A hiring manager and her interview team narrowed a pool of applicants to two final candidates for a nurse marketing liaison role for a hospice. One candidate, who is a white female, had a really great interview and the whole interview team agreed that she would be a great fit with the rest of the team. She had a bachelors degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and five and half years of relevant clinical and marketing experience and received numerous recognitions and awards in clinical nursing. The other candidate, who is a Hispanic male, also had a good interview, a bachelors degree in nursing from Concordia College School of Nursing and seven years of relevant clinical and marketing experience and had received numerous recognition awards from previous employers for excellence in pharmaceutical sales and marketing. Both candidates met the minimum requirements for the job in question, which included a bachelors degree and three years of related clinical nursing experience and at least one year of marketing 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 Hispanic male nurse on the mostly female team and that she thought a Hispanic male would be hard to manage. The hiring manager also noted that the first candidate came from an Ivy League top tier nursing school and she had superior clinical and assessment skills while the second candidate came from a much less recognized nursing school. Additionally, while the second candidate received recognition awards in pharmaceutical sales and marketing he did not receive awards in clinical nursing like the first candidate. She then said that she would ask the HR department to make an offer to the female 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 overall 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 would bond better with referral sources who tended to be female nurses or social workers or white female or male physicians, she would be a good addition to the team. The interviewer who heard the hiring managers sexist and 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.

Questions 1: Did the organization discriminate against the Hispanic male candidate? Is this a potential discrimination case?

Question 2: What could the HR department have done to mitigate any risk of a claim of discrimination in this case or in similar circumstances in the future?