Understanding Blind Recruitment

Handling bias has always been a problem with recruitment. Most of the time, it happens unconsciously. But still, when bias gets into a hiring process, it can seriously damage your workforce. Blind recruitment can help you overcome that and treat all candidates fairly.

 There are many benefits of having a diverse workforce. To gain those benefits and to avoid unconscious bias, blind recruitment is the best approach for your hiring practices.

 What Is Blind Recruitment?

Blind recruitment is a hiring strategy that anonymizes certain aspects of the candidate to remove unconscious bias in the hiring process.

For instance, factors such as name, age, ethnic background, and education may make the recruiter or the hiring manager have unconscious bias even before meeting the candidate in person.

This can skew the hiring process and stop you from recruiting candidates from diverse backgrounds.

On the other hand, removing certain information about the candidate can ensure that whoever takes care of the hiring process never has the space to form a bias toward the candidates.

The following are some of the details that are removed in blind recruitment:

• Names.
• School and university names.
• Ages.
• Pin code or location.
• Personal Interests.
• Gender.
• Ethnic background.

 Tips to Implement Blind Recruitment Practices

To implement blind screening methods, you must stay careful about the information you wish to keep and the ones you need to remove. 

The following are tips to implement blind hiring methods for your company:

Craft Inclusive Job Descriptions

The job description is the very beginning of contact for the candidates when it comes to recruitment. It should be created in a way that encourages diverse applicants to apply for the job.

In that regard, you need to carefully create a job description that does not refer to any specific gender. Avoid using terms that refer to a particular gender like “Chairman” and use “Chairperson” instead.

There is also a chance that age-related information like experience might appear in the job description. This can discourage some candidates from applying for the job.

 Hide Certain Information

Now that it is time to receive the CVs from the applicants. You need to choose the information you need to hide. 

Certain details, such as their university graduation year, might not seem necessary to hide, but this can reveal the candidate’s age. 

Likewise, other details, such as name, zip code, and a picture of the candidate might give rise to unconscious bias during the recruitment process. 

You need to choose the details you can hide and still have a proper recruitment process. Ensure that the school details and the candidate’s university are hidden.

Hide the details of the university, but ensure that you keep the relevant details, such as what the candidate studied.

 Avoid Social Media Pre-Screening

One of the most common ways to find more details about the candidate during normal hiring is to look at their social media profile. While some candidates might have a professional social media account, others might not have this.

This can provide you with a lot of information about the candidate that could be useful to learn more about in terms of the cultural fit.

But, when it comes to blinding recruitment, avoiding social media screening altogether is the best way to stop any bias from taking place during the recruitment process.

The social media profile will give you the candidates’ hobbies and interests. It also gives you an idea of what type of person they are and how well they would align with the company values.

The best time to screen the candidate through social media is after you get to know the candidate through a face-to-face interview. 

 Track the Metrics

When you implement blind recruitment methods, you must ensure that the new hiring strategies change the existing hiring practices.

Track the status of your hiring methods before and after the blind recruitment strategy. See if your workforce is more diverse now. Track the metrics regularly if your company engages in recruitment more frequently.

You must step back and modify your hiring style if there aren’t any noticeable changes after implementing the blind recruitment strategy. 

For instance, try looking into data-driven recruitment or a structured interview to help you handle recruitment bias.

 Educate Your Team about Unconscious Bias

Blind recruitment can help reduce bias in the recruitment process, but this does not mean recruiters can altogether avoid bias. Everyone on the recruitment team must understand bias.

Bias during the recruitment, even if it is unconscious, will make you lose a qualified candidate and might even make it hard for you to provide the candidate with a positive experience.

This can affect your branding and bring down your reputation. The best way to avoid this is by educating the recruitment team.

It is necessary for you as the employer to teach candidates about the various biases and how each of these biases can affect the organization.

The recruitment team should always ensure that they do not make decisions based on bias. Teach the team how to overcome these biases and tackle them when necessary.

 The Disadvantages of Blind Recruitment

While blind recruitment helps you overcome unconscious bias and treat all candidates fairly, it comes with certain disadvantages worth considering before implementing it in your recruitment strategy. 

The following are the disadvantages of blind recruitment:

• When you have certain quotas to meet for the hiring process, it might not always work together with blind hiring methods. 
• Blind recruitment methods can only work until the face-to-face interview. Once the recruiter and the candidates get together, it is hard to stop unconscious bias. 
• Since the candidates’ interests are hidden, it might become difficult to assess the candidate for the cultural fit for your company.
• Without an ATS to help you through the blind hiring methods, it might take a lot of time to implement this manually. 
• Some of the candidates might express themselves through their CV. Writers and designers, for instance. It might not come out fully when you go for blind recruitment.

 Closing Thoughts

Blind hiring, as mentioned above, can help you handle unconscious bias in the recruitment process. This does not mean that every bias related to recruitment will disappear. Blind hiring can only help you when it is properly implemented. To ensure that it works, you need to keep track of the metrics and modify the blind hiring strategies to work well with the existing recruitment process of your company.