Our Shared Shelf discussion

In Austria, the only accomodation in regards to diversity is made for gender.
As in, a job advertisement for, say, a software engineer would look like this:
Software engineer (m/f)

That's it.

I definitely find it important to accomodate for marginalised people, be it gender or otherwise.
I need to say that in my opinion we especially have to acommodate for marginalised people.

I think it would be a good thing not to specifically put it on the job ad, but that job recruiters and companies in general need to look out for marginalised people in the hiring process.

In light of talking about jobs and the BAME community I found this article shared by the Women's March London:
https://twitter.com/womensmarchlon/st...

The issue of postive bias is a thorny one. Its looks good on paper but it is problematic in practice.

Better option is to remove identifying markers from CV judge on content. maybe interview by text. Pic on the experience and skills not gender or race. It will take some work ro turn theory to fact but does npt have pitfalls of postive decrimination.

I'm not for an interview by text or any indirect form of interview, when you meet the potential boss or collaborator you can feel if you will like to work with her/him or to work in this environment.
Based on skill and experience, not a big fan as well. I prefer to work with someone with "descent" skill but a potential that can be developed rather than a smart person or a genius with crapy personality that would alter the synergy of the entire team. I highly prefer good personalities (open-minded, honest, communicative and persistent people) rather than skills and experiences, those can be gained and developed with time.


However, I totally agree that gender or origin/race should not be put in a CV since it is not relevant at all and do not tell you who the person is.

The government of Canada has a pretty interesting process where you have the option to declare yourself as a women, Indigenous person, person from a visible minority group or as a person with an handicap. The way it was explained to me is that it comes into effect at the end of the process when you have two or more candidates that have distinguished themselves for the job; then the applications from people that have identified themselves as a member of a minority group are favored over the other. I'm not saying it's a perfect process, but it can enable employers to overcome an historical bias against marginalized group without compromising skill-level.

Ideally initiatives like these wouldn't be needed, but I think that, until we can honestly say there is no more discrimination and that systematic factors that contribute to the marginalization of these groups have been addressed, there has to be a special effort on the part of employers to hire more diverse staff, especially in fields like government work, law, police force, etc.