Why the ‘Most Qualified’ Person for a Job Hardly Ever Is
Going on instinct to hire someone isn’t evil in itself. But we shouldn’t let those who practice it get away with saying, as the Giants did, that the process was objective.
Plenty to choose from.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Tout le monde has commented on Brian Flores’s racial discrimination suit against the National Football League and its teams, but the Grammar Curmudgeon has yet to weigh in. I’m disturbed by the initial response from the New York Giants, one of three teams named in the complaint: “We hired the coach we thought was most qualified.”
To one who worries about the debasement of the language, this usage of “qualified” is near meaningless dribble. When we understand why, we’ll have a richer sense of the problem the lawsuit seeks to illuminate.