2 Red Flags for Recruiters Using the Rooney Rule

2 Red Flags for Recruiters Using the Rooney Rule

The Rooney Rule is a well-meant attempt to address racial inequality in the National Football League (NFL) that is now a part of diversity and inclusion efforts for many recruiters. However, the Rooney Rule has flaws.

The Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at least one ethnic-minority candidate when hiring a new head coach. It also (now) requires teams to interview minorities for general manager positions as well as women for some front-office positions. It continues to evolve.

The Rooney Rule is well- intentioned, but it’s incomplete. Only one team (the Detroit Lions) has ever received a fine for violating the rule, and questions linger about its fairness in real-world application.

The rule overlooks the fact that a single underrepresented minority candidate isn’t enough. It also attempts to manufacture diversity rather than acquiring it organically.

One red flag for recruiters is that the Rooney Rule doesn’t address the negligible impact that a single diverse candidate has on the hiring process. A second red flag for recruiters is that the Rooney Rule requires them to tinker with their candidate pool, which isn’t something they need to do if they’ve got a large enough pool.

Detractors of the rule question whether hiring teams are sacrificing quality to ‘manufacture’ diverse candidate pools. Supporters and detractors alike struggle with asking hiring teams to purposefully source minority candidates.

Datapeople’s own research has found that large numbers of applicants will naturally yield more diversity in your candidate pool. In other words, more candidates from underrepresented groups at the top of the funnel net more qualified candidates from underrepresented groups at the bottom.

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