Often times when you’re having a discussion around privilege and signaling, particularly in the context of hiring, you’ll end up having a discussion around the “unimpeachable efficiency of bias”, where someone cedes the moral superior of biased evaluation, but argues there isn’t a pursuable alternative. I understand that perspective, and would have agreed with it at certain points. The path to doing better is to have a clear understanding of the behaviors and skills that make someone impactful in your organization and evaluating precisely for those skills. Many interview processes are unclear about what they’re evaluating, and those are the most susceptible to testing for signaling over skills. The good news is that designing interview formats that effectively test the identified skills is a very mechanical skill that anyone can develop with practice: I’ve gotten to participate in several interview loop revamps that took that approach to good effect. On the other hand, getting to clear alignment on what makes someone impactful at your organization, that’s really hard, and is the stuff of effective, courageous leadership.