Reducing Personal Bias in Hiring

When it comes to hiring diverse candidates, good intentions do not always lead to good results. Despite efforts to bring in more candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, many companies still struggle to achieve equal representation. This is often due to unconscious bias on the part of hiring managers, who may inadvertently exclude qualified candidates because of their own biases.

Ruchika Tulshyan, author of "The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace", suggests that there are several internal biases that can impact hiring decisions. These include:

• Affinity bias: a tendency to favor those who are similar to us in terms of race, gender, education, language, or other characteristics.

• Confirmation bias: a tendency to seek out information that confirms our preexisting beliefs and to overlook or discount information that challenges those beliefs.

• Pattern recognition bias: a tendency to rely on familiar patterns or heuristics when making decisions, even when those patterns may not be relevant or accurate.

• Halo effect: a tendency to make overall evaluations of candidates based on a single favorable characteristic, while ignoring other important factors.

To overcome these biases and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, Tulshyan recommends the following actionable steps:

• Acknowledge that everyone has biases and work to recognize and challenge your own.

• Create a personal learning list and seek out resources that provide perspectives from underrepresented communities.

• Ask questions about where bias might show up in the hiring process and involve diverse team members in the decision-making process.

• Hold yourself accountable for progress and continuously work on becoming more inclusive. This might involve setting diversity goals, tracking progress towards those goals, and soliciting feedback from team members.

• Seek out opportunities for professional development and actively seek out perspectives and experiences that differ from your own.

By following these steps, hiring managers can help to create a more diverse and equitable workplace. While this process can be challenging, it is ultimately worth the effort, as diverse teams are proven to be more innovative and better able to serve a wide range of customers and clients. Therefore, it is essential for companies to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a top priority in the hiring process.