This is the argument made against affirmative action as well, but what I conveniently never see mentioned in these comments is how even with these extra steps to get women and BIPOC into underrepresented fields, often when equally qualified people submit their resume for a role in the larger field (outside of your company) a equally qualified white man has a greater chance to get the role than a black woman. I have a hard time thinking the system is discriminating against me, when objectively it isn’t.

I’ve been hiring a long time and I’ve never seen two candidates that were perfectly equal. Especially after going through the interview process and having a chance to speak to them and see how they carry themselves. I obviously can’t speak for every company but at mine we don’t even see demographic information when reviewing applications. I couldn’t select for race/ethnicity if I wanted to.

We quickly posted the jobs but also told our teams that we were hiring and to let their friends know. Nearly half the applications where from Hmong people, because several people working for us were Hmong and they put the word out in the Hmong community and suddenly half our workforce was Hmong overnight.

The same thing would happen if you had only spoken to women at a career fair and deliberately only hired women… The only fair way is to give everyone an equal chance to apply/speak to you. Like you said, get the word out everywhere not just to particular communities. With job sites and linkedin this is relatively easy. My company advertises on the radio/internet when we’re hiring as well.