“For many open positions, employees would interview a ‘diverse’ candidate—the bank’s [Wells Fargo’s] term for a woman or person of color—in keeping with the bank’s yearslong informal policy. But Mr. Bruno noticed that often, the so-called diverse candidate would be interviewed for a job that had already been promised to someone else.” — New York Times, 5/19/22
Dear woman/non-white job applicant,
Thank you for your interest in our company. We didn’t think that someone like yourself would know about us or what we do, so it’s exciting to receive your application.
You may have read on our website that we prioritize diversity in our hiring practices, and that is 100% something that we would like you to believe. We know that talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion makes people feel positive about a company, and we’d like them to feel that way about us.
At our company, we are always on the lookout for top-tier candidates, typically people we already know or are related to someone who works here. That’s why it’s so impressive that your résumé made its way to us, and why we feel as if we should schedule an interview with you. We really don’t know how you did it.
To prepare for this interview, we’re providing a few questions for you to review:
- What makes you the best candidate for this role?
- What would make us select you over, say, our boss’s nephew, Eric?
- Are you related to anyone who may have been in a fraternity with our boss, and if not, why not?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how mad would you be to find out we already gave this job to Eric?
- What if we told you that Eric’s family has a sweet boat?
- What is your boat situation, and if you don’t have one, why not?
- If it ever came to light that we already gave this job to Eric before even talking to you, would you snitch?
- So, you know we already gave this job to Eric, right?
Just some classic, standard interview questions. Actually, during the process of asking those questions, we realized that the job you’d be interviewing for is below a certain salary threshold, which our policies say we don’t need to consider diverse candidates for. Sorry about that!
It’s just that employees in these lower-paid jobs don’t even have their photos on our website, so you can see why it just makes sense to go with Eric. Plus, he’s already into day three of working here.
Of course, if you ever do make it to where you’re applying for an executive level position, definitely get in touch. We’d love for your face to let people know how diverse we are.
Good luck with your career!