Rethinking Merit: Why the "Best Person for the Job" Isn't Always Who You Expect
By: Gayathri Shukla, March 18, 2025 (This article was originally published on our LinkedIn newsletter.)
Last month, I had the opportunity to engage with junior high girls, women in trades, and their educators and employers through a series of International Women’s Day events. I also facilitated a board governance workshop on belonging, and across all these spaces—whether speaking to students or leaders—a familiar question kept surfacing:
Is hiring about merit or diversity?
It’s a question I have been sitting with. On the surface, it seems simple: we want to hire the “best person for the job,” based on qualifications, not identity. But what if the concept of merit itself isn’t as neutral as we think? And is it really an either/or scenario?
This is a topic Erin Davis and I touched on in Hearth 2 Heart’s episode, Moving Beyond the DEI Backlash– and one worth unpacking further in this newsletter.
What is Meritocracy?
Meritocracy is rooted in the belief that one’s success is based solely on talent and effort. It has been dubbed a myth because of its underlying assumption that everyone competes on a level playing field, and therefore, hiring should be based on objective qualifications, such as degrees, certifications, or years of experience.
But the reality is different – barriers to opportunity are often profoundly shaped by identity.
At a recent keynote, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw shared a powerful insight:
Some people are given opportunities based on potential. Others only get them after they’ve proven themselves over and over again.
It made me pause: Who gets the benefit of the doubt? And who doesn’t?
A Doctor’s Office Analogy
When you visit a doctor, they don’t treat you as identity-neutral. You’re asked about your age, gender, ethnicity, and family history—because certain conditions disproportionately impact certain populations. A treatment plan that only emphasizes individual choices (like diet and exercise) and ignores systemic patterns would be incomplete.
Likewise, hiring decisions that focus only on individual qualifications, without acknowledging broader patterns of exclusion, miss important context. Now consider these examples:
✔ Nearly 70% of women report experiencing workplace bias. (McKinsey, 2023).
✔ Hiring managers unconsciously favour candidates who resemble past leaders. (Kellogg School of Management).
✔ High-profile figures face bias too – the former US VP and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, despite decades of legal and political experience, was often dismissed as a “DEI hire.” (If you’re wondering more about that term, check out this Forbes article, which explains it as “a disparaging term that refers to quotas or targets…implies that only heterosexual, white men are qualified for such high leadership positions.”)
So what does this mean for hiring leaders?
If we assess only individual competencies without considering who has historically been excluded, we risk reinforcing existing inequalities, rather than actually hiring the best person for the job. And as we all know, having the right talent or not can make or break a team’s success.
How to Avoid Tokenism
This raises the next question: how do organizations avoid tokenism—the perception that a person was hired solely to meet diversity quotas—while ensuring they access the widest possible talent pool?
The concern about tokenism is real. It can lead to the new hire feeling isolated or scrutinized while eroding trust among team members.
But here’s what’s critical to understand: If you are hiring someone who meets the required job competencies (i.e. table stakes) but does not fit the typical profile of past hires, you are not lowering the bar. You are removing the barriers that have kept many from reaching it in the first place.
In my consulting work, I often guide clients through questions like:
✅ How are we defining merit?Traditional markers of success—such as specific degrees or years in a role—may not fully capture the leadership potential, problem-solving, or resilience—qualities essential for team success.
✅ Are we challenging our own biases? In the podcast, I mention that talent comes in “different shapes and colours”—meaning we need to expand our perception of who we see as qualified.
✅ Are we expanding talent pools?Broadening outreach, using inclusive language in job descriptions, structured interviews, and skills-based assessments are all steps to reduce hiring bias.
✅ Are we developing talent internally?Instead of assuming “diverse talent doesn’t exist,” organizations can invest in upskilling, sponsorship, and re-assessing career pathways to ensure their own talent pipeline is free of leakage.
✅ Are we tracking outcomes? Without measurable goals for inclusion, organizations may unintentionally default to familiar hiring patterns, limiting their ability to build high-performing teams.
Moving Forward
As Erin eloquently shared in the podcast, now is not the time to abandon conversations on merit, talent, and equity—it’s time to move past binary thinking and focus on solutions, together.
So I leave you with this:
🌀 Who saw your potential before you proved yourself?
🌀 How are you creating that same opportunity for others?