“Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work”
by Shari Dunn
2025/Harper Business
$32/320 pages
In her experience as a consultant, Shari Dunn firmly acknowledges that being an employee is complicated and not so easy. For Black employees, though, there’s an additional level of difficulty called “competency checking,” or the constant need to prove themselves and their intelligence.
So what can employers do to ensure that their Black and Brown workers are welcome, and how do you make the workplace work for them? First, says Dunn, train yourself and your team to see and disrupt stereotypes and old tropes. Acknowledge that we do not and might never live in a “colorblind” world. Read up on history to understand where biases come from and how unions and apprenticeships have factored into competency checking in the past. Audit and evaluate your toolkit for any racial bias on a regular basis. Make the workplace a safe place for Black people to be authentic and to show the same emotions you’d allow white workers to display. Finally, offer support to all, and create a place for everyone, regardless of skin color, to thrive.
The entire basis of this book is essential reading, since it’s aimed at businesses of all sizes, including (and especially) those that can’t afford to turn away good workers. “Qualified” helps ensure that you find those workers, no matter what they look like, and that you make them happy and comfortable enough to want to stay; furthermore, easy-to-follow examples teach readers why maintaining diversity overall is important for growth, both personally and professionally.
