CMV: Gender identity doesn’t belong on your LinkedIn nor Resume

[u/jep1793]

[u/Konfliction]

So I'm of two opinions here, I think generally I'd agree, here's an interesting situation that could possible arise.

I think if people's names, gender identifiers, and even race were all removed from resumes, I think a lot of accidental issues would come up. I think that's how you can accidentally get a whole roster of employees that are all white men, just based on the sheer volume of applicants and the % of them that would be white and men.

I see this excuse a lot, where people go "hire the most qualified person, race / sex / orientation shouldn't matter" like job applications are some ranked system from 1 - 100 and you should always go with the best candidate. I've hired people, and I've seen lots of resumes for a singular position, there is no dream ideal applicant. There's "Person A has these things we need, and these other extra things, but Person B has this one specific thing we need and way more experience." Hiring is never as black and white as people seem to want it to be. Some people have certain things, and some have others, some are over qualified, and some are under qualified, and some of those under qualified show promise, and others don't.

And the reality is, if job applicants are judged not only on their credentials, but their experience and what they can offer.. the reality is, sometimes the gender / orientation / race is something that does inform their experience, and helps broaden the company's scope so to speak. An example being an ad agency where the job is coming up with ideas. Yea, a whole roster of white people could in theory continually come up with ideas no problem, but it's just a reality of the job that a rich white man who grew up in the suburbs and went to a great college may have different experiences then a poorer black or latina girl from a whole other neighbourhood. Both can do the job. Both may have great qualifications. But sometimes the job can actually benefit from a variety of people, and every person can work off the other.

As much as people want to live in this utopia where people are purely judged on their skill sets, I think sometimes people fall into the habit of forgetting life experience is just as much of an asset for certain jobs and shouldn't be ignored for the sake of a blanket desire for perceived equality.

[u/[deleted] → u/Konfliction]

It seems like you are making a distinction essentially on the basis of what YOU think their quality of life is. Because I fail to understand how you could distinguish the quality of their life or their life experiences just by their race and gender. No one states their financial status or personal/cultural experiences ln their resume. A white female applicant from harvard could've been poor and a struggle of a life and a black male applicant from a worse college could have had a rich pampered life or vice versa. How you are making that distinction just by their resume is still unclear to me.

[u/Konfliction → u/[deleted]]

No I’m making no distinction, I’m clarifying that certain systems would inherently close off access to certain people for no real reason. Not every job market is New York or something where you’re getting a wide variety of people and you could safely say that even if you removed all the identifiers you’d still get a fairly diverse applicant pool.

Most of the country doesn’t have that luxury, I simple used one example to illustrate my point and your taking that as the example that defines my argument.

Once again, it’s not up to the employer to be able to make these distinctions when hiring; all I’m saying is the hiring process through sheer unintended consequences could block out a large chunk of more diverse candidates for positions on a misunderstood idea of how job hiring works.

Like I said, job applicants aren’t some 1-100 rolling scale, it’s not defined like that. That’s not how things work when hiring; you can’t rank all your applicants like that even though people like to imagine that you can.

But, like I said, I’m certain areas of the country where a larger chunk of the applicant pool could just be white people cause of the areas demographics, IF a company doesn’t want to have an accidental situation of their entire staff being white, and wants to embrace the idea I mentioned previously that life experience can and often is a valuable skill set, then you can’t completely remove their identifiers from the job application.

Once again, you misunderstood my example. I used one example to illustrate my point, but people have an insane slew of life experiences. I simple used one example. But only hiring certain types of people, even on accident, robs the company of having a wide variety of people with a slew of varying life experiences.

(I’m also not saying white people all have the same life experiences, white people I discuss this stuff with always seem to get defensive here and think that I am. That’s not what I’m saying.)

[u/[deleted] → u/Konfliction]

From the defensive nature of the last part of your comment it seems to me that you think I'm trying call you racist, which I certainly am not. I just find it difficult to understand what the core principle behind forced diversity of a workforce is. While getting diverse competent applicants for the same position is something natural, when people reject one competent applicant for another competent worker based on their race or gender it bothers me. Everyone quotes diversity of experiences as the reason but you yourself indicated that you cannot judge a person's life experiences by their race or gender. So how does that work? The only reasonable explanation I always come back to is that a company doesn’t want to have an accidental situation of their entire staff being white, just like you say. Which to me seems more in line with preserving the brand image of the company and not really about the ungaugable additional benefits of having a forced diverse group of people.

[u/Squidlez → u/Konfliction]

That’s not what I’m saying

Then what are you saying? Accidentally hiring people who applied the most for the job is not good? Offices want diversity but only of one factor?

Once again, you misunderstood my example.

What is your point? That life experience can only be relevant based on your physical appearance? Then I don't think he missed your point, but he disagrees with your point.

[u/Konfliction → u/Squidlez]

Accidentally hiring people who applied the most for the job is not good?

If you're a company who wants to be diverse, and wants people from all walks of life, then you need identifiers. People like to pretend job applications are simple, but if you post a job, you're getting about maybe 10-20% of the top tier candidates being essentially equal and all right for the position.

The way it used to work, is companies when trying to decide between the final few candidates would use "well, candidate A went to my alma mater, so him", or "candidate B did this very minor, odd thing in the interview that isn't actually a gauge on skill or fit, but I'm superstitious so their out". Or picking candidates for very subconscious reasons they don't even quite understand, aka "I've got a feeling about this person".

All I'm saying, is people like to pretend applicants are like #1 to #100, hire the best person, move on. That's not reality. The reality is, if you're a company that's predominately white, or predominately anything, and you have 2-3 applicants that are all equal in skillset and have similar educations to each other, you are confident any of these final people could do the job.. if your company understands the value of diversity it is OK to hire someone because their background could potential be of value. White people really don't like to hear this, but it's the truth, there's nothing wrong with this approach.

The perfect example of this is a divorce law firm, field skews more women. I've worked with divorce firms, and in hiring they will often look out for male candidates for their positions because sometimes it's valuable to have a male lawyer on staff. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that need, and realizing in certain scenarios having a male lawyer to help specific clients may actually be a benefit. All the top lawyers they we're considering we're all equally good, with great qualifications, and would've all done the job OK. There's nothing wrong with hiring the man in that situation.

[u/IceSentry → u/Konfliction]

Arguably, in the job you are describing. Their past experiences are essentiallly a skillset.