Slightly frightening to me that this obviously brilliant man instantly jumped past all the civil rights and equal opportunity legislation of the last sixty-one years of US history and suggested we should watch and track people’s ethnicity throughout the interview process?!?

Ok, that was a little flippant, but let me explain:

If you don’t have enough people from varying backgrounds succeeding in your interview process, I recommend it stems from two areas:

First: your interview testing is prejudicial around the wrong things . Likely, you’re unknowingly prejudicial, but prejudicial nonetheless.

For example: “Did you solve this problem?” And “Did you solve this problem the way I would have solved it” are two very different tests. Passing the first but not the second gets you to further interviews but often fails you out at final decision stage, after an internal discussion about how alignment is so key and speed to delivery can’t afford challenges to the system. And all the candidate is left with is a hollow, HR-laden form letter (email) citing some mysterious immeasurable and unquantifiable qualification someone else had that she didn’t.

I know. I’ve written those letters. I’m partly to blame here. I realize that.

Are your interviews allowing for varying responses to your challenges?

If so, are the variances, as long as they are still right (aka: compile), celebrated as a key indicator of future performance to the company or are those variances from the mean stamped down — consciously or unconsciously — through the process because we’re all busy, we all have code to ship, meetings to have and lives to live. It’s easier to like my solution than yours.

I will always defer to my preferences over yours anytime, unless I purposefully and relentlessly control for my own bias.

(It’s also worth noting that, sometimes, the way that we unconsciously bow to our own biases in interviews might be by hand selecting people in the interview process that I “like”, which means they will think the way I do.)

Second, if your interview processes are free from personal bias (nearly impossible) and you still don’t have enough diverse candidates winning in your interview process, it means, simply, your fishing in the wrong ponds.

You’re not looking in enough places.

It’s obvious that people of diverse backgrounds don’t see themselves winning in your company and so they self-select out.

My high school basketball team was an Indiana state championship team (Led by Eric Montross) my 8th grade year. The clout and awe of that team was so far beyond me, my ability to see myself wearing a jersey was simply impossible. At 6'4", 200 pounds, I could have been a positive influence on my team even if I didn’t do much but get in the way of the opposition— but I didn’t even try out. I didn’t even consider it. Though, 20+ years later, I still play and enjoy basketball several times a week.

I self-selected out because I was afraid of failure. Until that point, I had only played playground and backyard basketball and the occasional pickup game at a gym or church. I had never been coached. I had natural skill at the game and easy natural advantages, but nobody told me that.

I didn’t know I was allowed to be around people who could tell me that.

Later, in my high school years, the high school coach and I had a conversation. I had since chosen rugby as my sport of choice and even played in the High School nationals. As a proven athlete, he mentioned that he felt bad I never tried out for basketball. In my recollection, he said something like “We could have used you… Too bad we never had the chance.”

I could be angry and blame him for not reaching out. I am not. It was my choice 100%.

But I’ve since realized in important life lesson: I never got an opportunity to improve or get coaching or to learn because I didn’t try. That’s on me.

I will admit that I own that, though, if someone had reached out to me and invited me to try, I probably would have. I would have considered something new I hadn’t considered before.

That’s how I view my job as a recruiter today. When I’m inviting candidates to come and take a look at a position, I’m inviting them to try. I’m inviting them to look outside themselves and see if they could do something more than they’ve done before.

If you don’t have enough candidates of diverse backgrounds applying for your positions or expressing interest in working for you, maybe you’re not inviting them to try.

Standing in the boardroom and saying you really wish you had more opportunities for diversity is a much different conversation than standing in a university classroom or a high school math class, surrounded by students with your arms open and asking them, begging them, to try.

So no. Don’t track candidates ethnicity through the interview process, please. People of diverse backgrounds in the US have been tracked and traced and poked and prodded enough.

Instead, investigate your own hiring style. Ask the hard questions about why people are winning at interviews and why they aren’t. Find out if they’re being tested on the right things, not just the things that feel right.

Then, get the word out that you want more people to come to you, tell them they’ll have an equal opportunity to win with you. Prove it to them by treating them as a person with as much of a shot as the Berkeley grad who is coming in next.

When they don’t win, tell them why and how they could improve. Perhaps extend a special invitation for them to come back and apply again for another opening. Offer coaching and advice, not platitudes and blather.

Who knows. Twitter could be able to live the #blacklivesmatter movement internally as well as externally.