How to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process

There is no denying that many candidates experience unfair hiring processes in their professional careers. Some of the primary factors like unconscious sexism, racism, and ageism, contribute to an unfair candidate selection process.  

Organizations are in a constant struggle to incorporate innovative ways to hire different talent and diverse candidates. Taking part in making a diverse workplace increases productivity and employee retention. You can learn how to demonstrate commitment to diversity and inclusion here.

Despite making a lot of effort, eliminating or learning how to reduce bias in hiring processes seems to be far-reaching. These biases in the organizations’ recruiting system are not only challenging to cover but also lead to imbalances in the process. Not to mention, they create a trend of uniformity in companies instead of diversity.

Take a look at the given strategies to reduce biases in the hiring process if you want to cultivate a culture of growth and diversity in your company.

Strategies to Reduce Biases in the Hiring Process  

Accept That Biases Exist

Whether you are a leading a diverse committee or a manager of the hiring process, know that we all hold biases especially those that can influence professional decisions. Giving preference to someone based on gender, race, or language is very common in the hiring process. Affinity bias, for example, is common in the talent acquisition process. Companies tend to hire candidates who act, behave, or operate like the rest of the employees.

Invest in Self-Learning

Commit to seeking resources such as books, articles or virtual webinars that are written or lead by diverse perspectives especially those from underrepresented communities. A reading list we found to be useful was Forbes, “10 Books to Help Foster a More Diverse and Inclusive Workplace”.  

This commitment to learning will bring a new awareness to uncovering biases in hiring decisions, provide the vocabulary to recognize these biases, and how to respond individually or on a company scale as well.  

Blind the Resume Review Process

If you do not think you can sort out resumes objectively, try to do this task blind or using a software program to blind the information. That means you can remove the applicant’s name, gender, age other discriminating information from the resumes before evaluating them. It is a strategy to reduce unconscious bias your company may hold to rank the candidates. This way, you will be able to choose the candidates on their relevant skills, not on any other biases.  

Rework the Language of your Job Description

Experiment with the job listing description vocabulary.  For many this is the first impression of a company in the recruiting process. It reflects the culture of your company and what talent your company is looking for.  

It is key to use neutral language in job descriptions and avoid using stereotypically gendered vocabulary.

Standardize Interviews

Studies have shown that structured interviews with the same defined questions are more organized and result oriented. It is a strategy to reduce bias as they allow employers to consider the skills and performance of different candidates with structure.  

Set a Target to Focus on Diversity Hires

A diverse workforce can bring significant advantages to any business. To achieve this, companies can intentionally set a target to focus on hiring candidates from different backgrounds, skillsets or industry experience.  

Whenever possible track and record any diversity hiring goals. Reflecting on the wins of having a diverse team allows for more accountability but more involvement companywide on those to keep diversity top of mind and encourages a mindset that promotes the idea of building a diverse team.

How to Reduce Bias with a Staffing Company

At Advantis we believe, true diversity starts with recruiting a variety of outstanding people with differing backgrounds, skills, ideas, cultures, and experience levels.  At Advantis Global our purpose is built on the idea that what we do matters to people other than ourselves.  Our goal is to foster a culture that attracts people who are driven by this service mindset and continue connecting people to opportunity.