Merit-Based Hiring vs Corporate Theater
Meritocratic competition is how the most capable rise fastest.
First, let’s get a few points out of the way.
DEI hiring practices are and were highly irrelevant to the vast majority of jobs.
The majority of people hired under those practices were not necessarily “just not White” either. It’s much more likely that McKayleigh was a DEI hire over Jamal, similar to Affirmative Action.Getting a job is sucky for everyone. You are not in a unique position if you had to apply to hundreds or even thousands of jobs before landing an internship or job.
Yes, there are companies that have admitted they intentionally chose not to hire certain demographics so they could “improve” their optics. That does not mean it was the entire country, and it does not mean that anyone who doesn’t look like you and has a job you want, is by default unqualified.
If you want to find common job discrimination, look at ageism, biases to your name, and preferential treatment for H-1Bs.
Unless you were hired by a friend, family member, or some explicit hiring program, whoever hired you simply liked your personality and resume.
Selecting “Other” or another race on an application does nothing. I always laugh when someone Black says, “I select White so I can get an interview,” or when someone White says, “I selected Black and Latino.” You realize the interviewer can see your face, right? Elizabeth Warren could lie about her race because she grew up in a different generation. That will not help you now.
With that out of the way, what is the ideal way of hiring people?
It should be a combination of grades (if it is a more entry-level role), work history, projects, and a personality check.
My reasoning is based on modern conditions. The world we live in today is not like the 1960s or 70s. Some of the worst-performing schools are among the best funded. After a certain point, the additional money just goes to administrative waste. The “underfunded inner-city school” narrative is largely outdated. If someone has terrible grades, they are usually lazy, not very smart, or their parents do not care. It is often some combination of those. The main indicator of student performance is how often they study. That is why you will see schools where students who actually use available resources perform very well.
Most schools follow a bell curve, but those on the bottom left are often there due to personal choices. Many schools function more like teenage daycare centers. That is why progressives cope by claiming that tenth graders needing to know basic multiplication is racist or that basic standards themselves are harmful.
Grade inflation is also rampant. There are valedictorians majoring in engineering at top universities who still need to take Math 1. Looking at ACT and SAT scores is a better indicator of capability. Forbid you are a midwit or going through a personal crisis, your classes like history and English should be easy As by default. We should listen to teachers who have been teaching for thirty-plus years when they say the material has been watered down because students today are performing so poorly.
Work history is straightforward. Who did you work for, and what did you do? Does it directly apply to this job? What skills did you actually use? Projects follow the same logic.
Personality fit depends on company culture. Some environments are casual, others are more like Boiler Room. There will always be people with racial or gender biases. That is a cultural or personal flaw, not something the government or a program can eliminate. To my knowledge, I have not personally experienced it, but I have seen it. Some people hire based on a specific look. If that hire performs poorly, the person who hired them will deflect blame or minimize the failure. There’s always going to be people like that.
In a strange way, this can be beneficial. You avoid working with the wrong types of people. If you do get hired into that environment, you will likely be held to a higher standard, and some people will assume you are unqualified. I am not in favor of censoring people. Whatever beliefs they hold, they should feel free to express them. Free speech is a great tool to show you who want or don’t want to be around.
Much of the DEI discourse was corporate virtue signaling for social points. A “commitment to DEI” usually meant a stock photo of a woman or non-white person on the careers page, maybe a DEI executive position held by McKayleigh, or mandatory pronouns in email signatures. Silicon Valley has largely dropped it, and other industries are following. It is time to move on and the whole discourse is boring.
There are many ways to demonstrate competence. Keeping hiring merit-based is the fairest approach.
If companies focus on intelligence, merit, and excellence, they naturally end up with well-rounded teams. Everyone who is hired knows it was because of their abilities and what they demonstrated, not because they were filling a demographic quota. People are treated as individuals rather than representatives of an entire group. The focus shifts to results, not image management.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dc-public-schools-grossly_b_1638663
https://www.lwv.org/blog/how-dei-impacts-us-and-democracy
Photo source: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/katherine-johnson-with-nasa-langley-colleagues-1970/