Hiring by merit with Creative Meritocracy
What is work and how it can be improved today
We use to think about meritocracy as a principle for social justice because indeed it could be: we all experience inequality in many life situations and we’d like this to be fixed by someone, by something (or by God maybe?). The ideal future may not be as we expect or try to design: after all we’re fuzzy beings and fuzzy systems may become the right fit.
But, hey, what is really right then?
Well, it’s also true that we, as societies, live by continously defining what’s acceptable, what is good/bad, what is great or not at all: it’s just necessary since we have dynamic personal needs (e.g., eating, relationships, having fun…), collective ones (e.g., security, services, information…) and, at a higher level, global needs like the need for social justice which we strictly tied to work, because work is required for us to prosper on all three levels.
Work is personal, collective and global
Work serves the worker in the first place, the society when the work is done and the world when the work has given good results.
So, how we make sure every aspect of the jobs industry fullfills the needs, desires and expectations of everyone, be it the worker, the company or the society these actors work and live in?
Here we are back to meritocracy, because such principle works by defining a set of requirements which have to be fulfilled for the personal, collective and global good: kinda like a briefing. The problem is that it’s easy to overlook the global and collective aspects of our work since we’re just too busy taking care of the personal facet because we still need to. Will this ever change? Maybe yes as we prosper so that the personal sphere gets more and more given for granted (less worries = better relationships, to make it short), what are your thoughts?
Anyway, meritocracy applied to the jobs industry is great because sets requirements to be met based on the companies needs, but requires at the same time deep understanding and care for the parts involved at multiple levels: incautious meritocracy implementation becomes easily a threat to social justice (what?!). This 2012 psychology study by Greg Walton from Stanford University and co-author Steven J. Spencer from the University of Waterloo showed how merit-based hiring can omit top candidates and promote discrimination indeed:
“…common school and testing environments create a different psychological experience for different students. This systematically disadvantages negatively stereotyped ethnic minority students like African Americans and Hispanic Americans, as well as girls and women in math and science.”
— Merit hiring may omit top candidates, Brooke Donald
Shocking? There isn’t bad meritocracy by the way; there are just good/bad systems where meritocracy has been declined without taking into account each actor and factor and when this happens nobody nor science can fully foresee which and how many complex chain reactions have been truly triggered.
Hiring basics
In the hiring process we basically have two big aspects to evaluate:
- The person (the applicant) with all their features (professional background, skills, soft skills and all the variables);
- The content (portfolio, cover letter, projects…).
Judging content by merit is easier because, once the requirements are set, the “best candidate” is the one whose content wins in respect to the chosen parameters. A whole other story is evaluating individuals: people are complex and sneaky systems as opposed to static, finished, immutable content.
What if I told you that a tough matter like people evaluation can be addressed with…
We need to be able to better help each other to prosper, like a huge team, the team of humanity.
For example: a company’s rejected applicants are eventually accepted elsewhere, so what if companies were able, besides just rejecting candidates, to automatically provide matching job opportunities in other companies inside their network? This would impact the whole system very positively allowing companies to save time, efforts and money in the recruiting process as well as turning rejected candidates in recommended ones for other companies/positions where they’d possibly fit well.
This is hiring by merit. This is creative meritocracy.
Got something to add? Can’t wait to hear ❤
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