Everyone has biases. The good news is that there are some important steps managers and other leaders can take to get bias – even unconscious bias — out of the hiring process:
- Give leaders the tools, skills, and resources to be self-aware.
- Remove certain information from resumes: age, name, gender, and origin.
- Educate everyone who is involved in the hiring process about bias.
- Encourage leaders to examine their own mindsets and the beliefs that helped shape them.
- Have conversations about the value of diverse opinions and backgrounds.
- Put the focus on job competencies and specific knowledge, skills, abilities needed to be successful.
- Get diverse perspectives on candidates and the hiring process.
- Use an assessment instrument with candidates before the in-person or video interview.
- Create a job benchmark for each role. What is necessary to be successful at that job?
- Recognize the existence of unconscious bias. Don’t ignore or deny it.
- Standardize the interview process and stick to that standardization for all candidates.
- Work on elevating the values you unconsciously de-emphasize.
- Promote self-awareness via training, coaching, role playing, and other efforts.
- Identify and maintain the “must haves” for each role.
- Ask open-ended questions, then listen to the responses.
- Challenge your own ideas about what matters.
