Unconscious bias from hiring managers and human resources can be one of the most difficult traits to identify and overcome in the recruitment process. What steps can be taken to tackle this and make the selection process fair for all applying candidates.
Almost everyone may be subject to using an element of unconscious bias in the hiring process and can be a result of cultural upbringing or other social factors. Irrespective of a hiring manager attempting to be as fair and rational as possible unconscious bias can still creep into the selection process. This is most likely to occur when hiring managers form an opinion about candidates based solely on first impressions either a candidate’s resume picture, their name, or even their hometown could influence an opinion without consciously thinking it will. Here are some steps that hiring managers can take to avoid unconscious bias in the recruitment and selection process
Training.
Providing training may not completely eradicate unconscious bias but it can help managers to become more aware of the issue. Some helpful training may involve hiring teams working more closely together to help identify bias in colleagues and to provide the appropriate feedback. Making managers more self-aware can be a good first step but needs to be complemented with some good diversity training too.
Removal of Personal Data.
Some larger organisations have taken more practical steps in tackling unconscious bias by removing all personal data from candidate resumes. Managers responsible for hiring talent will receive sifted resumes from human resources with all personal data removed (name, sex, age and address for example) so decisions are made based on work experience and achievements detailed in the candidate’s work history. This methodology does provide a level playing field for candidates albeit an extreme example of how to eliminate unconscious bias.
Interview Feedback.
As well as obtaining feedback from work colleagues hiring managers should also seek feedback from candidates that went through the interview process, both successful and unsuccessful. The feedback questions can ask candidates if they felt they were treated fairly and that the interviewing manager was not biased in any way.
Outsourcing.
An alternative solution to eliminate unconscious bias in the selection process is to outsource recruitment to an external agency or to use a hiring tool or other technology.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to ensure more efficient recruitment using any channel is Hire Digital, a start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment process. Their talent management software platform gives digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.