I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the…
I've heard similar quotes before, and always assumed the speaker meant that they didn't want everyone to be a old/white/guy, not that they didn't want anyone who was a old/white/guy. Context matters a lot - such quotes are usually said in reference to a company's leadership team, and there's quite a bit of truth to them. When you look at the list of CEOs/Senior-Executives/Board-members at Fortune 500 companies, it's…
These things swing to extremes, but harm will come to some. There are still good candidates out there with mortgages, families, etc.
I'm self-employed now and don't expect to ever put myself into someone else's employ (that's my tip to everyone else in the 40+ camp... entrepreneurialism isn't a groovy lifestyle choice, it's the offensive measure to secure your future --- business startup and continuity risks notwithstanding), but the "we need diversity" bell is now mine to ring. That said, I used to dream of creating a startup, building a team, growing a business --- now the dream is zero employees. It's me and my (life) partner, and we won't take on employees if we can help it.