6 Ways to reduce Recruitment Bias in your hiring process

With International Women’s Day being last week it’s important for businesses to understand exactly what recruitment bias is and how they can avoid it.

What is recruitment bias?

Not sure what ‘Recruitment Bias’ even means? Well don’t worry we’ve got you covered

You might hear the term unconscious bias which is defined as being prejudice or discriminatory against a thing, person, or group.

When we apply unconscious bias to the recruitment process you begin to understand why this can cause issues for potential candidates.

If unconscious recruitment bias is present in the hiring process, then candidates might be treated unfairly against others solely based on their background and not on their ability to do the job.

3 Recruitment Bias do’s

1. Experiment with the wording in your job description

Understand what stereotypically gendered words are and replace them with something more neutral.

For example using Business Person instead of Businessman or Businesswomen.

2. Give likeability a numerical score

Bias towards natural chemistry is one to watch, so give it a score to make it more controllable.

Ask yourself, does it matter whether you like the person you hire? And how important is it to you? If you do care about it, rate your candidate as you would on their other skills during the interview.

3. Conduct a work sample test

Calibrate your judgement to see how Candidate A compares to Candidate B. Asking candidates to solve work-related problems or partake in a skill test, yields important insights.

A skill test forces employers to critique the quality of a candidate’s work versus unconsciously judging them based on appearance, gender, age and even personality.

3 Recruitment Bias don’ts

1. Neglect to provide training

Understand what hiring prejudices you might have and provide awareness training for your workers.

Awareness training allows everyone involved in the hiring process to understand what hiring prejudices are and how they can influence decision making.

This allows people to identify their own biases and actively start altering their behaviour and judgement accordingly

2. Rely on structure interviews

Standardise interviews and ask defined questions. This will help you to focus on factors that directly impact on performance.

Ask open and closed question to get the most out of your candidates response.

Make sure that you clarify the focus and objective of the interview. in other words, what is the focus of the interview and what are your goals?

3. Avoid setting diversity goals

Review every element on your recruitment process to see a sustainable impact on diversity.

Understand what areas you need to work on, where you want your company to be and what you want to do well as a business.