Dive Brief:
- A new study from CIPD says that despite advances in technology and testing, many hiring managers still have internalized biases that cause them to hire people who are similar to themselves.
- Some examples of bias: Gender (both men and women preferred male candidates), justification (choosing those who are the "safer" choice so they don’t have to justify an "unusual" choice), and opting for candidates with white-sounding names over ethnic ones.
- The report shares 18 tips for better recruitment practices, including: testing the wording of your job ads, systematizing use of social media, anonymizing resumes when reviewing them, asking for feedback from both rejected and accepted candidates and including people in hiring decisions who have not been involved in assessing candidates.
Dive Insight:
“As behavioral science has continually highlighted, our decision-making is much more prone to sloppy thinking and bias than we would like to believe,” writes Jonny Gifford, research advisor for CIPD. As such, it’s difficult to overcome the human element during recruitment.
The study also noted some “unusual biases,” reported HRM America. The weight of a clipboard that a resume was attached to and whether or not the interviewer feels warm can affect interviewers’ decision-making.
Others are a bit more serious – gendered words in job ads, especially “stereotypically masculine” ones, made women less attracted to those jobs. This doesn’t just mean pronouns. Sentences like “We will challenge our employees to be proud of their chosen career” is considered masculine, according to the study, while a sentence like “We nurture and support our employees, expecting that they will become committed to their chosen career,” is seen as more feminine. Check the study for more tactics to remove as many biases as possible.
