Companies (especially tech companies) are trying to diversify their workforce. However the conventional interview process doesn't lend itself to diverse hiring. People hire people they'd like to have a beer with and the results bear out that minorities are underrepresented. My idea is to make a certain amount of the positions in the company blind hires. People would have to meet base qualifications (for example a programmer would have to take an aptitude test and show some code or for general hires would have to demo their skills with a service like Mechanical Turk or Interviewed). Their information would be taken in without the name, race or gender attached. Then one person from a pool of these individuals would be chosen for the job completely at random.

In the 70's symphonies started doing blind auditions (where the person played behind a curtain) and the odds of a woman being hired by an orchestra jumped from 25 percent to 46 percent. Similar biases have been shown for other minorities.

Obviously there is some risk in this system because you don't know how the chemistry is going to work out between the random hire and their new company. But I think it's more meritocratic than quota systems and conventional hiring.
-- lepton, Sep 02 2016

" People hire people they'd like to have a beer with "

If only, but I see the point you're trying to make. The halo effect is very real - guys who were in the navy will readily hire guys who were in the navy, etc.

The chemistry issue IS a challenge. There's two types of jobs. Those you have to hire for the skill set, and those where you can afford to hire for people skills and train the skill set.

I've passed on some highly skilled people because you could tell they were too tightly wound, and instead hired somebody more user friendly that could be taught.

Other times, you have to hire the skill set and deal with the dysfunction. It's hard on organizations.
-- normzone, Sep 03 2016



random, halfbakery