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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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211–220 of 724 posts

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#211

There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring practices that no one seems to notice. Remove all demographic questions from the application. Hide the name and gender and attach a applicant ID. It's as easy as that. Every job should be looking for the most qualified individual regardless of race, nationality, religion, and sex. Demographics in the application are a recipe for disaster on both sides of the i…

Agreed. However Progressives argue (wrongly in my opinion) that taking into account a person’s race and gender identity is the only wait to guard against discrimination. They explicitly regard ‘merit’ based hiring as racist and discriminatory.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not what happened. The guy from the black affinity group CLAIMED that he knew the answers. But he's a completely unreliable source who was pretending to know things that he didn't actually know. He also claimed to have a list of magic buzzwords that would get your application moved to the top of the pile, but if you look at the list of magic buzzwords that he provided, it was just a list of dozens of gener…

> As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She signed up as the February wave started. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA e…

I've read it. I've seen all the weightings. My point is that after reading the IG report, I think it's most likely that when he made the following statement he was exaggerating and claiming that he knew the right answers when he didn't:

> I am going to send it out to each of you and as you progress through the stages refer to those images so you will know which icons you should select…I am about 99 point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question in order to get through the first phase

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#213

This is a fascinating read, but the thing that bugs me about this whole affair is that when this came to light many years ago it was treated as a cheating and recruitment scandal. But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue. Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be…

That's a misreading of the article. This scandal was not just "cheating and recruitment" but forcing "Diversity" with a side of "Equity". To quote the facts: > The NBCFAE continued to pressure the FAA to diversify, with its members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push for increased diversity among ATCs. After years of fiddling with the research and years of pressure from the NBCFA…

> How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?

The key part though is that the FAA was worried about the job performance of diverse candidates they brought in. They did not see a trade off between their staffing levels.

There are two separate arguments happening:

Did changing their application process create less qualified ATC controllers? Maybe! But no one seems to be arguing this.

Did changing their application process create a shortage of ATC controllers? Probably not! If anything, the evidence points to the FAA being worried they were going to get too many mediocre candidates.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She signed up as the February wave started. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA e…

I've read it. I've seen all the weightings. My point is that after reading the IG report, I think it's most likely that when he made the following statement he was exaggerating and claiming that he knew the right answers when he didn't: > I am going to send it out to each of you and as you progress through the stages refer to those images so you will know which icons you should select…I am about 99 point 99 percent s…

Do you have the list of answers Snow told candidates to pick? It'd be simple to cross reference those with the biographical questionnaire weightings?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#215
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're imagining that there's ever been a meaning of DEI other than quotas, but there hasn't. That's the way it began and the only thing it's ever done or wanted.

Then maybe you should see how it’s done in other countries and companies. I’ve worked on hiring and we’ve never once lowered our standards just to get in a black candidate. What I’ve seen done is conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants, changing language to increase applications from women, blind reviews where you can’t see the name or details of the applicant (to minimise subconscious bias). All of th…

>conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants

Which involved doingwhat exactly?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking old, resolved scandals The lawsuit is still ongoing. The scandal has not yet resolved.

No, but the problematic assessment in question was eliminated by congress in 2016. That would not explain the FAA's current recruitment problems.

ATC training and dropout rate is so long and high, that mistakes made 8-9 years ago could still be impactful.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#218
Complaints about controller shortages and 6-day weeks being the norm and whatnot go back into the 00s.

Why the hell was anyone doing anything to restrict the hiring and onboarding pipeline in the first place?

The alleged motivation barely even matters. Heck considering the attrition rate of the career path it would arguably be acceptable if they juiced their hiring pipeline with their preferred demographics. I've seen companies do this and be better off for it. But to do so at the cost of missing qualified applicants is egregious.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is easy until you account for the real world. A disabled person who has to request accommodations for the application process will immediately be outed for having a disability. The same applies for people who speak different languages. Beyond that, the application is only one place in which discrimination occurs. - It also happens during interviews which are much harder to anonymize. - It also happens in t…

[flagged]

Let's see. The OP didn't specify they were talking about the ATC, I gave two examples of ways you could de-anonimyze resumes in the normal application process; I'm sure there's others. And glad to hear you don't think people with cancer or those who use wheelchairs should be allowed to work at the ATC, I guess.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#220

This is a fascinating read, but the thing that bugs me about this whole affair is that when this came to light many years ago it was treated as a cheating and recruitment scandal. But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue. Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be…

A thing I wonder about like the nature of government and power is why does it feel like going back and forth between ridiculous policies. Like I’m sure 10 years from now, we’ll be uncovering crazy things the Trump administration did that were racist or sexist or whatever and it won’t make any sense! You’ll look at it and go why would a reasonable person have decided that approach! Talk about a footgun. And then maybe there’s a New Democrat administration that creates a new catchphrase that replaces DEI and we get familiar excesses again.
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