This is what it feels like to be a diversity hire
by Nina Ace
After many months of working for a large financial corporation, Sam* was super excited to join a smaller consumer goods company as their brand manager. Early into the second decade of his career, he was used to working on marketing teams of mostly women his age or younger. But when he arrived on this first day, he was greeted by mostly men (and some women) of his parent’s generation.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, he thought. Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes, and he’s in the Midwest now. Things are probably just different out here.
It didn’t take long before he began to notice a different culture: one that was religiously, socially, and fiscally conservative. Each all-company meeting started with a prayer. “You won’t believe what just happened,” he texted me. As a lifelong Catholic, he wasn’t offended—simply surprised. “I’m definitely not in Kansas anymore.” And by Kansas, he meant New York City.
There wasn’t some big, obvious snafu. Instead, over several months, Sam put together tiny little pieces of a puzzle that led him to feel his sexuality may have played a part in his new gig. To be clear, Sam comes with an extensive and impressive resume and is finishing up his master’s at a top-tier university. He is unequivocally qualified. So his colleagues’ comments like what a “big decision” to hire him for his “fresh perspective” and “outlook on life,” roll off his back—for the most part.
“I’ve more than proved my value since I started,” he says, “but I definitely felt I needed to prove it in a big way, and fast. Sometimes I think they take some of my ideas because of the diversity box I check. I have to remind myself in those moments that my ideas are worth taking no matter what.”
That’s just one perspective of life as a known diversity hire, someone who comes to know or suspect they were hired because they “check certain boxes” for a company’s diversity hiring quotas.
To be clear, hiring a candidate (and excluding others) based on their sex, race, disability or other protected class is completely illegal. But after years of underwhelming diversity pledges to hire more minorities, corporations big and small are taking a more aggressive approach to increasing diversity in the workplace: hiring quotas. Wells Fargo, Ralph Lauren, and Delta Airlines recently announced diversity quotas for Black employees, and dozens more are announcing concrete quotas as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hiring quotas aren’t a new thing—government-issued quotas date back to the 1960s when federal contractors were required take “affirmative action.” More recently, California adopted a law setting targets for female representation on boards. But the use of quotas, despite their good intentions, come with plenty of (well-deserved) criticism. They’re legally sketchy—even the Supreme Court isn’t thrilled with them—and they can be almost performative in nature. But some of the biggest implications may be for the hires themselves
“There’s a tendency to expect diversity hires to fail,” says Morgan Mermagen, ACC, ICF-Certified Executive Coach and Founder and President of Morgan Mermagen & Associates. “People are left wondering: is that person really qualified?”
If you deal with bouts of imposter syndrome, you already know how much damage you can do to your own self-confidence. Now imagine being a diversity hire—and finding out about it. Suddenly, the standards of performance feel exponentially higher, and your coworkers are questioning why you’re hired. “You feel you have to be that much better than the person in the majority,” says Mermagen.
As a woman in the workforce, you might not find that idea that unfamiliar. Women and others are often hired for their achievements, while men or people of the majority are hired for their potential. In fact, our First Lady Dr. Jill Biden is facing the same sort of scrutiny. “Women use their titles bc they feel they need to prove that they merit your respect,” explains Mermagen. “Even though you’re there, you still feel like an outsider. It breaks down company culture and doesn’t do wonders for retention.”
If you’ve recently learned you’re a diversity hire and are looking for a way to reconcile that in your head and your heart, here’s some advice from Mermagen:
Remind yourself what you bring to this (and any) role.
Ask yourself why you took the job, and how this job is serving your goals.
Once I’m clear: if this job is serving me in this way and I want to stay here, it’s the right role for me, how am I going to handle this idea around it.
Reach out to your mentors.
Set a meeting with your manager and ask this: If I do an amazing job in this role, what will I have achieved in 3, 6, and 12 months? what are the resources I would need to achieve that, and are they available to me? This will help you understand whether or not you’re being set up for success.