Unconscious Bias and How to Reduce it in Your Recruiting
Unconscious bias can creep into to any decision-making process. These biases are often rooted in stereotypes and implicit assumptions. They have a significant impact on the hiring process, leading to unfair outcomes and perpetuating inequalities, in turn creating a certain environment that forms the basis of a culture of an organisation.
The good news is that it’s possible to break this bias and work towards a diverse, inclusive and equitable organisation. In this article, we explore discrimination and unconscious bias in the hiring process and explain how hiring managers can eradicate bias in their recruiting.
What is discrimination?
First, it’s worth understanding exactly what is covered by discrimination. It is unlawful to positively discriminate on the nine protected characteristics:
- Gender
- Age
- Disability
- Marriage / civil partnership
- Pregnancy & maternity
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Gender reassignment
- Sexual orientation.
Something that often surprises employers is that positive discrimination is still unlawful, eg only considering women for a role to bring diversity to a currently predominantly male team. So how can employers bring diversity to a workplace? Positive action is taking the steps discussed in this article, to encourage applications from diverse groups and then conducting an unbiased and fair selection process.
What is unconscious bias in recruitment?
Unconscious bias comes into play when hiring managers or employers show a preference which is not blatantly discriminatory. This could be rejecting candidates with more than 20 years’ experience, showing preference to a candidate who went to the same university or plays the same sport, or rejecting someone based on certain characteristics you think they may have.
Ksenia Zheltoukhova is an experienced researcher and organisational behavior specialist. In a podcast with CIPD she describes this as: “We can decide not to give someone an opportunity because we ascribe certain characteristics to them that they don’t necessarily have, but that also means we can favour someone unfairly because we think they have positive characteristics, again that they don’t necessarily hold.”
What is the best way to manage unconscious bias?
Below we outline four important steps hiring managers can utilise to break unconscious bias in their organisation to ensure a diverse and fair hiring process.
Recognise and acknowledge unconscious bias
In order to remove unconscious bias, first you have to recognise and acknowledge it as an organisation and as individuals. Unconscious bias can be unintentional and ingrained but by uncovering this and raising awareness of it as an organisation, the issue can be reversed.
Training sessions and workshops are a great way to educate employees about the different types of biases and their consequences. This then opens the door to internal self exploration.
Speaking in the Harvard Business Review, leadership and team development coach
Carmen Acton says: “The key is to slow down and investigate your beliefs and assumptions so that you can see the other person for who they truly are.”
She advises asking yourself questions, such as: What core beliefs do I hold?
How do I react to people from different backgrounds? Carmen says: “When you pay attention to your answers, you’ll find patterns of thinking that will help you become aware of other biases that you may have.”
Ensure a structured interview process
Ask everyone the same questions; create a structured list of job-related questions so that each candidate has a fair chance of performing well. Focus on behavioural-based questions that relate to past experiences and actions rather than hypothetical scenarios.
Hiring managers should then use clear evaluation criteria to grade consistently against. What skills and qualifications are required for the position? Develop a scoring system that marks accordingly. All of this will help to eradicate bias in the interview process.
Hire diversely
One way to start is to ensure a diverse hiring team – team being the key word. To counteract unconscious bias, it is crucial to have a diverse group of individuals involved in the hiring process. Having individuals from different backgrounds, as well as even multiple areas of the business outside of HR, will mean that different perspectives are considered, making biases more likely to be identified and mitigated.
Then it’s a case of using practices such as:
- Anonymising CVs by removing any identifying characteristics,
- Ensuring adverts are free from biased language,
- And drawing from a diverse talent pool.
We’ve covered this in more detail in our How to Create Diverse Shortlists article. Your recruiter will be able to assist you with the first step of attracting diverse candidates and providing a representative shortlist – as well as with the many important touch-points throughout the hiring process.
Utilise technology
Using technology to assist you at various points of the recruitment process can minimise the unconscious bias natural to us as humans.
- AI-powered gamified assessments – as well as creating a level playing field these tests can help uncover insights that a CV fails to showcase
- AI-powered video interview platforms – video assessment tools can analyse verbal and nonverbal cues to predict a candidate’s emotional engagement, problem-solving style and thought processes.
- Metric tools – Monitoring metrics using technology provides hiring managers with objective data to aid in effective decision making.
Making data-driven decisions takes the guess work (and unconscious bias) out of the process. When tracking metrics, define diversity goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) and set realistic targets. Track this over time and analyse it to identify areas where bias may still exist and then take action to correct it.
Diverse organisations have a greater opportunity for success. A 2021 McKinsey study found that the greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. Diverse workplaces create greater opportunities for professional growth, while diverse teams boost innovation and creativity.
By promoting fairer hiring strategies and fostering a more inclusive and diverse workplace, employers will be creating an organisation and workforce that can thrive and grow.