Dive Brief:
- Blind recruiting seeks to take "unconscious bias" out of the hiring process by removing basic resume data, including name, gender, age, education, and in some cases, career longevity. Some employers are successfully using it to improve their workforce diversity situation, according to Fast Company.
- Fast Company reports that blind recruitment is gaining traction due to recent research that found that job hunters with ethnic names needed to send out 50% more resumes before they got a call back than job hunters with "white"-sounding names.
- Azmat Mohammed, director general of the Institute of Recruiters, told Fast Company that employers who adopt blind recruitment practices "always see" a more diverse workforce. But he also added that employers must tread carefully to optimize blind recruitment, since it isn't one-size-fits-all.
Dive Insight:
As a "loose rule," the factors that would have no impact on a candidate's success should not be seen during the recruitment process, Mohammed said. That includes an applicant’s name, gender, age, sexual orientation, address and marital status.
That's the easy part, however. The challenge is that employers need to create a test or series of tests that would demonstrate competence. Fast Company cites Google, which makes applicants take various psychometric and ability tests. The article also notes that Deloitte, HSBC, the BBC, law firm Clifford Chance and cloud-storage firm Compose Inc. are blind recruitment adopters.
"Creating more of these processes and practical tests really gets into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to do the job," Mohammed told Fast Company, adding that the tests are better indicators of a person’s ability than what can be learned in a face-to-face interview.
