7 Common Forms of Bias And How to Remove Them From Your Hiring Process
To understand how to remove biases from your hiring process we must first define what is bias?
According to Merriam-Webster, bias is an inclination of temperament or outlook, especially a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment; prejudice. Simply put, it’s those snap judgments we make based on our previous experiences and it comes up in our lives every day.
We know bias impacts the decisions people make in the workplace, and data supports that bias negatively impacts certain groups more than others.
One study called Written in Black & White showed how people use confirmation bias to form opinions at work. In this study, Thomas Meyers was a fictional law associate, the study asked 60 law firm partners to view a memorandum written by Meyers. Half were told Meyers was caucasian, the other half were told he was African American. The results? Partners who were told he was White gave an average rating of 4.1 out of 5 while the partners who thought he was Black gave a 3.2 out of 5.
In addition, qualitative comments for the White associate were much more positive. More edits and critical comments on formatting were provided for the Black associate than the White one.
The hiring process is an area where a lot of decision-making has to happen in a short time, so naturally, lots of biases arise. But how do we remove this bias from the hiring process? In this podcast with Employee Cycle’s Bruce Marable, we discuss just that. And I wanted to write this blog to dive further into that.
First, let’s talk about some of the types of bias we see. Here are 7 common types of bias:
Types of bias in hiring
1. Confirmation Bias: The tendency to search for and interpret information in a way that confirms your current opinion. In the Thomas Meyers example, the partners who believed that a Black associate would be a worse writer had no trouble finding more mistakes and giving harsher criticism.
2. Unconscious or Implicit Bias: Underlying attitudes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people, occurs in our brain without us even realizing it. The goal is to identify our unconscious biases in order to stop ourselves from making decisions based on them.
3. Affinity or In-Group Bias: A bias to favor people who are like us or in the same group as us
4. Anchoring Bias: Relying too heavily on one trait when forming an opinion about someone, often the first thing we learn about them (the first impression).
5. Gender Bias: The tendency to favor one gender over another, or view one gender as more capable.
6. Racial Bias: The tendency to favor one race over another, or view one race as more or less capable than another race.
7. Anti-fat Bias: The bias against fat and obese people, believing they are less capable or worthy. Fat people are less likely to be hired, with 85% of hiring managers saying they wouldn’t even consider hiring a fat woman.
This list just scratches the surface. Let’s take a moment, sit down and think about all the ways you have bias and how to negate those feelings while interviewing candidates.
Three steps to eliminating bias:
Here are three steps in the hiring process where bias comes up, and ways to eliminate it by changing the process:
1. Focus on core competencies when creating job postings
When deciding we want to fill a specific role, we often picture the person we imagine ourselves working with. We automatically visualize characteristics and what the person looks like, causing us to select for characteristics that aren’t necessary for the role.
Instead, we should create a job around core competencies. These are the core skills and abilities that are needed to get the job done. Examples of core competencies include:
Strong written communication
Basic Math
Attention to detail
Accounting Knowledge
Teamwork
Goal-setting skills
Each job should have between 4 and 7 core competencies that candidates are rated on. These skills can be assessed throughout the process through application questions, project samples, standard phone screen and interview questions, skills testing, and more.
In addition, eliminating years of experience from the job posting as well as unnecessary degree requirements takes much of the bias out of the process. Years of experience does not predict success on a job, and is a good way to eliminate candidates you view as too old or too young instead of eliminating people who cannot do the job (which should be your goal.)
Lastly, there are many ways we can include biased language on a resume. Check out this list of 10 Ways to eliminate gendered language. You can also use this gender decoder or this one that will tell you what language to eliminate.
2. Go name-free when reviewing resumes
When reading a name on a resume, we often picture the person’s race and gender and make assumptions based on our bias. This is confirmed by the study Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?
To eliminate this bias we recommend using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software that removes all candidates’ names from their resumes. This is called “Blind Hiring”, but when we address our biases we should think about the ableist language we use too. Instead, I call this name-free resume review.
Some ATS that do this include:
If you can’t spend the money on an ATS that does this, one team member can simply mark out the names and other identifiers on resumes before another team member reviews them.
3. Have a diverse interview panel
Utilize core competency rating systems as a great way to eliminate some of the bias from your interviews. Ensure interviewers are properly trained on the rating system and they don’t share their opinions before giving the rating and feedback.
In addition, make sure your interview panels are diverse including people from different races, genders, ages, educational backgrounds, people with disabilities, people from the LGBTQ+ community, and more. The more diverse your hiring panels, the less likely you are to hire people based on affinity or in-group bias.
In order to close the opportunity gap, we have to eliminate the bias in decision-making in the workforce. This applies to all stages of the employee lifecycle, but hiring is a great place to start. To hear me speak more about this, check out the podcast here.
