Removing Unconscious Bias from the Hiring Process

Build a more diverse and talented workforce by removing unconscious bias from your hiring.

What is unconscious bias?

Unconscious bias in recruitment is an issue that deserves more attention, especially as workplaces aim to increase diversity and inclusion. It’s defined as the unintentional biases we develop towards individuals because of their race, gender, age, appearance or cultural background. These associations develop over a lifetime through exposure to direct and indirect messages.

In the context of recruitment, it can lead to hiring managers showing preferences for candidates based on factors unrelated to their qualifications, experience or skillset. In order to make the best decision for the business and the fairest decision for employees, it’s important to recognise and eliminate these biases wherever possible.

Types of unconscious bias

So how do we avoid falling into these traps? First, we have to understand the various different kinds of biases that may exist and how they can affect our judgement.

• Affinity bias – The tendency to connect with people who share similar interests, experiences and backgrounds to us.
• Ageism – Prejudice or stereotyping based on age. This often negatively impacts older individuals in the workplace.
• Anchor bias – Relying too heavily on one trait or piece of information when making decisions. This can cause interviewers to draw quick judgements.
• Attribution bias – Attributing someone’s behaviour or success to internal or external factors based on superficial characteristics. For example, attributing a mistake by a female employee to her gender.
• Authority bias – The tendency to value input from authority figures, even if it goes against logic or data. This could lead to discounting valid input from more junior team members.
• Beauty bias – Judging people’s competence or skills based on their perceived attractiveness.
• Confirmation bias – Seeking out or interpreting information that confirms your existing beliefs or assumptions. This can cause interviewers to favour candidates similar to themselves.
• Conformity bias – The urge to conform to the majority opinions or behaviours of a group. This can lead to ‘groupthink’, instead of evaluating candidates objectively.
• Contrast effect – When comparing two people, their differences seem bigger than they are. This can skew interviewers’ perceptions.
• Gender bias – Prejudice or stereotyping based on gender. Women often face unconscious bias in historically male-dominated fields.
• Halo effect – When positive attributes of a person cast a ‘halo’ and influence perceptions of their other, unrelated attributes. For example, thinking attractive candidates are more competent.
• Height bias – Associating height with leadership ability or competence, without merit or evidence.
• Horn effect – The opposite of the halo effect, when one negative trait casts a person in a completely negative light.
• Name bias – Judging someone’s skills or abilities based on associations with their name and perceived ethnic background.
• Nonverbal bias – Reactions to someone’s body language, accent, tone of voice or gestures. This could cause interviewers to form impressions unrelated to job qualifications.
• Overconfidence bias – People tend to overestimate their abilities. This can cause managers to favour their own qualitative assessments over more objective criteria.

The importance of removing unconscious bias

Unconscious bias in hiring can have significant negative implications for both individuals and organisations, for a few key reasons:

• Missing the best candidates – Unconscious bias can result in the best candidates being overlooked because they don’t fit the interviewee’s preconceived biases. By removing unconscious bias, organisations can ensure that all candidates have an equal opportunity to showcase their skills and potential.
• Diversity and inclusion – Businesses are under increasing pressure from their customers and workforces to demonstrate progress in the diversity and inclusion space. Unconscious bias can hinder these efforts, by ensuring only candidates from a certain background are successful.
• Improved performance: Most importantly, diversity achieves better productivity and results. In fact, recent research from McKinsey suggests that the most diverse businesses had a 39% greater likelihood of financially outperforming the competition.

8 strategies to reduce unconscious bias in your business

There are many different reasons why unconscious bias can occur. It’s important, therefore, to adopt a multi-pronged approach to ensure the best chance of eliminating this issue. Here are some of the best strategies to include:

1. Admit that implicit bias exists

The first place to start is by understanding that unconscious bias exists in even the most pro-diversity businesses. Research from LinkedIn suggests that 81% of founders say diversity enhances creativity and innovation and 63% say a diverse workforce provides greater access to talent. Yet 96% of hiring recruiters think that unconscious bias is a problem in the recruitment process.

The clue here is in the name: Unconscious bias can occur even among recruiters and managers who value diversity. The first step to overcoming this challenge, therefore, is to admit that unconscious bias can be present in anybody. Then, you can take a practical and judgement-free approach to mitigating it.

2. Offer bias training

Offering unconscious bias training can help hiring teams recognise bias and implement tools to minimise it. There are many different ways to provide this training, from specialist courses to online resources, remote webinars/classes and more.

An effective training programme should explain:

• Common forms of unconscious bias.
• How bias impacts hiring.
• Steps to mitigate bias.

Ideally, anybody who’s going to be involved in an interviewing process should go through some form of bias training, including recruitment/ HR teams and direct line managers. This doesn’t have to be expensive. Indeed, there are plenty of free online resources that can recap the basics of diversity awareness and training.

Read more: How to Identify Employee Training Needs

3. Create a structured interview process

Unstructured interviews can lead to unconscious bias. Too often, interviewers end up relying on intangible impressions and gut feelings instead of objective criteria. This can lead to highly qualified and capable candidates missing out because they just ‘don’t feel right’.

Instead, it’s important to develop a set of criteria against which all candidates can be objectively judged. This makes it easier to spot when qualified candidates aren’t being selected. It also makes it difficult for managers to justify hiring candidates who clearly aren’t the best fit for the job.

Steps to structuring interviews include:

• Develop an objective set of criteria for all candidates, ideally something that can be scored and reported. This creates transparency and accountability on all sides.
• Create a standardised set of questions to ask all interviewees. Of course, there can and should be variation depending on the flow of the conversation and the role in question. But having a few baseline questions can give you a few objective comparison points. This makes it easier to compare like-for-like, while reducing more subjective points of comparison.
• Ensure candidates are interviewed and scored by multiple employees, ideally from different departments and backgrounds. This helps balance disproportionate bias from any one individual.

4. Implement anonymous CV screening

Another helpful step here can be to remove identifying information like names, photos and demographic details from CVs and applications. This helps interviewers focus on more relevant and less subjective criteria.

There are multiple ways to do this. Recruitment software tools often include an option to remove this information before applications are screened. Alternatively, you can get a colleague who’s not involved in the hiring process to go through and remove them. This levels the playing field during initial CV assessments.

5. Evaluate sourcing and selection criteria

It can also be helpful to collect information on candidate sourcing and selection rates across various demographic groups. This can help you identify if there are any obvious places where unconscious bias may be occurring.

Useful metrics here could include:

• Sourcing rates.
• Interview rates.
• Candidate assessment.
• Length of time roles remain unfilled.

Compare this data before and after implementing bias reduction initiatives. If certain groups see improved trajectories, your efforts may be paying off.

6. Review job qualifications

It can be easy for interviewers to assume that only candidates with a specific background, qualification or experience are suitable for the role. Often, that’s the same background the interviewer themself came from – a great example of the confirmation bias we described above.

Sometimes, interviewers might expect to see a set number of years’ experience, specific skills, degrees or educational credentials. While these can be helpful differentiators, they can also create a narrow talent pool that only ever fields the same types of candidates.

If you’re still struggling to diversify your workforce, re-evaluating these preconceptions can be a helpful place to start.

7. Create a foundation of trust

Building trust, accountability and collaboration is an essential part of reducing bias. If people don’t feel comfortable talking about bias, you’ll struggle to effectively tackle it as an organisation.

Programmes focused on communication, empathy and conflict resolution help create an environment where people feel comfortable addressing bias. With open dialogue, companies can uncover issues and work to resolve them.

8. Leverage diverse referral networks

Research from the University of Melbourne shows that “bias can hinder effective and inclusive recruitment and selection.” The first step to overcoming unconscious bias is acknowledging that it’s present. Even with AI and algorithms, human bias can still impact hiring decisions. Companies must recognise how implicit bias could influence their processes beReferrals often yield candidates similar to existing teams. It can be helpful, therefore, to diversify the networks you’re relying on to source candidates. A great way to start could be to proactively source referrals from employee resource groups, conferences and networks focused on less represented groups in your field.

Casting a wide net through multiple channels allows hiring managers to discover qualified, diverse candidates they may have otherwise overlooked.fore they can take steps to address it.

How HSBC successfully reduced unconscious bias

HSBC recognised the importance of diversity and inclusion and implemented various initiatives to address bias in their hiring processes. This multi-step programme involved an insight survey, an initial workshop, individual action points for hiring managers and an ongoing review.

The initiative has reported significant improvements in leaders championing diversity and women being promoted across the organisation.

How to get it right: Effective diversity in action

Overcoming unconscious bias in hiring doesn’t happen suddenly. But the steps we explained above can go a long way to removing the dangers of unconscious bias and building more diverse teams.

Companies can hire more diverse talent by addressing unconscious bias, streamlining their hiring process and tracking their progress. The result is a smarter, more innovative workforce ready to drive the business forward.