Hiring bias, conscious or unconscious, can hurt companies’ innovation, diversity, and expose legal risk. In this week’s blog, we divulge into discussion around what hiring bias looks like, and how to avoid it while building out your team.

What is Hiring Bias?

There are various versions of bias that can be involved in the hiring process. The general definition of hiring bias is when personal preferences, prejudices, or stereotypes, rather than objective qualifications, influence a hiring decision.

Different forms of hiring bias include:

• Affinity Bias: Preferring candidates similar to you.
  • “You went to Penn State? So did I! I knew I liked you the best.”
• Confirmation Bias: Interpreting interview answers in ways that confirm your first impression.
  • You really vibed with the interviewing candidate in the first 5 minutes of the interview, they complimented your shirt. Because you immediately have a good feeling about this candidate, you find yourself ignoring or brushing off red flags that arise throughout the interview.
• Appearance Bias: Judging based on a candidate’s photo, perceived ethnicity, or name.
  • You schedule a virtual interview with Erica, when Erica joins the call you find out she is a woman of color. You thought, because her name is Erica, that she would be a white woman. This changes your thoughts on the interview.
• Gender Bias: Assuming certain roles fit men or women better.
  • You’re an owner of a construction company. When hiring, you tend to discredit any female applicants, without looking at their qualifications, simply because you believe “construction is a man’s job”.
• Age Bias: Favoring younger or older candidates based on stereotypes.
  • You’re hiring for an AI manager for your tech firm. You told your recruiters to only look for younger talent, because you believe older candidates are not good with technology.

The 4 Steps to Avoid Hiring Bias

To build an equitable and efficient team, ensuring it includes a diverse range of perspectives is key. Taking the necessary steps to avoid bias during the hiring and screening process will help to build that team.

1. Presenting Inclusive Job Descriptions & Application Processes

• Focus on skills and outcomes, not personality traits.
• Limit unnecessary requirements such as non-essential degrees or certifications, if it’s an entry level position not requiring previous experience.
• Engaging HR companies like Campbell HR to spot bias in postings and assist in the development of descriptions.
• Limiting the number of questions and forms to fill out prior to interviews during the application process.

2. Use Standardized Interviews

• Develop consistent interview questions for each candidate.
• Implement scoring rubrics to evaluate candidates on the same criteria.
• Avoiding gut feeling assessments, sticking to quantitative information.
• Ensuring your hiring team are trained on behavioral and situational interviewing techniques.

3. Diversifying Hiring Team

• Ensure interview and hiring team are made up of team members with different backgrounds, at different levels within the company, in different departments.
• This avoids the risk of groupthink and increases fairness in evaluation.

4. Relying on Data, Not Assumptions

• Track hiring metrics like candidate demographics, interview-to-offer ratios, and retention.
• Regularly review data and identify patterns of bias, and adjust practices where disparities appear.

Avoiding hiring bias is not a one-time initiative, but a continuous commitment. Organizatios that invest in equitable hiring build more innovative and high-performing teams. Begin your unconscious-bias training or engage Campbell HR in hiring for your organization today by contacting us at info@campbell-hr.com.