Everyone I speak to wants to debias recruitment, however, many struggle with “how”. They resort to approaches which at best are ineffective, e.g. taking names off CVs or putting a token person of colour on interview panels.
I’ve come across instances where an organisation’s well-meaning attempt to debias recruitment INCREASED barriers for some minoritised groups.
So here is your step-by-step guide of things to think about in debiasing recruitment.
You can never remove all the bias from your recruitment process, but you can do an awful lot to reduce it.
1 Identify and address biases in hiring managers
No, I am not suggesting sending hiring managers on generic unconscious bias training. These courses do not raise individuals’ awareness of their own personal biases or identify actions they can take to counter them.
However, people operate systems, so unless you reduce the impact of their biases, the best recruitment system in the world will not work.
If you don’t know how to do this, contact Full Colour at [email protected] to see how we can help.
2 Designing the job
Long job descriptions and person specifications with everything including the kitchen sink thrown in are – or should be – history. One danger of long JDs is that great but less confident candidates rule themselves out and people who are brilliant at selling themselves apply, even though they may not be the right person for the job.
Also, when job descriptions/person specifications are too long, hiring panels cannot keep everything in their heads, making it harder for them to assess candidates.
Instead, stick to what will the person be doing in the coming year. What major projects will they contribute to/be responsible for? How many people will they manage? What size of budget will they manage? Will they be dealing with external people and if so who, why and how?
It is crucial you avoid “they might possibly do this at some point, so let’s put it in”. JDs should be revised during annual appraisals and performance reviews, so you can always evolve the job if you need to.
With the person specification: what is essential for a candidate to bring with them? No really… Anything which could be trainable LEAVE OUT. E.g. Your Finance Director will probably need a financial qualification, but if they are unfamiliar with software you use, you can train them on this, so leave that out of the person specification.
3 Designing the application process
This is hard for those of us trained in traditional recruitment approaches.
We were taught to find evidence from candidates’ past careers that relates to the job. But here’s the thing…
People can inflate what they achieved past roles, or the circumstances within which they achieved something may be completely different from yours.
Evidence of past performance is not an effective indicator of future success.
So…design three or four questions about the main tasks/projects a person would be responsible for and ask them questions around that. E.g.:
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How would they approach the task/ design the project?
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How would they work with others to ensure success?
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What challenges or risks can they see and how would they address them?
And ask about how they would live your values in their day-to-day work.
Each member of the hiring panel should independently score answers with a pre-determined scoring system, and the results of this should determine who you bring to interview.
It is important that the hiring panel meet before they score to agree HOW they will score. If you have a numerical scoring system for example, what will the panel look for to award a “4”. We all score differently, based on our past experiences, temperament and biases, so this step is essential.
Answers to applications questions should be cut and paste into a grid by someone outside the hiring panel, with each candidate’s answers are scattered across the grid. The hiring panel should score each answer individually and then the person who created the grid can reassemble each application and tot up the scores to arrive at your shortlist.
Also, if you ask for CVs, these should not be shared/reviewed before answers to the application questions have been scored. Otherwise, you risk things like affinity bias (e.g. yay – he’s from my home town) or the halo effect (e.g. she went to an Oxbridge college so she must be intelligent).
4 Designing the selection process
Some people treat interviews as some kind of “let’s see if we can catch candidates out” process.
You WANT people to be at their best so you can genuinely assess who would perform well in the job.
So…give people a chance to prepare. E.g.:
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Give candidates the interview questions in advance
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If you have practical tests/assessments, tell candidates what these are so they can prepare
Also, make sure to ask about access needs in advance so you can plan for these.
And finally, limit the number of questions you ask at interview so you can give the candidate – and the hiring panel – room to breathe and think. If you designed the job properly, limiting the contents of the JD/person spec, this shouldn’t be hard.
5 Close the loop
I always offer every candidate the opportunity for feedback. If logistics allow, I do this face to face (virtually or in real life). Also, ask for feedback from candidates about their experience of the recruitment process. This will give you valuable data about how you can evolve your recruitment process, and signals that your organisation is serious about inclusion.
Can we help?
Want help with any aspect of your EDI journey? Reach out and to set up an informal, no obligation chat. Also, we will soon be opening our waiting list for the Full Colour EDI Programme for HR Leaders: we will hold your hand as you build everything you need – skills, confidence, concrete plans and practical actions – to drive change on EDI in your organisation.
Contact [email protected]