A long time ago I worked in the EEO complaints investigation office for the Department of Health and Human Services. I was not an investigator, but I typed up investigation reports.  By far the most typical finding at the time was that there was no discrimination based on age, sex or race; the employee was not promoted or not hired either based on their job-related qualifications relative to others, a record of poor performance reviews or because of an established Federal seniority policy that cut against the complainant.  As Pamela notes, if the investigator did find discrimination it was based on a documented pattern of the same by the hiring official or the department.

Please do not read the above anecdote as an example of “blame the victim”; it’s just a demonstration that in some, and possibly most, cases, people get so upset about being passed over for a job or promotion that they try to find causes outside of themselves.  Sometimes the causes are there but it takes a lengthy process to ferret them out.