Strangely, we are unwilling to apply that same logic to traditional hiring processes. I.e., few companies have ever done a study (sufficient to win in court) to prove that their subjective human opinion-based tests do not have a disparate impact. Yet processes like this are somehow allowed.
I.e., if my subjective human hiring technique is biased, you need to prove I discriminated on purpose. If my objective, IQ-based technique is biased, I need to prove I didn't. Why this disparity?
For the simple fact that we already have evidence that some protected classes perform worse on IQ tests. Therefore, simply by using an IQ test you are discriminating against a protected class. The burden is on you to prove that the discrimination is necessary. No one needs to prove that discrimination is happening because you are using a test that has already been show to be discriminatory.
Interview based hiring techniques are much more varied than IQ tests, and they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory. Therefore the burden is first to prove that discrimination is happening in the particular situation.
>they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory.
They actually have...
I am not going to get fully into it at the moment (but there's a ton of research on the topic) but we know that resumes that say Lakisha are significantly less likely to get a callback than a resume that says Karen.
Another example is blinding in orchestras. When the practice became the applicant played behind a curtain (so they judge didn't know what the applicant looked like) the number of women in orchestras increased.
Subjective interview based hiring across all companies has been show to be discriminatory towards protected classes.
But that's different than showing a specific company's hiring process is discriminative.
If company A uses IQ test X, and IQ test X has been shown to be discriminatory, then you can say definitively that the hiring process of company A is discriminatory.
If company B uses hiring process Y, and you can show that hiring process Y is discriminatory in 50% of the companies that use it, you can't make a definitive conclusion about company B in the same way you can company A.
There is a huge difference is explicit bias (give applicants an IQ test even though we'll weed out the blacks or even to weed out the blacks) and subconscious bias - which is an incredibly complex problem.
Most companies are trying to eliminate (unintended) bias in the hiring process.
> Strangely, we are unwilling to apply that same logic to traditional hiring processes.
Untrue.
> I.e., few companies have ever done a study (sufficient to win in court) to prove that their subjective human opinion-based tests do not have a disparate impact.
When an employment practice -- including a subjective, human-based tests -- does have a disproportionate impact against a protected class, and actions under it are challenged under anti-discrimination law, companies do have to prove that the practices are sufficiently related to the specific job being hired for that the disproportionate impact is not unjustified. IQ tests are not different in this regard.
They are different in that:
(1) the evidence of disproportionate impact is well-established and ready to use, and
(2) unlike most companies' other hiring practices, there is very little on the surface to show a trier-of-fact that it is related to the specific job duties, so tying it to the specific job duties takes a lot of work -- and, in fact, the places where they have been used and challenged are largely the kinds of places where studies have shown them least relevant to job performance.
how many examples are there of jobs where mental ability is irrelevant to job performance AND where there are more readily available and reliable signals of future job performance?
I.e., if my subjective human hiring technique is biased, you need to prove I discriminated on purpose. If my objective, IQ-based technique is biased, I need to prove I didn't. Why this disparity?