions unrelated to the job. A few weeks later they rejected him. I opened up his packet (as an hiring manager I had access to ATS) and it was stellar. Every question answered perfectly. I called the guy whose name was on the rejection “why on earth did you reject? Did he say something so bad you couldn’t write it down?” “No we just feared he was so good he’d get bored and go do something else” This from a company that claims to hire the best and the brightest. I called him, apologized and asked him to be patient with us. I literally had to start the process over. Fly him out and pretend to interview him again. All the while knowing I was going to make him an offer. Shit like this is why companies and hiring managers have trouble finding candidates. Not because the talent pool is not there, it’s because your process is broken, absurd, and insane.

Veering off topic a bit, but I wonder what would happen if a company required that for any new hiring filter for Role X, it must pass everyone currently in Role X or above.

Anecdote: Amazon has a hiring bar that states that new hires have to be better than half of the current population in the role. Whether or not it’s adhered to, there’s a reasonable motive for doing so.

For some reason I fancy buying myself a new watch.

If you're hiring because you need someone? Yes?

It makes sense to sort candidates with the more niche requirement to the top of the pile, but to require it? When you need to fill this role?

There's also hiring because "wow, this candidate is great, we should find a place to fit them", and there it makes sense to become more selective going forwards... but when a company is saying "we need people and can't find them", that doesn't seem like the time to be more selective.

I don't think it makes sense to prevent it becoming more selective, but I do think it makes sense to avoid passing over candidates who can do the job. And your best (only?) data on who can actually do the job is who is currently doing the job.

If you really need everyone in Role X to have a PhD in Psychoergonomics, then what's up with Jane over there and her MD?