You are discriminating against the candidates who might have some disabilities (whether they know they have or not) like dyslexia, you are also discriminating against candidates whose English (or whatever that language in your country) isn’t their first, even though they might be the best suited candidates, best programmers/engineers/etc., I have seen this first hand in some interviews, where some candidates eliminated from the first round by hiring managers because of similar issues or even silly ones like having an accent, after I -as the technical interviewer- gave the green light thay they are qualified for the second one.
Yes, when hiring I do discriminate against candidates with bad skills.
Reading and writing, communication in written form is a critical skill for a software developer, more important than even coding skills (btw, I'm yet to see a person who can code and can't write, or even hear about such person). It is irrelevant, what is the reason for the lack of skill - innate disability or low intelligence - if you can't clearly and precisely communicate with your coworkers, you'll create more problems for the team than you will solve.
And speaking of discrimination, you wouldn't hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter, right?
As I mentioned in the comment below, this is the first excuse for such discrimination, as most of the times they do properly communicate and can effectively communicate the idea, but it’s the covert way of discriminating them. One of the examples I witnessed, someone was from Singapore -and in Singapore just like a lot of other countries, English IS native, i.e. taught early in life- but they do have a thick accents, and the candidate was eliminated because of that, and obviously the hiring manager made the same silly excuse like you so he can feel better about himself, that it will “hinder” the communications. As long as the communication can be conducted, anything else is pure linguistics bias, you don’t see such bias when an international team of scientists are working in a space station or similar projects for example, even though in a lot of cases they lack the vocabulary per se, and lacking such vocabulary did not indicate a lack of skill or intelligence either, let alone to be evaluated by an average IQ hiring manager.
Another case I witnessed was in Canada, where French is an official language, yet the hiring manager excluded one candidate because he had a thick French accent..
Technically speaking too, there’s nothing as “native English”, we all do have an accent to some degree, a lot of English vocabulary are taken from other languages, and even English speakers do have a lot of silly typos and mistakes in their writing all the time, including my writings in here, so it’s never an excuse.
>And speaking of discrimination, you wouldn't hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter, right?
That’s a poor analogy, you do have the tools to properly and easily compensate such linguistic disability, as easy as having someone double checking their writing or having one of these new AI spell check tools, etc., but we don’t have the proper technology and tools to compensate for a paraplegic to be a firefighter, yet, say in the future there are proven ex-skeletons that can help, then yes you are discriminating.
> That’s a poor analogy, you do have the tools to properly and easily compensate such linguistic disability, as easy as having someone double checking their writing or having one of these new AI spell check tools, etc.
If the hypothetical person in question had such tools, then we would not see their "handicap" right? So the discrimination would not have occurred...
If only there were a word for a level of language proficiency where the person's speech is perfectly intelligible, but where there are still audible clues about the person's linguistic background that could be used to discriminate against them, and if only this weren't a "hypothetical person" but OP said they were talking about strong engineers with mild accents in their very first post? To act like the candidates' english is too poor for them to be employable is being willfully obtuse at best and outright racist at worst. There's nothing particularly difficult about working with someone who has a bit of a lilt or a twang or what have you; in fact it is more fun than working at a workplace where everyone sounds the same.
I like this post. I too have sadly seen this many times in my career. The (supposedly non-discriminatory) "preferences" of the hiring managers are frequently... discriminatory! It's the worst when the hiring manager is mono-cultural and only speaks a single language (English). Most middle managers are looking to hire people that are a dumber version of themselves and easy to control -- "sheep", if you like. The rare middle managers try to hire people smarter than themselves.
The bit about:
hire a paraplegic person as a nurse or firefighter
I like how they picked a tiny sliver of jobs that might require full mobility. Thinking deeper: I am sure there are many nursing jobs that can be done from a wheelchair. And why not doctors? (See Dr. House, with a limb, a cane, and an on-again-off-again opioid addiction!) There are plenty of jobs that can done in a hospital and fire department that do not require all of your limbs. A lot of the work involves sitting in an office, typing on a PC.
Once, I had an office mate who had a single hand. Incredibly, he was a member of a "fast reaction" front-line support team. It was a small miracle watching him dash about the keyboard. It helped to open my mind about what was possible with modern technology.
I dont really disagree with your post over all, but you really should refrain from using fictionalized stories to support your real world public policy it never works out well. That is aside from the fact that that example is pretty poor as something that should be aspirational.
> and even English speakers do have a lot of silly typos and mistakes in their writing all the time
Interestingly, the mistakes non-native English speakers make are different from the ones native speakers make. Thus, excluding non-natives makes it more likely for certain kinds of mistakes to slip by. "There" vs "Their", etc.
In my field communicating with other English-speaking people is probably 80% of the job. Someone who cannot read and write clear English prose will not be successful. Serious question: if I eliminate someone from contention because they struggle to read, write, and speak English, is that “discrimination”?
No one said anything about the ability to communicate, but the discrimination against candidates with some disability like dyslexia, it is YOUR job as an employer to provide the proper tool -either during the interview process or even after hiring- to make sure the work isn’t affected, and having a proper process to address it. Same goes with accent, it isn’t about the ability to communicate but rather the accent or linguistics bias either by not hiring these candidates, or excluding them later from meetings, presentations, etc., or eliminating any future career growth.
Obviously those discriminations are illegal so it goes passive most of the times, by continuous interruption during meetings or intentionally asked to repeat or elaborate themselves, among other.
It’s not about communication abilities as this is usually the covert passive response for such discriminatory behaviors, a lot of these candidates can speak “better” in terms of clarity than people with Australian accent for example, it’s just another episode of “I’m better than you”, you can read more about that in here:
> it is YOUR job as an employer to provide the proper tool
I love it when people from internet forums are telling me what my job is.
You know, your way of thinking will eventually lead to understanding that interviewing is inherently discriminatory against everyone but the best candidate, and thus must be abolished. This will lead to a creation of some kind of government agency that you'll ask for a worker and it'll appoint someone who would be considered as acceptable by some clerk. You wouldn't have the freedom to refuse to hire the appointee and would be obliged to pay him.
> You know, your way of thinking will eventually lead to understanding that interviewing is inherently discriminatory against everyone but the best candidate
That's not discrimination. The problem is when you assume someone isn't the best candidate because of (pick (religion, origin, language, disability, ...)) but you don't know that.
A lot of people have used your way of thinking to justify discrimination. "Obviously foreign people are less educated. I'm just looking for the best candidate so I should not interview someone with a foreign name".
How can you be sure that _you_ are not discriminating ?
> I love it when people from internet forums are telling me what my job is.
So you don't agree that your job is to hire the best person without discrimination ? Or you don't agree that giving people the proper tools allow them to be the best version of themselves ?
> The problem is when you assume someone isn't the best candidate because of (pick (religion, origin, language, disability, ...)) but you don't know that.
I assume that someone who can't throw up a few lines of text about himself is not worth even considering for an interview for a job that ultimately requires producing text, in a form of computer code, documentation and communication with co-workers. Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm discriminating against mentally handicapped and illiterate people. That's the intent.
Communication is a lot more than just competency in a language. It is correlated (especially at the low end of competency) but has a lot more to do with empathy and making an effort. There are plenty of native English speakers I’ve worked with that I would score low on communication ability because they can’t explain themselves unambiguously and I end up having to ask a lot of follow up questions.
As long as it’s not a catastrophic mental disability, having a disability should not preclude someone from communicating clearly. As long as they slow down and actually take time to make themselves clear, it shouldn’t be a problem.
> I have seen this first hand in some interviews, where some candidates eliminated from the first round by hiring managers because of similar issues or even silly ones like having an accent
You have first-hand experience of hiring managers telling you they eliminated someone b/c they had a foreign accent?
