A hiring manager and his interview team narrowed a pool of applicants to two

final candidates. One candidate, who is white, had a really great interview and the
whole interview team agreed that he would be a great fit with the rest of the team.
He had a bachelor’s degree and five and half years of relevant experience. The other
candidate, who is black, also had a good interview, a bachelor’s degree and seven
years of relevant experience and had received numerous recognition awards from
previous employers for excellent performance. Both candidates met the minimum
requirements for the job in question, which included a bachelor’s degree and four
years of related experience.

During a closed-door meeting about the candidates with an interview team member
and the hiring manager, the hiring manager said that it would be tough to have
a black person on the team and that he thought a black person would be hard to
manage. He then said that he would ask the HR department to make an offer to
the white candidate and proceeded to complete the necessary paperwork. HR policy
stated that hiring managers must submit all documents pertaining to the hiring
process to HR for review and retention.

Before extending the offer to the selected candidate, the HR representative noticed
on the interview notes of the rejected candidate that the primary reason for not
hiring the candidate was “not a good fit for the team.” However, the interview
notes in response to each of the interview questions did not provide anything
specific about why the candidate would not be a good fit for the team. The HR
representative contacted the hiring manager and interview team to collect more
detail about the reason for not hiring the candidate who had more experience than
the selected candidate. The general consensus among the interview team was that
both candidates were qualified to do the job and both would have been fine choices.
However, many of them did agree that since the selected candidate enjoyed playing
golf in his spare time, he would be a good addition to the team. The interviewer
who heard the hiring manager’s racist remarks about the rejected candidate informed
the HR representative about the comments. Without documenting the incident,
the HR representative, who reported to the hiring manager, phoned the selected
candidate to extend the offer of employment.

Did the organization discriminate against the black candidate?

Is this a potential discrimination case? If so, what could the HR department have done to mitigate risk in
this case and/or what can they do to mitigate risks of this nature in the future?