Merit Criteria vs. Hiring Quotas in
Large Urban Centers

Merit criteria in hiring minorities is more finely etched in our minds than hiring quotas while merit is often elusive, if not mythical and fallacious in its role of obstructing hiring quotas.

Contrary to the popular belief, we may find no logical inconsistencies between the application of merit criteria and hiring quotas for minorities. To imply otherwise, may be seen as to believe that there are inherently more incompetents in the minority groups than in the mainstream; therefore, hiring quotas can result in hiring more incompetents in the work force. By and large, this assumption is clearly unsubstantiated, and frequently stems from presumptuous or prejudicial points of view. Because, there is not a shred of evidence in indicating that one group of people, in a large urban centre, has more incompetent members than another. For this reason alone, it should become evident that the generalized argument of merit criteria is not relevant in obstructing the implementation of hiring quotas for minorities, yet, we continue to hear or read about merit criteria as the reason for not having a system of hiring quotas.

Unlike the merit criteria, a hiring quota based on the population mix of the available pool of the job applicants is relatively simple to understand and readily analyzable. As such, hiring quotas provide no cover for complex hidden agendas that have historically been associated with the design and evaluation of merit criteria.

In a true democracy, where a large diversified heterogeneous pool of job applicants is available for hiring, the result of using an unbiased merit criteria for hiring should be consistent with the result of the population-based hiring quota. If the results are not consistent, the problem should be traced to the source. Historically, when hiring abuses have been suspected, the design of merit criteria and its associated evaluations have drawn much attention. But, the abuses of merit criteria have never been restricted to one or two aspects of its design and evaluation. Using a merit criteria alone is prone to abuse, even if it is flawless in its design and evaluation. The existence of a true democracy is needed to ensure that the system of merit criteria works and produces the same results as the system of hiring quotas. For societies that have been initially non-democratic, but, have been moving toward full democracy, like ours, the use of merit criteria alone may even be seen as a hindrance to developing full democracy. At this point of transition, we should use hiring quotas in conjunction with merit criteria. Once we attain the state of full democracy, in theory, the use of merit criteria alone will suffice.

Where there has been a history of abusing merit criteria, the necessity for having a system of minority hiring quotas becomes more pronounced. For yet one more reason, the absence of hiring quotas discourages the minorities from applying for the jobs that have been known to have had abusive merit criteria.

Instead of abandoning minority hiring quotas based on our misunderstanding of its effect, is it not prudent to use it as a tool to verify the validity of our merit criteria, or still better, for its contribution in our transition to a true democracy where equitable hiring processes are to be in place?