Mitigating Bias with Structured Hiring

Bias is very common in workplaces. Most of the times, it happens unintentionally with the managers hiring candidates that they like or the ones that are most similar to them thereby totally eliminating people from a particular age, gender, race or religion & creating a uniform workforce. Moreover, hiring managers usually end up recruiting friendly and amiable candidates as opposed to someone qualified or competent.

While it may seem like a harmless error in hiring, bias can lead to discrimination against qualified & most suitable candidates. Reducing bias not only helps create a diverse environment, but also helps raise a talented workforce with enhanced employee experience leading to overall growth and success for the organisation. It also helps enhance the image of the company as being a good place to work and attracts better & more diverse, enriched workforce.

Corporations are now realizing the advantages of an unbiased hire & taking deliberate actions to mitigate bias & introduce diversity initiatives in hiring.

One effective way to reduce bias in recruitment is through Structured Hiring.

Structure Hiring is a well-intended & mindful recruitment process where decisions are based on data & evidence.

Structured hiring process entails clearly defined steps in recruiting candidates to ensure in depth & unbiased skill evaluation that is scalable and replicated for every candidate with minimal human involvement.  Minimal involvement by the HR and hiring managers help reduce the unconscious bias to a great effect.

Here is how structured hiring works :

1. Define the role : Structured hiring starts with a well-defined Business Objective for a job. The Hiring managers and the other stakeholders need to agree on what long-term business objective will the candidate meet. They can then define the qualifications, skills, traits & aptitude needed for success in the role. Managers need to be trained to include words that are gender neutral and as unbiased as possible, thus inviting applications from anyone and everyone who has the skills.

• Take advantage of technology : Technology helps eliminate bias by providing you with candidates based on data and evidence. There are many software that helps eliminate bias by doing much of the vetting during the initial screening stage. Social media allows companies to reach global talent irrespective of the demographics, gender, age etc. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook are being used extensively by companies looking for skilled resources. It would be a good idea to look at skills or the attributes without looking at the name, gender or the photograph.
• Structured Interview process : research shows that unstructured interviews where the interviewer does not follow a pre-defined set of questions, often leads to selection of candidates with lower job success rate. Whereas, structured interviews, in which candidate are asked the same set of defined questions, lead to a standardized interview process. Here the focus is on reducing unconscious bias and focusing on the factors that are important for the job performance. Since every candidate is asked the same set of questions, it becomes easier to compare and decide on the best fit candidate leaving no scope for any personal preferences that the interviewer might have.

Often unintentional bias sets in and it is not addressed because people do not recognize it as an issue. A good way to work towards an unbiased workforce is to identify and talk about the issue.

Many companies are now using the services of recruitment and staffing agencies and online recruitment platforms, that help them identify the right candidates, from their vast database of prospectives hires. They use complex algorithms to find the most suitable candidates based on the key skills defined.

Flexi Ventures Pvt Ltd is one of the fastest growing staffing companies in India. Through its online portal theflexiport.com, helps companies get access to pre-vetted highly skilled talent ready to be on-boarded.