Re: Comments on Composition and Comportment of the IETF Nominating Committee draft

Hi Joel,

I think specific candidate questions, if not related follow ups to the
structured interview questions, can invite discrimination.

OTOH, the US OPM goes to the other logical end: Employers should use
structured interviews in which all candidates are asked the same core,
job-related questions and are evaluated using the same criteria. Any
follow-up questions should be limited to clarifying a candidate’s responses
and should be used consistently to maintain fairness and comparability
across candidates.

Probably there’s a middle ground.

It would be worth interrogating the role of community feedback. Obviously
this is a unique element and guidance for most hiring processes won’t have
much to say about it. If we worry about discrimination in nomcom decision
making we should probably worry about it in candidate feedback too. So what
would be the fair mitigation? Giving a candidate the chance to rebut a
potentially discriminatory feedback comment? Or not mentioning the comment
during the interview at all, and giving the nomcom discretion to
consider feedback in its own right to supplement its decision?

Sorry I pointed the question back. But I’m genuinely not sure beyond my own
experiences and intuition, which I’ll keep to myself as an author of this
draft, which can hopefully encompass community consensus on the topic.

-Mallory

On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 11:11 Joel Halpern <[email protected]> wrote:

> With regard to the structured interview item in your draft, I was unclear
> whether your documents intends to say that each interview should include
> the structured questions or were you aiming to say that the interviews MUST
> ONLY consist of the structured questions.
>
> As far as I know, the former is common practice, and a good idea.  The
> latter would unduly constrain the committee from asking about things they
> think are important to the specific candidate, for example based on the
> feedback they have received.
>
> Yours,
>
> Joel
> On 7/6/2026 10:03 PM, Mallory Knodel wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 01:11 S Moonesamy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Mallory,
>> At 05:13 AM 06-07-2026, Mallory Knodel wrote:
>>
>>
>> >I'm not sure I remember. Could you elaborate this comment please?
>>
>> It's in RFC 7704 (Page 4).
>>
>
> Incredible. Thanks a lot for sharing this. I’ll cite it in the next
> version.
>
>
>> >Disclosure of interest to the chair, who then decides if there's a
>> >conflict. Simple recusal.
>>
>> It could be a bit more complicated than that.
>>
>
> Certainly but I don’t know if the document can or should try to encompass
> the complexity or simply describe a process for addressing it.
>
> I am open to text suggestions that better elaborate this and any of the
> comportment sections.
>
>
>> >It's here. I've edited the main copy.
>> ><
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__hbr.org_2016_04_how-2Dto-2Dtake-2Dthe-2Dbias-2Dout-2Dof-2Dinterviews&d=DwIBAg&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=krANNudPSfUTEf2kXiduBUqRjXhDsKNCASr1kibHLfs&m=YIrtQwrRtb_e31ldkUQjV6tcWTEcpf5fCSgJN5EFLRkjqZ3pHWlqlpLKxKQuPKb-&s=MBhR2Q0q-JMD3j71Sm58-ZD61u61e_r2AQAlRgDPkEI&e=
>> >
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__hbr.org_2016_04_how-2Dto-2Dtake-2Dthe-2Dbias-2Dout-2Dof-2Dinterviews&d=DwIBAg&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=krANNudPSfUTEf2kXiduBUqRjXhDsKNCASr1kibHLfs&m=YIrtQwrRtb_e31ldkUQjV6tcWTEcpf5fCSgJN5EFLRkjqZ3pHWlqlpLKxKQuPKb-&s=MBhR2Q0q-JMD3j71Sm58-ZD61u61e_r2AQAlRgDPkEI&e=
>>
>> Thanks.  The answers to the questions would not be relevant in my opinion.
>>
>
> Fair. My thinking was to provide some authoritative example of how
> industry thinks about this. I’m open to citing a better and more relevant
> publication.
>
> Thanks,
> -Mallory
>
>