12 Effective Ways to Reduce Unconscious Bias in the Hiring Process

Let’s accept there, unconscious bias seeps in whether you like it or not. 

Unconscious bias can occur in hiring for a variety of reasons. One factor is that many hiring decisions are based on subjective evaluations, such as evaluating a candidate's personality, communication style, or "fit" with the team. These types of evaluations can be particularly susceptible to unconscious biases because they often involve more intuitive, gut-level judgments that are influenced by preconceived notions and stereotypes. 

Another factor is that the hiring process is often influenced by factors such as a candidate's name, education, or work experience, which can signal certain characteristics or stereotypes. For example, research has shown that candidates with "white-sounding" names are more likely to be called back for interviews than those with "ethnic-sounding" names, even when their resumes are otherwise identical. So, how to tackle unconscious bias in hiring process? The first step is to learn what unconscious bias really is, and the different ways it manifests.  

What is Unconscious Bias? 

According to Harvard Business School, unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias, is a mental process that reinforces our stereotypes. In our conscious sense, we would deem such behavior inappropriate.  

Recruiters across the world are subject to unconscious bias. So much so that 85% to 97% of recruiters rely on intuition while processing applications.  

For organizations, tackling unconscious bias in the recruiting process is a crucial issue, as it can affect diversity in the organization and employee productivity.  

The 2019 State of Inclusion report by Deloitte confirmed this. According to the report, 84% of participants said that bias impacted them negatively. Further, 74% of participants noted that bias affected workplace engagement.  

Unconscious biases can manifest in various forms, including but not limited to: 

• Gender bias: When individuals are more likely to hire or promote people of a certain gender over the other, often based on stereotypes or assumptions about their abilities or suitability for a particular role. 
• Racial or ethnic bias: When individuals show favoritism or discrimination towards certain racial or ethnic groups, often based on stereotypes or assumptions about their capabilities, culture, or background. 
• Age bias: When individuals show favoritism or discrimination towards people of a certain age group, often based on stereotypes or assumptions about their abilities or suitability for a particular role. 
• Confirmation bias: When individuals are more likely to favor candidates who share similar backgrounds, experiences, or perspectives, and overlook those who are different. 

Now, you must be wondering how to reduce bias in the hiring process. Here are 12 effective ways for removing unconscious bias in recruitment that you must follow.

#1. Focus on Skills-Based Hiring

Some types of bias in hiring are:  

•   Halo effect 
•   Confirmation bias 
•   Affinity bias 
•   Horn effect 
•   Overconfidence bias 
•   Conformity bias 
•   Leniency effect 
•   Contrast effect 

Many of these biases play out during the resume screening and interview stage, curtailing an organization’s ability to hire the best talent. 

The demographics, the recruiter’s intuition, and other stereotypes make the recruitment process less effective. The organization will lack a diverse workforce which diminishes productivity. 

The best way to avoid unconscious bias in hiring is by focusing on skills-based hiring. Assessing the skills required for the job role enables recruiters to filter for suitable candidates.  

Software programs like iMocha are adept at making it easy for HR teams to reduce bias and focus on the candidate's core competencies for a job role. Its objective skills-based assessment helps recruiters evaluate candidates thoroughly for requisite skill sets. 

iMocha also grades candidates’ performances and benchmarks them to industry standards helping recruiters in diversity hiring. 

Plus, iMocha’s powerful talent analytics give detailed insights on candidate skill proficiencies and enables recruiters to look into the entire recruitment funnel for better decision-making.

#2.Remove Demographic Details from the Resume

As humans, we tend to favor people with similar traits as us. 

The place the interviewee came from, the school or college they have studied at, or the personality traits they share with the recruiters create implicit bias in the hiring process. This is called affinity bias in recruitment.  

Unfortunately, affinity bias is the most common bias affecting recruiters' behavior. Resumes are the first place where affinity bias plays out. The demographic details in resumes unconsciously affect the decision-making of hiring managers.  

Case in point: Candidates with names sounding Chinese, Pakistani, or Indian are 28% less likely to be called for an interview.  

Blinding demographic details from a resume is thus the best way to tackle unconscious bias in the hiring process. HR managers can use hiring technologies like iMocha to mask out demographic details from resumes.  

Recruiters can perform blind hiring by masking age, gender, place of origin, name, GPA, and other demographic details to make the hiring process more objective with iMocha’s talent acquisition tool. 

The HR managers can focus on values, skills, leadership qualities, the organization’s cultural fit, and core competencies in a candidate instead. 

#3.Discuss the Value of Diversity Throughout the Organization

Some types of bias in recruitment, like confirmation bias, beauty bias, overconfidence bias, authority bias, and expectation anchor bias, often come from within the organization, which can curtail diversity.  

Unaware of these, leaders in an organization propagate them. Empowering leaders to identify their inclinations would be the first step in reducing biases and promoting diversity. 

Educate how diverse opinions and people from different backgrounds can generate ideas and solve problems. 

The organization can carry out discussions on the value of diversity throughout the employee chain. Include such discussions in regular meetings to make employees understand how a diverse and inclusive workforce benefits all. 

Discussions must be held on how diversity fosters creativity, gives space to grow careers, boosts cooperation within the organization, and leads to cumulative benefits that everyone enjoys from the organization's growth.

#4.Create a Standardized Interview Process

Often, job interviews are unstructured and waver inconsistently. In unstructured interviews, undefined questions lead to unwarranted conversations based on the unconscious biases of recruiters.  

Candidates find that such non-standardized interviewing hinders their ability to tell their story for the role fit, and companies lose the best talent for hire. 

Organizations can overcome unconscious bias in hiring by creating standardized interviews. In essence, a standardized interview has the same questions for every candidate asked in the same order.  

According to Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino, standardized interviews reduce unconscious bias by shifting the focus to factors that impact performance. 

• Create interview questions that align directly with the job role and avoid unneeded questions that can bring up biases 
• Set up a cross-functional interview team for the purpose.  
• Creating interview scorecards on candidates’ performances on each response will help recruiters objectively select a candidate.  

Note: iMocha’s recruitment tool does exactly this. It delivers intelligent talent analytics that gives recruiters actionable insights on candidates. 

From allowing recruiters to standardize the interview to analyzing the responses and reporting, the tool aids in reducing unconscious bias in hiring process.   

#5.Create training programs to reduce bias in hiring process

Not everyone in the organization is aware of their unconscious biases. Making recruiters self-aware of their prejudices is thus an essential part of eliminating unconscious bias in hiring practices.  

Professor Gino stresses awareness training. She believes that it allows employees to recognize that everyone possesses biases, and identifying them at the individual level is the crucial first step. 

An organization can conduct training programs and run courses or individual coaching sessions to eliminate implicit biases in employees. It can undertake an organizational-level conversation and seek steps to mitigate biases.

#6.Avoid Using Biased Terms in Your Job Descriptions

Job listings play an important role in bringing a diverse talent pool. They act as an initial filter for the organizations and help candidates make an opinion on the brand. 

Specific terms in job descriptions can attract or repel talent.  

Research shows that masculine words like “competitive,” “leader,” etc., in job advertisements make candidates perceive the jobs to be male-dominated.  

Female candidates are less likely to apply for such jobs. Similarly, "cooperative" and "collaborative" tend to attract women.  

Recruiters can unconsciously use stereotypical terms in job descriptions which can hurt an organization’s talent diversity. It is thus essential to use appropriate language in job advertisements.  

A software tool like iMocha can counter unconscious bias by highlighting stereotypical words. HR managers can replace the terms with neutral ones or use inclusive language to strike a balance. 

#7.Adhere to the Organization’s Diversity Goals

The best way to avoid unconscious bias in recruiting is to first set diversity goals for the organization. Define what diversity means for your company and how it will help everyone in the organization. 

Identify what gender, ethnicity, and age groups are underrepresented in the company. Create metrics for hiring candidates from these groups in the recruitment process.  

Remember, these goals need to be changed constantly for the optimal representation of diverse groups in the organization.  

Professor Gino suggests that leaders must keep track of their performance against diversity goals after each hiring process. This way, diversity and equality always stay on top of the recruiters’ minds before hiring.

#8.Identify Implicit Bias in the Organization

How to reduce bias in the hiring process? First, admit that there is implicit bias within the organization. Without this realization, one cannot tame the bias that creeps into the recruiting process. 

One of the most common unconscious biases in recruitment examples involves HR managers not considering candidates for interviews if they cannot find them online. 

In fact, a survey shows that 41% of employers do this. It's an unconscious bias where recruiters believe that being online or on social media means the potential candidate is there too.  

Another example involves gender stereotyping, where female employees are marginalized. There are ways to identify and curb such bias towards women in an organization.  

This brings to light the organization's cultural systems, policies, and practices. Once you admit the presence of implicit bias, take steps to reduce biases by changing the mindsets and operations followed in the organization. 

#9.Make Data-Driven Decisions at Every Stage of the Hiring Process

Setting up the hiring process based on data is an objective way to hire talent. Data-driven recruiting improves decision-making based on tangible facts rather than unconscious bias.  

It helps increase diversity in the recruiting pool, optimizes recruiting based on key metrics, and improves the quality of the hiring process. 

Recruitment technology like iMocha collects, analyzes, and reports every bit of data for objective assessment of the candidates. It leaves no room for implicit biases of the recruiting team. 

From concealing candidates’ demographic information to conducting job assessment tests based on scientific methodology, iMocha’s talent acquisition tool is free of biases.  

It provides every bit of data collected through the recruitment process to the HR managers to assess candidates for selection and job performance. 

#10.Create a Work Culture that Promotes Diversity

A work culture that is diverse and inclusive makes employees feel valued. Being so, they work productively and responsibly. Diversity and inclusion can be brought about with simple efforts.  

By engaging with a diversified workforce, individuals will be exposed to different ideas, cultures, expressions, thought processes, and experiences that gradually eliminate implicit bias in the organization. 

For a work culture that promotes diversity and reduces unconscious bias in hiring: 

• Start from the top: Educate your top leaders and managers on the benefits of diversity. Empower them with the skills necessary to nurture diverse teams.  
• Cultivate open-mindedness: Employees must feel free to share their ideas. Reporting systems within the organization must be open for employees to voice their concerns. Also, implement a positive feedback mechanism that allows leaders to act.  
• Employee support: Employees need moral guidance from supervisors and should have access to employee resource groups (ERGS), showing that the organization cares for their growth.  
• Effective communication and follow-through: Clearly state the organization’s diversity policies throughout the recruitment process to performance evaluations. Make sure that everyone in the organization follows through. 

#11.Select Hiring Tools that Eliminate Unconscious Bias in Hiring Practices

Technology, especially AI-based hiring tools, has become a great leveler in removing unconscious bias in recruitment.  

These tools: 

• Pre-screen candidates 
• Screen resumes 
• Create automated assessments based on the skills required for the job 
• Automate interview scheduling 
• Accurately assess candidates for the set benchmarks 

...and do a lot more, leaving little for human intervention, thereby reducing implicit biases.  

Diversity Hiring tools also expand the recruitment process for a broader talent pool, measure specific KPIs, and select the right candidate for the job.  

Driven by objective data, hiring tools give recruiters flexibility in improving candidate sourcing, posting efficient job descriptions, reference follow-ups, and more.  

Plus, hiring tools provide an excellent recruitment experience for candidates with accurate reporting on the selection process. 

iMocha is a perfect example of such an AI-powered hiring tool. It helps recruit candidates for a job role based on skills and capabilities, delivering bias-free results.  

Intuitive data analytics reporting helps recruiters make decisions without biases. iMocha’s capabilities enable recruiting teams to widen the talent pool, and their organizations increase employee diversity.  

Learn how Gett's George Nichkov designed a process to make data-driven, unbiased hiring decisions using iMocha through this case study 

#12.Empowering Leaders' Mindset Toward Removing Biases

Authority bias is a common type of implicit bias visible in organizations. It's the tendency to believe in authority figures and follow their instructions blindly. Here, the implicit biases of the authority figure are carried with the subordinates.  

In a recruitment team, biases could easily creep in, impacting organizational diversity. This is why sensitizing the leadership over unconscious biases and empowering them to remove them is critical.  

CEOs and senior executives must assess their mindsets and belief systems. Once they admit to their prejudices, they will constantly check for biases in their decisions.  

Self-awareness training proposed by Professor Gino is definitely helpful for top leadership. It helps them come out of their comfort zones and make themselves accommodative towards a diverse workspace. 

Empowering the leaders to work in diverse teams with members from different backgrounds will give them a first-hand experience of diversity and the need to remove their biases. 

Conclusion 

Unconscious bias in hiring practices must be dealt with firmly. Biased recruiting leads to hiring less diverse teams with low creative and productive potential. Eventually, organizations will lose out on revenue. 

Diversity is essential in creating an organization that fosters problem-solving, innovation, and strategic planning. Statistics even suggest that talented candidates seek diverse work environments.   

From using technological solutions to developing diversity-friendly work cultures, the ways mentioned above will enable your organization to reduce implicit bias in the hiring process.  

FAQs

1.How to remove unconscious bias in recruitment process?

• Create neutral job descriptions that keep from repelling candidates of any gender 
• Make sure demographic details are blinded in resumes for objective hiring  
• Identify the “musts” for the job role by convening multiple interviewers 
• Conduct skills-based assessments and grade candidates’ performance 
• Make data-driven decisions instead of going by intuition 
• Follow through with the organization’s diversity goals 
• Conduct structured interviews 

2. What is the best way to reduce bias?

The best way to avoid bias is to reduce the time of human involvement in the recruiting process. AI-based software tools like iMocha can deliver a bias-free recruitment process which is advantageous for its cost reductions, time savings, and providing a large talent pool.  

From creating attractive job descriptions to conducting assessments and scheduling interviews, hiring tools reduce human bias to be negligible.  

However, accepting the existence of implicit bias within the organization will lead you to find effective solutions to reduce bias.  

Altering the company’s culture to become more inclusive, promoting awareness programs, sensitizing the workforce, creating an open-minded environment, etc., all help employees become less prejudicial and more accepting of diverse views. Read on to this blog to know 8 ways talent acquisition team can drive diversity hiring.

3.How do you reduce bias in an interview?

Conduct structured interviews where every candidate will answer the same questions. Structured interviews enable candidates to showcase their qualifications and create fairness in interviewing.  

Grade each candidate's responses against a benchmark for bias-free hiring.  

For preparing interview questions, we recommend convening multiple interviewers from across departments for a bias-free interview. 

Moreover, the interview questions must focus on the skills and competencies required for the job. Refrain from including any questions that may bring up bias.