Hiring concept design. One empty yellow chair among many. One spot left. 3D Rendering, 3D Illustration

Getty Images | iStock-2201248904 | by Ilija Erceg

“Hire the best person.”

It’s one of the most widely accepted ideas in American workplaces. It signals fairness. It suggests rigor. It feels like the opposite of bias.

But it assumes something that isn’t always true: that the process for identifying “the best” is already working as intended.

That assumption is at the center of a new debate about the Rooney Rule, the NFL policy that requires teams to interview candidates from underrepresented backgrounds when hiring for coaches and other executive positions. In a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier argued that the rule is discriminatory and unnecessary — that teams should simply be free to choose the best candidate.

On its face, that sounds reasonable. But it treats hiring as if it were a neutral sorting exercise, where all qualified candidates are equally visible and equally considered.

In practice, hiring rarely works that way.

Most senior roles — whether in sports, business or public service — are filled through a mix of networks, prior relationships and pattern recognition. Decision-makers rely on people they know, people who come recommended by people they trust and people who look familiar based on past experience. None of this is unusual. In fact, it’s often seen as efficient.

But it has consequences. Over time, those patterns shape who enters the candidate pool and who doesn’t. They influence who gets early opportunities, who builds a track record and who is seen as “ready” for leadership. By the time a hiring decision is made, the field has already been narrowed — long before any formal process begins.

That’s the gap between the idea of merit and the mechanics of hiring.

Policies like the Rooney Rule, established in 2003, don’t attempt to redefine merit or dictate outcomes. They operate earlier in the process. They introduce a requirement that organizations look beyond their immediate networks before making decisions. The goal isn’t to guarantee a particular hire. It’s to broaden who is considered.

The results have been uneven, and critics are right to point that out. In some hiring cycles, teams have conducted interviews but ultimately made decisions within the same small circle of candidates.

But those outcomes also highlight the underlying dynamic the rule is trying to address. When organizations revert to familiar patterns — even after being prompted to look wider — it suggests how strong those patterns are to begin with.

The broader question isn’t whether a specific policy is perfectly designed. It’s whether the existing system reliably surfaces the strongest candidates without any intervention.

There’s little evidence that it does.

Decades of research show that hiring decisions systematically advantage candidates with stronger social-network ties and those who fit prevailing prototypes of what a “leader” looks like. These tendencies are often unintentional, but they are persistent. Left unexamined, they reinforce themselves.

The logic of “just hire the best person” depends on a level playing field that rarely exists in practice.

You can see similar dynamics in fields like medicine, where pathways into leadership are shaped by access to education, mentorship and professional networks. These pathways influence not only who enters the field, but who advances within it. Over time, the composition of the workforce reflects those patterns.

The implications extend beyond representation. In fields that depend on public trust and effective communication, differences in background and experience can affect how institutions understand and respond to the people they serve.

None of this suggests that standards should be lowered or that outcomes should be predetermined. It suggests that identifying the strongest candidates requires more than relying on existing channels.

From that perspective, policies like the Rooney Rule function as policy adjustments rather than mandates. They are attempts to counterbalance the natural tendency of organizations to look inward.

Whether they succeed depends on how seriously they are implemented. A requirement to interview candidates only adds value if it leads to genuine consideration. Without that, it risks becoming symbolic.

But removing that requirement would not create a more merit-based system. It would simply return the process to its default state, where visibility and access are uneven.

For organizations focused on performance, that’s a practical consideration, not a philosophical one. The question isn’t whether merit matters. It’s how confident we are that our processes consistently identify it.

If the answer is uncertain, then expanding how we define the candidate pool isn’t a departure from merit. It’s part of making merit visible.

Because in most cases, the challenge isn’t choosing among equally known candidates. It’s making sure the full range of capable candidates is actually in view.