are you kidding? people fall over themselves to hire women for technical positions. Given two candidates of opposite sex with equal technical ability, I bet the woman is hired more than %50 of the time for many reasons. What is fair for the community and the individual are sometimes two different things.
"Human resources" is the answer. Any decent H.R. manager knows that diversity in the workplace is absolutely essential. Asking about race or age is illegal on job applications. Therefore, companies should always request job applicants complete an anonymous feedback form separate from any employment application to know who's applying for the jobs, the company's selection rate of applicants, and to comply with any potential legal issues involving the Equal Employment Opportunity Comission.
This strategy is ripe for gaming indirectly and influencing organizations to hire based on race, rather than merit. You're going to end up with some bad hires to just to fit the quota. Not a nice solution.
Yes, you need to be proactive for legal reasons. Legal precedent in the U.S. concerning equal employment opportunity is based on "disparate impact" of hiring practices. That means that you can still be held liable for discrimination if the effect of your hiring practices results in discrimination even if you did not intend to discriminate. Companies claiming that affirmative action is not important are really just waiting to be sued for discrimination.
Affirmative action is not just about race. It's about religion, sex, age, and sexual orientation. Good recruiting practices can eliminate bad job candidates prior to hiring. You can also always let go any employees based on poor performance. However, employers must still be proactive in hiring members of legally protected classes.
While that's true, it doesn't mean it's a good solution. I was commenting on whether or not the solution was optimal, not whether or not it was able to fulfill legal requirements. If a solution is needed to fulfill legal requirements, but is not optimal, that would speak to something being wrong in the law that needs to be updated. Laws usually exist for good reasons, but they shouldn't defeat the bigger picture.
And while I'm no legal expert, my shallow research tells me this is more of an issue in US law, not necessarily laws of other nations. In Canada, we have the requirement to give preference to minorities where qualifications are equal. If qualifications are not equal, the one who is more qualified gets the job. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
I imagine the reason that his student didn't get hired was because very few tech companies would hire a manager straight out of university.
People or product management isn't something you can learn in a classroom, but something you need to learn by doing. While larger companies like Microsoft will take graduates into product manager roles, startups (especially funded ones) tend to prefer hiring managers with experience or domain expertise.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 21.3 ms ] threadWhen I consider all the odds stacked against women, not to talk of those from a minority, I give Rashmi, CEO of Slideshare a lot of kudos!
edit: I'm an Asian, if that matters.
Affirmative action is not just about race. It's about religion, sex, age, and sexual orientation. Good recruiting practices can eliminate bad job candidates prior to hiring. You can also always let go any employees based on poor performance. However, employers must still be proactive in hiring members of legally protected classes.
Yes, my college degree is in business management.
And while I'm no legal expert, my shallow research tells me this is more of an issue in US law, not necessarily laws of other nations. In Canada, we have the requirement to give preference to minorities where qualifications are equal. If qualifications are not equal, the one who is more qualified gets the job. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
I've seen this mantra for years, but I've yet to see any actual studies that shows it to be true.
Or did you mean from a legal perspective?
People or product management isn't something you can learn in a classroom, but something you need to learn by doing. While larger companies like Microsoft will take graduates into product manager roles, startups (especially funded ones) tend to prefer hiring managers with experience or domain expertise.