Unbiased Screening

A vast body of research shows that the hiring process is biased and unfair. Unconscious bias in the hiring process is about racism, ageism, sexism, and seeing persons with disabilities as less worthy of respect and not considered able to contribute and participate, or of less inherent value than others.

Having a team that lacks diversity can suppress effectiveness and have more weaknesses and blind spots than a diverse group. Hiring managers must learn to de-bias their practices and procedures.

And there are steps you can reduce these biases. At Talent Attract, our system will fully support an unbiased selection process using state-of-the-art software, thus enabling a more effective hiring effort, ensuring the right pick and branding the organisations CSR brand.

With an open-minded and data-driven recruitment process, you put facts before "gut feeling" when it comes to finding the absolute most suitable candidates. We do this by having more objective assessments, fewer subjective opinions. The result is open-minded and competency-based recruitment that contributes to increased diversity, innovation and profitability in your workplace.

Companies that focus on diversity at work will create better results, have longer seniority, fewer conflicts and higher employee satisfaction.

If you want to implement a new, cutting-edge hiring policy that is better than your competitors, there are a few things you'll need to know.

1. Rethink and simplify your recruitment process

First, hiring managers need to understand what bias it is all about and its impact on the hiring process and day-to-day business. So, when it comes to bias and hiring, they need to think differently about how they're going through the recruitment process. And to do so, they need to standardise and simplify the process.

2. Create an organisational bias awareness

Provide recruitment consultants and managers and staff in day-to-day operations with education and training on topics – the pitfalls caused by bias and the benefits of having a diverse team. Awareness is the first step towards unravelling unconscious bias because it allows everyone to recognise their own bias and identify ways to eliminate it. The aim is to create an organisational conversation about biases and help spark ideas on the steps that an organisation can take to minimise them.

3. Be aware of subtle bias in the wording of the job ad

Job ads play an essential role in attracting candidates and showing how a company is perceived as a place to work. Consider the overall content and be aware that subtle word choices can substantially impact who actually applies for the job. Research shows that masculine language, including adjectives such as 'ambitious' 'confident', 'competitive', 'determined', 'outspoken', 'persistent and so on can results in women's perception that they would not be part of the work environment. On the other hand, words such as 'collaborative' and 'cooperative' tend to attract more women than men.

4. Go blind when reviewing resumes

The next step is to ensure you focus on your candidate's specific skills, not their marginalised group. The name, age, (dis)ability or even the looks and not skills can actually determine whether a candidate is called in for an interview. These are facts of life. To help you improve your chances of including the most relevant candidates in your interview pool, a blind review will help you uncover the best candidates.  You will most likely stumble over some candidates your unconscious bias usually would have dismissed.

5. Ensure candidate comparability

A Case Challenge can simulate a task that of the functions in the position your hiring for and provides an excellent prediction of future performance and makes candidate comparability a lot easier. Comparing Candidate A to Candidate B while evaluating work sample tests helps calibrate your judgement and gauge how they compare. A skill test forces employers to critically assess the quality of a candidate's work instead of choosing people based on how they look, age, gender, etc.

6. Standardisation of interviews

Research shows that unstructured interviews without defined questions, where the candidate's experience and expertise are meant to unfold organically through conversation, are often unreliable to predict job success.

Structured interviews, where each candidate is asked the same set of defined questions, help minimise bias by allowing the hiring team to focus on factors that directly impact performance. Using an interview scorecard that ranks candidates' answers to each question on a predetermined scale will help the interview to become a third independent data point.