How To Overcome Hiring Bias?

Tips to not hire wrong people

I was recently involved in hiring a new property manager for a residential apartment complex. The top candidate was starkly different from the successful employee who had previously held the position for 20 years.The new guy was a great fit, but he was much younger, had a different work background, and was essentially “unproven” in working with a more complicated property and staff.

 

The decision makers (the community’s board of directors) were concerned about the factors that made the candidate different from his predecessor. They were influenced by the natural tendency to try to hire someone just like the previous manager, but I helped them see how the new candidate was actually the right person for the job.
 
The board let hiring bias influence its decision-making, and they could have easily chosen the wrong applicant because of it. Hiring bias is a common occurrence that impacts hiring managers and committees across industries.
 
Hiring bias occurs when the person who hires has a preconceived notion of the type of candidate who should fill the role. Maybe the hiring manager is relying on instinct. Maybe he or she is letting personal preferences subconsciously influence the decision. Whatever the reason, hiring bias can cause leaders to hire the wrong people, even though they think they’re making the right decision.
 
If you’ve ever experienced a systematic hiring process, you’ll know that trusting your instincts is probably the least important criteria for effective hiring.But when hiring is done by the person running the department, hiring bias is likely to kick in, whether it is recognized or not. This happens for a few reasons:
 

1. The leader who is hiring has a very specific idea of the type of person they want to hire, based on their own previous experience with the role. They believe they know what will work best in that role, but they haven’t done any evaluation or assessment to back up that opinion.

 

2. The person coming into the role is replacing someone who was in the position for a long time and doing the job well, so the candidate is being unintentionally (or maybe intentionally)compared to that person. Instead of evaluating a new candidate based on the company’s changing needs, the hiring manager is deferring to what has worked in the past, or even the personality type that excelled in the role before.

 

3. Hiring managers subconsciously look for someone they “click” with, which often translates into hiring someone with a similar personality and the same working style. This type of hiring bias occurs because we tend to want to be around people who are like ourselves—it creates more head nodding and less challenging the way things are done. They may also try to hire people who will fulfill the job the way they would fulfill the job.

 
All three of these hiring mistakes can limit an organization’s potential. When you hire this way,you lose the benefit of differing perspectives, creativity of thought, innovative problem solving, and thinking outside of the box. If everyone does the work the way the manager does it, the company will only ever do it one way. You can’t push your organization further if everyone, including you, is just pushing the status quo.
 
Not only does hiring bias limit the opportunity for innovation, but it also limits the diversity in a company. When you hire based on instinct or what has worked in the past, you are unintentionally stifling the diversity that inspires next-level thinking and makes a company appealing to customers.You lose not only cultural, gender and age diversity, but you also forgo variety in areas like introversion and extroversion.
 
The most effective way to overcome hiring bias is to create a systematic and objective hiring process, one that your company follows every time, no matter how much you want to hire based on instinct. These four simple steps will help you cultivate hiring success.
 
Research Best Practices. Ask peers at other companies for their best practices in hiring so you get perspectives from outside your industry.Speak with colleagues whose employees have made a positive impression on you. How do they recruit? How do they evaluate prospective staff? What lessons have they learned from hiring?
 
Assess the Job. Create a benchmark that gauges the position, how that job contributes to the overall department and organization, and what success looks like in that role, without the bias of the person who is currently in the role. Measure this as if the position was standing alone without a person occupying the job.
 
Evaluate the Candidate. Then determine the skills needed to perform in the role, and what type of personality best fits that job. Assessments allow you to see past a polished resume and a shiny interview. You will be able to examine behavioral styles, motivators and competencies—and fit them directly to what the position calls for.  
 
Get Peer Input. Engage a cross section of people to participate in the interview process. Include not only managers, but also other positions that work closely with the position. They know what the job is about and will have an interesting perspective and depth to add.Create a checklist of the top five most important competencies that the candidate should have for the job and if the finalists do not fulfill that criteria, consider it a red flag.
 
It’s easy to slip into old patterns and hire by gut, not through a process. Although some people have the magic touch when it comes to instinct, most people’s biases come into play and disrupt the process. Create a system that works for your organization and stick with it. Use your gut to validate your conclusions.
 
Remember the property manager mentioned earlier? He took the job and made it his own. The board, the staff, and the residents are thrilled with what they’ve experienced so far. Funny how that hiring bias is now a distant memory.

Lisa M. Aldisert is a NYC-based business advisor, trend expert, speaker and author. She is President of Pharos Alliance Inc. Lisa’s most recent book is Leadership Reflections. Visit www.lisaaldisert.com Connect Lisa M. Aldisert