Unfortunately, unconscious bias often finds its way into the recruiting and hiring process. Some people associate genders with certain jobs, like K–12 teachers being women while engineers are men. Some let biases like favoritism affect how they evaluate applicants. While these implicit biases are difficult to outright eliminate, here are five ways to reduce bias in your recruiting and hiring processes.
Educate Your Team
The best defense against unconscious bias is to stay aware of its presence. For that reason, it’s important to talk to your team about implicit biases and teach workers how to recognize them. Unconscious biases often form our personal and professional perceptions. It’s important that members of your team take a step back and assess their views now and again. It will ensure they’re not clouding their own judgment.
Emphasize Accountability
After your team is aware of unconscious bias, accountability is key to reducing bias in your recruiting and hiring process. Teamwork is essential because it can be incredibly difficult to identify and address your own biases. If you see someone in your team exhibiting implicit bias, you must step in and help them regain self-awareness.
Review Job Descriptions
Job descriptions are an important part of the hiring process. They help you find applicants with the skills and work history you need for your business. However, it’s worth revisiting your job descriptions and examining the language you used to describe the job requirements. Even subtle word choices can make a strong impression on your applicant pool and convey biased preferences.
Establish Diversity Goals
While you’ve probably devised a diversity program in the past, you need to remember it’s not a one-and-done deal. Periodically adjust your goals, parameters, and more to achieve an effective diversity initiative that is conscious of ensuring a fair recruiting process.
Find a Fresh Perspective
Much like how your team needs to work together to ensure everyone remains aware and accountable for their biases, it helps to have an outside perspective with affirmative action plan outsourcing. Our experts can help identify problems you may not have noticed or considered. They can help you achieve the fairest workplace and hiring process possible.
