This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 158

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Guest Cook: Bias in the Six Stages of Recruitment by Bas van de Haterd

Unbiased hiring is a hot topic and nobody can be against a fair recruitment process right? 

In order to talk about bias it’s important to realise what it is and where it comes from. Bias are the mental shortcuts we take as humans to make sense of the world. Basically what the late great nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman called ‘system one thinking’. 

There are many biases of which dozens can influence the hiring process. From in-group favouritism to our group homogeneity bias. From priming to groupthink, the halo effect to stereotyping. This last one is of course one of the most commonly recognised as problematic in our industry. 

But bias doesn’t just creep in the selection part of recruitment, there are many risks of biases in many parts of the process. Bias in the sourcing part of the process, and not just with active sourcing. Bias also exists in attraction, meaning people who don’t apply based on how you’ve communicated the requirements. So lets start there, with the Job Advertisement

1. The Job Ad

Job ads can be full of bias. Age bias, by using overt words like ‘young’ to coded words like ‘dynamic’. Requirements for recency ‘recently graduated’ or for years experience can also imply a desired age range. Of course there are other ways to perhaps unintentionally communicate bias - religious bias for example by referring to the Friday afternoon drinks with the team or the fun weekends with colleagues. There is also a gender dimension - terms like ‘excellent’ and ‘high achiever’  have a gender bias as women have a much higher bar on self assessment then men for these terms. 

There is also the question of what parts of the remuneration package do you emphasise. You can’t print the entire employee handbook, so do you pick the time off? The hybrid work arrangements? The bonus package? The pension scheme? Or the office parties? They all speak to a different audience. 

Make sure you consciously write your job ads. Use bias decoders. Ask internal minority groups to proofread ads and perhaps even create multiple ads for the same job if there are just too many types of people to fit into one job ad. 

2. Advertisements

If you advertise on social media like Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, but also in magazines or outdoor posters, you use ads to attract people to the full job ad. These ads can be biassed as well. What photos do you use for example? We tend to be attracted to people we can identify with, this is unconscious signalling of the type of person the company is looking for. Is it male? Female? White? Black? Asian? Muslim? And the same goes for the text. What do you emphasise? The salary? Or the flexible hours? The great team? Or the company goals? They all attract different people. 

The great thing about digital advertising is that there is no limit on the amount of ads you can create and run. By creating different ads for different audiences you can reach many more people with an ad that appeals to them. 

3. Algorithmic Bias

The different ads you created in the previous step of course are useless if the algorithm only serves the public one ad. As all algorithms, especially on social media, tend to optimise for clicks they will become biassed even if you don’t want them to be or if your target audience is everybody, unless you ‘hack’ the algorithm. Since there are many more male engineers an algorithm will automatically optimise and show it to men. If your ad for a nurse has a female photo and emphasises part-time work, it will attract more women and the algorithm will eventually stop showing it to men. 

The remedy for this is to create different campaigns for different persona’s. And although specific targeting is forbidden on job ads, by tailoring the ads in text and photo to a specific group you can reach different groups. Each individual campaign needs to be consciously biassed towards one group in order for the overall campaign to not be biassed. 

4. Careers Website

Make sure your careers website doesn’t have bias in it as well. Be honest, but show your organisations diversity in photography. Also make sure you have photos of people that actually do the job with the job ad, as people like to recognise themselves in that photo. 

In an ideal situation you have different landing pages with different job ads that match the ad that’s clicked on social media. Using the same photography and emphasising the same benefits of the job. 

Make sure your website is readable, have a relatively large type as with age small letters become harder to read. Make sure this works perfectly on a mobile phone too. Have ‘read out loud’ options for the visually impaired. 

5. Pre-screening

Pre-selection is the focus of most anti bias tools since this is the most obvious, and most visible, place bias occurs. Most pre-selection occurs based on resumes even though there isn’t a single academic research to ever show even correlation between anything in a cv and future job performance. It is the ultimate document for bias. Racial bias, ageism, gender bias, but also in group bias, out group homogeneity bias and recency bias. 

There are several remedies to counter bias in this, depending on the type of role you are looking for. If all you need is for people to show up, for example at Kruidvat’s warehouse, you can do open hiring. No need to do any screening. 

Anonymizing cv’s doesn’t hurt, but the research isn’t conclusive that it helps. Without proper training it might pop up later in the process or sometimes bias can be derived from things in the cv. The date of your first work experience might reveal age, sorority reveals gender and languages spoken can reveal ethnicity. 

Skills based hiring, when done right, has proven to seriously reduce bias. There are two ways to do skills based hiring. One is still based on the cv and technology assesses the skills from the cv. Although this eliminates the risk of the biassed human interpretation of jobs in the CV, this hasn’t been researched enough to be confident this is really the cure for bias at this stage. The other way is by using assessments. When using the right, validated, assessments that are testing for the right skills, this has shown to get rid of most bias. However, selecting the right assessment that's validated for your target audience and actually measures the skills relevant for the job isn’t an easy process. For example: a perfectly validated test for people with a college degree can still be biassed if it’s used for people for whom English or Dutch or whatever language is their second language as they might not understand the nuances in the questions like a native speaker would. 

6. Screening

The last part of the process is the screening part. Although this is full of bias as well, it’s much harder to prove because it’s impossible to A/B test. As interviews are never the same. 

BrightHire’s data does show for example that male interviewers show up much more often with female candidates, they tend to dominate the conversation speaking 30% more than with male candidates and they talk sports 63% more with male candidates, which can lead to affinity bias. 

Although many companies have bias training for their interviewers, research shows this only works if there is a process to support it. Bias training does help interviewers stick to the process that is meant to combat bias. 

The key to an ‘as bias free process as possible’ is a structured process. The more structure, the less chance of bias. Asking every candidate the same questions in the same format by the same interviewer and individually scoring them after each interview is known to help a lot. 

Modern technology can also help. AI can for example transcribe the interview so the interviewer can focus on the interview itself. There are tools that can also analyse what’s been said and turn that information into skills, drivers and character traits. This also helps de-bias the process. 

These AI tools also help gather feedback on the interviewer, giving the interviewer data on his or her unconscious biases. 

How to De-bias Your Recruiting

In summary it’s important to look at bias in every stage of the recruitment process. 

• Make sure you are writing unbiased job ads;
• Create multiple ads for multiple target audiences;
• Create multiple campaigns for these target audiences, even if you can’t actively target them, hack the algorithms;
• Make sure your careers website is as diverse as your organisation;
• Make sure your careers website is accessible for different groups; 
• Go to skill based hiring and use tests to assess for skills in the pre-selection process; 
• Don’t ignore bias training, but understand it’s not enough;
• Have a structured process and use technology to assist in this process. 

This is an English translation of the Dutch white paper on unbiassed hiring by Digitaal-Werven. For the Dutchies that are interested it’s downloadable for free here.

Bas van de Haterd is a recruitment expert, published author and event organiser with a particular specialism in career websites and assessments. Follow Bas on LinkedIn here

Whats In The News?

Interview Intelligence Platform Metaview raises $7 Million

I've been bullish on this category ever since I first saw a demo of the product and in 2024 there is no doubt in my mind that this has been the most impactful AI-driven tech as applied to recruiting. Metaview have been a force in the sector and with this additional firepower, we can expect even faster product iteration and hopefully, more market insight. Read about the raise here

What's Going On?

Big List of Recruiter Events to Attend in 2024

There are 100+ events in the Big List of Recruiting and HR Events to Attend in 2024 - make sure you bookmark this spreadsheet, share it with your event organiser and event going friends and get yourself to one of these this year. If you see any that are missing and should be there, please do add to the bottom of the spreadsheet - I will merge them in weekly.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep252 - How to Pull Off a Global TA Restructure, Friday 5th April, 2pm BST

The 'Global Search for Productivity' means companies world over are restructuring in order to get lean, find efficiencies and re-engineer processes in order to do more with less. That also means TA departments will be needing to do the same. How exactly do we respond to the company demands to increase productivity whilst reducing costs? We're going to be talking to TA leaders who have done it - we're with Martin Thomas, Head of Workforce Strategy, Philips, Jennifer Cunningham, VP Global Talent Acquisition (Pearson) & Elaine Atkinson, Global Head of Talent Acquisition (Kainos). Must attend folks - register here

Talent & IR35, 4th April, 3pm BST

IR35 has been around for a decade, and it's been a huge task for recruitment & HR teams countrywide to keep abreast of the changes in the regulations. What is the latest update we have with IR35? I interview Ray Walker, VP of Contingent Workforce at Worksome to find out. Complete with Q&A - so if you have any questions that need answering, register here

Tribepad Gro Webinar -Unlocking Growth: Scaling Your Team with AI Driven Recruitment, Tuesday 16th April, 2pm BST

Super excited to have this conversation, particularly as we are finally getting examples of recruitment teams re-orientating themselves around AI-enabled functions. Examples are rare, but they are there. Lets see how far we can get to with this - join me, Neil Ray, MD, Livero Group and others. Register here

Canadian Staffing Summit 2024, Weds 17th April, One King West Hotel, Toronto

Honoured to be keynote in the Canadian Staffing Summit 2024. It is going to be welcome opportunity to learn from the Canadian community on what the local challenges have been in operating a recruiting business. My task is set those challenges into a global context, and offer some strategies that recruitment agencies in other parts of the world have pursued. It's going to be a great event - tickets here.

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter, comment below with the link and event details. Don't forget to at mention me so that I see it

Who's Hiring?

This is where it is at folks - Recruiting Brainfood on Trueup is an aggregator for TA / Recruiter jobs all around the world. Great filters on posting date, location etc. If you're looking, check it out here

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What Are You Doing?

Matthew Parker and James Hudson have launched a new podcast - Open To Work, focusing on conversations on helping people navigate this job market. Great to see more voices join the public discourse, especially on topics which we really need right now!

Clair Mohammed has launched a new newsletter Recruitment Radar - collecting together the best recruiter articles published on LinkedIn that week. A fantastic way to ensure you don't miss out on great content by other recruiters. I've subscribed - so should you!

If you have any personal news or initiative that you want to share, make sure you comment on the this newsletter with your news.

End Note

Second short week in a row, but then it ramps up from here. I'll be publishing a series of updates on live events I am attending soon - going to be a rollercoaster from now til November I think 🤣

Hope you've enjoyed this issue - see you next week

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.