How To Eliminate Hiring Bias

By Danielle Wirsansky on March 14, 2018

Every employer wants to have the strongest candidates possible employed at their place of work. The better the team, the higher the productivity, the more profit and success that the company will reach. It is an employer and recruiter’s job to get the best candidates possible, but sometimes it can be hard to tell who the right choice is. Even unconsciously, every employer has a certain amount of bias.

Bias is inherent—but it does not mean that you cannot work to overcome it. In fact, it is a recruiter’s job to overcome their hiring biases so that they can find and hire the best employees possible. But knowing that you need to eliminate your hiring bias and actually eliminating it are two different things. It is a good first step to recognize that you need to eliminate your hiring biases, but how do you actually do so? Read below to get some practical tips to help you eliminate hiring bias in your workplace!

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Write More Balanced Job Descriptions

Job descriptions are incredibly important. They are what attract, or repel, potential employees to your workplace. They help people to know what will be expected of them in this workplace and if it might be a good fit for them or not. In order to attract all kinds of potential employees, and thus a wider variety of employees, you need to make sure that the way you write job descriptions is balanced. If you get the same kind of applicants for your job postings, maybe it is time to re-evaluate the way that your job descriptions are written. There can be many ways that a job description is written that is influenced by unconscious biases that can chase away potential employees.

Gender Coding

Recent research shows that often, the language in job descriptions have coding to them that make them intrinsically gendered. Researchers Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen of the University of Waterloo and Aaron C. Kay of Duke University wrote, “gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged, institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance. Employing both archival and experimental analyses, the present research demonstrates that gendered wording commonly employed in job recruitment materials can maintain gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations.”

More masculine worded job descriptions can hinder women from applying for positions with that company and vice versa. Product manager Kat Matfield developed the “Gender Decoder for Job Ads” and drew an original list of gender-coded words which include the following:

-Masculine-Coded Words include:

  •  active
  • adventurous
  • challenge
  • confident
  • decision
  • driven
  • independent
  • lead
  • objective
  • opinion

-Feminine-Coded Words include:

  • agree
  • commit
  • cooperate
  • depend
  • honest
  • interpersonal
  • loyal
  • support
  • together
  • understand

Diversify your pool of applicants by removing what gendered language you can from your job descriptions so that all potential applicants that fit your criteria will answer your job posting. The more qualified people that apply, the more people for you to choose from, which will only help to ensure that you get the best fit of employees.

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Blind Submissions

Another way to help you to divest yourself of any hiring biases you may have is to take blind submissions. Have an applicant’s name, race, gender, you name it removed or redacted from their submission, so you can go through and judge them based on their past work experience and their career goals rather than what their name might be, for instance.

By going in blind when looking at these applicants’ information, you help to level the playing field for all potential employees. By looking beyond characteristic demographics, you can make sure any bias, unconscious or otherwise, is not getting the best of your hiring practices and stopping you from hiring the applicant with the best set of qualifications for the job. By going blind when reviewing applications, you can make sure that you are truly choosing people who might be right for the job—and you might even find a hidden gem or two that you might otherwise never considered.

Make Diversity A Goal

This can sometimes be a controversial step for a company to make as it can occasionally anger current employees of more majority groups and sometimes make those minority employees hired more of a target. However, research shows that diversity in the workplace is good for both employees AND the business itself—so do not let bullies rule the roost and stop you from making diversity hiring a practice. You and your company can set yourself goals as to the number of employees versus minority areas you want to hire in, influenced by race, gender, sexuality, religion, and more. Having people from all walks of life will only make your company more nuanced and better to tackle any problems that arise.

Hiring biases can happen to anyone, especially when a recruiter or employer falls into a routine of how they hire. Change it up by trying some of these tips and help shake up your hiring process today!

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