Biases within the recruitment and selection process

Anybody who has worked in a hiring capacity during their career has most probably witnessed or been involved, consciously or unconsciously, in a situation where assumptions have been made based on a person’s ability, age, gender, nationality, culture, or even looks.  For instance, I can recall a line manager in a large retail chain openly declaring that he prefers not to recruit females in their mid-20’s “in case she falls pregnant or needs to take extra time off to care for sick children, or do the school pick-ups!”

Unfortunately, race is also another common bias, with a belief that a person of color could be “more confrontational”, “tardy,” and “not align with company culture.”  or slower to pick up new technology” or “unable to adapt to change”.

Perception is also major issues with recruiting and selection; most agencies are quick to place certain of specific race into lower, dead end paying jobs regardless of education and experiences while promoting people who look like them, acts and behaves like them, and share similar interests and background as them. this has had a negative social and economic impact on individuals, families, and communities.

Even today, Ontario is going through an infrastructure boom in construction as the province and country prepare for the future where technology will dominate by speed and access to everything in a timely manner. The constriction sites though paint a very harsh truth about recruiting and selection in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These sites, regardless of location or jobs being done, are not reflective of the communities in which they are operating and yet there continue to be discussions about the need for youth and apprenticeship in construction.

We believe that when we invest in people and in our communities, we invest in the meaningful changes required to transform our world in powerful ways. As you may know, Toronto City Council approved the Community Benefits Framework in 2019. This aligned the City’s poverty reduction and economic development efforts with the organizing taking place in neighborhoods for over a decade. It also set a course for how we can better leverage our public resources (investments, land, tax incentives) to ensure equitable economic opportunities for community members who have been historically and persistently economically, politically, and socially marginalized. In the midst of a global pandemic, which has exacerbated the existing economic, social and environmental crisis in neighborhoods across Toronto, it must be clear the only way forward is through racial and gender economic justice, climate justice, and regenerative local economies. Now is time for the City to take bold leadership to deliver a well-built society that is also worth living in – a society that is built on the values of collective well-being and intelligent investment.

Bias in some form or another occurs very frequently within the interview process. So how can we avoid unconscious bias in our recruitment and selection processes?

Avoiding bias in recruitment and selection

Organizations that are seriously striving towards an inclusive and diverse workplace could start by looking at their current hiring processes and this cannot be overstated.  If you are a hiring manager or internal recruiter or HR Manager, you can help your organization to achieve this by following the next seven steps:

    • Engaging diverse perspectives at each stage of the recruitment process from writing job descriptions and developing selection criteria to advertising, application processes, shortlisting, interviews and follow up. Involving more diverse staff or even external advisers can ensure that unconscious bias and assumptions are mitigated at each stage.
    • Creating a job description that clearly focusses on the core requirements of the job and the skills, knowledge and other personal qualities actually required to perform those duties. It is often important to encourage genuine questioning of selection criteria so that old assumptions about how a job will be performed can be challenged if appropriate.  The advertisement and job description should actively encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply, reiterating that the recruitment and selection process will be conducted using a fair, transparent process based on the key capabilities required of the role.
    • Ensuring hiring managers/recruiters/panel members have insight into their own unconscious bias. Training in this area would heighten this awareness.
    • Establishing behavioural interview questions and standardised benchmarks prior to interviewing and making sure they are consistently adhered to during the interview.
    • Avoiding hasty hiring decisions and listening to opinions of each of the interviewers, ensuring one person does not dominate the process or the decision making.
    • Utilising multiple sources of evidence (e.g. psychometric assessments, written work tasks and comprehensive referee checks) and making sure this evidence is taken into consideration before a decision is made.
    • Taking care not to appoint purely based on perceived cultural fit. Numerous studies have demonstrated that hiring based on culture fit can be highly subjective. For example, an applicant may have built a strong rapport during the interview resulting in the interviewers thinking, “I’d love to work with that person” and not assessing them on the basis of meeting or demonstrating the core capabilities of the role. 

Building a truly diverse workforce is not possible if unconscious bias in recruitment and selection practices is overlooked.  There are concrete steps that can be taken in terms of designing and conducting the  recruitment and selection process itself to avoid bias, conscious or unconscious.  It is also imperative that managers and supervisors involved in selection and recruitment processes have the necessary self-awareness to identify their own individual unconscious biases.  This awareness can be enhanced through training.

We can do better, ought to do better and it starts not just with businesses granting contracts or companies expanding their workforces, it starts with the recruiting and selection process and the who manage and administer them. These are the people who can contribute negatively/positive to organizational culture and in essence, individual, family, and community development.