“They’ll fit right in”
It’s Monday morning and you’re checking the applicants for a job you posted last week. There’s over 100 applications waiting to be reviewed. As you begin to work through them, one stands out: they went to the same university as you, and you immediately feel a connection with them.
You begin to imagine them fitting in with the team, and perhaps even catching up with them for a coffee to share university stories.
In the back of your mind, you’ve already decided that they might be a good fit, despite the fact you’ve not even read most of their CV.
This is unconscious bias happening.
What is unconscious bias?
Across the internet, you’ll see similar definitions of unconscious bias
… unconscious favouritism towards or prejudice against people of a particular race, gender, or group that influences one’s actions or perceptions; an instance of this. Cf. implicit bias n.
Oxford English Dictionary
Unconscious (or implicit) bias is a term that describes the associations we hold, outside our conscious awareness and control. Unconscious bias affects everyone.
Imperial College London
In the hiring world, this means the unconscious decisions we make when determining if someone is a good fit for our company and position, based on our own experiences and gut feelings.
The common culprits
Unconscious bias comes in a spectrum of different forms. In time as this blog grows, I’ll deep dive into each of them, but for the time being, here are some of the most common:
🤝 Affinity Bias
Preferring candidates which are similar to you. This could be going to the same university, coming from the same hometown, similar interests, or even just looking like one another.
“They also love hiking? They’ll fit right in with the team!”
By hiring people similar to yourself, you risk ending up with a homogenous workforce – that is, a workforce with similar backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. This can impact innovative solutions and diverse thought.
👼 Halo Effect
Letting one positive characteristic outshine everything else. Some examples of this could be having a prestigious university or well respected previous employer.
“They went to one of our country’s best universities, they must be good”
By focussing on the one attribute, you risk ignoring or being more lenient towards red flags on the CV.
👿 Horn Effect
The opposite of the halo effect. Allowing one negative characteristic to outshine everything else.
“The punctuation on their CV isn’t perfect. This is the one impression they get to show themselves off to me. Do they not care? They’re probably careless with other things too.”
By already making a judgement on the grammar, you risk closing other doors which allows the candidate to shine. Some candidates may not be native English speakers, but are excellent aural communicators. Without allowing them to get to the interview, you never know.
Non-native speakers can bring very unique perspectives to your business challenges, unlocking far more organisational creativity.
⏱️ Confirmation Bias
Seeking things which back up your first impressions. This often goes hand in hand with the halo effect.
“I had a bad feeling about them in the first few minutes, I’ll focus on their weaker answers”.
I remember interviewing a business leader in Manchester who stated that she always knew in the first 2 minutes of an hour interview if she wasn’t going to hire someone. It turned out that she had very little diverse representation within her business.
How does this affect diversity and inclusion?
When your hiring pipeline isn’t designed to account for unconscious bias, it can lead to a homogenous workforce. When people hire those who are similar to themselves, qualified candidates from different backgrounds can end up being excluded.
How can I manage all of this?
At this point, you might be wondering to yourself “Struan, I get it – but I have hundreds of CVs to get through, and I don’t have the time to meticulously go through each application”.
You’re right. As I’ve already said, being aware of these biases doesn’t prevent them from happening. If you quit reading this blog right now, it’s unlikely that your hiring outcomes are going to change at all.
Technology is your friend. More and more applicant tracking systems (ATS) are providing tools for the ethically minded hirer to design an environment where unconscious biases are reduced.
Tools for reducing bias
🦮 Blind Hiring
Blind Hiring is the practice of automatically removing information from a CV which could trigger an unconscious bias. Many applicant tracking systems such as ethical hirer’s own Prisma will automate removing names, universities, addresses and other data points from an application, before revealing them later in the hiring process when they’re needed.
You don’t need someone’s name to review their CV, but it’s certainly helpful to know it just before their first interview.
For more information on blind hiring, check out our blog post.
🤲 Share the Workload
If only one person is screening CVs, it there is a risk that their bias might be influencing who ultimately gets hired. I’ve been a member of teams who have opened up the CV review process to members of the team or department that candidate is joining. This has led to a far wider set of perspectives being considered.
Many applicant tracking systems will allow you to add new users to view the candidates within your hiring workflow – combined with Score Cards (below) this can be a very powerful combination. This works best for an ATS which doesn’t charge you per seat.
🚦 Score Cards
As we’ve seen already in in this post, when decisions are made on gut feelings, this is unconscious decision making at play. By defining upfront what skills and attributes you are looking for, you can then objectively compare them against other candidates.
The Greenhouse ATS has an Scorecard system.
💡 Educate about Bias
Ensuring that your staff are well educated about unconscious bias before being allowed to make decisions can be a great way to ensure you have a shared baseline.
I’ve worked at a company which requires you to complete an internal video playlist before being allowed access to the ATS. This content covered interviewing skills, unconscious biases, as well as guidance on how to effectively use their chosen ATS.
This meant that I understood why we used scorecards. This was also the first time I was made aware of unconscious biases, which led me to having better conversations with the hiring team to continuously improve our processes.
Closing thoughts
Unconscious biases can subtly influence who we end up hiring, but by being aware of them, and choosing to design our hiring pipelines to mitigate these effects, we can significantly decrease the systematic inequality which occurs within our own influence.
At the ethical hirer, our mission is make to help businesses become more transparent, ethical and inclusive in their hiring processes.
If you’ve enjoyed this article, or have found it useful, please share it.
