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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 10 2017, @09:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the doing-science dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A measure aimed at boosting female employment in the workforce may actually be making it worse, a major study has found.

Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials, which many believed would increase the number of women in senior positions. Blind recruitment means recruiters cannot tell the gender of candidates because those details are removed from applications. It is seen as an alternative to gender quotas and has also been embraced by Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Victoria Police and Westpac Bank.

In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs. The assumption behind the trial is that management will hire more women when they can only consider the professional merits of candidates. Their choices have been monitored by behavioural economists in the Prime Minister's department — colloquially known as "the nudge unit".

Professor Michael Hiscox, a Harvard academic who oversaw the trial, said he was shocked by the results and has urged caution. "We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist," he said. "We found the opposite, that de-identifying candidates reduced the likelihood of women being selected for the shortlist."


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:43PM (5 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:43PM (#551945) Journal

    Any idea if the study showed that old-buys-network or other parameters improved with this selection method?

    Otoh, I think most people have experienced how eerily Facebook and other government spies pinpoints people using data breadcrumbs. And the human brain is a good pattern recognizer so of course it would not be rocket science to think that data crumbs in applications gave away who the candidate were.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 11 2017, @02:53AM (4 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday August 11 2017, @02:53AM (#552067)

    Then there's the interview process, I suppose this study gathered their "outcome" data before the interview stage, but I've never met anyone who can be race, sex or ethnicity blind during a face to face.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @04:44AM (3 children)

      Hi, nice to meet yas. I genuinely don't give a rat's fat, furry ass if you're gay, black, female, or identify as all three and an apache attack helicopter as long as you can do the work and maintain a moderately professional demeanor. By that I absolutely do mean not bringing your personal issues into my business, not starting or continuing drama, speaking English at least as properly as I do (which isn't a high bar when not dealing with customers), and dressing/grooming according to the level of professionalism required for the position.

      Spend some time employing people and trying to get employees you enjoy working with. You'll see there are so many things that actually matter that you just have zero fucks to give for non-work-related traits.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 11 2017, @02:59PM (2 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday August 11 2017, @02:59PM (#552321)

        Don't know where you grew up, but the M-WASPs rule here, and they were raised with WASPs, socialized exclusively with WASPs, and by the time they were getting their tech degrees were educated with mostly M-WASPs. They might be O.K. working with a Catholic, as long as they don't talk religion, Jews would be stretching it, and persons of other color or sex just make them uneasy, due to lack of exposure if nothing else. So, that "get along" thing starts to fall down.

        I left my hometown for University and went where there were other languages spoken in the city, lots of foreigners in the classes - was pretty far outside the comfort zone for most kids in my high school, and of the ones that might have given it a go, most of their parents would outright forbid it due to the parents' lack of comfort with the "big melting pot city." Of a class of 200+, only 2 of us went there (in-state 250 miles away) for University, me and the Valedictorian who had German parents. The bulk of the rest of college goers stayed in heavy WASP schools, and that includes the blacks who went on to continue being semi-persecuted minorities in their college.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @04:12PM (1 child)

          Ahhh, I see. You should try the south or southwest then. There are far less people like that down here than up north or out west.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 11 2017, @04:33PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday August 11 2017, @04:33PM (#552403)

            Central Florida - kind of a blend of Alabama/Georgia and New York/New Jersey/Michigan/Ohio - but only those northerners who are comfortable around the southern/redneck ways.

            Gainesville, Florida - where most of my HS classmates went to college, still has active KKK sentiment running around town to this day, vandalizing homes in the night and making lame/vague threats of violence against Asians, and anyone else they're uncomfortable around. It's also the home of the "Islam is of the Devil" t-shirt providing priest who threatened to burn a Quran on 9/11 and managed to get national attention.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]