How can organizations ensure that hiring decisions are not biased? Extensive research shows that discriminatory and unconscious biases are pervasive in the hiring process.
Unconscious bias encourages us to make decisions in the best interests of an individual or group at the expense of others. That one doesn’t notice.
How can you be sure there is no bias when hiring at your company? Hiring bias can take many forms, from overt discrimination to unconscious bias. When choosing successful candidates, you are attracted to people who look and act like you. The latter is much more subtle and rarely intentional, but it’s still discriminatory.
Diversity in the workplace leads to better results. A McKinsey study found that diversified companies perform 35 better than non-diversified companies.
Conscious bias refers to intentional discrimination that harms another person or group. Prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious, can have a negative impact on the work environment.
So how can companies remove bias from the hiring process? Here are seven doable suggestions to get you going.
What is unconscious bias?
Unconscious prejudice refers to preconceived notions about a person based on gender identity, race, religion, appearance, ability, national origin, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc. These implicit biases can prevent applicants from obtaining fair employment opportunities. They also tend to prefer certain types of candidates over others.
For example, remote teams may say or think things like:
- Since they are not native speakers, it will be challenging to communicate effectively.
- Your personality does not match our progressive corporate culture.
- They come from a country of workaholics, and we should elect them.
- The internet in your country may be unreliable.
- We need new protocols to accommodate those functions, but there are too many to take on. Familiarity with legacy structures would not suggest they can hold up with our tech stack.
- When she has a baby, will she be able to handle the workload?
The worst thing about unconscious bias is that people don’t realize how their assumptions affect their job opportunities. But the results are not that different.
Similar to discrimination, prejudice in the hiring process prevents far-flung companies from gathering diverse perspectives and hiring foreign workers. It will also stop hiring inclusive and fair practices in promotions and reduce employee retention.
Now that we’re on the same page let’s dive into the next thing.
Guiding Principles
To prevent your company from circumventing a biased hiring process, you should keep in mind certain principles that serve as guides and guardrails against discrimination in hiring.
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Do
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- Change the wording of your job listing by intentionally removing adjectives that may be similar to gender, community, or age group.
- Whenever possible, ask candidates to undergo testing for an unbiased approach to assessing and comparing results clinically.
- Consciously refrain from personal feelings by quantifying empathy in terms of requirements
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Don’t
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- Conduct unstructured interviews. Always ensure your interview process and questions are standardized by level so you can instantly compare each candidate’s responses. If possible, please provide an example of your ideal answer for reference
- Don’t let demographic bias cloud your resume score. If necessary, use software to filter out these factors so that you can assess the skills you need with a clear mind.
- It overlooks the requirement to set diversity goals. Make sure to track your progress toward reaching your goals
Eliminate bias in the hiring process
Recruiters and recruiters need to level the practices, procedures, and belief systems for non-judgmental hiring and help develop an inclusive culture. All employees deserve to feel welcomed, respected, and valued, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, or life choice. Acknowledging bias is the first step. Here’s how organizations do this:
Awareness is key
The first critical step in promoting a fair hiring process is educating employees about the prevalence of unconscious bias, including affinity bias, racism, and more. One way to raise awareness is by educating and educating your employees on the subject. It helps us recognize and understand our unconscious biases.
In addition, employees are required to take exams such as the Harvard Implicit Association Test. This exam can teach your entire team about unconscious biases and how they shape your personal and professional outlook.
Accountability is essential
You trained your employees to recognize bias in the workplace. Every employee should be held accountable, especially the HR specialist who trains the entire team.
For example, a manager has completed 10 performance reviews. He has 5 males and 5 females. Given that 4 of the top 5 performers are women, we need to examine whether there is a bias in favor of women in this process.
Please review your job description
Job postings play an important role in recruiting talent and often give the first impression of a company’s culture. “Even the subtlest choice of words can have a big impact on your applicant pool to “Make them aware that they do not belong in the work environment”.
On the other hand, words like “supportive” and “supportive” tend to attract women more than men. Software programs that emphasize stereotypical gender can counteract this effect. “You can then remove the word and replace it with something more neutral”, or try to find a balance by using the same number of gender descriptors and verbs. Alternate the word “create”. The purpose of this research is to determine how [these modifications] will impact the pool.
Similarly, the use of excessive business jargon, long words, and abstract descriptions discourage many newcomers, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, from applying because they feel they are not suited for the role. Consider your language carefully. Find the right balance by alternating “he” and “she” in job descriptions with a program, a software that emphasizes stereotypical genders.
“Learning by doing, learning by observing”.
Proficiency tests are useful
Sampling tests are one of the most accurate indicators of a candidate’s future success. Testing allows organizations to compare available candidates based on jobs, not just resumes.
For example, in competency testing, an organization should look at a candidate’s job performance rather than the candidate’s appearance, gender, age, or personality.
Defining diversity and setting goals
Set business goals to help everyone understand the importance of eliminating unconscious bias and increasing revenue diversity. Next, describe what diversity means in your organization. For example, underrepresented race, age, gender, or sexual orientation?
At each stage of the candidate process, you should set goals: Application Funnels, Interview Conversion Rates, and Passes. Most importantly, communicate your achievements.
Use structured interviews
Unstructured interviews cannot identify specific job issues. Research shows that hiring decisions for such interviews are often subject to unconscious biases and prejudices. Structured interviews, however, are useful when you want a fair and impartial hiring process. You know 67% of companies use structured interviewing during the candidate selection.
If you are among those remaining 33% of companies, then don’t worry, at BarRaiser. We have prepared how to run a structured interview with all the necessary questions to develop an effective interview process.
In structured interviews, recruiters ask all prospects the same or similar questions in the same or similar order. This approach removes the need for small talk and subjectivity and allows you to compare applications based on objective criteria.
There are several things to consider when creating an effectively structured interview. You can use BarRaiser’s free structure tool to implement some of these.
First, you should create a standardized rubric for a particular role and stick to it in all candidate interviews for that role
Record or transcribe the job interviews
Recording job interviews can be a valuable tool for ensuring accuracy and fairness in the hiring process, but it is important to consider a number of compliances before proceeding with recording. Recording interviews can be very powerful in building intelligence around interviews, eliminating bias, and making better hiring decisions.
The recordings can be used to train new interviewers (sort of asynchronous shadow and reverse-shadowing) faster. Interviewers can visit some of the best interviews and respond to candidates’ questions.
A recorded or transcribed interview can brush up the memory of the interviewer at the time of feedback and hence enable a comprehensive assessment of each candidate rather than a judgment based on the interviewer’s memory. Recording interviews can also help people managers to keep track of the interview process which is a crucial element in employer branding.
Assemble a multi-functional interview team
A cross-functional interview team is a great way to break down bias in the hiring process. Another good practice is to guide the interview team on what to look for and what to avoid, including bias.
Developing a strategy for discussing candidates in coordinated debriefings is a great way to allow other interviewers to check for bias.
Conclusion
Unchecked and unconscious biases can keep the best candidates out of interviews and job openings. You can make meaningful progress toward your goal of attracting and retaining. If your company is ready to hire diverse leadership talent, BarRaiser offers modern recruiting resources designed to protect recruiting resources from conscious and unconscious biases and provide equal opportunity for candidates. of executive search platforms. Diversity isn’t just business sense, it’s also healthy. BarRaiser can help you with that. Request a demo for your business today.
People also asked
How do you address (mitigate/eliminate) the problems with biases that exist in your hiring process?
Utilizing numerous interviewers is one approach to accomplish this and lessen the chance of interview bias. In some areas, someone will be more biased than in others, and vice versa. You are allowing more skills to emerge by expanding the pool of interviewees.
What tactics could you use to get rid of prejudice and discrimination at work?
Here is what you can do to stop discrimination at work:
- Inform all of your staff members about prejudice.
- Encourage your staff to honour one another’s differences.
- React to any proof or criticism of improper behaviour.
- respond quickly and discreetly to any discrimination claims.
How can a bias be addressed during a job interview?
Make use of test-style questions. Have a set of questions prepared for each position that you ask all applicants. In this manner, you avoid similar-to-me bias and inconsistent questioning. Because X is a crucial ability, you won’t mistakenly forget to question one candidate about it and then dismiss them. Read more on how to measure diversity in the interview process.
How can bias in sample selection be avoided?
Simple random sampling, in which samples are solely selected by chance, is one of the most successful techniques that researchers may utilise to prevent sampling bias. As a result, everyone in the population has an equal chance of being selected to take part in the current study.
References
HBR on reducing bias in hiring process
Forbes on reducing unconscious bias in hiring
