Why Your Single Minority Candidate Has Statistically No Chance Of Being Hired

Diversity initiatives are popping up all over, particularly within technology companies that have a preponderance of white men among executives and staff.

Several organizations started by putting measures in place to ensure new hires were drawn from a more diverse talent pool. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Colorado aims to show that simply adding one minority candidate to the pipeline doesn’t guarantee a quick fix.

You can hardly blame them for trying. The business case for diversity–even in a more nuanced form–is hard for companies to ignore. So the likes of Facebook, Slack, and Pinterest attempted to change the ratio by taking a page from the NFL’s Rooney Rule. It requires at least one person from an underrepresented background and one female candidate to be interviewed for every open leadership position.

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About the Author: DrStefanieKJohnson

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is particularly interested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities, with the goal of finding ways to mitigate those biases. Dr. Johnson brings bias to light with an engaging and humorous approach to advanced scientific research, which has earned her numerous accolades and invitations to present her work at meetings around the world, including the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day, and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology and The Academy of Management Journal. She has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership-development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice. In recognition of her unique research, Dr. Johnson has been awarded nearly three million dollars in external funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuring her work include: The Economist, Newsweek, Time, and CNN. Stefanie lives in the Boulder Bubble in Colorado with her Biology Professor husband, two young kiddos, and two old kitties.