I worked in a fairly successful company that was pretty diverse for our sector and people would always ask, how did you boost your DEI to get those metrics (eg did we blind the names on applications, actively recruit from certain universities, actively choose non white applicants etc). And we literally hadn’t don’t any of that. We just hired the best people— we ended up diverse because we didn’t automatically throw out non local non white applicants, which most companies are doing actively or subconsciously.

The “DEI is not merit” claim is utter bs. I also am close with a college recruiter— it’s nothing to do with going after the lesser student because they’re brown or black or whatever. It’s giving applications an HONEST look and evaluation (as much as one can). For example, you might have one rich kid with a perfect SAT score and 5 extracurriculars their private tutors picked for them that cost egregious amounts of money to pursue. You might have another who comes from a very poor area, hits a perfect SAT or maybe a few points under, no extracurriculars, and works a fast food job to support their sick parent. Who is more impressive? Who has more merit? Pre DEI you’d only pick the extracurricular kid because that’s how the “merit” was based, grades and extracurricular. The new approach is, well maybe we should actually be identifying outside work experience, too. It’s still merit, only with more considerations.