Effective Strategies to Offset Unconscious Bias in Tech Recruitment
Unconscious biases, both at organizational and individual levels, can impede a fair and equitable hiring process. Hiring the best of the best is not just a smart move but also a moral responsibility. Delivering an unbiased recruitment process, especially in tech recruitment, could be challenging. Sir, a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, shares crucial evidence-based strategies for levelling the playing field in tech recruitment and building inclusive and diverse organizations.
Unconscious Bias and Its Impact
The unconscious part of our brain processes a significant amount of information that we encounter daily. This unconscious processing is highly prone to patterns, which leads to unconscious bias (a preconceived notion influenced by our background, personal experiences, societal stereotypes, and cultural context). The problem with unconscious bias is that merely being aware of its existence is not enough to overcome its effects. It's built into the processes and systems that we humans have created, leading to biases in our decision-making process.
Strategies to Overcome Unconscious Bias
Recognizing and mitigating the impact of unconscious bias requires careful intervention at various stages of the recruitment process. Here are some practical strategies encompassing application, evaluation, and decision-making stages:
1. Broadening the Pool
- Eliminate Gendered Language: When job advertisements contain gendered language, they subconsciously affect the type of applicants. An ad with male stereotyped language will attract more men, and an ad with feminine stereotyped language will attract more women. It is crucial, therefore, to eliminate biased language or balance out the feminine and masculine stereotyped words.
- Explicit Negotiable Aspects: When job ads clearly state which aspects of the job are negotiable (salary, vacation time, etc.), they attract more underrepresented applicants and help reduce the gender pay gap.
- Cautious Use of Symbols: Symbols and role models used in recruitment play a significant role in conveying inclusivity' levels. You should be mindful about who represents your brand at recruitment events, whose photos are hung on the walls, who are conference rooms named after, etc.
2. Evaluating More Objectively
- Determine Evaluation Criteria: Choosing your evaluation criteria in advance helps reduce unconscious bias because you will be focusing on the qualifications for the role rather than the candidate's gender.
- Use Work Sample Tests: Work sample tests evaluate the candidate based on tasks that mimic the actual job’s requirements; it is one of the most predictive ways of assessing candidates.
- Structured and Formal Interviews: Structuring your interview questions relevant to the job and asking all the candidates the same questions helps make the interview process less biased.
3. Improve Decision Making
- Independent Evaluations: Getting the individual assessments of the evaluators before the final group decision reduces the likelihood of falling into groupthink and provides a more diverse perspective.
- Joint and Simultaneous Decision Making: Evaluating several candidates all at once and making simultaneous decisions leads to better diversity in decision making and reduces unconscious bias.
- Review Shortlists: Make sure your shortlist contains a diverse group of candidates.
Resources for Implementing these Strategies
There are many resources available to help your organization implement these strategies. Several companies offer tools to help eliminate gendered language from resumes, craft insightful interview questions, and stay informed on the latest research in gender equality.
A structured, well-thought-out approach can help tech companies demystify unconscious bias, enhance their hiring process, and build diverse and inclusive teams.