From: gwangung@carson.u.washington.edu (Roger Tang)
Subject: Re: Political Power--Why the quotas?
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 16:44:45 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.064220.26932@news.columbia.edu> dnm9@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (David Neal Messina) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.080115.15873@u.washington.edu> gwangung@carson.u.washington.edu (Roger Tang) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec14.063145.2250@news.columbia.edu> dnm9@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (David Neal Messina) writes:
>>>If you rely on arbitrary characteristics such as race, you won't be
>>>able to please everyone.  Some group will inevitably feel
>>>underrepresented, so discount the issue entirely.  Hire in the most
>>>equitable fashion--hire the person who will best perform the duties of
>>>the office.
>>First task:  define qualified.
>>Second task: define the methodology of finding these qualified individuals.
>>Third task: think about it.
>No reason to be snide, Roger, but even so, I'll entertain you.
>
>One:
>Ever hear of job descriptions?  _qualified_ --> competent to
>fulfill the required duties.  That is, employer looks at list of
>possible employees' resumes, scratches head, and says, "Aha!  Person
>X's writings/actions on topic X have been/seem to me like they would
>be successful.  Person Y just jerked off in gratuitous professorship
>for years twiddling thumbs.  I think I'll hire X.  He's more qualified."

	Umm....ever been in the Real World? The relationship between
job dsecriptions and competency and resumes are often not as strong as
people think they are.  Then there is the fact that resumes screeners home
in on key words and ignore everything else. Even when you are more than
qualified to do a job, if you do not have a specific job title or key word,
you go into the rejection pile. Then there is the fact that at this level
of work, personal relationships and contacts count very heavily. 

	THen there's the effect that racial discrimination still seems to
be persisting. You HAVE heard of the studies of matched candidates sent to
interviews, right? Where white candidates get substantially more job
offers than non-white candidates? Obviously that would have an effect
on credentials....

>Two: 
>Roger, you're in school.

	Nope.

  How did your school decide you were
>worth taking when other people weren't?  What sort of things did they
>look at?  Probably your grades and standardized tests, measures of
>your aptitude and your intelligence,

	All of which are imperfect measures, inadequately compensated for by
the institutions who use them.

 and your extracurriculars,
>measures of your interpersonal skills and interests.  Are you really
>prepared to tell me that you have no concept of merit, or not one
>that's applicable to presidential appointments?

	No, but you are apparently quite prepared to tell me that you are
not familiar with the methodology of candidate search and selection at
high levels in an organization.

	Please consider that for any particular job, there are dozens
of candidates competent in reality to handle it. There are differences
between candidates in their ability to do this, but measuring these
differences is not as reliable nor as accurate as many people think it is.

	One of the characteristics of organizational behavior is that there
is a marked tendency to draw upon the familiar for the upper echelons. That's
why a lot of behavior in upper corporate management, the social scene and
the philanthropic scene is seen to be incestuous. It takes a conscious effort
to break that cycle.




-- 
Roger Tang, gwangung@u.washington.edu
Producer Emeritus, Asian Theatre at the UW
	"The definition of balls is for a non-singer to go karaoke singing
with the cast of a musical revue."