AddyTheWrath
Registered User
I understand your point, but all of those traits are subjective and not very easy to hire for. On top of that, women likely have not had the same exposure to success given the high barriers to enter the professional hockey industry.Its not just experience its a combination of experience, creative thinking and other beneficial personality traits, and hopefully SUCCESS. Even a small series of successes could easily trump 20 years of male-centric staff work for a middling old school NHL org.
And once again, “diversity hiring” or “affirmative action” by just guaranteeing a role to a person who ticks boxes outside of their ability to perform, is backwards, lazy, and damaging to the organization.
In these cases, the RIGHT candidate is most likely not applying. You have to headhunt them. Go to Hockey Canada or USA Hockey or top Sports science/Math/Analytics universities and find out who their top female scouts are in recent years who take analytics and other factors into consideration. Pay for first class tickets and a full meal deal to come tour the city and discuss the future of women in pro hockey. Find out which of them are really creative thinkers and have ideas about how to drive the industry forward and create advantages for your organization. Develop long-term relationships with all of them, but hire the best of them and make mentoring local females in the industry part of their job description.
Thats too hard though, so most orgs will just guarantee the job to whichever female applies. The “old boys club” in mens hockey is probably not that much different from the “old girls club”. The “MOST EXPERIENCED” candidates may not be the ones you are looking for if you are looking for a fresh perspective. You have to dig a little deeper. But you’re too lazy.
Anyway, This is putting the horse before the cart because we really have no idea what they’re doing behind the scenes based on some offhand comment to DNB, but if they’re serious about diversity they should be developing it and not following a traditional hiring precess That will most likely turn up predominantly male candidates.
In my option, affirmative action is a jump start to getting traditionally underrepresented groups in positions to which they otherwise would not have access.
I understand that you have to reshape the entire industry but it needs to be a top-down approach. The NHL has to pave the path for women to be in such roles so that other leagues will follow. No one is saying you shouldn't be developing female talent as well, but there are definitely qualified women already out there who have comparable capabilities to any man that would traditionally be considered. If you give a slight preference to these groups it goes a long way to opening the door for others in the future.
That is very easy to say for people who have not historically been marginalized and prevented access to certain opportunities. If hockey and (society at large, by extension) had always been inclusive, we could completely ignore such things, but unfortunately we don't live in such a utopia. Take a look at OEG's organization structure and you'll see it's currently 100% comprised of Caucasian males. If race/gender had never been taken into consideration historically, then you would expect there to be more diversity on the team. In reality, many of these people have these jobs because they are "in circle" or have connections to the industry (through family or otherwise).Your ethnically or gender should never be taken into consideration for a job. Especially race. Unless of coarse it’s a gender specific position.