Oh what insight you have… the D is for Diversity?!
Of course it is… Diversity doesn’t mean “without merit”. You can have a surviving company if you don’t hire on merit. Yet every single fortune 50 company has a DEI program.
My teams is above the company avg. I hire a lot of vets and they tend to be a larger diverse pool for cybersecurity.
Not necessarily.
If I only hire from Harvard, for example, I can find a bunch of highly qualified new grads to work for me. However they might also have the same background. If I also open up my hiring to Alabama A&M, I can also find different backgrounds and get the same highly qualified candidate. It just will be harder.
I always pick the most “qualified” person. I wouldn’t survive if I built my teams full of unqualified people. I’d be fired, quickly. My performance is based on how well my team performs. Again… I don’t know a single hiring manager willing to risk their job by hiring unqualified people.
I put qualified in quotes because that is subjective. I often get several hundred “qualified” applicants for my entry level roles. From all over the globe. Down selecting to 6-10 for interviews is very challenging and often I pass on very qualified candidates because they have too much experience for the role… or they are in a location that would be difficult to work with…etc.
Even though merit is the priority, I also seek to expand the pool of candidates to interview as many different types of people I can. Veterans, Women, Black, White, Hispanic, Men, New Grads from different schools etc.
It’s not merit or diversity. It’s merit AND diversity. Even if my company adopted “MEI” that wouldn’t remove DEI from consideration.
To built the best team possible. My continued employment depends on it. Building the most qualified and diverse teams is the key to success. As proven time and time again.