By Dan Bobinski
Director, The Center for Workplace Excellence

Not much good comes from trying to look good. You must actually be good, too.

Unfortunately, someone needs to remind the Chicago Police Department of this truism. A recent article by Steve Bryant on nbcchicago.com (Police May Scrap Entrance Exam) states that the Chicago PD is thinking about doing away with their entrance exam because they don’t employ enough minorities.

If you have half a brain, you’re saying “What?”

But it’s true. Apparently the department is overly concerned about achieving racial parity. Only 25 percent of their rank-and-file officers and 8 percent of their lieutenants are African-American, but the 2000 census shows that blacks make up about 37 percent of Chicago’s population. It would seem that someone doesn’t think those numbers look fair.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make sure the people hired to serve and protect are the best available at serving and protecting—regardless of their skin color. If the best cops are 4 feet tall with green skin from Antarctica, “hire em!”

It so happens that I grew up in a Chicago suburb near O’Hare airport and my father was a policeman in that town for 28 years. I can tell you from close observation and interacting with these men and women on a regular basis that they don’t have an easy job. The stresses on policemen and women are enormous.

Put yourself in their shoes

For a moment, put yourself in a police officer’s shoes. It would be pretty unnerving as a highly qualified officer to be surrounded by people hired because of their skin color and not because they were the best possible people to be backing you up.

Quality hiring makes a huge difference. When I was contracted to do management coaching at Qualcomm, Inc. in San Diego, California, I noticed they had an intense application process to identify the best possible applicants. As a result, the company created much of the cutting-edge technology we use today in our mobile phones, along with other nifty inventions that most of us never hear about.

But Qualcomm wouldn’t be the successful company they are if they merely hired people to balance their employees’ skin-tone palette.

If this kind of logic doesn’t sit right with you, think about your current place of employment. Regardless of your specific career choice, if the professional hurdles you had to clear were suddenly discarded and unqualified people were hired (for whatever reason), I imagine you might feel a bit ripped off and cheated.

‘Opportunity’ and ‘Outcome’ are different

I’m all about equal opportunity, but equal opportunity doesn’t mean equality of outcome. In other words, everyone who wants to apply themselves should be given the chance to do so. But true fairness says that people are to be evaluated based on their merits, not on their race, color, religion, gender, national origin, veteran’s status, political affiliation, or the existence or non-existence of any disability.

Hiring (or not hiring) people based on any aspect of the above-mentioned list is not only unethical and immoral, it’s illegal.

Sadly, the Chicago Police Department is giving us an example of how to substitute perceived fairness for true fairness.

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Filed in Opinion, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Job Seeking, Interviewing