Is Bias In Recruitment Blurring Recruiter Mindsets?

6 unconscious hiring biases to watch out for

In recruitment, two things to avoid are “adverse impact” and bias. Employers are not allowed to apply any requirement or condition that disadvantages people or makes them ineligible for a job, without a justifiable reason. Otherwise it could constitute discrimination. Clearly this has started to come to the fore even more in recent weeks as major brands announce moves to ban what they deem as discriminatory interview shortlists.
 

Accountancy giant Price waterhouse Coopers (PwC) has banned all-male shortlists and all-male interview panels for jobs in the UK in an attempt to increase the number of women in senior roles at the firm - prompted by its recent pay gap report showing men on average earned 43.8% more than women. Laura Hinton, chief people officer at PwC, said: “Diversity in our recruitment processes is something we’ve been focused on for some time and as part of this we are ensuring we have no all-male shortlists and more diverse interviewing panels.”

Bill Michael, KPMG’s UK chairman, has also said the firm had a ‘no tolerance’ policy towards all-male recruitment lists, stressing “We expect greater efforts around the other areas we report on for our own employees such as ethnicity, sexuality and socio-economic background.”

This isn’t just a finance issue. Broadcasters have also spoken out on such issues. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Independent Television News (ITN) have also banned all-white shortlists. In the BBC’s case a report pledges to introduce a policy that ensures shortlists for all jobs at band E and above include at least one Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) person and to dramatically increase BAME representation across our interview panels, backed by performance monitoring. ITN meanwhile pledged to interview at least one BAME person for every vacancy after revealing a “disappointing” BAME pay gap.

These are welcome steps in the right direction, but being deliberate in trying to ease gaps could just as easily reinforce bias into a recruiting process. Bias, simply put, is a person’s inclination or prejudice against another person or group of people. Unconscious bias are the prejudices each and every human has and acts on without thinking or malice intent. Instinctively, people tend to like those they align with most. Sometimes that alignment is racial or gendered or sometimes it is personality-based.

Here are a few of the most common forms of unconscious hiring bias to watch out for:

●   Conformity Bias - Like peer pressure and group think, this bias occurs when an individual follows the thought of the majority, ignoring their own opinions. In recruiting, conformity bias might be present in a panel interview where individuals hesitate to voice their thoughts for fear of disagreeing with the majority

●   Halo/Horns Effect - This hiring bias occurs when one element or detail of a candidate or resume becomes the foundation of your analysis for the individual. For example, highly regarding an unfit candidate because he or she participated in a specific fellowship or assessing a fit candidate as unfit because he or she went to a certain college.

●   Affinity & Similarity Bias - These are some of the most common forms of unconscious hiring bias. Affinity bias occurs when a recruiter favours a candidate because he or she has shared traits. This could be attending the same college, growing up in the same city or simply reminding them of someone in their life they like. Similarity bias occurs when the recruiter sees themselves or a part of themselves within the candidate and is more open to pursuing their employment because of it.

●   Contrast Effect - Common for recruiters sifting through resumes, this bias takes place when the recruiter or interviewer has multiple people or applications to compare. Naturally, instead of considering the individuals on their own merit, the recruiter or interviewer uses another individual’s skills and attributes to make decisions on the next individual.

●   Beauty Bias - As the name suggests, this bias is rooted in external appearance. If the recruiter or interviewer believes the more handsome individual will be most successful, they might suffer from beauty bias. On the other hand, when someone who is more traditionally attractive is hindered by their appearance (especially in the case of women), is considered the “bimbo effect.”

●   Conformity Bias - When a recruiter or interviewer makes assessments in order to support their initial beliefs of the candidate, they are falling to conformity bias. For example, if a recruiter has decided that a candidate will fit well within the company, they might overlook warning signs in order to back up their first impression.

Unless carefully monitored, this bias can be guilty of detecting patterns of under representation and reproducing them, perpetuating biases against already disadvantaged groups such as older and disabled workers, women and ethnic minorities.

To avoid hiring biases, an increasing number of organisations are using blind hiring strategies that would focus on recruiting candidates with the right skills set rather than their gender, their region or where they studied. Used wisely, this can lead to impartial selection, personal bias removal, gender parity, workplace diversity and development of a skill-based meritocratic organisation. 

Introducing AI to the recruitment process has the potential to help tackle the problem of unconscious bias blighting the decisions human hiring managers make, but that all comes down to who is responsible for training them and the data they are fed.

As Kevin Green, CEO of REC puts it “The person influencing the technology must be chosen carefully to avoid this happening in tests or what you end up with is that you just hardwire some of the prejudices of the individual into the assessment technique.”

Charles Hipps is CEO and Founder of Oleeo. Visit www.oleeo.com Connect Charles Hipps