The Pipeline Problem: When Your “High Standards” Are Just Expensive Filters
Or: Why companies keep saying they can’t find diverse talent, and why that diagnosis is costing them more than they think
Picture this:
A company posts a job. The requirements list includes “4-year degree required,” “5+ years of experience,” and “must be fluent in [specific enterprise software].”
They get 300 applications. After filtering, 12 make it to interviews. All 12 look remarkably similar, same schools, same career paths, same demographic profile.
The hiring manager looks at the final slate and says, with complete sincerity: “We really want to hire more diverse candidates. But we can’t lower the bar. The pipeline just isn’t there.”
This is the moment the “pipeline problem” narrative gets born, and it sounds so reasonable that almost no one questions it.
Here’s what caught my attention about this moment: Nobody is lying. The hiring manager genuinely believes they’re maintaining quality standards. The filtered-out candidates genuinely didn’t meet the stated requirements. The outcome genuinely skews toward a narrow demographic.
But something expensive is happening here that almost no one is diagnosing correctly.
The Thing Everyone Blames (That Isn’t Actually the Problem)
When diversity initiatives fail, the explanation almost always lands in the same place: “The pipeline problem.”
The logic goes: We’d love to hire more diverse candidates, but there just aren’t enough qualified people from underrepresented backgrounds in our industry.
This explanation feels neutral. It locates the problem in the supply (not enough qualified candidates) rather than the demand (our hiring criteria). It lets everyone off the hook while maintaining the appearance of good intentions.
But here’s what I learned from working in revenue operations that changed how I see this:
When your funnel has a conversion problem, you don’t blame the market. You audit the funnel.
The Sales Funnel That Would Get You Fired
Imagine you built a landing page to sell a SaaS product. You drive 10,000 qualified visitors to the page. Only 2 people buy.
You go to your CEO and say: “The market just isn’t ready for this product. The pipeline of qualified buyers isn’t there.”
Your CEO would look at you like you’d lost your mind.
They’d say: “The market is fine. Your landing page is broken. Fix the funnel.”
In sales, when conversion rates tank, we know to look at the filter (the landing page, the messaging, the friction points), not the supply (the market).
But in hiring? When we get zero diverse candidates through our filter, we blame the supply.
We say “pipeline problem” instead of “filter problem.”
The Proxy Trap (Or: The Rule That Isn’t Measuring What You Think It’s Measuring)
Here’s where Normacism shows up in a way that costs real money:
Most hiring criteria aren’t actually measuring the skill you need. They’re measuring a proxy for the skill, a shortcut that correlates with competence but isn’t the same thing.
The Credit Score Example (The One We Can All See)
Think about credit scores for a second. We all know how this works.
You want to rent an apartment. The landlord checks your credit score. A high score suggests you’ll pay rent on time. Makes sense, right?
Except: What does a credit score actually measure?
It doesn’t measure responsibility (the thing the landlord cares about). It measures access to credit + history of managing debt.
If you grew up wealthy and never needed credit, your score might be thin or nonexistent. If you grew up poor and had to take predatory loans to cover emergencies, your score takes hits that have nothing to do with whether you’ll pay rent moving forward. Yes, history does say something but not everything.
The score correlates with payment reliability. But it’s not measuring reliability directly, it’s measuring something else that sometimes predicts reliability.
That difference is the gap where Normacism lives.
And once you see this gap, the “pipeline problem” explanation starts to look different. It’s not that there aren’t enough qualified people, it’s that we’re filtering for the wrong qualifications.
The Degree Filter (The Expensive One Nobody Questions)
Now apply that same lens to: “Must have a 4-year degree”
What does a college degree actually measure?
Most hiring managers will tell you it signals:
- Intelligence
- Discipline
- Ability to learn complex material
- Work ethic
And for many people, a degree does correlate with those qualities.
But what does a degree require in order to obtain it?
- Access to $40K–$200K in capital (or willingness to take on debt)
- Four years where full-time work isn’t your primary obligation
- Geographic proximity to a university or ability to relocate
- A family situation that supports education as a priority
- Documentation status (for many institutions)
When you make “degree required” a filter, you think you’re filtering for intelligence and discipline.
But you’re actually filtering for access to capital and stability during ages 18–22.
The person who couldn’t afford college isn’t less intelligent. They’re less capitalized.
The system assumes the filter is neutral. But the outcome reveals it’s not.
That’s the Normacism loop.
The False Negative Problem (Or: The Money You’re Leaving on the Table)
Here’s the part that should make every business leader nervous:
Every time your filter rejects someone who could do the job but doesn’t fit the “standard profile,” you’re creating what data scientists call a false negative.
Imagine:
- The self-taught developer who learned to code through free online courses and built a portfolio of working apps, but has no CS degree
- The operations manager who ran logistics for a military unit under high pressure, but doesn’t have an MBA
- The sales rep who grew up in the community you’re trying to reach and understands the customer intimately, but lacks “corporate polish”
These people can do the job. Your filter says they can’t.
Your competitor who’s willing to question the filter? They’re going to hire these people.
And they’re going to beat you.
The Diagnostic Question That Changes Everything
You don’t have to tear down your entire hiring process to fix this. You just have to run each requirement through one question:
“Does this rule measure the skill itself, or a proxy for the skill?”
Let’s try it:
Rule: “Must have 5 years of experience”
Question: Is a 5-year veteran actually better than a 2-year fast learner? Or is “5 years” just a lazy proxy for “maturity and judgment”?
Fix: Change it to “Must demonstrate ability to handle [specific volume/complexity of work]” and test for that directly.
Rule: “Must have degree in [field]”
Question: Does the degree teach the skill, or does it just correlate with having had time and money to study it formally?
Fix: “Must demonstrate proficiency in [specific skill]”, then test for the skill, not the credential.
Rule: “Must be fluent in [enterprise software]”
Question: Is this software actually hard to learn, or are we just filtering for people who’ve had access to expensive tools?
Fix: “Must be able to learn [software] within 30 days” + provide training budget.
The Tension I’m Sitting With
Here’s what I keep thinking about:
If the pipeline problem narrative is this common, this accepted, this automatic, and if it’s masking a filter problem rather than a supply problem, how many other systems are we defending as neutral when they’re actually just filtering for proximity to wealth, stability, or cultural norms?
And more importantly: What’s the cost of not asking that question?
I’m not saying every standard is bad. I’m not saying credentials don’t matter. I’m saying: if your system keeps producing the same narrow outcome while you insist the inputs are the problem, you might be caught in a Normacism loop.
The expensive part isn’t the diversity training.
It’s the talent you keep filtering out because you’re measuring the wrong thing.
I don’t fix hiring funnels, but I do fix growth funnels. And the same question applies: when your pipeline isn’t converting, are you blaming the leads or auditing the filter? At MASH, we help companies diagnose where their marketing and sales systems are measuring the wrong proxies, and leaving revenue on the table. Let’s talk.
Author Bio
Adam Ace Spencer is a creative growth consultant, digital builder, and entrepreneur based in Massachusetts. He runs Marketing & Sales Help (MASH), helping businesses generate awareness, diagnose broken funnels, and align systems for revenue growth. A Bates College graduate with a background in Rhetoric and Film and extensive study in Anthropology and Africana Studies, Adam applies the same diagnostic logic he uses in business to understanding how “neutral” systems produce unequal outcomes.
