Most of us have heard of unconscious bias, but have you really considered how it impacts your life? It’s easy to think it only applies to other people. Understanding exactly what unconscious bias is, that it affects all of us, and that we can introduce steps to make ourselves more aware is essential to avoiding it in recruiting.
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What is Unconscious Bias?
Unconscious bias is also known as implicit bias. You may also hear people talk about confirmation bias, affinity bias, and conformity bias. It is the term used to describe the unconscious mental processes that lead us to act with a bias towards certain people or groups, even though our conscious mind would consider our behaviour to be contrary to our values.
Everyone is affected by unconscious biases. It is a natural process developed to help humans function in groups: our brains are wired to respond positively to people we identify with and whom we see as helpful. We have evolved to make automatic, quick judgments about other people that we don’t even realise we are making. Our personal experiences and the cultural and social stereotypes that inform our world influence these judgements. Unconscious bias can be triggered by a variety of factors, not just gender or ethnicity but also physical characteristics such as disability, height, weight and body shape.
Unconscious bias can significantly impact how we behave and our attitudes toward other people, so it’s essential to be aware of how it can contribute to limiting decision-making in the recruitment process.
How Does Unconscious Bias Impact Recruitment?
In the recruitment process, unconscious bias can lead to the hiring manager forming opinions about candidates based on first impressions of what they look like or other information such as where they live, went to school or even their name. These first impressions can then influence whether a candidate is invited for an interview when those details are irrelevant to whether or not the candidate could be suitable for the role.
Unconscious bias can cause hiring managers to inadvertently choose people to interview who they feel are similar to them or will be an excellent social fit for the team. While some argue that this reflects the natural tendency for humans to feel safe with those we recognise as similar to us, in the business world, choosing candidates that reflect ourselves has been shown to have a negative impact. Limiting the pool of candidates leads to less diversity in the business, which can reduce productivity, employee engagement and satisfaction, and retention rates.
How to Avoid Unconscious Bias in the Hiring Process
Thankfully, there are many different ways recruiting departments can work to reduce unconscious hiring bias. We’ve listed eight different strategies here, but it’s also essential to remember that the process of reducing unconscious bias continues with the onboarding and development of your employees.
Make the Commitment
The first step to avoiding unconscious bias in the hiring process is to ensure the whole company is committed to supporting diversity, equality and inclusion. If the business case for increasing under-represented employees needs making, using data can help. Once the whole business understands that diversity is not a tick-box exercise but has real and significant benefits, this can lead to a new company ethos with challenging unconscious bias at its heart.
Identify the Issues
If you think there may be unconscious bias in the hiring process (for example, you have noticed that shortlists for candidates are predominantly white or male), then it is worthwhile to spend time looking at who is making the decisions, how they are being made, and what other factors might be impacting the process. Knowing what is going on in the hiring process can guide where you put your efforts to reduce bias in recruitment.
Set Goals and Share Them
Creating company objectives that actively tackle unconscious bias in the hiring process helps employees focus on changing how they work when they recruit. Monitoring these objectives is essential to ensure they do not become a tick-box exercise, and being transparent about setbacks and progress is also key to creating a culture that values the work that goes into making the change.
Train Recruiting Managers in Unconscious Bias
Providing external unconscious bias training to recruiting managers can significantly reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process. Bringing in someone from outside the company or sending managers to a training centre away from their regular day job can provide a different perspective to the training, improving how it is received. Learning about unconscious bias involves rethinking how we perceive the world and receiving that education in a different way can be a helpful element of the training process.
Create Diverse Hiring Groups
Ensuring that the teams who make the hiring decisions represent a diverse group of people can be a relatively quick and easy way to reduce unconscious bias. For example, adding a woman to a previously male-dominated shortlisting committee can help to encourage the whole group to include more women on the shortlist just because the group’s dynamic has changed.
Rewrite Job Descriptions
Taking the time to rewrite job descriptions so that they use more inclusive language, clearly state how the application process can support those with additional needs and provide general information on how the company works inclusively can make a big difference to how potential candidates view a role and how hiring managers approach the recruitment process. Inclusive job descriptions set the tone for a more inclusive recruitment process. Asking someone from an under-represented group to read over the job description and provide feedback on how it will be received by other candidates is a useful exercise.
Use Blind CVs
Removing any details from the CV that provide information about the applicant’s background can help reduce unconscious hiring biases. When the hiring manager can only see an individual’s experience and skills, decisions are made based on the candidate’s merit rather than other factors.
Standardise the Interview Process
Ensuring that the same process is used to interview all candidates can help to reduce unconscious bias playing a role in the recruitment process because it eliminates the chance of someone unintentionally giving one candidate an advantage over another, for example, introducing an additional question that they know that person will be able to answer. Asking the same questions in the same order, removing any questions that are not directly relevant to the role and using scorecards to compare candidates’ answers logically can all help to make the interview process fairer.
Key Takeaways: Unconscious Bias
- Unconscious bias is a natural part of how our brains work, but it can mean that we make decisions that are not inclusive or supportive of people who are different from us.
- We can use different methods to counter our unconscious bias. Working to understand and eliminate our natural biases needs to be an ongoing, thoughtful, and focussed process.
- Several opportunities exist within the recruiting process to reduce the chance of unconscious bias influencing candidate selection.
