Perfecting your hiring process to reduce bias

The performance of any organisation often comes down to having the right people in the right job, which makes having an effective hiring process paramount.

With conscious and unconscious biases preventing organisations from hiring the best possible people, removing them is crucial to editing your hiring process and preventing employers from losing out on talented employees.

It is rarely a simple undertaking, but for the wellbeing of any organisation and its employees, it is essential.

Bias in the hiring process

Having conducted extensive research into diversity in the workplace, Monash University Department of Economics Professor Andreas Leibbrandt said it was undeniable that there were biases to be found in the hiring processes of many organisations – biases that frequently locked qualified workers out of positions they could do perfectly.

“I have conducted several large field experiments in Australia and the US, which reveal significant bias in the hiring and recruitment process,” he said.

“These biases are large and disadvantage minorities such as non-white people in leadership positions and women in tech.

“Substantial evidence bias exists in the first stages of hiring – in particular, the screening stage where assessments are fast.

“There is much less evidence on biases in later stages, but the existing evidence suggests they are prevalent in all recruitment stages, albeit more difficult to detect later in the recruitment stage.”

Encountering bias as you go through recruitment can be incredibly discouraging for workers in minority groups but they are far from the only people impacted by imperfect hiring processes.

Gerard Daniels Partner Jennifer Grove said a fairer and more bias-free hiring process could aid both the employee and the organisation.

“It is very hard to get a diverse workforce without a hiring process that is as bias-free as possible,” she said.

“A diverse workforce brings collaboration, innovation and trust – all things which contribute to greater productivity and performance.

“Diverse workforces mean you get fresh approaches and make open communication easier.

“Bias in a hiring process means you only hire a certain type of person, so you get a lot of people with similar lenses, which clouds the potential of innovation and ideas – something all workplaces need."

“Workforces are competitive and without innovation and fresh ideas, organisations can be at risk of not operating at their best.

“So, endeavouring to reduce biases – and it does take strategies – can negate its impact.”

How to reduce bias

Ms Grove said bias could hinder recruitment at any stage of the process, so there were several methods to find and eliminate hidden biases.

“Graduate processes run by large organisations utilise skills-based assessments, which might have blind applications,” she said.

“Look at your job advertisements to make sure the language focuses on the job itself and less on cliches.

“Use skill-based matrixes to shortlist candidates to ensure you focus on the skills and not the perceptions of people.

“Have panels that involve a broad group.

“Some of the strategies can be time-consuming but it is worth it.”

As someone intimately involved in the hiring process at many large companies, Ms Grove said she herself has used these strategies and has found success with them.

This includes when appointing high-level executive roles, for which a perfect match is essential.

“Skill-based matrixes to rank candidates are very useful,” she said.

“The elements of the matrixes can be developed with the selection panel, which for a chief executive officer role, can utilise the different views of a whole board.

“We have panel interviews with a broader group of senior executives involved and consciously ensure the group brings varied viewpoints.

“We have set questions and not just chatty interviews.

“There is a place for less formal discussions, but it should be something done at the later stages, particularly for a highly competitive process such as exists for senior executives or chief executive officer processes.”

Biased robots

In this age of automation, many organisations are turning to digital tools, including artificial intelligence (AI) screening processes, to make hiring easier and quicker.

Mr Leibbrandt said while these tools could be useful, and even aid in the fight against bias, they could have built-in biases of their own and needed to be used correctly.

He urged those responsible for the hiring process to proceed with caution and do their research.

“While there is evidence on these tools being imperfect, I believe a bigger concern arises when the users of these tools – such as recruiters and human resources managers – do not understand their limitations and risk making choices which aggravate biases,” Mr Leibbrandt said.

“This could happen when managers completely delegate their recruitment choices to AI assessment tools or when managers wrongly believe these tools are biased, and then try to correct it.

“I hope developers of new recruitment tools are transparent about their scope and their algorithms, and I hope companies using these tools will engage independent researchers testing their efficacy and proneness to biases.

“I believe biases can be minimised when AI tools are used in conjunction with human assessments, and there is common knowledge on the functioning of these tools and the biases they and the recruiters can have.”

Ms Grove agreed that it was crucial to search for hidden biases in digital tools, just as you might do the same for human-only hiring processes.

“If you are using these tools for multiple roles, which for a big company hiring multiple positions is not unusual, you need to run a diversity audit regularly,” she said.

“If it isn’t delivering the results, you need to assess why and what needs to change.

“However, any company actively trying to be diverse in its hiring and implementing strategies to achieve that needs to assess its success race.

“Equally, it should be part of turnover assessment as well.

“If you are hiring a diverse rate of people but they are not staying, then that is a problem.”