Article 5: Unconscious bias in recruitment

“We absorb bias in the same way we breathe in smog—involuntarily and usually without any awareness of it.”

Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D.

According to Reinders (2023), unconscious biases, also called implicit biases, are prejudices or stereotypes that we hold about certain groups of people that we are not aware of. These biases are shaped by our experiences, upbringing and culture, and can influence our thoughts, feelings and behaviour towards others.

The term 'mindbugs' was coined by the psychologist Mahzarin Banaji to describe the unconscious biases we have. Just like a piece of software, our brains have bugs in them that can sometimes cause us to behave in ways that we do not intend. These bugs are called unconscious bias, and they're part of everyone's brain.

Unconscious biases are neither intentional nor voluntary. They are just the way our brains are wired. Our brains make connections between different pieces of information, and sometimes these connections are based on our own personal experiences and on our own biases.

For example, if we have had a negative experience with people of a particular race or ethnicity, our brains may make a connection between that race or ethnicity and negative things. As a result, we may unconsciously have a bias against people of that race or ethnicity.

Unconscious bias can have a huge impact on our lives, both on a personal and a professional level. It can affect how we relate to one another, how we make decisions and how we progress in our careers.

When we talk about bias in recruitment, we often think of the most obvious forms, such as demographic age, gender and race bias. However, there are many other types of bias that can also have a negative impact on the candidate selection process. These biases can lead to a talent pool that is smaller and less diverse than it should be.

In this article we will explore the 10 most common forms of bias in the recruitment process, as well as strategies for avoiding bias and the benefits of an unbiased approach.

The 10 most common forms of recruitment bias

According to Equalture.com, these are the 10 types of unconscious bias that lead to unfair screening. Let’s have a closer look.

1. The affinity bias: This is the tendency to favour candidates who are similar to ourselves in terms of background, education or interests. This can happen because we feel more comfortable with people who are like us, or because we believe they will be a better fit for the team.
   During a job interview, this is often done by asking candidates about their personal life, hobbies and other non-work-related questions. This happens simply because we assume that someone with the same hobbies will have the same soft skills as us.
   This can lead to an unfair rejection of candidates who do in fact have the soft skills that we are looking for. Or it can lead us to promote candidates who do not have the soft skills we are looking for.
   
2. The confirmation bias: This is the tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them. This can be the case, for example, when we are reviewing CVs and we are looking for candidates who have the same educational background or work experience as we do. As a result, you may focus on asking questions that confirm this belief, rather than asking all kinds of questions that would help you get a good picture of the candidate's qualifications.
   In addition, you may be more likely to pay attention to information that confirms your preconceptions and to ignore information that contradicts them. As a result, confirmation bias can cause you to overlook a candidate who might be a good fit.
3. The halo effect: This is the tendency to let a positive characteristic about a candidate influence our overall impression of him or her, or rather our first impression. For example, if you see someone dressed in business attire, you might think they're more competent and capable than someone wearing a coffee-stained T-shirt.
   During a selection process, this can easily lead you to unfairly reject candidates with great potential. So in an interview, you could be blinded by this one positive and end up making the wrong hire.
4. The horns effect: This is the opposite of the halo effect, where we allow a single negative aspect of a candidate to influence our overall impression of them. An example of this hiring bias is a situation where a candidate has a great interview and is highly qualified, but you remember a small negative comment or mistake made during the interview more strongly than any positive aspects of the candidate.
   As a result, even though the candidate has many positive attributes, you are more likely to reject them for the job.
5. The social bias: This is when we tend to favour candidates who come from the same social group as ourselves.
   An example of this bias is when a recruiter unconsciously favours a candidate from their own social group or ethnicity over other, perhaps more qualified, candidates.
   For example, a recruiter may have a preference for a white candidate over a minority candidate, even though the minority candidate has more qualifications and experience. This may happen because the recruiter subconsciously associates positive attributes such as work ethic, intelligence and reliability with their own group, leading to biased decision-making.
6. The bias of illusory correlation: This is when we tend to see two things as related when they are not actually related. For example, even though there is no evidence to support this, we may believe that all people of a certain race or ethnicity are good at maths.
   Interview questions such as "If you could be an animal, which one would you be?" claim to provide insight into a candidate's personality. In reality, there is no evidence that such questions can actually be used to predict a person's performance on the job.
7. The anchoring bias: This is the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we receive when making a decision.
   Suppose you are hiring a replacement for Person A, your company's current sales manager. Based on Person A's skills, experience and other qualities, you create a profile of the perfect candidate. Why is this a bad thing? Because you become 'anchored' in the expectation that the next sales manager has to be (and will be) exactly like the current one.
   The important thing is that you are looking for a different sales manager, not a copy of person A.
   It's like looking at somebody's CV who's worked at Google for a year. But that becomes the one piece of information you cling to, anchoring all the other expectations you have of that candidate. The outcome? Because you are anchored to that one piece of information, you decide not to look at other potential candidates.
8. In-Group Bias: This is the tendency to give preferential treatment to members of our own group over members of other groups. This can happen because we feel a sense of loyalty to, or a connection with, our own in-group.
   The consequences of this bias can be reflected in valuing members of one's own group over 'outsiders', sharing similar opinions within the group and prejudicing other groups. This bias is strongly influenced by the affinity/equity bias and leads to the stereotyping bias.
   If you apply this to the situation in the labour market, you will find that recruiters will give a more positive assessment to candidates who fit into more similar groups than to those who have less in common.
9. The attribution bias: This is the tendency to attribute your successes to your own abilities and your failures to external factors.
   This happens when we evaluate how others behave or try to find out why they behave the way they do. At first glance, this may seem harmless, but jumping to the wrong conclusions about someone without knowing the whole story can lead to an inaccurate judgement of that person. A judgement that is based solely on assumptions. If you are doing something very well at work, you may attribute your success to your own skill and your own perseverance. But when people make mistakes, we are always inclined to point the finger at someone else, and to blame all sorts of external factors that have led us to make that mistake.
   The problem with the attribution effect is that we do exactly the opposite in our judgments about other people. In a recruitment context, this means we may unconsciously see candidates' successes and achievements as luck, and their mistakes as confirmation of their unsuitability for the job.
10. The beauty bias: This is the tendency to have a preference for candidates who are physically attractive.
    Beauty bias is a type of prejudice that results in a preference for a candidate who is considered to be attractive by society's standards. Let's face it, looks don't make better employees. Even though beauty is subjective, we're all human and we can often be dazzled and start to associate a person's looks with their future performance on the job.
    Physically attractive people are more likely to be interviewed and more likely to be hired. Common examples of discrimination include prejudice against someone with a lot of tattoos, obesity or who simply does not fit the dominant ideals of beauty in society.
    

How to avoid unconscious bias in the recruitment process

Most people are largely unaware of their unconscious and/or implicit bias. According to Suveren (2022), it is necessary to better understand and overcome our inner (unconscious) biases by recognizing them in our personality, social relationships, and interactions.

Gërguri (2023) gives us a few practices to remove unconscious bias in recruitment.

Be aware of your own biases. The first step in the prevention of unconscious bias is to be aware of it. Courses and workshops to make recruiters aware of their biases are one way many companies are tackling this problem. By doing so, they will be able to assess candidates on the basis of their skills, experience and competencies. In this way they can mitigate their unconscious biases. This approach results in a more diverse workforce that is more reflective of the society in which it operates.

Use blind recruitment practices. Blind hiring practices remove personal identifying information from resumes and other application materials. This includes names, addresses, and schools attended. This helps to reduce the impact of unconscious bias on recruitment decisions.

Evaluate your recruitment process. To evaluate your recruitment process, consider the following questions at each stage:
Application: Do you receive enough applications from diverse candidates? Are vacancies posted in locations that attract a diverse pool of candidates?
Eligibility: Are the selection criteria based on the candidate's goals or on intuition and instinct?
Referral: What criteria do you use to determine which candidates will move on to the referral stage of the process? How do you decide which candidates to refer to the hiring manager?
Interviewing: Do you do interviews with all referral candidates? Are there any unconscious biases at play on the part of the hiring manager?
Offer: Are opportunities offered to diverse candidates? Does the number offered reflect the proportion of diverse candidates referred?
Hiring: Have you set goals and objectives for each stage of the recruitment and hiring process? Do you strive to meet these targets for each new position offered

Set diversity targets. Diversity targets can be a win-win situation for companies by bringing the issue to the forefront. A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in their leadership teams were 36% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

Use data-driven hiring practices. Data-driven recruiting is when you use tangible facts and stats to inform your hiring decisions. Making decisions based on data can help to reduce bias by taking some of the subjectivity and emotion out of the decision making process. The use of objective data to assess candidates can help employers make more informed and fairer hiring decisions. One of the key benefits of the use of data in the recruitment process is the introduction of a greater degree of objectivity into the assessment process. It can be difficult to remain unbiased when making hiring decisions based on emotion, intuition or subjective impressions. Data-driven decisions remove subjectivity, allowing employers to make more objective hiring decisions based on information and evidence.

Here is also an interesting video by Gail Tolstoi-Miller. She is an award-winning career coach, staffing strategist and author.

(Source: https://youtu.be/QCFb4BiDDcE?si=BlNNi9QSElodFEYW)

Conclusion

Unconscious bias can negatively affect our judgement, say Gino and Coffman (2021). It can lead to decisions that are in favour of certain individuals or groups to the detriment of others. This can hinder workplace diversity, recruitment, promotion and retention efforts.

However, there are ways to help limit how it plays out. By getting to the root of the problem and being open to where people get their skills from, organisations can recruit from a wider range of people and benefit from the diversity of thinking that exists. Encouraging 'blind hiring', standardising how candidates' skills are assessed, diversifying recruitment panels and conducting objective assessments also help to eliminate unconscious bias.

Organisations should become aware of the different forms of bias and take steps to ensure that all candidates are assessed on the basis of their skills and experience rather than on the basis of their gender, race or ethnic background. In this way, they can build a more diverse and inclusive workforce that is a better reflection of the society in which they operate, ultimately leading to greater innovation and productivity.

List of references:

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