What They Are and How They Affect Your Organization

When it comes to recruitment, the reason why you hire a specific candidate matters as much as who and how you recruit. What’s more, good intentions don’t always lead to a more diverse workforce. Diversity initiatives and changes in process cannot improve the workforce diversity when the end result lies within the hands of hiring managers who fail to address their own bias.

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Leaving unconscious hiring bias unaddressed will only result in a situation where underrepresented communities continue to be discriminated against in the hiring process. Before trying to find a way to solve this problem, organizations need to accept that humans are pre-loaded with instincts to align with people similar to us and reject those who are different.

Unlearning these behaviors demands hiring managers to move from a mindset where they believe they are doing all they can to build diverse teams, to an open-minded nature where they can identify, challenge, and change their personal, albeit unconscious biases.

Here’s what HR managers need to know about unconscious hiring biases before they wage war against them.

What is Hiring Bias?

Bias in recruitment is the sometimes unconscious process where interviewers use their assumptions to “fill the gaps” about a candidate’s behavior. When decision-makers let hiring bias to override their impartial judgments, it results in negative implications. What’s worse, hiring managers end up drawing erroneous conclusions about interviewees and inadvertently reject qualified candidates.

For example, hiring managers may pass over a middle-aged woman for a role that requires a lot of travel because they assume she has kids and won’t want to be away from home. Or they may pass on a qualified black or latinx candidate for an account manager role, assuming that most of their white clients will be more comfortable with someone who looks like them.   

Why is it important to eliminate hiring bias?​

In order to diversify their workforce, organizations need to get a better understanding of unconscious bias in the hiring process and its impact. Failing to do so will not only result in negative implications but also reinforce popular stereotypes.

Hiring bias can,

• Hamper an organization’s potential to achieve diversity
• Leave an impact on mentoring and promotion
• Prevent women and other historically oppressed groups from getting equal opportunities in their careers
• Make interviewers expect a lot more from specific groups of people
• Let employers pay varying kinds of attention to different people
• Lead managers to hire the same kind of people over and over again

What are the different types of hiring bias?

Often, hiring managers are lulled into a false sense of security by work done in the analysis of a potential candidate. What they don’t realize is the underlying bias in the process, and they struggle to understand the impact these biases can have on their decision-making process.

Listed below are eight of the most common hiring biases,

1. The bandwagon effect

If several interviewers favor a specific candidate, conformity bias can drive the entire team to select that specific person despite the fact that better alternatives exist. The tendency of people to “hop on the bandwagon” irrespective of underlying evidence is called the bandwagon effect.

2. Anchoring bias

Hiring managers rely too much or anchor on to the first piece of information they acquired about a candidate (such as their race or gender) and interpret everything through that filter.  

3. The horn/halo effect

The interviewer tends to generalize and interpret the candidate’s behavior as positive (halo) or negative (horn) across all situations. A candidate who is physically attractive, thin, or who matches the race/gender of the manager might have previous activities excused (like job-hopping), while those with less desirable physical qualities or from other communities might have negative explanations imposed on even positive achievements.  

4. Affinity bias

This is the tendency to select a person who is similar to the recruiters, either culturally or socially. The similarity and comfort with the candidate tend to override the assessment of that person’s ability and skills to perform the job. 

5. Confirmation bias

This is the behavior of a recruiter to make an initial judgment and then seek evidence to back that up. When a candidate projects confidence and gives away a talented aura, recruiters may unconsciously focus on the candidate’s positive attributes and dismiss negative signals.

6. Biased recall

This is the inclination to commit memory errors that affirm with pre-existing stereotypes and prejudices, even when presented with contradictory facts like test scores. 

7. Exposure bias

This is the tendency to prefer a specific candidate just because team members have been exposed to a similar candidate before. The sense of familiarity overrides other factors and ensures acceptance. 

8. Performance bias

This is the situation where interviewers become so enamored with a candidate’s performance and dismiss other crucial factors like skill set and experience required to fulfill a job.

How to eliminate unconscious bias in your hiring process? 

Most hiring decisions are taken using little information as the process involves assessing candidates who are typically complete strangers. CVs, cover letters, and work samples can only offer an overview of a candidate’s personality and skills. As a result, there is a chance for bias to sneak in and influence a decision-maker even before his/her first encounter with the candidate.

Also, hiring involves quick decisions and time-sensitive performance. These circumstances tend to have a strong influence on a person’s perception and impression, eventually impacting the decision as well. Listed below are some steadfast rules HR practitioners can use to reduce bias in their hiring process,

• Accept that you are subject to bias and try to recognize it in your actions
• Devise a consistent and structured hiring process 
• Identify where bias kicks in and how it manifests itself
• Use decision aids like “flip it to test” and psychometrics
• Ensure that all candidates are objectively assessed on their skillset
• Use technological aids like Applicant tracking system and recruitment suites to make informed decisions

Using recruitment software to reduce unconscious bias

The traditional interview process is not only a poor predictor of candidate performance but also particularly vulnerable to bias. Intuition-based interviews are rather subjective and more aligned with personal preferences. While an interviewer’s gut feeling might seem right, it can also make them favor people like themselves (affirmation bias) and charming candidates (halo effect), or reject someone for traits they don’t possess (bias recall).

Worst of all, most hiring managers tend to believe that they are not affected by bias like others. When HR leaders staunchly believe that they can hire the best talent without any process or technology aid with just their experience and intuition, bias creeps in and leaves a negative effect on critical hiring decisions.

After realizing the fact that biases are a social virus rather than being an individual perception, HR managers need to take efforts to identify and remove biases that are deeply embedded within their organizational culture and practices. Technological solutions like hiring software and ATS can come in handy during this process.

Predictive algorithms in modern recruitment software can remove inaccurate, unrepresentative, and biased data that are otherwise undetectable. Empowered with AI and machine learning recruitment automation process can not only debias your hiring but also perform challenging recruitment activities in every step of the recruitment funnel.

What’s more, a talent acquisition system can come up with interview questions that solely focus on the specific role and responsibilities instead of individual bias that is directed towards the candidate. Rather than forcing time-constrained HR leaders to implement processes and shrink them from the start, automation can assess the entire talent pipeline in a short span of time.

Understand how reducing bias can benefit your business

A diverse, more inclusive workplace means a smarter, more innovative environment that promotes critical thinking. In addition to the overall organizational benefits, individuals can garner a lot of benefits by working with peers from a variety of backgrounds. While streamlined processes and recruitment software can help HR managers reduce bias, it will not replace them.

It is the responsibility of HR leaders to be more transparent and educate other stakeholders about bias in their recruitment process. They also need to take active steps to detect and remove hiring bias. Without an ideal level of transparency and regulatory measures, there is no practical way to protect job seekers from bias curses and hold responsible people accountable.