Study after study proves that sexism, racism and ageism (amongst other types of discrimination) are still rife in the hiring process. In many cases, this is subconscious/unconscious bias as opposed to intentional. Nonetheless, this is a real problem in the world of recruitment.
In a bid to counteract this, companies have adopted “blind recruitment” processes. But what is blind hiring, how does it work and how do you implement it?
Let’s take a look.
What is a blind hiring or recruitment process?
In short, this is the process of removing all demographic information from applicant CVs in order that the hiring manager does not see it.
This ultimately then means that hiring managers make decisions about who makes the next stage of the recruitment process based on merit.
This could include the removal of information that would hint at gender, information that would hint at age and ethnicity. In some cases, the process even goes deeper and removes any information at all that might hint at an applicant’s socio economic background – things like home address or education.
Does blind hiring work?
Yes. It certainly seems to in some cases. Data shows that anonymised job applications result in reduced bias.
When research shows that so many of us are guilty of unconscious bias – something that can be more notable when hiring managers are trying to process lots of applications quickly – this is one way to try and level the playing field and ensure your application process is as fair as possible.
The Limitations of Blind Recruiting
Of course, this is not a flawless process. The main limitation is that any ability to fully anonymise ends at the interview segment of a hiring process.
So unconscious biases can once again come into play at later stages of the process.
How to implement blind recruitment
The key to implementing blind recruitment is to ensure that the hiring manager does not see information that might give away a candidate’s ethnic background, socio economic background, age or gender.
You might refer to this process as “anonymising a CV.” And in terms of how to practically anonymise a CV?
Well, you could do this manually. You could have a member of your company who is responsible (someone in HR perhaps) for receiving CVS and sending them on to the specific hiring manager with those key details redacted.
The process would potentially look something like this:
- HR member receives CV
- He or she assigns the CV with a number
- He or she creates a copy of the CV, adds the number to it
- He or she then redacts all identifying information from the CV
- The name of the candidate is recorded alongside the number assigned in a sheet that the HR team member has access to
- He or she then forwards the redacted CVs, now anonymised, to the hiring manager
- The hiring manager feed back which CVs he or she would like to process to the round of recruitment
This is a laborious task to do manually so if you’re receiving high volumes of CVs, this is something you might look to do with a tool.
A number of hiring tools offer blind recruitment features that will anonymise CVs for you and make the process faster.
Blind Recruiting and the Interview Process
Of course, when you meet someone face to face or on a video call, the risk of unconscious bias creeps back in.
Well, unless you plan to interview with an actual blindfold on!
So while you can’t totally anonymise this part of your recruitment process, you can take steps to make it as fair as possible.
The first thing is to make it a structured interview process. In a properly structured interview process, all candidates are asked the same questions in the same order.
The focus should be on work centric questions and not on the candidate’s background. You could have candidates carry out assessments etc.
And ultimately, before interviewing, you should work out specifically how you will assess the quality of answers you get. Measuring every candidate against the same set of standards is imperative.
In summary
Blind recruiting is NOT a full solution for unconscious bias and discrimination in the job application and hiring process. But it’s a start.
