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

Hi Joel,

On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 10:42 PM Joel Halpern <[email protected]> wrote:

> I think without violating the confidentiality requirements, I can make a
> couple of observations.  Other past nomcom members / chairs / liaisons can
> provide comments as they feel appropriate.
>
> First, one of the difficulties is that the nomcom must treat the feedback
> as confidential.   Great care is taken to not violate that.  Nonetheless,
> committees do learn about issues with specific candidates from the
> feedback, and it is important to identify those issues.  Whether they
> decide to ask the candidate about aspects of that ought, as far as I can
> tell, be left to the discretion of the committee.
>
> In my experience committee members are generally good at separating
> substantive feedback issues from feedback driven by attributes that
> shouldn't matter.  There are many dimensions besides the ones you are
> focusing on that the committee needs to watch for and avoid.   I don't
> think trying to prevent bias in the feedback is desirable or achievable.
>
> It is the goal of this section of this document to intervene against
discrimination in leadership appointments by the nomcom.

You are validating that, indeed, current processes will change as a result
of non-discrimination efforts. This is inherently good. Also, diverse teams
perform better, which means these process changes will result in better
decisions and better outcomes for the IETF.

Win-win.

Best,
-Mallory

It is also worth noting that we are interviewing people for many different
> jobs.  At the very least, even the structured part of the interview is
> likely to be different for the different positions.  This then gets even
> more complicated when the committee may be evaluating person A based on
> strength X and weakness Y, and person B on strength Q and weakness R.  The
> interview may well want to explore those specific qualities for that
> specific candidate.  Even when we know the job, we know that people will do
> the job differently.  And the selection process is even more complicated by
> the fact that the job itself changes over time.   In fact, one of the tasks
> the nomcom undertakes is deciding what properties they think are important
> for which positions.
>
> I suspect that further analysis would reveal even more nuances in the
> interview and evaluation process.  Yes, it is important to be clear that we
> avoid bias in our selection.  I don't think tying the hands of the
> committee in terms of what they ask candidates is helpful.
>
> In some sense, the structured part of the interview presumably starts with
> the common questionnaire.  I am not asking or suggesting that the
> questionnaire be tuned to the individual candidate.   But that is only the
> starting point.
>
> Yours,
>
> Joel
> On 7/6/2026 10:25 PM, Mallory Knodel wrote:
>
> 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
>>
>>