What are the best ways to avoid bias when evaluating a candidate's responses to competency-based questions?

1. Hierarchy - Bias is something which cannot be 100% eliminated as long as humans are involved, however defining hierarchy while interviewing can help. Let's say, I pick up a candidate having 5 years' experience - we definitely need them to get interviewed by someone who atleast has 8 years. The reason being, if at all this candidate is getting interviewed by someone who's of the same hierarchy - an unknown human bias works. 2. Defining competencies: Skill set evaluations pertaining to the current opening, setting up questions based on the job description. 3. Diversity - Leverage a panel from diverse background - this will not only set an example in front of the potential candidate, but also make them feel they are inclusive. .

I am a fan of competency mapping - the process of identifying the competencies and proficiency levels that align with the requirements for a specific job. It is one of the most important (and labor-intensive) parts of hiring; however, by putting in the work on the front end, you will have a more consistent and transparent hiring process. My team is working on a competency guide to share with our employees that includes common core competencies & scopes, which designate the different levels of responsibility. We are also going to start "Partnership Meetings" where the hiring manager, talent acquisition team, and HR team meet before the hiring process starts to align on this piece.

As a recruiter, I cannot stress the importance of defining assessment criteria ahead of an interview! After rolling out interviewer training at previous companies, Recruiting wouldn't begin sourcing candidates until a hiring manager could define how a candidate would be assessed. If you have trouble with it, go back to the drawing board; by this, I mean the job description! Elaborate more bullet points from your published job description, bucket these into focus areas and choose your interview panel, not based on who you >>want<< on the interview panel, but by who would best assess these skills. Oftentimes, an interview panel will look very different after this exercise; and include individuals HMs would have never otherwise considered!

Practical, actual in-role competence, is essential, not just well qualified, well intentioned graduates. Using high ranking or high qualification as a metric for recruitment/interview panel membership is what lets so many organisations down, so: 1. Remove anyone talking about diversity quotas from any from of recruiting or competency based assessments. 2. Take the results of your PNA/TNA (If you haven't done them you have no business discussing competencies for a role); then either internally or hired-in, select assessors with clear and established competence in the field being interviewed for. 3. Use technology and simple staging or the single respondent method to conduct blind interview standards to remove all bias and personal conflicts

The first thing I think of when it is to avoid bias in assessing competencies is : it is impossible to do it 100%. As long as you are not doing the same job than the candidates, you will have a bias. The goal of the recruiter is to reduce the most it can be - but not avoid - the bias. To define and encompass the skills we want to asses is a good first step for taking the recruiter and the candidate on a common ground.

To assess a candidate's relevancy, 3 types of questions are needed: - Behavioral - Technical - Situational (past related achievement) To ensure a fair interview process, the question bank need to remain the same for each candidates. Most importantly, these questions needs to be decided with the hiring team during the kick off meeting. Not only it will help to get valuable insights from the hiring manager regarding their expectations but also ensure that each interview round will assess different attributes.

Interviewers commonly ask two types of questions: behavioral and situational. Behavioral questions explore a candidate's past actions to predict future job performance, assessing traits and skills. For example, "Can you describe a time you assumed a leadership role?" Situational questions present hypothetical scenarios, testing problem-solving skills. Properly structured, they predict performance, but open-ended ones may be ambiguous. Questions should relate to the role, avoiding brain teasers. A complete interview question includes a clear prompt introducing a realistic scenario and follow-up questions to delve into the candidate's approach and problem-solving process.

Often the subject of over thinking, use the STAR, DUET, CAR acronyms/models, all will seek examples and reasoning from the interviewee. What we have found lacking in the questioning design is 'Challenge'. Challenge the examples, challenge the responses, challenge or even attack the result and the rationale. The important indicators are how, and how well a interviewee defends their actions and rationale. Any business should be challenging their staff to be better, start the culture during recruiting, and importantly allow new recruits to start their role with a feeling of achievement - ''I got selected and recruited even after 'that' interview''.

Implement the structured interview, which means all candidates have to answer all the given questions. By doing this, the HR & hiring manager will have a exact same points to evaluate candidates. It may be boring BUT effective. On the other hand, you have spend first half for structured interview and second part is instructured interview to know more about candidates for reference check.

Skills-based Question: Example: "Can you provide an instance where your coding skills were crucial in overcoming a challenging project obstacle?" Knowledge-based Question: Example: "How do you stay updated on industry trends, and how has this knowledge positively impacted your previous roles?" Abilities-based Question: Example: "Describe a situation where your leadership abilities played a pivotal role in achieving team goals." Attributes-based Question: Example: "Share an experience where your adaptability was tested, and how you successfully navigated through change." Qualifications-based Question: Example: "How have your educational background and certifications prepared you for the specific demands of this role?"

Our interviews are like a team effort, and having a mix of voices (diverse panel) is crucial. It's about fairness and gaining different perspectives. Yet, we're human, and biases can sneak in. That's why we train our interviewers on bias awareness. It's like giving them a set of bias-resistant tools, making sure our judgments are based on skills and experiences. With diverse panels and bias training, our interviews aim to be as fair and inclusive as possible.

As human beings, we are notoriously bad at recognizing our own biases; it's called "unconscious bias" for a reason! Candidate debriefs are a great means to combat bias that can creep into the interview process. It all starts with having clear definitions of what an interviewer should be assessing; if you're not clear about the objective, you can't question it's objectivity. Secondly, interviewers need to be receptive to questions about perceived bias. If a peer is questioning a potential bias, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you; it simply means you're human! Take the opportunity for introspection, and you both may learn something from it!

Create your own personal "Board of Directors" and seek feedback! You could even have each candidate's responses on a faceless sheet to mitigate bias even further.

In the global process of the recrutment, the feedback (or reference) is a very important stage, even if not enough to make sure it is the right candidate. This is a unique chance for you to open the process to someone else, which you need to choose carefully (there is an obvious potential bias from the old employer), and to secure your choice.

I emphasize documenting evidence when evaluating competency-based responses to ensure objectivity. This involves correlating observations directly with assessments, creating a transparent decision-making process. Additionally, implementing group interviews and post-interview discussions with other interviewers is crucial. It promotes diverse perspectives, minimizes individual biases, and validates assessments, leading to more fair and accurate candidate evaluations.

It is so important to review your data - are there any trends? Do you see that a particular team/department/hiring manager has any trends - for example, the pass through rates across gender/race/ethnicity? Are there any trends with what candidates are scored more critically than others? We all have bias - so it is important to do trainings around mitigating bias. Then, you need to align on the rubrics - is one person's "strong yes" another person's "no?" Lastly - are the competencies you are assessing actually aligned to the role (ie - for an individual contributor role, you are assessing people management)?

Interviewers inevitably bring biases, be it conscious or unconscious into the process. Interview training can help mitigate bias by enhancing awareness of the various types of biases. In addition, introduce a structured debrief process where the interview team can scrutinize and challenge others answers for fairness and accuracy.

If the interviewers are biased, they will unconsciously bring their bias to the interview. The beste way to improve, is to become aware of it and work on yourself.

why would a bias be bad in this context ? you need to figure out whether someone is competent and you are knowledgeable enough to evaluate that. moreover, you definitely want to know whether that person will fit. be biased. accept it. strict methodology will merely turn such interviews into qcm-like tests which are notoriously bad at evaluating technical skills. the reactions of the candidate are important. how fast they get it when they are wrong, how they behave, how they link things together... all of this is valuable information. personnal opinion : don't try too hard. you will have a few initial questions that you will probably ask most candidates. the rest will be based on their resumes and how they responded to the first questions